Quotes of the Day:

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm."

- Aldous Huxley

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” 

- Blaise Pascal

"You learn as much from failure as from success, Dad always says. Though no one admires you for it." 

- Karen Joy Fowler

1. Can Russia Terror Bomb Its Way to Victory in Ukraine?

2. Putin Fans or Kremlin Bots? War and Mobilization Across Russian Social Media Platforms

3. What did Xi and Biden just accomplish?

4. Russia’s Road to Economic Ruin

5. Is A NATO vs. Russia War Possible over Poland Missile Strike?

6.​ Poland Hit by Russian Missiles: How Should NATO Respond?​

7.​ Could Ukraine's New Peace Plan End the War For Good?​

8. ​Korea’s Shifting Deterrence Strategy

9. Biden’s Pentagon misses the target again

10. The Stage Is Set For US Combat Troops In Ukraine –

11. The Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon is getting its first female commander ever

12. FBI director says he's 'extremely concerned' about China's ability to weaponize TikTok

13. Biden-Xi Talks Mark Shift in U.S.-China Ties Toward Managing Fierce Competition

14. At G20 Summit, Xi and Biden Offer Rival Visions for Solving Global Issues

15. Skilling SOF teams to exploit the cyber vector

16. G20 leaders' declaration condemns Russia's war 'in strongest terms'

17. The US’s New Tool for Deterrence Isn’t Ready (SOF, Cyber, Space Triad)

18. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 15 (Putin's War)

19. Exclusive: Kamala Harris to visit Philippine islands at edge of South China Sea dispute

20. Missile That Hit Poland Likely Launched by Ukraine in Air Defense, Western Officials Say

21. Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons

22. Ukraine Needs Air Defense Assistance to Protect Hard-Won Victories on the Ground

23. Operationalizing Strategic Empathy: Best Practices from Inside the First Island Chain

24. US to Spend $66 Million to Upgrade Philippine Security Facilities

25. To win the internet, the Pentagon's info ops need more humanity and a dash of absurdity

26. Putin’s Fear of Retreat – How the Cuban Missile Crisis Haunts the Kremlin

​27. ​Max Hastings On The Legacy Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

1. Can Russia Terror Bomb Its Way to Victory in Ukraine?

Excerpts:

The Russian strategic campaign is not likely to succeed in either toppling the Ukrainian government or in forcing Kyiv to capitulate. If Ukrainian morale fell because of this bombing campaign, it would become a huge outlier in the history of strategic air campaigns. Robert Pape (author of Bombing to Win, an account of the history of strategic bombing) is deeply skeptical about the effectiveness of Russian efforts. Moscow may believe too much of its own propaganda about the weakness and decadence of the West and, by extension, Ukraine.

But the people Russia is trying to coerce are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the people who survived the Holodomor and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. It is not likely that the weather will force them to knuckle under and give up on their resistance to Russia’s invasion. But Russia can undoubtedly make life unpleasant for Ukrainians, especially in the face of what could be a dreadful winter.

Can Russia Terror Bomb Its Way to Victory in Ukraine?

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Farley · November 15, 2022

Russia has decided to try to win its war with Ukraine by resorting to terror bombing. What chances does the campaign have for success?

An Extraordinarily Brief History of Strategic Bombing

World War I saw the first strategic bombing campaigns, with Germany using Zeppelins and heavy, long-range aircraft to inflict damage primarily upon British cities. The campaign was not extensive enough to cause serious damage to British industry, but it did kill a fair number of civilians and caused panic, if not demoralization, on the British home front. Germany made another half-hearted attempt at a strategic bombing campaign in the first year of World War II, but this rapidly gave way to the Combined Bomber Offensive, the British and American effort to destroy German industry and morale.

A similar campaign against Japan ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs. The US undertook strategic bombing campaigns in both the Korean and Vietnam wars to little substantial military effect. Apart from the atomic attacks on Japan none of these campaigns are regarded as having been decisive to winning a war, but almost all of them killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of property.

Enola Gay B-29. Image was taken on October 1, 2022. Image Credit: 19FortyFive.com

Nature of Damage

Conceptually, a strategic bombing campaign can strike a variety of different kinds of targets. During the Combined Bomber Offensive of World War II the United States focused on attacking Germany’s industrial capacity, while the British concentrated on breaking the morale of the German population, although in practice there was relatively little difference between the campaigns due to the inaccuracy of American bombing.

The campaign against Japan technically targeted industry but mostly killed civilians. The campaigns against North Korea and Vietnam mostly targeted infrastructure and industry , although the Korean campaign in particular caused substantial collateral damage to civilian agriculture.

The Russian campaign has generally avoided direct attacks against the civilian populace in favor of dual-use civilian-military targets. Early in the war, Russia targeted some Ukrainian industry, especially in the defense sector, but Russia likely judged the strategic impact of such attacks limited because of how much military equipment Kyiv imports from the West.

Now, Russia is focusing its attention on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, attacking power generation and transfer stations. Ukrainian officials expect that attacks against water distribution facilities may come next.

Nature of the Russian Campaign in Ukraine

Strategic bombing campaigns are often as costly to the initiator as they are to the victim. While we will never have a full accounting, the cost of conducting the Combined Bomber Offensive was immense for the Western Allies. It involved flying large, expensive four-engine bombers into the teeth of German air defenses, which were relatively inexpensive. Germany could rely on smaller, cheaper single-engine fighters to attack the bombers, and also enjoyed the advantage of fighting most of the battles over their own territory, meaning that damaged aircraft could be repaired and pilots rescued.

Russia has largely avoided using expensive fixed-wing aircraft to attack well-defended Ukrainian strategic targets. Rather, the Russian campaign has mostly used cruise missiles and long-range drones to target Ukrainian infrastructure. These drones and missiles are accurate enough to hit small targets, and appear to have caused extensive damage. The acquisition of additional ballistic missiles (and the retooling of Russian industry to produce drones) means that Russia will continue to be able to destroy targets deep in Ukrainian territory.

But the Ukrainians are certainly not helpless. The transfer of extensive anti-aircraft defenses to Ukraine began as soon as Russia invaded, and has continued to this day. However, the economics of offense and defense may not favor Ukraine. Many of the missiles that Ukraine is using against Russian drones and missiles are more expensive than their targets. Of course, Ukraine isn’t really paying for many of these capabilities, as Western countries are generally footing the bill.

Still, Ukraine can’t rely on the hope that the Russians will run out of money to launch additional drones and missiles.

And in some ways, that Russian strategy plays directly into the strengths of the pro-Ukraine coalition. Germany may be reluctant (or even unable) to dispatch lethal military equipment that would help Ukraine defeat Russia’s armies. Still, it is willing and able to send engineers and machine parts to Ukraine to repair electricity transfer stations. Moreover, as the Russian campaign seems to serve little military purpose beyond inflicting misery upon civilians, it won’t help the Russian public relations campaign in Europe.

Likely Impact on Ukraine

The Russian strategic campaign is not likely to succeed in either toppling the Ukrainian government or in forcing Kyiv to capitulate. If Ukrainian morale fell because of this bombing campaign, it would become a huge outlier in the history of strategic air campaigns. Robert Pape (author of Bombing to Win, an account of the history of strategic bombing) is deeply skeptical about the effectiveness of Russian efforts. Moscow may believe too much of its own propaganda about the weakness and decadence of the West and, by extension, Ukraine.

But the people Russia is trying to coerce are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the people who survived the Holodomor and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. It is not likely that the weather will force them to knuckle under and give up on their resistance to Russia’s invasion. But Russia can undoubtedly make life unpleasant for Ukrainians, especially in the face of what could be a dreadful winter.

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Farley · November 15, 2022

2. Putin Fans or Kremlin Bots? War and Mobilization Across Russian Social Media Platforms

Excerpts:

Lacking many traditional elements of soft and hard power, Russia has relied on widespread propaganda and disinformation campaigns to bolster its global standing and ability to achieve diverse foreign policy goals. Abetted by social media and virtual reality, Russian operators have injected the global informational environment with false narratives and propaganda designed to roll back American influence, boost Russia’s image, or weaken NATO and the EU. Russia’s extensive ecosystem of informational influence includes Kremlin-sponsored proxy sites, “trolls” exploiting social cleavages through fake blogs and inflammatory comments, bots connected to Russian intelligence, and state-funded media outlets, like Sputnik and RT (Russia Today) disseminating Russian propaganda under the guise of conventional international media.

Putin Fans or Kremlin Bots? War and Mobilization Across Russian Social Media Platforms

ponarseurasia.org · by Mariya Omelicheva

PONARS Eurasia Policy MeMO No. 810 (PDF)

The 2022 Russian war against Ukraine elicited worldwide indignation. Wealthy democratic countries levied harsh sanctions on the Russian economy and provided humanitarian and military support to Kyiv. Muted behind the loud condemnation of war by the leaders of G7, EU, and NATO has been a sizable group of nations that are yet to show strong support for Ukraine or reprimand the Kremlin. From Nigeria and Senegal in Africa to India, Indonesia, and Vietnam in Asia and Peru, Educator, and Honduras in Latin America, scores of governments have been reluctant to call Russia the aggressor and unwilling to take sides in the war.

These cracks in the united front against the Russian war have received little attention. When acknowledged, these diverging positions have been attributed to the vagaries of domestic politics or the so-called “Southern” dimension defined by these countries’ colonial past or, in the case of the African nations, a non-alignment posture. This memo demonstrates how Russia’s arms sales, foreign aid, and information propaganda have also affected countries’ positions on Moscow’s war in Ukraine. It concludes that the growing hesitancy of the West to commit its resources to certain countries and regions, coupled with lagging anti-Western sentiments informed by past American and European foreign policies, have allowed Moscow to spread its influence abroad.

Using the roll call votes for UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 (March 2, 2022) and UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/3 (April 7, 2022), I conducted a statistical analysis of the effectiveness of limited economic, security, and informational resources deployed by Russia in its effort to win global hearts and minds (see Appendix A). Five countries, including Russia, voted against the first UN resolution condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, and 35 countries abstained. Twenty-four countries voted against the second resolution suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over its conduct in Ukraine, while 58 states abstained from voting.

Arms Sales Influence

Russia has been the world’s second-largest arms supplier (behind the United States), accounting for nearly 20 percent of global arms sales since 2016. Despite the Western sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of the Crimea annexation, Moscow continued exporting arms and weapons systems to over 45 countries. For the Kremlin, arms sales have served three primary goals. First, they have provided an influx of capital into Russia’s ailing economy. Second, arms sales have been essential to Russia’s image as a great power state. And third, arms exports were an important conduit for Russia’s influence over client nations. The Kremlin has had some success in achieving the latter goal. Per my analysis of countries’ positions on Russia’s war in Ukraine, states that imported arms from Russia in the years preceding the 2022 war in Ukraine were also considerably more likely to either abstain from voting in favor of the UN resolutions condemning Russia’s aggression and suspending it from the UN Human Rights Council or voted against these resolutions.

Although Western sanctions curtailed Russia’s arms sales by 22 percent between 2016 and 2020, Moscow has sought to expand its arms markets in Southeast Asia and Africa while maintaining some of its long-standing arms relationships in this region. It became the number one arms exporter in Southeast Asia, delivering almost $11 billion, or 26 percent of the region’s weapons between 2000 and 2021. Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Indonesia—all of which abstained or voted against the UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/3—have been among the largest importers of Russian arms. Further, in the Indo-Pacific region, India, which abstained from voting on both UN resolutions, remains the largest purchaser of Russian missile systems and military equipment. And, in Africa, Moscow has brokered military sales deals with 20 countries since 2017. In 2021, for example, Russia signed military cooperation agreements with Nigeria, which abstained from voting on the UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/3, and Ethiopia, which skipped the vote on the UN Resolution ES-11/3 and voted against the second document.

Development and Humanitarian Assistance as Russia’s “Soft” Power Tools

Russia is rarely thought of as an “international donor” as its levels of development and humanitarian contributions pale in comparison to those of the United States and other traditional donors. In 2015, for example, when Russia’s assistance amounted to $1.2 billion, the highest annual contribution to development and humanitarian goals, the United States sought to allocate $20.1 billion across all development assistance and humanitarian accounts. Still, since 2007, Russia has made a concerted effort to increase aid allocations to countries in the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia to bolster its global image and increase its leverage over recipient states. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has specifically named his country’s participation in international aid programs as one of Russia’s “soft power” tools.

The COVID-19 pandemic and slow, inconsistent, and heavily politicized U.S. response to the rapidly spreading infectious disease provided the Kremlin with an opportunity to instrumentalize the use of scarce medical resources. Russia provided various types of medical supplies and equipment to nearly 40 countries in all parts of the world during the first year of the pandemic. And, while the combined bilateral and multilateral allocations by Russia toward the health crises dwarf American and Chinese COVID-19 assistance, the highly visible aid transfers accompanied by Russian propaganda deriding the United States for abdicating its global leadership contributed to a perception of Russia as a more reliable partner for countries in need. To heighten the spectacle of the largest aid deliveries by Russia, the Russian president or foreign minister would have a highly publicized phone conversation with a counterpart in a recipient state, followed by a swift delivery of the much-needed assistance.

These efforts seemed to pan out, at least in the short run. In my analysis, countries which were selected by Russia as the recipients of its COVID-19 assistance, as well as those which received development assistance from Russia in the years preceding its war in Ukraine, were among those who abstained or voted against the UN resolutions condemning and punishing Russia for its aggression.

Russian Propaganda and Disinformation Campaigns Meet Receptive Ears

Lacking many traditional elements of soft and hard power, Russia has relied on widespread propaganda and disinformation campaigns to bolster its global standing and ability to achieve diverse foreign policy goals. Abetted by social media and virtual reality, Russian operators have injected the global informational environment with false narratives and propaganda designed to roll back American influence, boost Russia’s image, or weaken NATO and the EU. Russia’s extensive ecosystem of informational influence includes Kremlin-sponsored proxy sites, “trolls” exploiting social cleavages through fake blogs and inflammatory comments, bots connected to Russian intelligence, and state-funded media outlets, like Sputnik and RT (Russia Today) disseminating Russian propaganda under the guise of conventional international media.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, RT operated pay television and free-to-air channels in more than 100 countries providing content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. In recent years, RT has become a leading purveyor of disinformation and propaganda campaigns targeting audiences in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.

Tapping anti-colonial and anti-Western sentiments, these campaigns sought to portray NATO as the aggressor and the United States as a global threat. By creating false equivalences between the United States and European foreign policies and those of Russia, Moscow’s narratives have fostered disillusion, apathy, cynicism, and the deniability of the Kremlin’s own actions.

While the exact viewership of RT is difficult to establish, research has shown that its content has been widely shared on Twitter, YouTube, and social media, which amplifies the Russian narratives. It is not surprising, therefore, that the countries with greater numbers of RT satellite providers and operators were also more likely to abstain or vote against the UN resolutions condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and calling for suspending Russia’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council.

The impact of RT has been more pronounced in countries that score lower on the survival/self-expression and traditional-secular/rational values scale developed by the World Values Survey project. Survival values indicate nations’ greater concern with physical and economic security as well as lower levels of trust and tolerance. Traditional values scores convey countries’ embrace of traditional family values and deference to authority, among other things. In the analyses, which included both values scales among predictors, countries with lower scores on the survival/self-expression and traditional-secular/rational values scales were also less likely to vote in support of the UN resolutions condemning and punishing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Where the United States and European countries have been quick to criticize Russia for its policies, the Kremlin’s brand of authoritarian politics and appeals to security, order, and traditional values find appeal in many countries across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

In the wake of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, all EU countries, as well as Canada, formally banned RT, and social media platforms in Europe restricted access to RT’s content. Yet, the content thrives outside the United States and Europe on Twitter, social media, and the Internet, including new websites disguising the banned Russian news media outlets. Together with the RT broadcasts, in which falsehoods proliferate on social media, these outlets breed Russia’s misinformation about the war in Ukraine and reinforce the pre-war themes of racism, colonialism, economic expansionism, and Washington’s hypocrisy. In fact, RT has been among the most retweeted platforms for tweets in Africa and Latin America since the beginning of the war.

Lessons Learned

Despite the considerable economic and human toll of war on Russia and its increasing isolation on the global stage, Moscow continues using its arms sales and military deals as well as informational and political levers in the countries that have been receptive to Russian influence for a host of reasons, ranging from shared anti-Western sentiment to national security priorities and cultural traditions. Punishing struggling nations for their links to Russia through secondary sanctions or reductions in development assistance and humanitarian aid is unlikely to change their governments’ behavior. On the country, it may play in the hands of countries like Russia and China while furthering the suffering of populations severely affected by rising energy and food prices. Pushing these countries deeper into social and economic emergencies may bode future security crises necessitating the involvement of the United States and its Western partners, who often rely on these same governments for addressing regional security concerns.

Western efforts at countering Russian propaganda and disinformation have worked well in the European context but have so far done little to galvanize public outrage with Moscow in locations that have long harbored anti-Western sentiment. While the United States and EU governments should continue tracking, confronting, and rebutting Russian disinformation, they should also listen to legitimate concerns and acknowledge uncomfortable truths about significant differences in the volume and types of assistance provided to peoples around the world experiencing acute crises and emergencies. If global unity is a genuine concern for the West, both Washington and Brussels should devise more circumspect, long-term, comprehensive, and diversified approaches to countries caught in the midst of the broader conflict between Russia and the West to pay close attention to factors that have enabled Moscow’s influence.

Appendix A

Mariya Omelicheva is Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College, National Defense University. The views expressed in this memo are those of the author and do not represent an official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, or National Defense University.

PONARS Eurasia Policy MeMO No. 810 (PDF)

Image credit/license

ponarseurasia.org · by Mariya Omelicheva

3. What did Xi and Biden just accomplish?

Fast Thinking

November 14, 2022

What did Xi and Biden just accomplish?

By Atlantic Council

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/what-did-xi-and-biden-just-accomplish/

JUST IN

Can a beach getaway repair this relationship? US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met for three hours today in Bali, Indonesia, ahead of this week’s G20 summit, with both leaders pledging to get the world’s most important bilateral relationship back on track and agreeing to restart climate talks. There “need not be a new Cold War,” Biden said afterward. Did the two leaders make any progress beyond the talking points? What flashpoints may emerge next? Our Sinologists read between the lines of the post-meeting diplomat-speak.

TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION COURTESY OF

• Michael Schuman (@MichaelSchuman): Nonresident senior fellow at the Global China Hub and contributing writer to the Atlantic magazine
• Jeremy Mark (@jedmark888): Nonresident senior fellow at the GeoEconomics Center and former IMF official and Asian Wall Street Journal correspondent
• Jessica Drun (@jessicadrun): Nonresident fellow at the Global China Hub

Good talk

• “The good news is that the US and China are talking,” Michael tells us, “after an especially icy stretch” that included US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and the unveiling of new US export controls to keep cutting-edge technologies away from China. And those talks will continue: Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing to follow up.
• “The bad news,” Michael adds, “is that too often the two sides seem to talk at each other rather than with each other” on everything from economics to human rights. “There still appears to be no acknowledgement from the Chinese of how their actions contribute to soured relations,” he says.
• But in the end, “perhaps the outcome of the meeting was the best we could have expected—that dialogue, and the prospect of more of it, holds out hope that competition won’t boil over into conflict,” Michael says.

Cooperation or frustration?

• While the two leaders agreed that the United States and China should work together on climate change, debt relief, and food security—the subject of an Atlantic Council forum in Bali over the weekend—“finding common ground won’t be easy,” Jeremy tells us. 
• To make progress on food security, “Beijing would have to join in pressuring Russia to allow more exports of Ukrainian grain that have been cut off by its invasion,” Jeremy says. “Russian aggression is the greatest single threat to global food security.”
• On debt relief, which will be a hot topic at the G20, “China is the largest sovereign lender and has resisted taking ‘haircuts’ on its loans as heavily indebted poor and emerging market countries have faced a deepening economic crisis,” Jeremy adds, with China sending no signals that it will change course.
• And there are ample areas where officials aren’t even paying lip service to cooperation. China’s readout of the meeting warned of a “trade war or technology war” while the United States took aim at China’s “non-market economic practices.” Says Jeremy: “The core differences in the economic relationship are likely to continue festering.”

Inside Strait

• In his post-meeting news conference, Biden declared that he does not believe a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to be “imminent.” Jessica pointed out that “each leader reaffirmed their country’s respective positions when discussing Taiwan,” with Biden saying the One China policy is unchanged.
• Biden has repeatedly pledged that the United States will defend Taiwan if the island is attacked, which goes against longstanding US policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Those statements combined with other signals that Beijing perceives to be in support of Taiwanese independence and against the One China policy led to what Jessica saw as the most striking part of China’s readout of the meeting: Beijing’s call on Washington to “match its words with its deeds” on Taiwan. 
• Says Jessica: “I’m curious as to whether Biden’s comments were sufficient in reassuring the [People’s Republic of China] that our existing Taiwan policy has endured and will endure.” 

4. Russia’s Road to Economic Ruin

Excerpts:

No matter the outcome, however, Russia will emerge from the war with its government exercising authority over the private sector to an extent that is unprecedented anywhere in the world aside from Cuba and North Korea. The Russian government will be omnipresent yet simultaneously not strong enough to protect businesses from mafia groups consisting of demobilized soldiers armed with weapons they acquired during the war. Particularly at first, they will target the most profitable enterprises, both at the national and local level.

For the Russian economy to grow, it will need not only major institutional reforms but also the kind of clean slate that Russia was left with in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet state made institutions of that era irrelevant. A long and painful process of building new institutions, increasing state capacity, and reducing corruption followed—until Putin came to power and eventually dismantled market institutions and built his own system of patronage. The lesson is grim: even if Putin loses power and a successor ushers in significant reforms, it will take at least a decade for Russia to return to the levels of private-sector production and quality of life the country experienced just a year ago. Such are the consequences of a disastrous, misguided war.

Russia’s Road to Economic Ruin

The Long-Term Costs of the Ukraine War Will Be Staggering

By Konstantin Sonin

November 15, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Konstantin Sonin · November 15, 2022

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian economy seemed destined for a nosedive. International sanctions threatened to strangle the economy, leading to a plunge in the value of the ruble and Russian financial markets. Everyday Russians appeared poised for privation.

More than eight months into the war, this scenario has not come to pass. Indeed, some data suggest that the opposite is true, and the Russian economy is doing fine. The ruble has strengthened against the dollar, and although Russian GDP has shrunk, the contraction may well be limited to less than three percent in 2022.

Look behind the moderate GDP contraction and inflation figures, however, and it becomes evident that the damage is in fact severe: the Russian economy is destined for a long period of stagnation. The state was already interfering in the private sector before the war. That tendency has become only more pronounced, and it threatens to further stifle innovation and market efficiency. The only way to preserve the viability of the Russian economy is either through major reforms—which are not in the offing—or an institutional disruption similar to the one that occurred with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Sanctions Are Not Missiles

The misapprehension of what sanctions against Russia would accomplish can be explained in part by unrealistic expectations of what economic measures can do. Simply put, they are not the equivalent of a missile strike. Yes, in the long run, sanctions can weaken the economy and lower GDP. But in the short run, the most one can reasonably hope for is a massive fall in Russia’s imports. It is only natural that the ruble strengthens rather than weakens as the demand for dollars and euros drops. And as the money that would have been spent on imports is redirected towards domestic production, GDP should in fact rise rather than fall. The effect of sanctions on consumption and quality of life take longer to work their way through the economy.

At the beginning of the war, in February and early March, Russians rushed to buy dollars and euros to protect themselves against a potential plunge in the ruble. Over the next eight months, with Russian losses in Ukraine mounting, they bought even more. Normally, this would have caused a significant devaluation of the ruble because when people buy foreign currency, the ruble plunges. Because of sanctions, however, companies that imported goods before the war stopped purchasing currency to finance these imports. As a result, imports fell by 40 percent in the spring. One consequence was that the ruble strengthened against the dollar. In short, it was not that sanctions did not work. On the contrary, their short-term effect on imports was unexpectedly strong. Such a fall in imports was not expected. If Russia’s central bank had anticipated such a massive fall, it would not have had introduced severe restrictions on dollar deposits in March to prevent a collapse in the value of the ruble.

Economic sanctions did, of course, have other immediate effects. Curbing Russia’s access to microelectronics, chips, and semiconductors made production of cars and aircraft almost impossible. From March to August, Russian car manufacturing fell by an astonishing 90 percent, and the drop in aircraft production was similar. The same holds true for the production of weapons, which is understandably a top priority for the government. Expectations that new trade routes through China, Turkey, and other countries that are not part of the sanctions regime would compensate for the loss of Western imports have been proved wrong. The abnormally strong ruble is a signal that back-door import channels are not working. If imports were flowing into Russia through hidden channels, importers would have been buying dollars, sending the ruble down. Without these critical imports, the long-term health of Russia’s high-tech industry is dire.

The Russian economy is destined for a long period of stagnation.

Even more consequential than Western technology sanctions is the fact that Russia is unmistakably entering a period in which political cronies are solidifying their hold over the private sector. This has been a long time in the making. After the 2008 global financial crisis hit Russia harder than any other G20 country, Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially nationalized large enterprises. In some cases, he placed them under direct government control; in other cases, he placed them under the purview of state banks. To stay in the government’s good graces, these companies have been expected to maintain a surplus of workers on their payrolls. Even enterprises that remained private have in essence been prohibited from firing employees. This did provide the Russian people with economic security—at least for the time being—and that stability is a critical part of Putin’s compact with his constituents. But an economy in which enterprises cannot modernize, restructure, and fire employees to boost profits will stagnate. Not surprisingly, Russia’s GDP growth from 2009 to 2021 averaged 0.8 percent per year, lower than the period in the 1970s and 1980s that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Even before the war, Russian businesses faced regulations that deprived them of investment. Advanced industries such as energy, transportation, and communication—that is, those that would have benefited the most from foreign technology and foreign investment—faced the greatest restrictions. To survive, companies operating in this space were forced to maintain close ties with government officials and bureaucrats. In exchange, these government protectors ensured that these businesses faced no competition. They outlawed foreign investment, passed laws that put onerous burdens on foreigners doing business in Russia, and opened investigations against companies operating without government protection. The result was that government officials, military generals, and high-ranking bureaucrats—many of them Putin’s friends—became multimillionaires. The living standards of ordinary Russians, in contrast, have not improved in the past decade.

Since the beginning of the war, the government has tightened its grip over the private sector even further. Starting in March, the Kremlin rolled out laws and regulations that give the government the right to shut down businesses, dictate production decisions, and set prices for manufactured goods. The mass mobilization of military recruits that started in September is providing Putin with another cudgel to wield over Russian businesses because to preserve their workforces, company leaders will need to bargain with government officials to ensure that their employees are exempt from conscription.

To be sure, the Russian economy has long operated under a government stranglehold. But Putin’s most recent moves are taking this control to a new level. As the economists Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny have argued, the one thing worse than corruption is decentralized corruption. It’s bad enough when a corrupt central government demands bribes; it is even worse when several different government offices are competing for handouts. Indeed, the high growth rates of Putin’s first decade in office were in part due to how he centralized power in the Kremlin, snuffing out competing predators such as oligarchs operating outside of the government’s fold. The emphasis on creating private armies and regional volunteer battalions for his war against Ukraine, however, is creating new power centers. That means that decentralized corruption will almost certainly resurface in Russia.

That could create a dynamic reminiscent of the 1990s, when Russian business owners relied on private security, mafia ties, and corrupt officials to maintain control of newly privatized enterprises. Criminal gangs employing veterans of the Russian war in Afghanistan offered “protection” to the highest bidder or simply plundered profitable businesses. The mercenary groups that Putin created to fight in Ukraine will play the same role in the future.

A Long Road Ahead

Russia could still eke out a victory in Ukraine. It’s unclear what winning would look like; perhaps permanent occupation of a few ruined Ukrainian cities would be packaged as a triumph. Alternatively, Russia could lose the war, an outcome that would make it more likely that Putin would lose power. A new reformist government could take over and withdraw troops, consider reparations, and negotiate a lifting of trade sanctions.

No matter the outcome, however, Russia will emerge from the war with its government exercising authority over the private sector to an extent that is unprecedented anywhere in the world aside from Cuba and North Korea. The Russian government will be omnipresent yet simultaneously not strong enough to protect businesses from mafia groups consisting of demobilized soldiers armed with weapons they acquired during the war. Particularly at first, they will target the most profitable enterprises, both at the national and local level.

For the Russian economy to grow, it will need not only major institutional reforms but also the kind of clean slate that Russia was left with in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet state made institutions of that era irrelevant. A long and painful process of building new institutions, increasing state capacity, and reducing corruption followed—until Putin came to power and eventually dismantled market institutions and built his own system of patronage. The lesson is grim: even if Putin loses power and a successor ushers in significant reforms, it will take at least a decade for Russia to return to the levels of private-sector production and quality of life the country experienced just a year ago. Such are the consequences of a disastrous, misguided war.

• KONSTANTIN SONIN is John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago.

Foreign Affairs · by Konstantin Sonin · November 15, 2022

5. Is A NATO vs. Russia War Possible over Poland Missile Strike?

Excerpt:

For now, the United States, Poland, and NATO all need to avoid any hasty judgments, allow a thorough investigation to be conducted, and only then, once the facts are known, consider whether any further actions by NATO is warranted. But one thing must be clear: America’s most vital national interest is now and will remain to avoid any unnecessary escalation of the fighting in Ukraine that could drag us into an unnecessary, no-win war.

Is A NATO vs. Russia War Possible over Poland Missile Strike?

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Davis · November 15, 2022

Today has been the most consequential day of the war since Russia invaded Ukraine last February. First, Zelensky defiantly addressed the G20, then Russia responded with a massive missile attack against Ukrainian infrastructure. Then, late this afternoon reports emerged of a Russian missile going astray and landing on NATO-member Poland, killing two civilians.

Will Article 5 of the NATO charter draw Poland – and by implication, the rest of the alliance – into war with Russia?

The situation in eastern Europe is heating up fast, and it is crucial to ensure everyone in America understands what is at stake for our national security and what our obligations are both to our Constitution and our NATO allies.

The war between Ukraine and Russia has been raging since February, already undergoing numerous swings and shifts, with significant casualties being suffered by both sides. Things heated up early today when Zelensky addressed the G20 summit via videoconference. During his remarks, he again emphatically declared that “we will fight” until his forces regain all Ukrainian territory. He then issued what he called a 10-point “peace plan,” point 6 of which required Russia to unilaterally withdraw all troops from Ukraine and simply stop fighting.

Apparently, Putin regarded that more as a demand to surrender and hours later replied by launching the largest and most withering missile attack of the war. By the first of November, Russian rocket and missile attacks had destroyed 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. But following Zelensky’s speech, the Kremlin reportedly unleased more than 100 cruise missiles that battered more than two dozen cities, destroying yet more of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, plunging whole cities into darkness. What happened late in the day, however, caused NATO to hold its collective breath.

According to numerous reports, an errant Russian missile was alleged to have landed on NATO-member Poland, killing Polish civilians. As of this writing, it is not clear if Russia deliberately targeted Poland, whether it was a misfire that missed its target, or whether it might have been a Ukrainian S-300 air defense missile that may have missed one of Russia’s 100 missiles and landed in Poland. Once the sun rises tomorrow, Polish officials will be better able to investigate and provide facts.

But already, many voices are speculating this could draw NATO – and therefore the United States – into direct confrontation with Russia, becoming parties to the war. As recently as September, Biden declared that the U.S. and the Atlantic Alliance would “defend every single inch of NATO territory” from any Russian aggression. Lesia Vasylenko, Ukrainian Member of Parliament, tweeted that the missile strike “calls for @NATO article 5 reaction.”

Any suggestion of using Article 5 – sometimes misnamed the “go-to-war clause” – first requires an understanding of what the NATO charter does and doesn’t oblige members to do. Article 5 states that NATO members “agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” and each “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked” by taking “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”

Another critical provision of the NATO charter is often forgotten but incredibly relevant. Article 11 of the charter specifies that all members will carry out the treaty’s provisions “in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.”

Taken together, for the United States, that means that if any member of NATO is attacked, we may take whatever action the U.S. Congress and president deem necessary. Critically, the NATO charter does not supersede the Constitution’s sole war-making authority, which is given in Article I, section 8, clause 11 to the U.S. Congress. Related to what did or didn’t happen in Poland today, however, there is another crucial distinction.

To invoke Article 5, there has to have been an attack against a NATO member. By all appearances, this was either an errant Russian missile or a Ukrainian air defense missile that missed its target and went astray. For there to be any serious consideration of the initiation of Article 5, there has to have been an actual, deliberate attack. It should go without saying that the very essence of the NATO alliance is a mutual defense pact to prevent war – not a mechanism whose careless application could plunge the alliance into a war with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

M1 Abrams tank.

For now, the United States, Poland, and NATO all need to avoid any hasty judgments, allow a thorough investigation to be conducted, and only then, once the facts are known, consider whether any further actions by NATO is warranted. But one thing must be clear: America’s most vital national interest is now and will remain to avoid any unnecessary escalation of the fighting in Ukraine that could drag us into an unnecessary, no-win war.

Also a 1945 Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis.

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Davis · November 15, 2022

6. Poland Hit by Russian Missiles: How Should NATO Respond?

Excerpts:

At the same time, such accidents do not occur in a vacuum. In solidarity with Poland, it is time for a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from NATO countries. This would fall short of severance of relations: Let one or two diplomats remain for communications, but everyone else should go home. Russia would respond reciprocally, but the rebuke and isolation they seek would send a signal to the Russian people about the cost of their aggression. Turkey, which profits greatly from the Ukraine War and is a sanctions-busting hub for Russia, may object. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cynicism should be no excuse for inaction. Every NATO member can also act independently as a sovereign country and then, as necessary, take action against Turkey as well.

The overriding point, however, is to stand with Poland unabashedly. They are not only the frontline with Ukraine but the frontline for the free world.

Poland Hit by Russian Missiles: How Should NATO Respond?

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Rubin · November 15, 2022

NATO Needs to Demonstrate a Backbone after Poland Attack: Russian missiles reportedly fell inside Poland, killing at least two Poles in Przewodów.

Details are still coming in, but three quick thoughts:

First, it is crucial to assure Poland and NATO’s eastern bloc that the United States does not differentiate between them and NATO’s founding members.

There should be no difference between a strike on Przewodów and one on Paris or Providence. When the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke two decades ago about Old Europe and New Europe, he struck a nerve. For too long, those countries like Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic that won their freedom with the end of the Cold War have felt that some NATO members consider them second tier. Diplomats have long tried to paper over this tension, but now is the time to show every new NATO member that there is no second tier. The fact that the missiles struck Poland should not be a reason for a more muted response.

Second, the attack on Poland is not unprecedented. Up until two decades ago, when I entered the Pentagon and fell off the lecture circuit, I would regularly travel to the George C. Marshall Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Often, I would lecture to Foreign Area Officers in a room dedicated to Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson, Jr., an unarmed American officer shot by a Soviet soldier while on a sanctioned observation mission in Potsdam, East Germany. U.S. officials at the time believed the murder was no accident, but was instead a Russian test of America’s Cold War mettle. Only in 1988 did the Soviet Union officially apologize for Nicholson’s death. While Nicholson’s shooting sparked a crisis, then as now, not every crisis—even one deliberately provoked—means inevitable escalation to nuclear war. What is important is to hold Russian leaders to account.

This leads to point three. As a collective defense organization, NATO operates by consensus. Its leaders can choose from a range of options to apply. In this case, as it is not clear that Russia deliberately targeted Poland, NATO has greater flexibility to respond. Indeed, NATO should demand Russia apologize and pay compensation to Poland and the families of those killed.

At the same time, such accidents do not occur in a vacuum. In solidarity with Poland, it is time for a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from NATO countries. This would fall short of severance of relations: Let one or two diplomats remain for communications, but everyone else should go home. Russia would respond reciprocally, but the rebuke and isolation they seek would send a signal to the Russian people about the cost of their aggression. Turkey, which profits greatly from the Ukraine War and is a sanctions-busting hub for Russia, may object. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cynicism should be no excuse for inaction. Every NATO member can also act independently as a sovereign country and then, as necessary, take action against Turkey as well.

The overriding point, however, is to stand with Poland unabashedly. They are not only the frontline with Ukraine but the frontline for the free world.

In this article:

Written By Michael Rubin

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005).

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Rubin · November 15, 2022

7. Could Ukraine's New Peace Plan End the War For Good?

Excerpts:

During the speech, Zelenskyy repeatedly addressed the leaders of what he called the “G-19,” a suggestion that Russia is not, or should not be, a participant in the international intergovernmental forum.

Zelenskyy also accused Russia of attempting to weaponize the upcoming cold weather in Ukraine by targeting the country’s energy infrastructure with missile attacks, while also purposely disrupting the energy market.

“If Russia is trying to deprive Ukraine, Europe and all energy consumers in the world of predictability and price stability, the answer to this should be a forced limitation of export prices for Russia,” Zelenskyy said. “That’s fair. If you take something away, the world has the right to take from you.”

Could Ukraine's New Peace Plan End the War For Good?

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · November 15, 2022

Zelenskyy’s Plan for Peace With Russia to End Ukraine War: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used Tuesday’s G-20 gathering to propose a new 10-point peace plan designed to bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end.

Zelenskyy laid out the plan in a virtual address at the Bali, Indonesia, summit.

The plan comes just days after Russian forces withdrew from Kherson city and Ukrainian troops advanced into the city, reclaiming the first and only regional capital captured by the Russians. The announcement of the plan is significant for several reasons – not just because Zelensky previously refused to negotiate with Russia for as long as Vladimir Putin remains the president, but also because Ukraine is now arguably negotiating from a position of strength.

“I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy said that peace could be achieved as long as Russia commits to food security, energy security, radiation, and nuclear safety, the release of deportees and prisoners, and the implementation of the UN charter. The deal would also require the withdrawal of all Russian troops and an end to all “hostilities” on Ukrainian soil, a commitment to protecting the environment, measures to prevent another escalation, and confirmation from Russia that the war has ended.

Zelenskyy also demanded “justice,” a suggestion that Russia should be held accountable for the damage caused in Ukraine and required to pay for the reconstruction of the country’s towns, cities, and infrastructure.

The ambitious plan does not, however, cede any territory to Russia – as demanded by the Russian president – and will almost certainly be rejected in its entirety unless the Kremlin announces a sudden change of heart.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly resisted pressure from friendly countries like China and India to end the war. He has shown no willingness to bring the conflict to an end without keeping control of Crimea and claiming some Ukrainian territory in the Donbas.

Zelenskyy Snubs Russia at G-20

After previously suggesting that Ukraine would not take part in the G-20 if Putin was invited or in attendance, the Ukrainian president snubbed Russian representatives entirely at this week’s summit. On Tuesday, during a video address to the conference, Zelenskyy outlined the support his military needs to continue fighting Russian forces and called for an extension to the Ukrainian grain export deal which is due to expire on November 19.

During the speech, Zelenskyy repeatedly addressed the leaders of what he called the “G-19,” a suggestion that Russia is not, or should not be, a participant in the international intergovernmental forum.

Zelenskyy also accused Russia of attempting to weaponize the upcoming cold weather in Ukraine by targeting the country’s energy infrastructure with missile attacks, while also purposely disrupting the energy market.

“If Russia is trying to deprive Ukraine, Europe and all energy consumers in the world of predictability and price stability, the answer to this should be a forced limitation of export prices for Russia,” Zelenskyy said. “That’s fair. If you take something away, the world has the right to take from you.”

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

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · November 15, 2022

8. The Implications of North​ ​Korea’s Shifting Deterrence Strategy​

Excerpts:

North Korea, for its part, is likely to slowly but steadily expand its areas of military action and operations as it seeks to reshape the political and security environment around the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang sees U.S.-South Korean military exercises as an existential threat to the regime, and will use its military demonstrations to emphasize the high risk of escalation around any future exercises. South Korea and the United States will, in turn, need to factor in a more bellicose and belligerent North Korean response to any bilateral military drills.

With more military action, there is an increased risk of short, sharp clashes (similar to the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island or the sinking of South Korea's Cheonan navy vessel in 2010), and potentially more exchanges of fire between the two Koreas.

More military engagements may reawaken the South Korean public to the reality of the ever-present but rarely considered North Korean threat — something that could affect voting patterns, though it is unclear currently if that would benefit those arguing for or against conciliation toward the North. At a minimum, it will place North Korea more firmly into the South Korean political dialogue, heightening differences and divisions.

A more bellicose North Korea and sustained heightened tensions increase political risk in and around the Peninsula, imparting uncertainty on foreign activities and investments in the region. As companies are shifting supply chains amid rising U.S.-China economic and trade tensions, this could decrease South Korea's attractiveness as a preferred destination. If North Korea increases the frequency of missile launches into the sea between the Koreas and Japan, it may also add to uncertainty in shipping lanes, particularly if the North fails to issue prior notifications. 

The Implications of North

 Korea’s Shifting Deterrence Strategy

By Rodger Baker & Scott Kardas

November 15, 2022

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2022/11/15/the_implications_of_north_koreas_shifting_deterrence_strategy_865050.html

This article was first published by Stratfor Worldview and is reprinted here with permission.

North Korea's strong response to recent U.S.-South Korean military exercises reflects a test of Pyongyang's new calibrated escalation capabilities, and may represent a lasting shift in North Korea's coercive strategy. As we noted in February, North Korea's recent focus on short-range conventional weapons systems will ''provide Pyongyang with more ways to manage its political and security needs by enabling North Korea to increase pressure on adversaries in ways far less likely to trigger a full-scale war.'' It appears North Korea is growing more confident in its ability to manage escalation, meaning Pyongyang will likely take more aggressive actions to dissuade South Korea-U.S. defense exercises and reshape its own security environment.

On Nov. 1, North Korea warned of ''more powerful follow-up measures'' in response to U.S.-South Korea Vigilant Storm exercises, a four-day joint air training exercise that kicked off on Oct. 31. The next day, Pyongyang launched several missiles from numerous locations — including one that landed south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the maritime border between the two Koreas — for the first time since North Korea began testing ballistic missiles in the 1980s. Pyongyang also fired roughly 100 artillery shells into the maritime buffer zone that was set up in 2018 as part of negotiations with Washington and Seoul. Less than two hours later, South Korean and U.S. aircraft responded by firing three air-to-surface missiles into the sea north of the NLL.

Over the next several days, North Korea carried out a series of additional missile tests — including a failed launch of a suspected inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) — and conducted a large-scale drill of military aircraft across the country. On Nov. 7, Pyongyang also claimed it launched two cruise missiles off the South Korean city of Ulsan on Nov. 2, which it said the South failed to detect, but which Seoul and Washington denied happened. 

The Evolution of North Korea's Deterrence Strategy

North Korea's defense strategy has gone through several phases since the end of the Korean War in 1953, particularly after Pyongyang recognized South Korea's economic success in the late 1970s and 80s and waning Soviet and Chinese support near the end of the Cold War. In the decades following the conflict, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung relied on large conventional military and active special operations forces to shape the security environment on the Korean Peninsula. Kim still sought to integrate the two Koreas, and — thanks to the protection of the Cold War security architecture in which North Korea was backed by the Soviet Union and China — felt confident in carrying out active incursions into South Korean territory. But that security architecture began to change in the late 1970s and 80s, as the Soviet Union looked increasingly unreliable, and as China pursued its economic opening and reform. North Korea's economy, meanwhile, had also started falling behind that of the South. Amid waning support from its Cold War allies and South Korea's economic success, Pyongyang began building out a ballistic missile and nuclear weapons program to ensure its own security within this new reality.

Kim Il Sung accelerated North Korea's nuclear development after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. But he ultimately agreed to trade away the pursuit of nuclear weapons in return for international assistance and a path toward recognition under the 1994 Agreed Framework that his regime negotiated with the United States and South Korea. Kim died before he was able to actually sign the deal. But while his son Kim Jong Il signed it shortly after taking power, he did not capitalize on the agreement the way his father could have. 

Kim Jong Il continued the pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, though more often as a potentially tradeable asset — with mixed success. After his stroke in 2008, however, Kim redoubled the effort to develop a viable nuclear weapons capability — especially after witnessing the 2003 destruction of Saddam Hussein's authoritarian regime in Iraq, which lacked nuclear weapons to defend itself against the U.S.-led invasion. 

When North Korea's current leader Kim Jong Un took power in 2011, he continued the rapid pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles — hoping to use these systems as a way to demand global recognition of North Korea as a nuclear power and break free from Pyongyang's decades-long international isolation. Shortly before Kim Jong Un assumed power, Libya's long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi was also overthrown and killed amid a U.S.-backed campaign to topple his regime. Kim saw the lessons of Iraq and Libya as clear examples that without a robust nuclear capability, small states were at the mercy of the big powers. But he also knew that he needed to diversify North Korea's options for escalation beyond a central focus on nuclear weapons, which risk triggering an all-out war.

In 2017, Kim began a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM and nuclear testing after a brief surge of diplomacy and warming relations with then-U.S. President Donald Trump and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-In. Over the next few years and then throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Kim shifted North Korea's focus to developing conventional, short-range missile and rocket systems that could more selectively target critical military assets in South Korea. 

Previously, North Korea was locked in a very steep escalation ladder: In response to South Korean or U.S. actions, Pyongyang could use either its frontline artillery to conduct small-scale actions (like shelling an island, or sinking a ship), or its nuclear weapons at the risk of spurring another full war on the Korean Peninsula. But the development of short-range systems in recent years has granted Pyongyang the ability to better calibrate its responses to external threats with more precision strike capabilities without needing to resort to nuclear threats. 

A Shift in Approach

North Korea's expanded arsenal of conventional weapons is changing its options to manage the security situation around the Korean Peninsula, as seen in Pyongyang's aggressive response to the recent U.S.-South Korea joint military drills. In the past, North Korea's room for escalation was significantly constrained, as it had little capability or confidence to carry out reciprocal military actions beyond a first clash. But thanks to its expanded conventional capability, Pyongyang now has more tactical options at its disposal to shape political calculations in Seoul and Washington, with less risk of a rapid descent into an all-out conflict. 

Pyongyang's recent demonstrations of simultaneous launches of multiple missiles from various areas, focus on new weapons systems, and increased aviation activity are intended to showcase its ability to counter South Korea's defensive systems. In doing so, Pyongyang is asserting that the United States and South Korea's sanctions and isolation strategy is simply ineffective. With this greater room for calibrated escalation, North Korea is likely to become increasingly bold in its military responses to future U.S. and/or South Korean actions. Now that North Korea has broken the taboo of launching missiles across the NLL, for example, it will be less constrained in the future to use a similar tactic. 

North Korea remains highly unlikely to enter diplomatic talks centered on the removal of its nuclear capabilities, which still serve as the backbone of the country's deterrence strategy. Indeed, on Sept. 9, Pyongyang announced a new law that enshrines the right to conduct preemptive nuclear strikes if there is a threat of an imminent attack on its leaders, or the country is at risk of destruction. But restarting a broader dialogue with Washington and Seoul remains in North Korea's economic and political interest, as Pyongyang ultimately hopes to secure sanctions relief and more formal recognition from the international community. By displaying its expanded conventional capabilities, Pyongyang is shifting the security dynamic on the Korean Peninsula, and may be better positioned to press Washington and Seoul to discuss broader arms control measures, rather than demanding denuclearization as the main driver of talks. 

South Korean and U.S. Responses

North Korea's calibrated escalation strategy creates new tactical risks for South Korea, even as it reduces the potential for rapid escalation to major conflict. Seoul has already adjusted its pre-approved responses to North Korean aggressive actions, allowing more rapid proportional kinetic responses. The South has responded to the North's recent actions with similar precision bombing demonstrations, missile launches and artillery rounds. Both sides continue to employ constraint, rarely intentionally risking lives on the other side. But an expansion of North Korea's willingness to carry out military demonstrations closer to South Korea — combined with Seoul's more rapid proportional response — raises the potential for accidental or intentional escalation that leads to loss of life on either side, similar to the series of naval clashes between the two a few decades ago. But unlike the 1999 and 2002 maritime clashes, Pyongyang may feel more capable now to carry out a second or third round of tit-for-tat military escalation should events repeat today. 

Since coming to office, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has reiterated Seoul's support for a strong alliance with the United States, sought to strengthen political and security ties with Japan, and shifted Seoul's security focus back squarely on North Korea. Although Yoon has claimed an ''audacious'' plan to engage North Korea, the reality is a much more traditional conservative South Korean strategy of doubling down on U.S. defense ties and highlighting the threat from North Korea, rather than pursuing peace or sustained de-escalation. Yoon, however, is compelled to walk a line between being seen as tough on North Korea and not acting in such a manner as to expand the likelihood of clashes or conflict. And with North Korea's perceived greater room for maneuvering, this will be a difficult path to walk. 

For the United States, the rising sense of instability around the Korean Peninsula is an unwelcome development. Washington wants to concentrate its Indo-Pacific focus on China, and North Korean actions are a distraction — but one with real security implications. There is strategic logic in Washington engaging Pyongyang from an arms control perspective to reduce the immediate perception of a North Korean threat and allow greater focus on China. However, such a policy is politically untenable, both in Washington (where it'd be seen as a capitulation to nuclear blackmail) and in Seoul (where it'd be seen as an abandonment by a key ally). 

The more likely path is a phased escalation of shows of force by Seoul and Washington, increased missile defense and arms sales in South Korea, and widening trilateral coordination between the United States, South Korea and Japan. But these actions will do little to dissuade the North, and are instead likely to encourage its continued shows of force by making Pyongyang further feel the need to showcase its capabilities amid a more cohesive regional bloc. 

The Implications of a More Bellicose North Korea

North Korea, for its part, is likely to slowly but steadily expand its areas of military action and operations as it seeks to reshape the political and security environment around the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang sees U.S.-South Korean military exercises as an existential threat to the regime, and will use its military demonstrations to emphasize the high risk of escalation around any future exercises. South Korea and the United States will, in turn, need to factor in a more bellicose and belligerent North Korean response to any bilateral military drills. 

With more military action, there is an increased risk of short, sharp clashes (similar to the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island or the sinking of South Korea's Cheonan navy vessel in 2010), and potentially more exchanges of fire between the two Koreas. 

More military engagements may reawaken the South Korean public to the reality of the ever-present but rarely considered North Korean threat — something that could affect voting patterns, though it is unclear currently if that would benefit those arguing for or against conciliation toward the North. At a minimum, it will place North Korea more firmly into the South Korean political dialogue, heightening differences and divisions.

A more bellicose North Korea and sustained heightened tensions increase political risk in and around the Peninsula, imparting uncertainty on foreign activities and investments in the region. As companies are shifting supply chains amid rising U.S.-China economic and trade tensions, this could decrease South Korea's attractiveness as a preferred destination. If North Korea increases the frequency of missile launches into the sea between the Koreas and Japan, it may also add to uncertainty in shipping lanes, particularly if the North fails to issue prior notifications. 

9.  Biden’s Pentagon misses the target again

Note the comment that follows this article.

Biden’s Pentagon misses the target again

Its National Defense Strategy prioritizes climate change, and little else

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

OPINION:

On Oct. 27, the Biden administration released the public version of the National Defense Strategy (NDS). To start, the document uses faculty lounge aphorisms, such as referring to China — our greatest national security threat — as a “pacing threat.” A “pacing threat” implies no sense of urgency and is silent about the number and shape of American forces required to deter Beijing, Tehran and Moscow.

The National Defense Strategy is an illuminating subchapter of the Biden National Security Strategy (NSS). The NSS tells us what we presumed: This administration considers climate change — not China, Russia, North Korea or Iran — to be the greatest threat facing the American people. It mentions climate change 63 times, far more space than is allocated for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The Biden team prioritizes dialogue for its own sake and, in its own words, places cooperating with international bodies and the PRC above preparation for countering threats from a Leninist superstate. Indeed, as National Review notes, talk of military modernization and strategy “is cursory by comparison with the sections on the climate.”

The 20th century’s lessons of deterrence, hard diplomacy and military strength have been lost in a haze of woke multilateralism and what Mark Helprin calls “performative diplomacy.” How else can one explain the Biden administration’s obsession with reviving the 2015 nuclear deal at a time when the theocratic fanatics in Iran are gunning down their own people amid historic protests that Tehran views as a mere speed bump on its road to Persian hegemony at the crossroads of three continents?

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin prefaced his NDS remarks by mentioning current Russian aggression and Chinese military ambition. He noted that the administration is “clear-eyed about serious threats.” He then contradicted himself by noting that the Pentagon is focused on achieving a military renaissance not until 2030 despite the clear and present threat right now. Moreover, it is difficult to see how even this delayed renaissance will occur. His rose-colored spin is belied by the anemic defense budgets the Pentagon has offered Congress on the Biden administration’s watch, indicating to the world that it is not serious about the threats the secretary says we face.

The Biden administration’s fiscal 2022 defense budget proposal fell below the minimum 3% increase over inflation needed to meet current demands and prepare for future challenges.

To fit within this constrained budget, the administration decided to limit shipbuilding resources, reduce the training available to the Army, shortchange the number of aerial refuelers essential for the current generation of Air Force fighters, and further reduce the size of the Marine Corps.

In its current state, the U.S. military is only marginally capable (The Heritage Foundation labels the state of our military as weak) of meeting the challenges before it, and China will continue to modernize and expand its armed forces aggressively. New budget constraints will only hamper our ability to respond. There is no change in future Biden administration spending proposals.

Remember that, under President Biden, we have the worst recruiting numbers since the all-volunteer force was conceived in 1973. His administration is scrapping 24 service vessels and will hand us the smallest Navy since the 1930s, and the Air Force has its oldest fleet since its inception in 1947. Nothing in the National Defense Strategy changes that trajectory.

• Robert Wilkie served during the Trump administration as the 10th secretary of veterans affairs and, previously, as the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. He is currently a distinguished fellow in the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute.

Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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HarryHuntington

15h

Winston Churchill lost WWII. Churchill bankrupted the empire and in the years following WWII Britain slowly had to shrink its military, stop defending half the planet, and reach the state that it is today where the entire British military could sit at once in a large football stadium. Republicans have done the same to the US with their military craziness since Reagan. Richard Nixon sensibly surrendered in Vietnam, recognized US military overreach, signed arms control with the Soviet Union and worked to reevaluate US commitments. Jimmy Carter cancelled failed US military programs and actually procured the very good weapons we continue to rely on today like the F-15 and F-16. Virtually every major military system in use today ties back to decisions made by Jimmy Carter.

Reagan started the stupid spending, the New Gingrich congress following the Soviet Collapse enacted stupid military cuts that gutted future program development. George W Bush started wars the US could not afford. Obama did not stop them. Trump tried to stop them but was blocked by a Pentagon that simply disobeyed orders. The Pentagon is insubordinate and no longer does what politicians command.

Which gets to this article. The US today has mismanaged the military since Reagan. The US does not have the national wealth to field a strong military because we no longer manufacture things. We have fat children who are incapable of service because their parents indulge them and let them get fat.

To its credit, the British military (which has always been better than the American) has stayed professional as it has shrunk. The French military has always stayed professional. The US military is still the frontier cavalry that shoots buffalo at heart. Time to completely gut and rebuild the US military along the lines that a grossly diminished US economy can support.

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washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

10. The Stage Is Set For US Combat Troops In Ukraine 

Hard to take this analysis seriously.

Excerpt:

Russia is now prepared to do whatever it takes to win the war quickly and roll-up the hostile army that poses a threat to its national security. If US forces join the fighting, the calculus for winning could change dramatically, but the strategic objectives would remain the same. No nation can be expected to live at peace when a gun is pointed at its head. That is why Putin opposed NATO membership for Ukraine, and that is why the current war is being fought.

The Stage Is Set For US Combat Troops In Ukraine – OpEd

eurasiareview.com · by Mike Whitney · November 14, 2022

There’s no doubt that the retreat from Kherson was a black-eye for the Russian Army. There’s also no doubt that the general who ordered the evacuation made the right decision. True, the optics are terrible, but optics don’t win wars. Strategy, valor and firepower wins wars. Russian General Sergey Surovikin appears to grasp that fact which is why he made the unpopular decision to retreat.

Surovikin could have made the more politically acceptable choice and defended Kherson to the end, but the risks far outweighed the benefits. By all accounts, the 25,000 Russian troops in the city could have easily been encircled and annihilated by Ukrainian artillery. Additionally, Surovikin would have been forced to commit more troops to a rescue mission that would not have advanced Russia’s overall military strategy in the slightest. Russia’s immediate goal is to complete the liberation of the Donbas, a task that is not yet finished and which requires more of the troops that had been pinned-down in Kherson.

For all intents and purposes, the retreat from Kherson was a no-brainer. If the nightmare scenario had unfolded –as many had expected– and thousands of Russian soldiers wound up surrounded and slaughtered in defense of a city that holds little strategic value, then popular support for the war in Russia would have vanished overnight. Neither Putin nor Surovikin could afford to take that risk. So, instead, they opted to pack-it-in and evacuate while they still could, which of course, incited the fury of their critics who are still hopping mad. The good news, however, is that the Kherson public relations disaster will have no meaningful impact on the outcome of the war. Russia is still on-track to achieve all of its strategic objectives despite the pitfalls it has encountered along the way. Here’s a brief recap of the Russian withdrawal from an interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

“When General Surovikin took command… it was decided that Russia was going to wait for a decisive operation to end the war. In other words, no more simply defending southern Ukraine and the territory we’ve annexed, no more expectations of negotiations with anyone– those are over– we have to end the war.

How do you end the war? Well, you launch operations that are so devastating in their destructiveness that the enemy cannot resist them. However, if you are going to do that you’re going to have to scale back current activities. (like Kherson) In other words, you have to make changes on the ground, shuffle troops, change resource commitments because you are now building up for forces that are not yet in southern Ukraine … but are being prepared with this mobilization of 300,000 troops integrated into this new force for future operations… which will come this winter once the ground freezes…. So, I would regard (the withdrawal) as an operational decision with short-term benefit in support of the long-term strategy of building this enormous striking power…The Russians no longer place any confidence in negotiations. I don’t think we could say anything to the Russians at this point that would persuade them to stop.” (“EVERYTHING changes in 4 weeks: Interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor”, youtube; Start at 50 seconds)

So, according to MacGregor, the repositioning of troops is key to the overall strategy which has changed under Surovikin. Under the new commander, the primary focus of military operations is the annihilation of all forces and assets that allow the enemy to continue to wage war. I suspect that means the removal of the Zelensky regime and his security services, but I could be wrong. In any event, the upcoming Russian offensive is going to be much more in-line with a conventional combined-arms ground war than with the Special Military Operation we’ve seen up to this point. Moscow is determined settle the issue as quickly as possible and as forcefully as necessary. There won’t be any more messing around.

That said, recent reports (see below) suggest that the Biden administration may deploy US combat troops to the theatre in response to any Russian escalation that could threaten to alter the course of the war. If these reports prove to be accurate, then the greatly-anticipated winter offensive could trigger a direct conflagration between the United States and Russia. Given the trajectory of the war to this point, we think it’s only a matter of time before Washington emerges from behind its proxies and engages Russian troops on the battlefield. There are many indications that the Pentagon is already preparing for that eventuality.

Secret communications between national security advisor Jake Sullivan and the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Yuri Yushakov, and the former head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, suggest that Sullivan warned his Russian counterparts that the US would not allow Russia to settle the conflict on its own terms, but would take whatever steps were needed to prevent a decisive Russian victory. Check out this excerpt from another interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

MacGregor– “Jake Sullivan talked about the dangers of escalation… He simply said that ‘We see evidence that you, Russia, are preparing to escalate this conflict.’ Which is true; we have been talking about this (impending Russian winter) offensive. ‘And we are warning you against that’ (said Sullivan) The unspoken implication at this point, is that we’re prepared to jump into this conflict in some way because we will not allow you to partition Ukraine. We will not allow you to fight and win this war on your terms……

Napolitano– Do you know whether Sullivan mentioned the presence of the 40,000 US troops (101st Airborne) in Poland?

MacGregor– We don’t (know that) But we think– based on the language that has leaked-out in the paragraph I received from another source, that he (Sullivan) did imply that they have 90,000 troops in Poland and Romania, and that, potentially, if Russia escalated, presumably– on the scale that we think the Russians will escalate– that we (the US) might be prepared to jump in. And we would jump in with 40,000 US troops, 30,000 Polish troops and 20,000 Romanian troops….. Sullivan made it clear that we are in a position to intervene.”

…”What we don’t know is what the Russians said in response, because if you are Russian, the red line is clear: ‘If you move into Ukraine, you’re going to be at war with Russia.’ We seem to be in denial about that.”

Napolitano– “Let me get this straight: Are you of the belief, …that Jake Sullivan…threatened the Russians that if they crossed these red lines, they would meet with US military resistance in Ukraine?”

MacGregor– I think that implication was made. That is the impression I am getting and I don’t think we should be surprised about that because Ukraine’s position is deteriorating very rapidly… And we are very concerned about a Ukrainian collapse. Some estimates indicate that the entire economy and social structure will collapse within 60 days. Some say they are going to general mobilization in Ukraine right now, which may include women, because their manpower base is exhausted. And, remember, people continue to leave Ukraine as much as possible because nobody wants to be stuck in a country that shortly will have no power, no electricity, and where there will be trouble getting water, and trouble getting food. The situation in Ukraine is dire.”

Napolitano– What are 40,000 US troops in the 101st Airborne doing in Poland?

MacGregor– They are preparing for combat operations….

Napolitano– Has the Department of Defense given the President of the United States plans for the entry of US troops into Ukraine? Is that done?

MacGregor– I think those plans have certainly been discussed if not briefed to Jake Sullivan. Certainly, the Secretary of State (Anthony Blinken) is aware. I don’t know what they’ve told the president. My hope is that he received some briefing. Again, this is all very serious because we are in the middle of an election and this could happen without any consultation with Congress whatsoever.

Napolitano– What is the status of the 300,000 reservists that Putin called up a month ago?

MacGregor– The majority of them have already been integrated into formations and units –alot of them have gone into units that were under-strength that are now back to ‘full strength’. Some have gone into new units. (Note: I think MacGregor could be wrong about this. Other analysts suggest that only 80,000 reservists have been sent to Ukraine so far. The process could take a few months before the entire deployment is concluded.) It’s almost complete but, the bottom line is, the low temperature in Ukraine has been 37 degrees. which means you’re still going to be stuck in the mud whether you are attacking or defending. Until the ground freezes, I don’t think alot going to happen…But when the winter arrives and the ground freezes, that is when the Russians will attack. And we see evidence of this from at least three different directions including the east, the southeast and the north. And, judging from the (military) buildup and the weapons systems that are in place and supplies that are available, this is an offensive that is designed to end the war.Whether it will or not, we don’t know. But I think that is the idea.

MacGregor– There’s one last thing I’d like to leave you with: When General Surovikin, the commander of the western theatre accepted his appointment, he made these brief remarks. He said “A Syrian solution for Ukraine is unacceptable.” In other words, we will not allow Ukraine to fall under the influence of various actors that maintain Ukraine in a state of permanent turmoil and war. That’s a very clear signal, that when they launch (the winter offensive) they plan to put an end to the conflict. So, it would be very unwise for us to get in the way of this…..We simply do not have the level of support to guarantee success.” (“This is a Red Line in Ukraine”, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Judging Freedom)

Russia is now prepared to do whatever it takes to win the war quickly and roll-up the hostile army that poses a threat to its national security. If US forces join the fighting, the calculus for winning could change dramatically, but the strategic objectives would remain the same. No nation can be expected to live at peace when a gun is pointed at its head. That is why Putin opposed NATO membership for Ukraine, and that is why the current war is being fought.

Views expressed are the author’s own

eurasiareview.com · by Mike Whitney · November 14, 2022

11. The Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon is getting its first female commander ever

​Hooah, Capt Hastings.​

The Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon is getting its first female commander ever

A first for one of the Marine Corps’ most famous units.

taskandpurpose.com · by Max Hauptman · November 15, 2022

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For the first time in its history, the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon will be led by a female commander.

The Marine Corps announced Tuesday that Capt. Kelsey A. Hastings, an artillery officer, has been selected to lead the storied ceremonial unit for its 2023 parade season. Hastings will take command on Nov. 21.

“It is exciting to be selected as the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon Commander,” said Hastings in a Marine Corps press release. “SDP is oftentimes the face of the Marine Corps, showing the world how elite and professional our organization is, and being selected to lead them is truly an honor. I look forward to working with my new Marines and being a face that a little girl can see and envision herself as.”

Capt. Kelsey M. Hastings, a native of Seattle, Washington, was selected to serve as the Silent Drill Platoon Commander for the Marine Barracks Washington 2023 parade season. She will be the first woman to command the platoon. (United States Marine Corps photo)

Based at Marine Barracks Washington in Washington, D.C. the Silent Drill Platoon first performed in 1948 and has since become a fixture at Marine Corps ceremonies and parades.

During the annual parade season, which begins in the early spring and continues throughout the summer, the platoon performs during parades at the Marine Barracks on Fridays and Tuesday, as well as across the nation.

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A post shared by USMC Silent Drill Platoon (@silentdrillplatoon)

The 24 members of the platoon perform their precise drill movements and handling of their hand-polished ten-and-a-half pound M1 Garand rifles with bayonets mounted without cadence or commands. The routine also involves an inspection sequence that includes spinning and tossing the rifle in the air.

The few Marines who are selected for the platoon undergo months of rigorous training to perfect the ceremonial routine, along with maintaining their traditional infantry skills throughout the year. Each year, just two experienced members of the platoon are selected to become rifle inspectors after auditioning for former rifle inspectors. These Marines, along with the platoon commander, are responsible for maintaining and passing along the special customs and traditions of the Silent Drill Platoon.

Hastings was commissioned into the Marine Corps in 2017 after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy. After serving as an artillery officer with the 1st Battalion, 12th Marines in Hawaii, she was selected for duty at Marine Barracks Washington in 2020.

Hastings served as a marching platoon commander in 2021 and marching company executive officer earlier this year before being selected for her upcoming assignment.

“Kelsey displays a tireless work ethic and high standard of performance that makes her a stand-out performer at Marine Barracks Washington,” said Col. Robb Sucher, commanding officer of Marine Barracks Washington. “I’m excited for her to represent Marine Barracks Washington as a representative of the Marine Corps in this role.”

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

Max Hauptman

Max Hauptman has been covering breaking news at Task & Purpose since December 2021. He previously worked at The Washington Post as a Military Veterans in Journalism Fellow, as well as covering local news in New England. Contact the author here.

Branch

Marine Corps

taskandpurpose.com · by Max Hauptman · November 15, 2022

12. FBI director says he's 'extremely concerned' about China's ability to weaponize TikTok

​I don't think we could wean Americans off their addiction to TikTok.

FBI director says he's 'extremely concerned' about China's ability to weaponize TikTok

cyberscoop.com · by Suzanne Smalley · November 15, 2022

Written by Suzanne Smalley

Nov 15, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP

FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Tuesday he is “extremely concerned” that Beijing could weaponize data collected through TikTok, the wildly popular app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

Wray said during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on worldwide threats that application programming interfaces, or APIs, that ByteDance embeds in TikTok are a national security concern since Beijing could use them to “control data collection of millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which can be used for influence operations.”

In his opening remarks, Wray noted that while America faces cyberthreats from a variety of nations, “China’s fast hacking program is the world’s largest, and they have stolen more of Americans’ personal and business data than every other nation combined.”

Wray said the FBI has seen a surge in cybersecurity cases and as the numbers have increased so too has the complexity of the investigations. “We’re investigating over 100 different ransomware variants and each one of those with scores of victims as well as a whole host of other novel threats posed by both cybercriminals and nation-states alike.”

He said that APIs in TikTok could be harnessed by China to control software on millions of devices, meaning the Chinese government could conceivably technically compromise Americans’ personal devices.

Because Chinese companies are forced to “basically do whatever the Chinese government wants to do in terms of sharing information or serving as a tool of the Chinese government … that’s plenty of reason by itself to be extremely concerned” about TikTok and the larger threat posed by Chinese cyber aggression, he said.

Chinese cyber operations threaten the economic and national security of all Americans, according to Rep. John Katko, D-NY, the committee’s ranking member and a longtime advocate for cybersecurity issues in Congress. He told the committee that ransomware attacks cost businesses an estimated $1.2 billion last year.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid also testified on Tuesday.

Mayorkas said ransomware attacks targeting hospitals, pipelines, electric grids and water treatment plants have become commonplace.

Such operations “exploit the integrated global cyber ecosystem to sow discord, undermine democracy and erode trust in our institutions,” Mayorkas said. “In particular, China is using its technology to tilt the global playing field to its benefit.”

cyberscoop.com · by Suzanne Smalley · November 15, 2022​

13. Biden-Xi Talks Mark Shift in U.S.-China Ties Toward Managing Fierce Competition

Excerpts:

U.S. and Chinese officials said the meeting was expected to last two hours but went on for three, with a break in between. To ensure Messrs. Biden and Xi could make the best use of their time together, the two sides agreed to use simultaneous interpretation, meaning interpreters translated as participants spoke, instead of waiting for speakers to finish before translating—a method that is customary for important summit meetings, the officials said.

In a news conference after the meeting, Mr. Biden said he had “open and candid” discussions with Mr. Xi, whom he said came across as “direct and straightforward” in laying down China’s positions. “We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed or where we were uncertain of each other’s position,” Mr. Biden said.

U.S. officials said they have been poring over the meeting’s transcript for more clues about Mr. Xi’s thinking. They said they believe that Mr. Xi is committed to empowering his top advisers to restore regular communication, though that may take time, they said, in part because of the sweeping leadership changes Mr. Xi is making since he took a third term as Communist Party chief last month.

Chinese officials and state media portrayed the meeting in positive terms. State media released video footage and images that showed Messrs. Xi and Biden smiling broadly as they shook hands and spoke to each other.

The summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, helped “set a clear direction, which is to prevent China-U.S. relations from derailing and getting out of control.”

Biden-Xi Talks Mark Shift in U.S.-China Ties Toward Managing Fierce Competition

The meeting, arranged through weeks of back-channel negotiations, helped establish new guardrails as differences between the countries widen

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-xi-talks-mark-shift-in-u-s-china-ties-toward-managing-fierce-competition-11668534046?mod=hp_lead_pos6

By Andrew RestucciaFollow

, Ken ThomasFollow

, Chun Han WongFollow

 and Keith ZhaiFollow

Nov. 15, 2022 12:40 pm ET

NUSA DUA, Indonesia—A few weeks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s August visit to Taiwan, advisers to President Biden quietly opened back-channel talks with a senior Chinese diplomat. Beijing had largely severed lines of communication with the U.S. government, and the two sides were looking for a way forward.

Over frequent video and phone calls throughout the subsequent weeks, the group laid the groundwork for the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Chinese presidents since Mr. Biden was elected, according to U.S. officials. The negotiations continued up to the day of the meeting, with senior Biden administration officials huddled with their Chinese counterparts until 3 a.m. on Monday at a hotel in Bali, Indonesia, before that day’s talks, U.S. and Chinese officials said.

The meeting between Mr. Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping stretched over three hours, covering thorny issues such as their differences over Taiwan, Russia’s war in Ukraine and ways to ensure that the U.S.-China rivalry doesn’t flare into open conflict. Mr. Xi offered a firm defense of Communist Party rule in China and grew particularly animated when he spoke about Taiwan, providing a detailed history of the self-ruled island that Beijing sees as part of its territory, according to Chinese officials.

But Mr. Biden and his advisers also came away with the impression that China had no imminent plans to invade Taiwan, although Mr. Xi didn’t say so explicitly, one of the U.S. officials said. To Mr. Biden’s team, it appeared the Chinese leader was seeking stability and predictability at an uncertain time in China. A downturn in the property market and the country’s zero-Covid policies have throttled the economic growth that proceeded at a breakneck pace for decades.

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In the end, the meeting largely accomplished what the two sides set out to achieve, restoring dialogue between the two major powers and a measure of stability to a relationship that had deteriorated to its lowest point since the 1970s.

Biden, Xi Meet Ahead of Bali G-20 Summit in Push to Restart Dialogue

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Biden, Xi Meet Ahead of Bali G-20 Summit in Push to Restart Dialogue

Play video: Biden, Xi Meet Ahead of Bali G-20 Summit in Push to Restart Dialogue

President Biden met Chinese leader Xi Jinping ahead of a G-20 summit in Indonesia, in their first face-to-face talks since Biden became president. WSJ’s Andrew Restuccia reports on how the U.S. and China are looking to ease tensions after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taiwan. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

But it also marked a new phase in U.S.-China relations—one that is focused on managing the fierce competition between the two economic powers, preventing conflict and finding common ground when they can. It is a departure from past administrations, which have centered more heavily on striking economic deals, finding new business opportunities or expanding cooperation.

In this phase of the relationship, Chinese and U.S. officials said, Beijing and Washington must work out how to coexist—and avoid, or at least postpone, a conflagration.

For decades, successive American presidents pursued a policy of engagement with Beijing, focused on developing economic and cultural ties that Washington hoped would spur China’s shift toward a Western-style democratic system. Many Chinese officials, meanwhile, wanted to tap foreign expertise to boost their country’s economic development.

China and the U.S. once worked together under the rubric of globalization, but the powers now increasingly clash over issues spanning politics, trade and technology. Many lawmakers and analysts in Washington are convinced China poses a grave threat to U.S. interests. Mr. Xi and his lieutenants, meanwhile, often assert that “the East is rising, and the West is declining”—and that China is destined to reclaim its rightful place as a great power.

The U.S. has ramped up pressure on China across economic, diplomatic and military fronts in recent years, a shift that started under President Trump and continued under Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to rebalance the trade relationship and restore American industrial might. Mr. Biden has kept those tariffs in place and imposed new measures aimed at curbing exports of advanced semiconductors to China.

U.S. officials, nonetheless, wanted to resume the type of extensive, face-to-face talks that Messrs. Biden and Xi first held when they served as vice president of their respective countries. During a phone call in July, the two leaders directed their teams to explore the possibility of an in-person meeting, officials from both countries said.

Then in August, Mrs. Pelosi traveled to Taiwan, the first visit to the island by a House speaker in 25 years. Beijing viewed the visit as a sign of growing U.S. support for the island and launched large-scale military exercises in response while cutting off key lines of communication between the two governments.

The Chinese government had in the past limited communication as a diplomatic tactic, but the discord after Mrs. Pelosi’s visit was extensive, U.S. officials said. China said it would shut down some military communication channels and began limiting engagement on climate change, economics and global health. The U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, was frozen out by officials in Beijing, the U.S. officials said.

The president’s team, including White House Asia adviser Kurt Campbell, were able to keep an open line with Qin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., and back-channels with lower-level officials in Beijing, officials said. But beyond that, they said their outreach to Chinese officials was often met with silence. Mr. Qin was also having trouble finding people in the U.S. business community who were willing to engage with him, according to people who spoke with him.

Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Asia adviser, helped keep communication channels open after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.

PHOTO: AUSTRALIA BROADCASTING CORPORATION/ASSOCIATED PRESS

That stalemate began to thaw in September, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s foreign minister at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. There, Laura Rosenberger, a special assistant to Mr. Biden and senior director for China at the National Security Council, and a top State Department official, Daniel Kritenbrink, met with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Xie once worked under Yang Jiechi, who retired as Mr. Xi’s top foreign-policy adviser last month, at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. Peers describe Mr. Xie as low key and careful—some say overly cautious.

Mr. Xie has taken on a leading role in managing ties with Washington since he became vice foreign minister in early 2021. He played a key role in negotiations for the 2021 release of a well-connected Chinese executive, Meng Wanzhou, from Canadian custody—a case that stemmed from U.S. criminal charges against Ms. Meng. She admitted to some wrongdoing in exchange for prosecutors deferring and later dropping fraud charges.

Ms. Rosenberger and Mr. Xie agreed to quietly revive a communication channel that had been used to help plan previous virtual conversations between Messrs. Xi and Biden, the U.S. officials said. Though the focus of the discussions was a possible meeting between the two countries’ leaders, Ms. Rosenberger also pressed Mr. Xie on other issues, such as restoring communication with Mr. Burns in Beijing, the officials said.

As part of the preparations for Monday’s bilateral meeting, Mr. Biden’s team reviewed the two leaders’ past encounters, “every utterance between President Biden and President Xi, looking for clues for what would be important,” one of the officials said.

When Messrs. Biden and Xi met on Monday ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Indonesia, they were largely the only people who spoke, officials on both sides said. American officials came away thinking that Mr. Xi’s team had closely researched Western criticisms about China’s one-party system, and Mr. Xi tried to rebut those narratives point by point, according to a person briefed on the proceedings.

Mr. Xi had spent hours before the meeting reviewing talking points on Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter. He also made changes to the talking points, to better reflect his thoughts on the issue, one of the people said. Mr. Xi spent considerable time discussing historical narratives about mainland China and Taiwan, in order to convey to Mr. Biden that while China wishes to unify Taiwan with the mainland, Beijing hopes it doesn’t have to do so by force, they said.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng has taken on a leading role in managing ties with Washington.

PHOTO: PHILIP FONG/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. and Chinese officials said the meeting was expected to last two hours but went on for three, with a break in between. To ensure Messrs. Biden and Xi could make the best use of their time together, the two sides agreed to use simultaneous interpretation, meaning interpreters translated as participants spoke, instead of waiting for speakers to finish before translating—a method that is customary for important summit meetings, the officials said.

In a news conference after the meeting, Mr. Biden said he had “open and candid” discussions with Mr. Xi, whom he said came across as “direct and straightforward” in laying down China’s positions. “We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed or where we were uncertain of each other’s position,” Mr. Biden said.

U.S. officials said they have been poring over the meeting’s transcript for more clues about Mr. Xi’s thinking. They said they believe that Mr. Xi is committed to empowering his top advisers to restore regular communication, though that may take time, they said, in part because of the sweeping leadership changes Mr. Xi is making since he took a third term as Communist Party chief last month.

Chinese officials and state media portrayed the meeting in positive terms. State media released video footage and images that showed Messrs. Xi and Biden smiling broadly as they shook hands and spoke to each other.

The summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, helped “set a clear direction, which is to prevent China-U.S. relations from derailing and getting out of control.”

Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com, Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com and Keith Zhai at keith.zhai@wsj.com

14. At G20 Summit, Xi and Biden Offer Rival Visions for Solving Global Issues

At G20 Summit, Xi and Biden Offer Rival Visions for Solving Global Issues

nytimes.com · by Katie Rogers · November 15, 2022

China and the United States showed how global summits are an arena for great powers to compete, with implications for the war in Ukraine and Asia’s future.

President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Bali on Tuesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

BALI, Indonesia — While President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have eased tensions between their countries, they are vying for influence in Asia and beyond, offering competing stances on how to address poverty and the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Xi has cast China as a steadfast partner to the region, rejecting what he described as the United States’ “Cold War mentality” of forming security alliances. At the Group of 20 summit on Tuesday, he spoke loftily about China’s “global initiatives” to fight poverty and strife, while remaining publicly vague about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir V. Putin’s nuclear saber rattling.

“Drawing ideological lines or promoting group politics and bloc confrontation will only divide the world, and hinder global development and human progress,” Mr. Xi told the opening session of the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia.

President Biden unveiled fresh steps by rich Western countries promising hundreds of billions of dollars to build infrastructure in poor countries, an effort widely seen as a counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and he met with leaders from Italy and Turkey to shore up support for Ukraine.

The agendas of China and the United States at the summit, a gathering of the world’s biggest economies, showed how both powers are courting other nations with dueling priorities and spending programs. That rivalry can sometimes benefit middle powers — like Indonesia, the host country — by generating competition to provide aid and support, but it can also leave them fearful of being squeezed between the jostling giants.

“This grouping is not interested in choosing sides,” said Courtney J. Fung, an associate fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, referring to Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia. “They would rather that these two states figure it out so that they don’t get crushed in the middle.”

For Mr. Xi, his trip to Indonesia was his first in-person appearance at a major global gathering outside China in recent years. His first trip abroad since the pandemic took hold was to Uzbekistan in September. His power bolstered by a Chinese Communist Party congress that last month extended his rule for another five years, Mr. Xi appears poised to recharge China’s diplomacy. He has said he wants China to more vigorously promote its solutions to the world’s problems.

But Mr. Xi’s reluctance to take a clearer stance on Ukraine, or to wade into the complicated task of seeking to stop the war, also showed the limits China faces should it seek to displace the United States as a global power broker, Ms. Fung said.

Mr. Xi used the global platform of the G20 to promote a so-called Global Security Initiative, a vague proposal begun earlier this year to offer China’s solutions to international conflict and threats. The idea appears to be at least partly driven by the Chinese government’s sensitivity to criticisms that it failed to stand by its declared reverence for sovereignty when Russia invaded Ukraine.

So far, the proposal was “an upgrade in China saying ‘I don’t like what the Americans have done,’ but it’s not entirely clear to me what Beijing is offering,” Ms. Fung said. “It’s still unclear to me what better answers they can offer to difficult questions.”

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, has been eager to reinforce the United States’ traditional leadership, saying on Monday that the United States is more “prepared than any country in the world, economically and politically, to deal with the changing circumstances around the world.”

He held meetings with Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Tuesday, seeking to secure their cooperation as Ukraine fights to take back territory seized by Russian forces.

Officials in Washington were optimistic that the summit was an opportunity for other leaders to show Mr. Xi that they are aligned in their thinking. When President Emmanuel Macron of France met with Mr. Xi on Tuesday, he urged their two countries to work together to stop the war in Ukraine.

At the summit, other leaders expressed growing concerns about the escalating risk of conflict in the world.

“We should not divide the world into parts,” President Joko Widodo of Indonesia said in his opening speech to the meeting in Bali, a tropical resort island. “We must not allow the world to fall into another world war.”

On Monday, Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden sought to assuage such fears, meeting for nearly three hours and promising to rein in tensions that had caused ties between China and the United States to spiral to their lowest in decades. The message resonated in Southeast Asia, which for decades had counted on a stable relationship between China and the United States to preserve its prosperity. In recent months, senior officials have expressed alarm about the deterioration in ties between the powers. Many said they were relieved by the outcome of Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi’s meeting.

“I would not use the word reset, but I hope it sets a floor to how low the relationship can fall,” said Chan Heng Chee, the ambassador at large with Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She urged “both powers to bear in mind” that “we really do not want to be collateral damage.”

Still, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi acknowledged that the United States and China would keep competing, and each has used the G20 and a cluster of related regional meetings to repair or strengthen ties.

China’s renewed emphasis on international outreach reflects the deterioration of the country’s image in many wealthy countries in recent years. It also underscores Beijing’s interest in shoring up its ties with nations across Asia and Africa, while trying to repair relations with Western Europe, which have been hurt by China’s closeness with Russia.

Mr. Xi has already shown how he hopes to regain some of that lost diplomatic ground. Early this month, he hosted the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Beijing. During his meeting in Bali on Tuesday with Mr. Macron, the Chinese leader continued trying to coax Europe a little closer to Beijing.

“As two major forces in the world’s multipolar array, China and France — and China and Europe — should hold to a spirit of independence and autonomy, openness and cooperation,” Mr. Xi said, according to the Chinese summary of their talks, using phrases that Beijing uses to prod Europe to avoid aligning with Washington.

In another sign of China’s interest in improving its standing in the region, Mr. Xi also held talks with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, ending Beijing’s freeze on top-level contacts between the two countries after a series of disagreements.

If there is one region in the world where Mr. Xi’s soaring promises may find an interested audience, it is Southeast Asia, which has felt China’s rise more inexorably than any other. Beijing has spent billions of dollars to build high-speed trains, bridges, dams, and highways in places like Indonesia and the Philippines.

Even so, many there hope Washington stays involved.

“Unlike the United States, China is not ever going to withdraw to the other side of the Pacific,” Evelyn Goh, a professor of strategic policy studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, said. “But there is still a very strong preference that it would be great if the United States could remain forward positioned in the region.”

After years of being largely forgotten by the Obama administration and then ignored by the Trump government, many in Southeast Asia say they welcome the renewed attention from the Biden administration. Top officials have made multiple trips to the region, and the Biden administration has offered the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework as a counter to China’s influence. But it stopped short of offering market access to the United States, which has disappointed many in Southeast Asia.

In Indonesia, which has tilted closer to China in recent years, Beijing’s investment is welcome. In an interview, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister of maritime and investment affairs, said Premier Li Keqiang of China was happy to comply with his conditions on Chinese investment in Indonesia. Those included promising that Indonesia would not take on government debt and that the Chinese would provide technology transfer, among others.

“They never, ever dictate,” Mr. Luhut said.

In contrast, Mr. Luhut said, the United States often comes with a list of onerous requirements for Indonesia to fulfill before any investment is approved. “I told Washington about this: ‘The way you deal with us, forget it,” he said. “I can go anywhere, but don’t blame us.”

nytimes.com · by Katie Rogers · November 15, 2022

​15. Skilling SOF teams to exploit the cyber vector

​

Skilling SOF teams to exploit the cyber vector

Amid a decrease in demand for special operations forces teams to undertake counterterrorism operations, researchers have called for an integration of special operations capabilities into the cyber and information warfare continuum.

defenceconnect.com.au · by Reporter · November 14, 2022

In 2007, Israeli special operations forces (SOF) teams penetrated Syria. According to a New York Times article published following the incursion, the special operations teams employed jamming capabilities against Syria’s anti-air systems, opening the way for targeted air strikes from the Israeli Air Force.

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Though the conceptual application of the SOF team was no different — that being the ability for small, yet highly trained teams to bring about operational and strategic level advantages often within the grey zone — the character of the application shifted from counterterror operations to an unmistakably cyber domain.

Writing for War on the Rocks this week, Josh Golding, former cyber analyst at the US Department of Defense, examined how special operations and cyber warfare teams can leverage their unique capabilities to influence the battlefield.

1

To the author, the syncretisation of cyber and special operations is a natural way to harness the unique skills of SOF teams while the demand for counterterror and counterinsurgency operations decreases globally.

“On a site visit to Afghanistan in 2019, former Special Operations Command commander General Richard Clarke noted that 60 per cent of the special operations community’s focus was now on ‘working in the information space’, a dramatic change from the 90 per cent focus on kinetic operations he observed between 2002-11,” he argued.

“Left with a bloated Special Operations Command numbering 70,000 people after 20 years of counterterrorism operations, the Pentagon must make the tough calls about what to prioritise during the shift to peer competition.”

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Such an examination is consistent with the traditional concept of special operations capabilities, especially the requirement to conduct tasks in “hostile, denied, or politically and/or diplomatically sensitive environments” (as defined in the US Special Operations Joint Publication 3-05). Such applications are unique to the demands of conventional forces in peer-to-peer conflict.

As such, Golding cited former commander of the US forces in Iraq and Syria General Stephen Townsend to observe the importance of developing “easier-to-deploy” cyber units to take advantage of this extremely impactful vector.

“Recently, the 915th tested its ability to gain access to ‘internet of things’ devices inside a house containing mock terrorists to gather intelligence and potentially create effects to drive out the group,” Golding observed.

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“Expeditionary cyber operators achieved this by gaining proximal access to the target house from a nearby office in Maryland. This sort of operation is reminiscent of an attempted Russian intelligence close-access operation conducted from a car in The Hague to gain access to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ networks in 2018.”

As observed with Golding’s example, there are substantial data points to evidence the impact of special operations cyber units in military competition.

Looking back to the Stuxnet attack in 2010, special operations use of cyber warfare proved paramount to undermining Iranian nuclear capabilities.

While commentators laud this efficacy of the Stuxnet worm in destroying Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, they have also observed that the existence of an air gap between the internet and the nuclear centrifuges necessitates human intervention.

Therefore, despite the increase in cyber capabilities, there will always be a requirement to have a human in the loop to deploy cyber capabilities. It is time to enhance cyber with special operations support.

Skilling SOF teams to exploit the cyber vector

Reporter

Last Updated: 14 November 2022 Published: 14 November 2022

defenceconnect.com.au · by Reporter · November 14, 2022

16. G20 leaders' declaration condemns Russia's war 'in strongest terms'

G20 leaders' declaration condemns Russia's war 'in strongest terms' | CNN

CNN · by Nectar Gan,Rhea Mogul · November 16, 2022

Bali, Indonesia CNN —

Russia’s international isolation grew Wednesday, as world leaders issued a joint declaration condemning its war in Ukraine that has killed thousands of people and roiled the global economy.

The Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, concluded Wednesday with a leaders’ statement that “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine.”

Speaking after the closing of the summit, Indonesian President and G20 host Joko Widodo told a news conference that “world leaders agreed on the content of the declaration, namely condemnation to the war in Ukraine” which violates its territorial integrity. However, some of the language used in the declaration pointed to disagreement among members on issues around Ukraine.

“This war has caused massive public suffering, and also jeopardizing the global economy that is still vulnerable from the pandemic, which also caused risks for food and energy crises, as well as financial crisis. The G20 discussed the impact of war to the global economy,” he said.

The 17-page document is a major victory for the United States and its allies who have pushed to end the summit with a strong condemnation of Russia, though it also acknowledged a rift among member states.

“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” it said. “There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.”

Jokowi said the G20 members’ stance on the war in Ukraine was the “most debated” paragraph.

“Until late midnight yesterday we discussed about this, and at the end the Bali leaders’ declaration was agreed unanimously in consensus,” Jokowi said.

“We agreed that the war has negative impact to the global economy, and the global economic recovery will also not be achieved without any peace.”

Emergency meetings

The statement came hours after Poland said a “Russian-made missile” had landed in a village near its border with Ukraine, killing two people.

It remains unclear who fired that missile. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used Russian-made munitions during the conflict, with Ukraine deploying Russian-made missiles as part of their air defense system. But whatever the outcome of the investigation into the deadly strike, the incident underscored the dangers of miscalculation in a brutal war that has stretched on for nearly nine months, and which risks escalating further and dragging major powers into it.

A crater is seen near the small village of Przewodów, Poland where Polish officials confirmed that two people were killed after an explosion.

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US declines to comment on reports 'Russian made' missile that struck Poland was fired by Ukrainian forces

Waking up to the news, US President Joe Biden and leaders from the G7 and NATO convened an emergency meeting in Bali to discuss the explosion.

The passing of the joint declaration would have required the buy-in from leaders that share close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin – most notably Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who declared a “no-limits” friendship between their countries weeks before the invasion, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While India is seen to have distanced itself from Russia, whether there has been any shift of position from China is less clear. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for a ceasefire and agreed to oppose the use of nuclear weapons in a flurry of bilateral meetings with Western leaders on the sidelines of the G20, but he has given no public indication of any commitment to persuade his “close friend” Vladimir Putin to end the war.

China on nuclear weapons

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February, Beijing has refused to label the military aggression as an “invasion” or “war,” and has amplified Russian propaganda blaming the conflict on NATO and the US while decrying sanctions.

When discussing Ukraine with leaders from the US, France and other nations, Xi invariably stuck to terms such as “the Ukraine crisis” or “the Ukraine issue” and avoided the word “war,” according to Chinese readouts.

In those meetings, Xi reiterated China’s call for a ceasefire through dialogue, and, according to readouts from his interlocutors, agreed to oppose the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine – but those remarks are not included in China’s account of the talks.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi later told Chinese state media that Xi had reiterated China’s position in his meeting with Biden that “nuclear weapons cannot be used and a nuclear war cannot be fought.”

In a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov Tuesday, Wang praised Russia for holding the same position. “China noticed that Russia has recently reaffirmed the established position that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,’ which shows Russia’s rational and responsible attitude,” Wang was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua.

Wang is one of the few – if not only – foreign officials to have sat down for a formal meeting with Lavrov, who has faced isolation and condemnation at a summit where he stood in for Putin.

India ‘disassociating itself from Russia’

On Tuesday, Lavrov sat through the opening of the summit listening to world leaders condemn Russia’s brutal invasion. Indonesian President and G20 host Widodo told world leaders “we must end the war.” “If the war does not end, it will be difficult for the world to move forward,” he said.

President Joe Biden talks talks to reporters after a meeting of G7 and NATO leaders in Bali, Indonesia, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

Doug Mills/Pool/The New York Times/AP

Biden says allies working in 'total unanimity' after Russian-made missile falls on Poland, killing 2

Xi, meanwhile, made no mention of Ukraine in his opening remarks. Instead, the Chinese leader made a thinly veiled criticism of the US – without mentioning it by name – for “drawing ideological lines” and “promoting group politics and bloc confrontation.”

Compared with the ambiguous stance of China, observers have noted a more obvious shift from India – and the greater role New Delhi is willing to play in engaging all sides.

On Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for leaders to “find a way to return to the path of ceasefire and diplomacy in Ukraine” in his opening remarks at the summit.

The draft of the joint declaration also includes a sentence: “Today’s era must not be of war.” The language echos what Modi told Putin in September, on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan.

“If the Indian language was used in the text, that means Western leaders are listening to India as a major stakeholder in the region, because India is a country that is close to both the West and Russia,” said Happymon Jacob, associate professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“And we are seeing India disassociating itself from Russia in many ways.”

CNN · by Nectar Gan,Rhea Mogul · November 16, 2022

17.  The US’s New Tool for Deterrence Isn’t Ready (SOF, Cyber, Space Triad)

Excerpts:

But “fundamentally, we don’t have playbooks on the shelf that incorporate the power of these three elements. And that’s what we need,” the second speaker said. “You can have big plans, but if the only thing you’ve exercised is PowerPoint deep, that doesn’t get you anywhere.”

...

The other two speakers agreed that the triad hasn’t done enough in-person operating to see how the three legs will perform in real life. Both panelists want to see more integrated demonstrations—exercises that bring operators from all three legs of the triad together and put them through a real scenario with real data.

...

“We’re getting a small glimpse into what we think warfare is going to look like in the future,” the third speaker said, adding that future competition will be in the cyber and space domains.

“Our adversaries don’t necessarily want to challenge us traditionally, because we’re prepared for that. We know how to fight in the air domain, we know how to fight in the maritime domain, and how to fight on the ground. But we’re not quite sure how to fight in space and how to fight in cyber,” he said.

The US’s New Tool for Deterrence Isn’t Ready

The “SOF, space, and cyber triad” is meant to serve as an integrated deterrent, much like the nuclear triad.

defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe

A “deterrence triad” that combines special operations, space, and cyber forces has been described as the “next step in terms of deterrence,” to give the U.S. the “ability to protect and the opportunity to disrupt.” But while the concept was announced in August, the actual where, how, and what of the triad remains “a work in progress,” according to special operations thinkers, leaders, and industry-movers who spoke last week at Global Special Operations Foundation’s Modern Warfare Week conference at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“The triad, in simple terms, is the converging and integrating of three very important organizations…and that is Army Cyber Command, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command,” said one speaker. The conference’s Chatham House coverage rules bar reporters from naming or attributing remarks to any specific panelist.

“It’s not any one leg of the triad—SOF, space, or cyber—that gets us to where we want to go, which is integrated defense,” a second speaker said. “It’s the combination of the three capabilities. It is the convergence of space, cyber, and SOF working together and being able to fundamentally speak a common language—which we don’t right now.”

There’s ongoing “experimentation” across the globe to see how these three capabilities can be best integrated on the battlefield of the future, the first speaker said.

But “fundamentally, we don’t have playbooks on the shelf that incorporate the power of these three elements. And that’s what we need,” the second speaker said. “You can have big plans, but if the only thing you’ve exercised is PowerPoint deep, that doesn’t get you anywhere.”

And once the capability is polished and ready, it must be fielded to be effective.

“We can’t be content to create the perfect warfighting concept with the most exquisite capabilities, put them on a shelf, and hope that the adversary gets the message,” a third speaker said.

However, there’s a lot of work that still must be done before the triad is operational.

“We need a lot of capabilities. We need a lot of help,” the third speaker said.

For example, on the SOF side of the triad, the intelligence community and the West “miscalculated the resolve of the Ukrainians” and generally “[struggle] to understand and assess, from an intelligence perspective, sentiments at the national level,” the third speaker said.

The other two speakers agreed that the triad hasn’t done enough in-person operating to see how the three legs will perform in real life. Both panelists want to see more integrated demonstrations—exercises that bring operators from all three legs of the triad together and put them through a real scenario with real data.

“If we don’t train the way we fight and fight the way we train, we will do that at our own peril,” the second speaker said.

While the war in Ukraine has shown some areas in which the U.S. should improve deterrence, it has also highlighted where the triad’s capabilities would apply. The reliance by Ukraine on Starlink satellite internet shows how the “fusion of space and cyber can be really, really important,” the third speaker said. He also noted how crucial SOF’s partnership-building capabilities have been in Eastern Europe.

“We’re getting a small glimpse into what we think warfare is going to look like in the future,” the third speaker said, adding that future competition will be in the cyber and space domains.

“Our adversaries don’t necessarily want to challenge us traditionally, because we’re prepared for that. We know how to fight in the air domain, we know how to fight in the maritime domain, and how to fight on the ground. But we’re not quite sure how to fight in space and how to fight in cyber,” he said.

defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe

18. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 15 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-15

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces conducted the largest set of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure since the start of the war, likely using a substantial portion of their remaining high-precision weapon systems.
• Polish officials announced that a likely “Russian-made missile” landed in Poland within six kilometers of the international border with Ukraine.
• Russian military commanders reportedly ignored existing plans for offensive operations in the Vuhledar direction and committed poorly trained reinforcements to costly assaults on Pavlivka out of impatience, generating continued criticism of Russian military leadership.
• Russian officials continued to set conditions to force the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to recognize Russian control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and thereby de facto recognize the Russian annexation of occupied Ukraine.
• Russians are increasingly turning to various platforms on social media to express their dissatisfaction with mobilization problems, which could ignite organized online anti-war movements in Russia.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensives in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna, and Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian logistics to the rear of Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar.
• Premature reports of Ukrainian forces capturing territory on the left bank of the Dnipro River provoked backlash in the Russian information space.
• Russian logistics routes from Crimea into southern Ukraine are likely highly degraded.
• Russian forces are continuing to supply their diminishing supplies with Belarusian military equipment.
• Russian officials continued to minimize the role of proxy officials in occupied territories in favor of Russian officials.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 15

Nov 15, 2022 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 15

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Madison Williams, Yekaterina Klepanchuk, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 15, 10:30 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.

Russian forces conducted the largest set of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure since the start of the war. Ukrainian Air Force Command spokesperson Yuriy Ignat reported on November 15 that Russian forces launched about 100 Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, primarily against Ukrainian critical infrastructure facilities.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces targeted Ukrainian infrastructure with ten drones.[2] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Russian forces struck targets in Kyiv as well as in Rivne, Zhytomyr, Lviv, Khmelnytskyi, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Volyn, and Kharkiv oblasts.[3]

The Russian military likely used a substantial portion of its remaining high-precision weapon systems in the coordinated missile strikes on November 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 73 Russian cruise missiles and all drones on November 15.[4] Ukrainian air defenses had previously shot down 43 cruise missiles out of 84 and 13 drones out of 24 during the October 10 coordinated Russian missile strikes.[5] Ukraine‘s increased shoot-down percentage illustrates the improvement in Ukrainian air defenses in the last month, and the Ukrainian General Staff attributed this improvement to the effectiveness of Western-provided air defense systems. ISW also assesses that Russian forces are greatly depleting their stock of high-precision weapons systems and will likely have to slow the pace of their campaign against critical Ukrainian infrastructure.[6] Russian missile strikes continue to pose a threat to the Ukrainian civilian population with Ukrainian Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko stating that the energy situation is rather “critical” in Ukraine.[7] Damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is unlikely to break Ukrainians’ spirit, however, given Ukraine’s improving air defenses and recent ground victories in Kherson Oblast.

Polish officials announced that a likely “Russian-made missile” landed in Poland within six kilometers of the international border with Ukraine. Western officials have yet to make definitive statements regarding the incident. The Polish Foreign Ministry stated on November 15 that a “Russian-made missile” killed two Polish citizens in the border village of Przewodow.[8] Polish President Andrzej Duda noted that Poland does not currently have information regarding the actor responsible for firing the missile but noted that the missile was “most probably Russian-made.”[9] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) denied Russia’s involvement in striking any targets near the Ukraine-Polish border and claimed that the incident is a “provocation.”[10] Russian forces, however, did target energy infrastructure in Lviv City, about 72km south of Przewodow.[11] US President Joe Biden stated that according to preliminary information it is unlikely that the missile was fired from territorial Russia but emphasized that the investigation is still ongoing as of the time of this publication.[12] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of staging a “serious provocation” on NATO territory.[13] ISW will continue to monitor the situation.

The Kremlin had prepared today’s massive missile campaign before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented his 10-point peace proposal at the G20 summit on November 15. Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine will negotiate with Russia if the Kremlin totally withdraws its forces from Ukraine, restores Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and ensures punishment for war crimes among other provisions on nuclear, energy, and food security.[14] The Kremlin likely deliberately planned a massive missile strike campaign on Ukraine in anticipation of Zelensky’s speech at the G20 summit given that a multi-direction missile campaign requires significant military preparation. The Russian pro-war community on Telegram claimed that the Kremlin retaliated for Zelensky’s “Russophobic” statements shortly after his speech, but the impossibility of launching such a massive attack on short notice highlights the Kremlin’s disinterest in setting the stage for negotiations with Ukraine.[15]

The Kremlin’s official narrative surrounding the G20 summit further confirms Russia’s disinterest in the prospect of peace negotiations with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not appear at the summit and instead signed numerous decrees granting honorary titles to Russian-occupied Ukrainian cities.[16] Putin’s Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia will continue its “special military operation” in Ukraine, accusing Zelensky of unwillingness to negotiate with Russia.[17] Lavrov called Ukraine’s conditions “unrealistic and inadequate,” which has been the Kremlin’s recurrent position throughout the war.[18] Peskov also made a point to emphasize that Russia will still treat liberated Kherson City as the capital of Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast, and Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev repeated the original false narratives used to justify the invasion that Russia needs to defend Donbas and that Ukrainian “Nazis” failed to comply with the Minsk agreements.[19]

Russian military commanders reportedly ignored existing plans for offensive operations in the Vuhledar direction and committed poorly trained reinforcements to costly assaults on Pavlivka out of impatience. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) military commander Aleksandr Khodakovsky claimed on November 15 that Russian forces initially planned to attack in the Vuhledar area from two directions but that he and other commanders realized that the poor training of reinforcements and their inability to contact brigade commanders made such plans impossible.[20] Khodakovsky claimed that brigade commanders changed the plan completely and committed all Russian forces in the area to an attack on Pavlivka, Donetsk Oblast.[21] ISW had previously reported that Russian forces prematurely impaled an insufficient concentration of mobilized personnel on offensive pushes aimed at seizing Pavlivka leading to extensive losses, particularly among the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet.[22] Russian military officials likely abandoned their initial plans and committed poorly trained reinforcements to the assault on Pavlivka due to a sense of politically-driven urgency to restart the Donetsk offensive campaign before the planned Russian withdrawal from Kherson City.

The high costs associated with the Russian offensive push on Pavlivka continue to generate criticism of Russian military leadership. Khodakovsky claimed that Russian military leadership is trying to blame the “miserable results” on the commander of the 40th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet for not properly supporting the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade.[23] Khodakovsky argued that the brigade commanders are guilty of the high costs of the assault and that the commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, Army General Sergey Surovikin, should not allow an “innocent” commander to take the blame for the poor planning of Russian military leadership.[24] ISW previously assessed that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) issued a rare statement on November 7 in response to the extensive Russian milblogger outcry concerning the losses associated with the Pavlivka offensive operation.[25] Khodakovsky’s criticisms of the Russian military command indicate that the Russian MoD likely failed to address the outrage fully and that Russian pro-war figures and milbloggers will continue to criticize Russian military commanders.

Russians are increasingly turning to various platforms on social media to express their dissatisfaction with mobilization problems, a phenomenon that has the ingredients to ignite organized online-based movements in Russia. Sixteen anti-war groups in Russia launched a petition demanding that Russian President Vladimir Putin demobilize all mobilized Russian men.[26] The petition has already garnered almost 38,000 signatories as of the time of this publication. About 1,500 mothers of disabled children and mothers with more than three children in their households also petitioned Putin to exempt their husbands from mobilization.[27] Russian opposition and non-governmental organizations such as Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg had voiced concerns with the Russian Armed Forces prior to the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine but did not receive significant attention within the Russian information space.[28] Grievances over mobilization issues, however, reached the milblogger community that was already critical of the Russian Ministry of Defense and that has been discussing issues with the execution of mobilization since the second day of the order.[29] These grievances are increasingly influencing both the opposition and the pro-war communities, which is a new phenomenon. While Russian police have consistently suppressed small-scale protests throughout the country the Kremlin has yet to regulate platforms such as Telegram that allow Russians across the country to share their discontent and demand action from local officials with the backing of prominent milbloggers.

Russian officials continued to set conditions to force the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to recognize Russian control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and thereby de facto recognize the Russian annexation of occupied Ukraine. The IAEA announced on November 14 that Russian ZNPP authorities rejected a Ukrainian proposal to bring two reactors to a low power state from a hot shutdown state and that Russian officials are increasingly making “significant operational decisions,” noting that IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed concern at “open contradictions” in decision making at the ZNPP.[30] The IAEA and Ukraine’s Resistance Center reported that Russia is increasingly importing technical staff from Russian nuclear power plants to the ZNPP.[31] The IAEA’s reporting and concerns about the decision-making hierarchy at the ZNPP is an inflection in the IAEA’s usual communications and suggests that Russian physical control and operational authority over the plant is increasing to a point that is alarming the IAEA.

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces conducted the largest set of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure since the start of the war, likely using a substantial portion of their remaining high-precision weapon systems.
• Polish officials announced that a likely “Russian-made missile” landed in Poland within six kilometers of the international border with Ukraine.
• Russian military commanders reportedly ignored existing plans for offensive operations in the Vuhledar direction and committed poorly trained reinforcements to costly assaults on Pavlivka out of impatience, generating continued criticism of Russian military leadership.
• Russian officials continued to set conditions to force the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to recognize Russian control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and thereby de facto recognize the Russian annexation of occupied Ukraine.
• Russians are increasingly turning to various platforms on social media to express their dissatisfaction with mobilization problems, which could ignite organized online anti-war movements in Russia.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensives in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna, and Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian logistics to the rear of Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar.
• Premature reports of Ukrainian forces capturing territory on the left bank of the Dnipro River provoked backlash in the Russian information space.
• Russian logistics routes from Crimea into southern Ukraine are likely highly degraded.
• Russian forces are continuing to supply their diminishing supplies with Belarusian military equipment.
• Russian officials continued to minimize the role of proxy officials in occupied territories in favor of Russian officials.

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—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: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna on November 15. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted assaults within 13km northwest of Svatove in the direction of Stelmakhivka and Kuzemivka and that Ukrainian forces entrenched themselves on the western outskirts of Kuzemivka.[32] A Ukrainian source stated that there was heavy fighting in the area of Novomykilske (9km south of Svatove).[33] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults northwest of Kreminna in the direction of Chervonopopivka and south of Kreminna in the direction of Zolotarivka.[34] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to advance towards Kreminna from the north and south but were unsuccessful and that fighting is ongoing 12km south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[35] A milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are accumulating near Makiivka (24km west of Kreminna) and are probing nearby Russian defensive positions.[36] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are amassing to launch future offensives on Svatove, Kreminna, Lysychansk, and Popasna, although ISW offers no assessment about claims regarding future Ukrainian operations.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on November 15 that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian ground assault near Novoselivske, Luhansk Oblast (13km northwest of Svatove).[38] Russian forces continue to conduct limited counterattacks likely to constrain the actions of Ukrainian forces and not to regain limited territory.

Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian military logistics and concentration areas in Luhansk Oblast on November 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian artillery units struck Russian positions in Kreminna and that the personnel from degraded units are planning to escape from the city.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian headquarters south of Svatove in Mylovatka, Luhansk Oblast, killing at least 30 Russian military personnel and wounding more than 20 others.[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian artillery units are massively shelling the Olshana-Pervomaiske-Orlianka-Yahidne line.[41] The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) People’s Militia claimed that Ukrainian forces also struck Denezhnykove, Luhansk Oblast with three HIMARS rockets.[42] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces conducted routine air, missile, and artillery strikes along the line of contact in eastern Kharkiv and western Luhansk oblasts.[43]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on November 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian ground attacks near Bakhmut, and northeast of Bakhmut near Bilohorivka and Bakhmutske along the T1302 highway.[44] Geolocated footage published on November 14 shows that Russian forces established positions in southeastern Mayorsk.[45] A Russian source claimed that intense fighting is ongoing north of Horlivka (about 27km south of Bakhmut).[46] Geolocated footage showed the aftermath of a Ukrainian HIMARS strike against a Russian base in Horlivka.[47] Russian and Ukrainian forces continued routine artillery strikes around Bakhmut.[48]

Russian forces continued to carry out offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on November 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks near Krasnohorivka and Pervomaiske on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City and Marinka and Novomykhailivka on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[49] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian ground attack near Novokalynove (about 42km northwest of Donetsk City).[50] Russian sources claimed that fighting is ongoing near Pervomaiske, Vodyane, Nevelske (about 19km northwest of Donetsk City), and Opytne (about 12km northwest of Donetsk City).[51] The Donetsk People’s Republic Territorial Defense reiterated claims that Russian forces seized Opytne and plan to advance on Avdiivka.[52] Another Russian source reported that Russian forces are on the northern outskirts of Opytne, indicating that Russian forces do not currently control the entire settlement.[53] Both Russian and Ukrainian forces continued routine artillery strikes along the contact line in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area.[54]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on November 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian ground assault near Vremivka, Donetsk Oblast.[55] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reiterated claims that Russian forces completely captured Pavlivka on November 14 and claimed that Russian forces killed up to 1,400 Ukrainian personnel during the offensive, which is highly implausible.[56] Donetsk Oblast Administration Head Pavlo Kyrylenko reported that Russian forces shelled Pavlivka and Prechystivka (12km west of Vuhledar).[57] A Russian source claimed that Russian artillery repelled a Ukrainian offensive against Novosilka (48km west of Vuhledar) and that Ukrainian forces withdrew to their original positions.[58] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Russian forces conducted air and artillery strikes against Vuhledar and noted the presence of the Russian 36th Combined Arms Army in the Vuhledar direction.[59] Russian forces continued routine shelling along the line of contact in western Donetsk Oblast and eastern Zaporizhia Oblast.[60]

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

Russian forces continued establishing defensive positions east of the Dnipro River and pulling back from the coast of the left (east) bank as of November 15. Geolocated satellite imagery shows that Russian forces are establishing defensive lines just south of the Krasnoznamyanskyi Canal near Bekhtery, about 50km southwest of Kherson City.[61] Such lines indicate that Russian forces see western Kherson Oblast near the Kinburn Peninsula and Spit as operationally significant. Russian forces would likely struggle to hold these defensive lines against a Ukrainian ground offensive due to terrain that favors mechanized warfare, however. Ukraine’s Operational Command South stated that Russian forces finished regrouping on the left bank of the Dnipro River and are establishing defensive positions 15-20km back from the river.[62] Ukrainian Southern Forces Spokesperson Natalia Humenyuk stated that Ukrainian forces are continuing to interdict Russian logistics routes in rear areas of southern Kherson Oblast.[63]

Premature reports of Ukrainian forces capturing territory on the left bank of the Dnipro River provoked backlash in the Russian information space. Reports emerged that Ukrainian forces had reached Nova Kakhovka, Oleshky (about 10km southeast of Kherson City), and the Kinburn Spit, but Ukrainian officials later refuted these claims.[64] The Ukrainian Mayor of Oleshky Yevhen Ryshchuk insinuated that Ukrainian forces liberated Oleshky but later deleted the social media post.[65] Humenyuk stated that the military situation around the Kinburn Spit is developing and called for operational silence.[66] Geolocated footage posted on November 15 shows Russian journalists fleeing from Oleshky, which is consistent with reports that Russian forces are withdrawing from the immediate eastern bank of the Dnipro River.[67] Russian sources refuted claims that Ukrainian forces crossed the Dnipro River and one even claimed that “the enemy is grasping at [Russian] pain points” with such reports.[68]

Russian forces continued routine artillery and airstrikes in Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts and on the right bank of Kherson Oblast on November 15.[69] Ukrainian officials stated that Russian forces fired on Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast, and Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian forces are using positions in Ochakiv to prepare for operations against the Kinburn Spit.[70] Russian forces conducted artillery strikes against Nikopol and Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[71]

Russian logistics routes from Crimea into southern Ukraine are likely highly degraded. A Russian source reported that Russian officials elected to delay repairing the Kerch Strait rail bridge until summer or autumn 2023 as weather conditions are too dangerous to conduct the repairs and noted that one rail line is still usable.[72] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian officials only allow passenger traffic over the Kerch Strait road bridge and transport all other vehicles across the strait via ferry.[73] The severely limited Russian use of the Kerch Strait Bridge for military logistics likely has and will continue to cause long-term issues supplying forces in eastern Kherson Oblast, especially as Ukrainian forces can now interdict supply lines previously considered to be in rear areas.

Note: ISW will report on activities in Kherson Oblast as part of the Southern Axis in this and subsequent updates. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in right-bank Kherson Oblast has accomplished its stated objectives, so ISW will not present a Southern Ukraine counteroffensive section until Ukrainian forces resume counteroffensives in southern Ukraine.

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

Russian forces are continuing to replenish their diminishing supplies with Belarusian military equipment. Belarusian group “Society of Railway Personnel of Belarus” claimed that Belarusian forces delivered 98 T-72 tanks, 40 BMP-2 armored vehicles, 20 dismantled BMPs, and 53 Ural trucks from the Belarusian 969th tank reserve base located in Minsk Oblast, Belarus throughout October.[74] Russian forces are also continuing to face challenges with insufficient training personnel responsible for preparing mobilized men for combat and are continuing to rely on Belarusian training facilities. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that elements of the Western Military District (WMD) are training at Belarusian training grounds, and ISW has previously reported that Belarusian forces are accommodating Russian mobilized personnel in Belarus.[75] Social media users also showed footage of Iranian-made bulletproof vests reportedly belonging to Russian mobilized personnel, further indicating the extent of likely Russian supply shortages.[76]

Russian forces are continuing to conduct covert mobilization in Russia and proxy republics despite the end of the declared mobilization period. Russian opposition sources reported that the Republic of Udmurtia and certain cities in Samara and Rostov oblasts continued to issue summonses under the pretext of clarifying information past November 1.[77] Russian forces consistently used similar practices prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February in an attempt to lure more men into signing military contracts. A Moscow City military recruitment center also issued second-wave mobilization notices to previously mobilized men who did not deploy during the first wave because they do not have non-core registration specialties.[78] Ukrainian officials also noted that Russian forces are continuing to forcefully mobilize men in occupied Luhansk Oblast.[79]

Russian officials are continuing to make promises to deliver payments to Russian mobilized servicemen amidst growing dissatisfaction with the lack of payments among mobilized and their families. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Tatyana Shevtsova stated on November 14 that the mobilized will receive December payments by December 25, instead of in January.[80] Shevtsova justified this modification as an effort to ensure Russian families receive payments ahead of the New Year celebrations. It is unclear whether Russian officials will actually act upon such promises, given that the Russian MoD announced the start of monthly payments of 195,000 rubles (about $3,175) to mobilized servicemen on November 8.[81]

Low morale and poor discipline continue to plague Russian mobilized personnel as a result of insufficient military equipment and a lack of proper military command. Fighters of a Dagestani assault group published a video complaint noting that they had to purchase equipment with their own money.[82] Residents of Kazan complained that six drunk mobilized men, who supposedly escaped from their unit, trespassed into an apartment building.[83] A Russian outlet reported that 12 Russian mobilized personnel engaged in an armed fight following a drunk verbal altercation in Melitopol.[84] Russian opposition outlets also reported that at least 38 mobilized personnel died before even reaching Ukraine as of November 14.[85]

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 officials continued to minimize the role of proxy officials in occupied territories in favor of Russian officials as of November 15. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 15 that Russian officials have almost completely replaced Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) officials in the occupation administration in Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast.[86] ISW previously reported that Russian officials likely excluded DNR and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) officials from attempts at integrating LNR and DNR forces into the Russian military.[87] Russian officials will likely continue to minimize the roles of former proxy officials in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast as they seek to further cement administrative and political control over these illegally annexed territories.

Partisans likely targeted an occupation official in Russian-occupied Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast on November 14. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 15 that unspecified actors detonated an IED at the apartment of Melitopol occupation official Dmitry Trukhin, who is currently in an intensive care unit as a result of the explosion.[88] Zaporizhia occupation deputy Vladimir Rogov claimed that Ukrainian affiliated actors conducted the IED attack on November 14.[89] Ukrainian partisans will likely continue to target occupation officials in Russian-occupied territories.

Russian occupation officials continued forced evacuation measures on the left (east) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast on November 15. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo stated on November 15 that Russian occupation officials will continue to evacuate people from the 15km zone on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast until all people who have decided to leave have left.[90] Saldo claimed that 115,000 Kherson Oblast residents evacuated from the right bank of the Dnipro River and that most residents are currently residing on the left bank.[91] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 15 that Russian officials are evacuating residents from Kherson Oblast to the Southern Federal District of the Russian Federation, particularly Krasnodar and Stavropol krais.[92] Russian occupation officials will likely continue forced evacuation measures in Kherson Oblast for the foreseeable future.

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.

[8] https://www dot gov.pl/web/dyplomacja/komunikat-w-zwiazku-z-wezwaniem-ambasadora-federacji-rosyjskiej-do-msz

[18] https://korrespondent dot net/ukraine/4452457-perehovory-ukrayny-y-rossyy-onlain

[31] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/15/na-zaporizku-aes-zvozyat-rosijskyh-energetykiv/; https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-126-iaea-director-g...

[65] https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1592264839086624769; https:/... ua/ru/video/video-novini/osvobozhdenie-levoberezhya-hersonschiny-nachalos-vsu-uzhe-v-oleshkah.html; https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1592265160181403655

https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1592288768068812800

https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1592

[74] https://defence-ua dot com/news/bilorus_u_zhovtni_viddala_rashistam_stilki_tehniki_scho_vistachit_na_pobitu_tankovu_diviziju-9653.html ; https://t.me/belzhd_live/2001

[81] https://iz dot ru/1422210/2022-11-08/v-minoborony-soobshchili-o-nachale-dosrochnykh-vyplat-mobilizovanym-s-8-noiabria

[86] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/15/okupaczijnyj-uryad-na-donechchyni-ocholyly-rosiyany/

[88] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/15/u-melitopoli-pidirvaly-chergovogo-zradnyka/

[92] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/15/okupanty-deportuyut-meshkancziv-tot-na-pivden-rf/

understandingwar.org

19. Exclusive: Kamala Harris to visit Philippine islands at edge of South China Sea dispute

​Also a great place for a vacation. And it is where Gracia and Martin Burnham, Deboarah Yap, and Guillermo Sobero were kidnapped by the ASG in 2001.​

Exclusive: Kamala Harris to visit Philippine islands at edge of South China Sea dispute

Reuters · by Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the Philippine islands of Palawan on the edge of the disputed South China Sea, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, in a move that may be interpreted by Beijing as a rebuke.

The visit, scheduled for next Tuesday, will make Harris the highest-ranking American official to visit the island chain adjacent to the Spratly Islands. China has dredged the sea floor to build harbors and airstrips on the Spratlys, parts of which are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Beijing claims some territories in the waters off Palawan and much of the South China Sea, citing domestic historical maps. A 2016 international arbitration ruling, however, said the Chinese claims had no legal basis, in a victory for Manila that has yet to be enforced.

Coming days after a three-hour, face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping intended to ease tensions, the trip may frustrate Beijing.

The South China Sea, which contains massive oil and gas deposits, is the stage for $5 trillion in ship-borne trade each year but also a flashpoint for Chinese and U.S. tensions around naval operations.

In Palawan, Harris is expected to meet with "residents, civil society leaders and representatives of the Philippines Coast Guard," the senior administration official said.

The trip will show the administration's "commitment to stand with our Philippine ally in upholding the rules-based international maritime order in the South China Sea, supporting maritime livelihoods and countering illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing," that official said.

The Philippines is a defense ally of the United States, but under former President Rodrigo Duterte it avoided criticizing Beijing, eyeing Chinese investment.

Manila announced earlier on Tuesday that Washington would spend $66.5 million to start building training and warehouse facilities at three of its military bases there under a 2014 joint security deal.

Harris' trip marks her second to Asia in three months and follows Biden's week-long trip to the region. Both trips were aimed at shoring up both defenses and alliances to discourage aggressive steps by China, including in self-ruled Taiwan. The Harris trip also includes a stop in Thailand for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting.

During her last trip to the region, Harris accused China of actions to "coerce and intimidate" neighbors.

South China Sea expert Gregory Poling said the visit could send a strong message to the Philippines without angering Beijing because it is not a visit to a disputed territory.

"It will be reassuring to the Philippines by sending a clear signal that, even with Ukraine and Taiwan center stage, the United States still recognizes the South China Sea as central to the future of the U.S.-Philippine alliance," said Poling, who is director of the Southeast Asia Program at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Poling expected Harris would also visit a facility being established under the U.S.-Philippines Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement at Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa, which is the home of the Philippines military command in charge of defending and patrolling the Spratly Islands.

Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Heather Timmons, Cynthia Osterman and Josie Kao

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Trevor Hunnicutt

20. Missile That Hit Poland Likely Launched by Ukraine in Air Defense, Western Officials Say

Per conventional wisdom, the first report is always wrong.

Missile That Hit Poland Likely Launched by Ukraine in Air Defense, Western Officials Say

NATO meeting to assess fatal explosion that occurred amid Russian barrage across Ukraine

https://www.wsj.com/articles/missile-that-hit-poland-likely-launched-by-ukraine-in-air-defense-western-officials-say-11668589786?mod=hp_lead_pos2

By Laurence NormanFollow

 and Daniel MichaelsFollow

Nov. 16, 2022 4:09 am ET

BRUSSELS—The missile that crashed in Poland on Tuesday, killing two people, was from a Ukrainian air-defense system, according to two senior Western officials briefed on preliminary U.S. assessments, but Poland is continuing its own investigation of the explosion.

The initial findings will be discussed Wednesday at an emergency meeting at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where ambassadors from the alliance’s 30 members are set to review intelligence and consider their options.

Polish President Andrzej Duda late Tuesday spoke with President Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg about the situation. The Group of Seven advanced economies issued a statement offering support to Poland and condemning Russia’s attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine.

President Biden said Tuesday that preliminary information about the missile strike indicates that it was unlikely to have been fired from Russia and pledged to investigate the incident.

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Senior Ukrainian officials said Tuesday that it was a Russian missile that crossed into Poland.

The Polish deaths appear to be the first fatalities on the terrain of a NATO country to be directly linked to hostilities following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Poland is considering asking NATO countries to begin special high-level consultations. The consultations, known as Article IV in reference to NATO’s founding treaty, are a step short of invoking the alliance’s mutual-defense pact, known as Article V.

While initial analyses of missile fragments and radar coverage of the area point to the projectile having been launched from Ukraine, NATO officials will have in mind that the country on Tuesday was defending itself against a barrage of missiles Russia launched against civilian targets across the country. The fusillade of at least 85 projectiles was among the biggest Russia has fired since its large-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal informed his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, that many of the missiles Russia fired Tuesday were aimed at electrical infrastructure near Ukraine’s border with Poland, Polish government spokesman Piotr Müller wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

A police vehicle drives toward the scene of the blast in Przewodów, Poland.

PHOTO: EVGENIY MALOLETKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com

21. Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons

Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons

Though the battle for Ukraine remains largely a grinding artillery war, new advances in technology and training there are being closely monitored for the ways they are starting to shape combat.

nytimes.com · by Lara Jakes · November 15, 2022

Soldiers with Ukraine’s Carpathian Sich Battalion reviewing drone footage below the front line in May.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Three months ago, as Ukrainian troops were struggling to advance against Russian forces in the south, the military’s headquarters in Kyiv quietly deployed a valuable new weapon to the battlefield.

It was not a rocket launcher, cannon or another kind of heavy arms from Western allies. Instead, it was a real-time information system known as Delta — an online network that military troops, civilian officials and even vetted bystanders could use to track and share desperately needed details about Russian forces.

The software, developed in coordination with NATO, had barely been tested in battle.

But as they moved across the Kherson region in a major counteroffensive, Ukraine’s forces employed Delta, as well as powerful weaponry supplied by the West, to push the Russians out of towns and villages they had occupied for months.

The big payoff came on Friday with the retreat of Russian forces from Kherson City — a major prize in the nearly nine-month war.

Delta is one example of how Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come.

The battle for Ukraine, to be sure, remains largely a grinding war of attrition, with relentless artillery attacks and other World War II-era tactics. Both sides primarily rely on Soviet-era weapons, and Ukraine has reported running low on ammunition for them.

But even as the traditional warfare is underway, new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight. Beyond Delta, they include remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.

“Ukraine is the best test ground, as we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce revolutionary change in military tech and modern warfare,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation.

He was speaking in October at a NATO conference in Norfolk, Va., where he publicly discussed Delta for the first time.

He also emphasized the growing reliance on the remote-controlled aircraft and boats that officials and military experts said have become weapons of choice like those in no previous war.

The State of the War

• Retaking Kherson: On Nov. 11, Ukrainian soldiers swept into the southern city of Kherson, which Russian forces had occupied for more than eight months, seizing a major symbolic and strategic prize and dealing a bitter blow to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
• What’s Next?: Cheering crowds greeted Ukrainian forces as they entered Kherson, but analysts agree that the war is far from over. Here’s a look at what might lie ahead.
• Winter Looms: Many analysts and diplomats have suggested there could be a pause in major combat over the winter. But after pushing the Russians out of Kherson, Ukraine has no desire to stop.
• Peace Talks: While Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made the case that the Ukrainians should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table, some U.S. officials say that peace talks remain a distant prospect.

“In the last two weeks, we have been convinced once again the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans,” Mr. Federov said.

Since last summer, Ukraine and its allies have been testing remote-controlled boats packed with explosives in the Black Sea, culminating in a bold attack in October against Russia’s fleet off the coast of Sevastopol.

Military officials largely have declined to discuss the attack or provide details about the boats, but both the United States and Germany have supplied Ukraine with similar ships this year. Shaurav Gairola, a naval weapons analyst for Janes, a defense intelligence firm, said the Black Sea strike showed a sophisticated level of planning, given the apparent success of the small and relatively inexpensive boats against Russia’s mightier war ships.

The attack “has pushed the conflict envelope,” Mr. Gairola said. He said it “imposes a paradigm shift in naval war doctrines and symbolizes an expression of futuristic warfare tactics.”

The use of remote-controlled boats could become particularly important, military experts said, showing how warfare at sea might play out as the United States and its allies brace for potential future naval aggressions by China in the East and South China Seas, and against Taiwan.

Inevitably, the Russians’ increased use of drones has spurred Ukraine’s allies to send new technology to stop them.

Late last year, Ukraine’s military began using the newly developed drone-jamming guns known as SkyWipers to thwart Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region. The SkyWipers, which can divert or disrupt drones by blocking their communication signals, were developed in Lithuania and had been on the market for only two years before they were given to Ukraine through a NATO security assistance program.

Nearly nine months into the war, the SkyWipers are now only one kind of drone jammer being used in Ukraine. But they have been singled out as a highly coveted battlefield asset — both for Ukrainian troops and enemy forces that hope to capture them.

It is not known how many SkyWipers have been sent to Ukraine, although Lithuania reportedly sent several dozen in October 2021. In a statement to The New York Times, Lithuania’s defense ministry said it sent 50 SkyWipers in August after Ukrainian officials called it “one of the top priorities.”

Dalia Grybauskaite, who was Lithuania’s president when the SkyWipers were being designed, said her country’s defense industry made a calculated turn toward producing high-tech equipment during her time in office, from 2009 to 2019, to update a stockpile of weapons that “were mainly Kalashnikovs” and other Soviet-era arms.

“We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” Ms. Grybauskaite said in an interview last week. “And, yes, it is a teaching battleground.”

She paused, then added: “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

The Western lethal aid that is being sent to Ukraine consists, for the most part, of recently updated versions of older weapons. That was the case with the German-made infrared, medium-range homing missiles and launchers known as IRIS-T, which protect against Russian rocket attacks.

They have a longer range than the previous generation of air-defense systems that debuted in 2015. Germany’s own military has not yet used the updated version of the systems, which were shipped to Ukraine last month. Additional missiles were delivered last week.

Rafael Loss, a weapons expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that by themselves the upgraded air defenses do not “represent a game-changer.” But he said their use in Ukraine showed how the government in Kyiv had evolved beyond Soviet-era warfare and brought it more in line with NATO.

Senior NATO and Ukrainian officials said the Delta network was a prime example.

More than an early alert system, Delta combines real-time maps and pictures of enemy assets, down to how many soldiers are on the move and what kinds of weapons they are carrying, officials said.

That is combined with intelligence — including from surveillance satellites, drones and other government sources — to decide where and how Ukrainian troops should attack.

Ukraine and Western powers determined they needed the system after Russia instigated a separatist-backed war in Ukraine’s east in 2014. It was developed by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry with NATO assistance and first tested in 2017, in part to wean troops off Russian standards of siloing information among ground units instead of sharing it.

It has been included in training exercises between Ukraine’s military and other NATO planners in the years since.

Information sharing has long been a staple for American and other NATO forces. What NATO officials said was surprising about the Delta system was that the network was so broadly accessible to troops that it helped them make battlefield decisions even faster than some more modern militaries. In Kherson, Delta helped Ukrainian troops quickly identify Russian supply lines to attack, Inna Honchar, commander of the nongovernment group Aerorozvidka, which develops drones and other technology for Ukraine’s military, said in a statement on Sunday.

“Bridges were certainly key points,” Ms. Honchar added. “Warehouses and control points were damaged, and the provision of troops became critical” as Russians became increasingly isolated, she said.

Delta’s first real test had come in the weeks immediately after the February invasion as a Russian convoy stretching 40 miles long headed toward Kyiv. Ukrainian drones overhead tracked its advance, and troops assessed the best places to intercept it. Residents texted up-to-the-minute reports to the government with details that could have been seen only up close.

All the information was collected, analyzed and disseminated through Delta to help Ukraine’s military force a Russian retreat, Ukrainian officials said.

“That was the very first moment when Delta capabilities were realized at max,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement. It said Delta had since helped identify 1,500 confirmed Russian targets across the country on any given day — with “hundreds of them being eliminated” within 48 hours.

The test runs in Ukraine are helping senior officials and defense planners in the United States and its allies decide how to invest military spending over the next two decades.

Even routine missions in Ukraine — like how to get fuel to missile-toting vehicles on the edge of enemy territory — have set off discussions in American commands over how to design equipment that is not dependent on supply lines.

And longer-term strategy about how to coordinate and communicate among allied troops, which officials now say was a challenge during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being developed as the battle against Russia continues to unfold.

Such strategic military reforms were being discussed before Ukraine was invaded, said Gen. Philippe Lavigne of France, who leads NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, but “our early observations of this war is that those assumptions are still valid.”

He said Ukraine had shown how future warfare was likely to be fast-paced and highly contested not just on the ground or in the skies, but also, most important, in cyberspace.

“This is the future operating environment,” General Lavigne said.

nytimes.com · by Lara Jakes · November 15, 2022

22.  Ukraine Needs Air Defense Assistance to Protect Hard-Won Victories on the Ground

Timely article after the missile mishap yesterday.

Excerpt:

If Ukrainian surface-to-air missiles are allowed to be attritted away over time by drones and artillery without reinforcement or replacement, and their ammunition depleted, then the Ukrainian Air Force will not be able to hold back Russian airpower over the frontlines. There are limited numbers of Western surface-to-air missile systems available, and procuring missiles and replacement launchers and radars for Soviet-made systems from elsewhere in the world to supply to Ukraine is politically difficult, so this will be a serious challenge in the medium term. Ultimately, therefore, a sustainable air defense posture for Ukraine is also likely to require at least some Western fighter aircraft able to engage Russian fighters on more equal terms. Such fighters would need to be able to operate from the small, relatively rough dispersed airbases that Ukraine’s fighters use to avoid being hit by Russian missile strikes.

The military momentum on the ground has swung decisively in Ukraine’s favor, especially following the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, and it has a real chance to drive Russian forces from the occupied territories in spring and summer 2023. However, this will not only require sustained support for the ground war, but also urgent Western air defense support to keep the Russian air force as ineffective as it has been up to now, and to repel the ongoing assault on the critical infrastructure that Ukrainian civilians rely on for warmth, light, and clean water this winter.

Ukraine Needs Air Defense Assistance to Protect Hard-Won Victories on the Ground - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Justin Bronk · November 16, 2022

Editor’s Note: This piece is a companion to the latest members-only podcast, The Russia Contigency with Michael Kofman. In this latest episode, Michael speaks with Justin Bronk and Jack Watling, both senior research fellows at the Royal United Services Institute, in great detail about the air war over Ukraine, and their recent observations from field research in the country.

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The Russian Aerospace Forces have struggled during the war against Ukraine. However, Russian jets and helicopters were far more active in the early days of the war than has been previously reported. If not for Ukraine’s Soviet-era mobile surface-to-air missile systems, the Russian military could have overwhelmed Ukraine’s defenses in the initial weeks of the war. These ground-based air defenses have kept Russian airpower at arm’s length and consequently ineffective since mid-March 2022. However, the Russian Aerospace Forces remain a major threat if Ukrainian air defense systems are allowed to run out of ammunition and steadily attritted. Ukraine is also under sustained missile and loitering munition bombardment that is draining air defense ammunition and causing nationwide electricity and water blackouts. Therefore, Ukraine’s Western partners need to prioritize sending air defense assistance such as the Western-made National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, along with shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems and modern anti-aircraft gun systems like the German-built Gepard.

The Unseen Air War

When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, the view of the war for outside observers was one dominated by advancing Russian ground forces and hundreds of cruise missile and ballistic missile strikes. The fighter jets and bombers of the Russian air force appeared to be largely absent during the first few days of the invasion, and then subsequently began to suffer losses in low-level bombing attacks against Ukrainian positions and besieged cities in early March. Since then, Russia’s inability to win air superiority over Ukraine has been a major factor in determining the course of the invasion. In the absence of the capacity on either side to use airpower effectively at scale, the war so far has been decided by land-based artillery firepower, guided by drones against maneuvering armored vehicles and infantry.

However, a new RUSI report based on fieldwork conducted in Ukraine in October 2022 suggests that Russia conducted significantly more extensive strike and fighter patrol operations with its combat aircraft during the first days of the invasion than had previously been documented. According to interviews with Ukrainian Air Force commanders, Russian electronic warfare attacks, effective use of aerial decoys, and long-range missile strikes suppressed or damaged most of Ukraine’s ground-based air defense systems at the start of the invasion. This left Ukraine’s outnumbered and outgunned fighter pilots trying to defend the skies on their own, and they took significant losses until the ground-based defenses could be restored to effective operations after the third day of the conflict.

During this initial three-day window, Russian strike aircraft flew hundreds of sorties to bomb targets up to 300 kilometers inside Ukrainian-controlled territory. They would have continued to do so if the Ukrainian surface-to-air missile systems like the long-range S-300, medium range SA-11 “Buk,” and short-range SA-8 “Osa” had not been brought back into action to make flying at medium and high altitudes prohibitively dangerous for Russian aircraft. Once Ukraine’s surface-to-air missile systems were back in action, Russian jets and helicopters were unable to effectively find, suppress, and destroy them. Consequently, they were instead forced to fly very low, which left them unacceptably vulnerable to the short-range shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems that the West supplied in large quantities to Ukraine.

Nonetheless, the RUSI report has also shown that Russian fighter aircraft flying near the frontlines continue to inflict serious losses on Ukrainian pilots, who are stuck flying Soviet-era jets that are completely technically outclassed. Essentially, the Russian air force only failed to win air superiority over Ukraine thanks to its inability so far to hunt down and destroy Ukraine’s mobile surface-to-air missile systems. However, these are hard for Western partners to resupply because they are Soviet-made systems that the West has never manufactured. Replacing them with Western systems is also difficult because Western militaries have few surface-to-air missile launchers and limited missile stocks as a result of having had assured air superiority in conflicts since the end of the Cold War. This matters, because the Ukrainian surface-to-air missile systems that are so crucial to holding back the Russian air force are not only being slowly attritted, but they also have finite ammunition.

So far Western military aid has overwhelmingly focused on ground equipment like tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and anti-tank rocket launchers. This was for good reason — the Russian army has been by far the biggest threat to Ukraine up until now, especially because the Russian air force has not been able to operate effectively since the first few days of the invasion. However, the Russian air force remains a serious threat to Ukraine’s hard-won progress on the ground. If Ukraine is not provided with urgent additional support in terms of missile ammunition for its Soviet-era surface-to-air missile systems, as well as new Western ones such as the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems in quantity over time, then Russian jets could find themselves with much more freedom to bomb Ukrainian troops, cities, and infrastructure near the frontlines in the coming months.

Russia’s Missile Bombardment Strategy

Ukraine is also under renewed and potentially very serious bombardment from Russian cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and Iranian-supplied Shahed-136 loitering munitions. The Russian military has so far failed to concentrate its limited arsenal of expensive cruise and ballistic missiles on any one target set to cause strategically decisive effects. Ukraine is, after all, a huge and resilient country. However, with the addition of the Shahed-136, this latest strike campaign is more threatening. The small loitering munitions are relatively “dumb” weapons, being quite slow, relatively easy to shoot down individually, and only able to reliably hit fixed targets. However, they are cheap — around $25,000 per munition — and their 20 to 40 kilogram warhead capacity is sufficient to badly damage smaller infrastructure targets and buildings.

Russia is using these weapons to target the Ukrainian electricity and water grids as winter approaches, using its remaining expensive cruise and ballistic missiles to hit large targets like major power stations and interconnectors while using hundreds of Shahed-136s to hit smaller substations and pumping stations. This is having serious effects after only around a month of strikes. Most Ukrainian cities are down to a few hours of electricity and water per day. Ukrainian forces continue to shoot down the majority of the Shahed-136s and more than half of the cruise missiles fired. However, this effort is rapidly depleting Ukraine’s stocks of man-portable air defense systems and other air defense missiles.

To defeat this ruthless Russian strategy of plunging millions of Ukrainian civilians into darkness, cold, and thirst this winter, Ukraine needs urgent resupply shipments of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, and additional radar-guided anti-aircraft guns like the German Gepard that can reliably destroy the Shahed-136 loitering munitions at a sustainable cost per interception.

Conclusion

While the general perception that the Russian Aerospace Forces have been ineffective during the invasion so far is largely correct, this should not obscure the real threat that they still pose if Ukraine’s air defenses are not urgently reinforced. During the first three days of the war, Russian jets flew hundreds of strike sorties and fighter sweeps, and the Ukrainian Air Force fighter pilots took serious casualties trying to hold them back. The reason why Russia’s airpower has been so ineffective since then is that the Russian Aerospace Forces lack the capacity to plan, fly, and sustain the sort of large and complex strike packages required to conduct effective suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses against Ukrainian mobile surface-to-air missile systems. However, they still possess formidable fighters and strike aircraft with heavy firepower that could be devastating if they are allowed to regain the ability to operate sustainably at medium level over Ukrainian territory.

If Ukrainian surface-to-air missiles are allowed to be attritted away over time by drones and artillery without reinforcement or replacement, and their ammunition depleted, then the Ukrainian Air Force will not be able to hold back Russian airpower over the frontlines. There are limited numbers of Western surface-to-air missile systems available, and procuring missiles and replacement launchers and radars for Soviet-made systems from elsewhere in the world to supply to Ukraine is politically difficult, so this will be a serious challenge in the medium term. Ultimately, therefore, a sustainable air defense posture for Ukraine is also likely to require at least some Western fighter aircraft able to engage Russian fighters on more equal terms. Such fighters would need to be able to operate from the small, relatively rough dispersed airbases that Ukraine’s fighters use to avoid being hit by Russian missile strikes.

The military momentum on the ground has swung decisively in Ukraine’s favor, especially following the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, and it has a real chance to drive Russian forces from the occupied territories in spring and summer 2023. However, this will not only require sustained support for the ground war, but also urgent Western air defense support to keep the Russian air force as ineffective as it has been up to now, and to repel the ongoing assault on the critical infrastructure that Ukrainian civilians rely on for warmth, light, and clean water this winter.

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Justin Bronk is the Senior Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology in the Military Sciences team at the defense and security think tank RUSI in London. His Twitter handle is @Justin_Br0nk

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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warontherocks.com · by Justin Bronk · November 16, 2022

23. Operationalizing Strategic Empathy: Best Practices from Inside the First Island Chain

Conclusion:

Strategic empathy is, in fact, an imperative. Candidly, the stakes are too high to persist with self-centered approaches to the current challenges in the contemporary operating environment. The techniques employed by U.S. Army Japan to assess implications of geography, history, and domestic politics are not isolated to this small but mighty land component of a sub-unified command in the Indo-Pacific. The methods can be applied at echelon—from tactical to national-strategic organizations, including bilateral and multilateral commands. Doing so breaks the paradigm of strategic narcissism and its associated cognitive traps.

Operationalizing Strategic Empathy: Best Practices from Inside the First Island Chain

thestrategybridge.org · November 16, 2022

J.B. Vowell and Craig Evans

The United States cannot compete effectively or prevail in conflict if its approach to leading the free world through current global challenges is self-centered. Hans Morgenthau described self-centered leadership as strategic narcissism: “the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States and to assume the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans.” In his 2018 book, Battlegrounds, former National Security Advisor and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster describes multiple examples where strategic narcissism contributed false assumptions about other countries, which errantly drove U.S. policy in the post-Cold War era—most acutely regarding U.S. policy toward China.[1] McMaster responds to that history by calling for strategic leaders and practitioners to embrace strategic empathy, defined as "the skill of understanding what drives and constrains one's adversary."[2]

McMaster’s strategic empathy concept prescribes looking at issues from the perspective of others—specifically adversaries.

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McMaster’s strategic empathy concept prescribes looking at issues from the perspective of others—specifically adversaries. However, it is equally applicable to allies and partners as a window into better understanding the emotions, ideologies, and aspirations that motivate their behavior. The theory predicts, as strategic empathy increases, that strategic narcissism decreases, resulting in better policies and strategies for competing and prevailing in conflict. McMaster’s theory, however, begs the question; How do strategic leaders operate with strategic empathy?

To operationalize the concept of strategic empathy, this article argues that strategic leaders must appreciate three critical factors: geography, history, and domestic politics. These three factors are the pillars of the framework employed by U.S. Army Japan, a theater-strategic headquarters in the Indo-Pacific theater. First, U.S. Army Japan embraced strategic empathy by reorienting the map to gain appreciation for how U.S. adversaries and its anchoring ally, Japan, perceive the region. Second, through professional development sessions, leaders in U.S. Army Japan have also invested in examining the historical perspectives of regional actors to contextualize contemporary actions and policies. The command’s leadership then applies that framing to sufficiently understand Japanese domestic political events, such as elections and strategic document formulation. These activities enable the command to operate with the kind of strategic empathy to think, act, and operate differently in an operational environment that demands greater agility and innovation to address regional challenges.[3]

Pay Attention to Geography

Journalist Robert Kaplan argues that the "only thing enduring is a people's position on the map [and] the map, while not determinative, is the beginning of discerning historical logic about what might come next.".[4] U.S. Army Japan reoriented the map to see geography through the lens of regional actors to help illuminate many regional security challenges in Northeast Asia. Three countries are particularly useful as examples: Japan, Russia, and China.

First Island Chain Perspective. (US Army Japan)

U.S. and Japanese military leaders often remark that the fault line of the international order runs through Japan.[5] From Japan’s northernmost tip to the southernmost island, it has territorial disputes with three authoritarian, nuclear powers—each with distinct regional ambitions that collide with Japan’s security interests.

Reorienting the map also helps apply strategic empathy by focusing U.S. leaders on China’s geographic perception of being surrounded by U.S. partner democracies such as the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Philippines that constrain China’s regional and global ambitions.

Russia is similarly influenced by the chokepoint between Petropavlovsk and the Northern Territories to transform the geography with modernized anti-access and area denial capabilities, such as the Bastion. The Russian fleet relies on navigation routes from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Northern Pacific Ocean that are potentially at risk if not defended. The influence of geography on Russian policy is readily apparent when viewing the map from an orientation centered on Russia’s geographic context.[6]

Reorienting the map also helps apply strategic empathy by focusing U.S. leaders on China’s geographic perception of being surrounded by U.S. partner democracies such as the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Philippines that constrain China’s regional and global ambitions. U.S. leaders can better appreciate China’s express belief that it is the object of a U.S.-led regional containment strategy.[7] Beijing’s attempts to create and enforce new geographic facts by designating a 10-dash-line, the construction and militarization of artificial features in the South China Sea, and its pressure campaign against Taiwan are all efforts to alter conditions in a security environment in furtherance of its interests. Leaders gain empathetic perspectives of the region by studying the geography.

Remember the Importance of History

“History is who we are and why we are the way we are,” according to the late historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, David McCullough.[8] U.S. Army Japan has used various methods to gain increased understanding of historical perspectives of regional actors and how their interactions over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries have directly shaped present-day national security policies and actions. The command has institutionalized historical understanding through both cyclical and occasional venues, such as leader professional development program, expert roundtables, staff rides, and the commander’s update briefs.

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A command-wide professional development session used Rush Doshi’s, The Long Game, and included a candid, structured dialogue led by the commanding general on how China’s goals for Great Rejuvenation are directly linked to its historical self-perception as a regional and global leader. An essential insight from that discussion was that the Chinese Communist Party views 1839 to 1949, known in China as the “Century of Humiliation,” as historically anomalous and that the CCP is determined to establish China in what it views as China’s natural and rightful place as the leader of the international order.[9]

A recent Analyst Roundtable hosted by U.S. Army Japan applied a similar approach in assessing the relationship between Japan and the Republic of Korea. The panel discussed how the brutal subjugation of Korea by Imperial Japan from 1910-1945, involving the forced labor of Korean women, remains a point of contention between present day Japan and the Republic of Korea.[10] A two-day senior leader staff ride to Okinawa included a facilitated tour of Hacksaw Ridge and historical recount of the World War II Battle of Okinawa, which occurred April 1 to June 21, 1945, and illuminated challenges associated with joint warfare in an archipelagic environment.

The U.S. Army Japan staff has also updated its cyclical outputs by incorporating academic-oriented presentations on various topics into its commander’s update brief that are relevant to the aggregated threats in the command’s area of interest. Examples include discussion of China’s “Three Warfares” concept, and publishing “This Day in History” vignettes.[11] These methods enable the command leadership to develop strategic empathy in its planning by cultivating an appreciation for the historical and cultural context of the operating environment.

U.S. Army Japan senior leaders discuss the Battle of Okinawa during a staff ride. (US Army Japan)

Look Inside to Understand Outside

Attempting to understand any state’s behavior without exploring its internal dynamics is an insufficient approach for increasing strategic empathy. U.S. Army Japan, which resides inside the weapons engagement zones of three authoritarian, adversarial regimes, prioritizes understanding the links between the domestic politics and international behavior of regional actors. This understanding is critical for increasing strategic empathy required to execute or advocate policy and strategy to deter conflict. U.S. Army Japan finds two variables particularly useful: leadership personality and leadership ambition. This is particularly true with respect to countries such as China, Russia, and North Korea because their engagement in the region and with the rest of the world is determined through the personality and malign ambitions of their leaders.

In authoritarian systems, regime survival is the preeminent security interest; internal and external decisions are filtered through the lens of what will ensure regime continuity.[12] Authoritarians are also necessarily paranoid about appearing weak for fear of losing internal control.[13] This often makes them prone to provocative, retaliatory, or escalatory behavior. Chinese President Xi Jinping exhibited this dynamic in his response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s retaliatory abrogation of negotiations with Japan over disputed territories after Japan sanctioned Russia for invading Ukraine is another example.[14] North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s development of nuclear and advanced missile programs are designed to protect and perpetuate the Kim Family regime.[15] Accordingly, U.S. Army Japan’s intelligence directorate incorporates leadership analysis into assessments of regional military activities.

To be sure, democracies are not immune from similar considerations. Domestic considerations such as elections, budget cycles, and national strategic document formulation can determine how fast and how far the anchoring ally in the Pacific is willing to negotiate with the U.S. on alliance issues, such as forward basing and posture. Consequently, U.S. Army Japan’s strategy directorate drafts and disseminates white papers in advance of and following major domestic political events in Japan to inform the development and revision of command objectives. Whether for allies or adversaries, understanding internal considerations informs analysis of state behavior and helps strategic leaders and practitioners operate with increased strategic empathy.

Tying it All Together

The premise of this article is that increasing awareness of geography, history, and domestic politics increases strategic empathy, reduces strategic narcissism, and ultimately results in better decisions. This has been internally validated by the staff at U.S. Army Japan where accounting for these three factors behind state perspectives informed command efforts. Increasing strategic empathy enabled its intelligence directorate to produce balanced, timely, predictive analysis on the aggregated threats in the region and influenced the operations directorate’s design of more realistic bilateral training events that incorporate nuanced considerations of these factors into training material. This year alone, U.S. Army Japan’s two signature bilateral mission rehearsal events, Orient Shield and Yama Sakura, achieved many firsts based on the simulation of more realistic ally and adversary objectives, capabilities, and behavior. Inclusion of geographic, historical, and domestic political considerations also enabled the strategy directorate to develop an executable campaign plan and inform contingency planning efforts. Collectively, efforts across the staff to operate with strategic empathy will enable the U.S. Army Japan Commanding General to make decisions, offer military advice to civilian leaders, and submit military recommendations to higher headquarters more likely to benefit U.S. national interests and avoid needless costs to those interests.

Strategic empathy is, in fact, an imperative.

Strategic empathy is, in fact, an imperative. Candidly, the stakes are too high to persist with self-centered approaches to the current challenges in the contemporary operating environment. The techniques employed by U.S. Army Japan to assess implications of geography, history, and domestic politics are not isolated to this small but mighty land component of a sub-unified command in the Indo-Pacific. The methods can be applied at echelon—from tactical to national-strategic organizations, including bilateral and multilateral commands. Doing so breaks the paradigm of strategic narcissism and its associated cognitive traps.

Major General J.B. Vowell is currently the Commanding General of United States Army Japan. Colonel Craig L. Evans is the United States Army Japan Senior Intelligence Officer. The views expressed are the authors’ alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

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Header Image: First Island Chain Perspective, 2022 (US Army Japan)

Notes:

[1] H. R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (New York, NY: Harper, 2020), 15–16, 127–33.

[2] McMaster, 16.

[3] U.S. Congress. Senate, Statement of Admiral John C. Aquilino, U.S. Navy Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Indo-Pacific Command Posture, Senate, 117th Cong., 2nd sess., March 22, 2022, 2.

[4] Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us about Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House, 2013), xviii.

[5] Lt. Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, “Remarks to the Japan National Press Club” (Tokyo, February 25, 2020), usfj.mil.

[6] Seth Robson, “Russia Deploys Bastion Anti-Ship Missile System to Island North of Japan,” Stars and Stripes, December 7, 2021; Jon Grevatt et al., “Update: Russia Deploys Bastion Coastal Defence System at New Military Facility in Disputed Kuril Islands,” Janes.com, December 7, 2021.

[7] Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 56–58.

[8] “Historian Addresses Wesleyan,” The New York Times, June 4, 1984, Late edition, sec. B, timemachine.nytimes.com.

[9] Doshi, The Long Game, 271–76; Brands and Beckley, Danger Zone, 27–28. Brands and Beckley note, "During the Century of Humiliation, China was forced to fight more than a dozen wars on its soil and suffered two of the deadliest civil wars in history: the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864, 20-30 million dead) and the Chinese Civil War (1927-1948, 7-8 million dead)."

[10] Timothy Webster, “A Formula to Resolve the South Korea-Japan Wartime Forced Labor Issue,” United States Institute of Peace, August 18, 2022, https://www.usip.org.

[11] For an executive synopsis of China' Three Warfares, see Seth G. Jones, Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, and the Rise of Irregular Warfare, First edition (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021), 147–49.

[12] Regarding China, Australia’s former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, explains Xi Jinping's world view using a heuristic of ten concentric circles, the first of which is Xi's and CCP's determination to remain in power. See, Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and XI Jinping’s China (New York: PublicAffairs, 2022), 77–94.

[13] See Freedom House's 2022 report for regional and country-specific assessments of tools authoritarian leaders use to maintain internal control. Brands and Beckley, Danger Zone, 49–51; Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, “Freedom in the World 2022, The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule” (Freedom House, February 2022), https://freedomhouse.org.

[14] Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Russia Halts WWII Peace Treaty Talks with Japan in Response to Sanctions over Ukraine Invasion,” Washington Post, March 22, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/.

[15] Council on Foreign Relations, “North Korea’s Military Capabilities,” Backgrounder, June 28, 2022, https://www.cfr.org.

thestrategybridge.org · November 16, 2022

24. US to Spend $66 Million to Upgrade Philippine Security Facilities

Excerpt:

The resumption of security cooperation under EDCA is just the latest sign that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who succeeded Duterte in July, is returning his country’s foreign policy to its historical mean of friendliness toward Washington. As Zachary Abuza of the National War College in Washington, D.C., put it on Twitter yesterday, “Duterte’s damage is slowly being undone.”

US to Spend $66 Million to Upgrade Philippine Security Facilities

The announcement comes ahead of a visit by Vice President Kamala Harris to the island of Palawan, adjacent to the disputed Spratly Islands.

thediplomat.com · by Sebastian Strangio · November 16, 2022

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The Philippines announced yesterday that the United States had agreed to spend $66.5 million to start building training and warehouse facilities at three of its military bases, under a security pact signed in 2014.

In a statement, the Philippine Department of National Defense said that construction will start next year on projects involving three Philippine bases earmarked under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

“The Department is committed to accelerating the implementation of the EDCA by concluding infrastructure enhancement and repair projects, developing new infrastructure projects at existing EDCA locations, and exploring new locations that will build a more credible mutual defense posture,” the DND’s statement read.

The new projects will involve the construction of training, warehouse, and other facilities at Basa Air Base in Pampanga, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, and Lumbia Airport Base Station in Cagayan de Oro.

Manila’s Defense Department said it is also focused on planning joint activities with U.S. forces to develop the Philippines’ individual and joint capacity “to address current security challenges.”

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Signed in 2014, EDCA permitted the U.S. to deploy conventional forces in the Philippines for the first time in decades, amid growing mutual concerns about China’s assertive actions in the South China Sea. The Philippines later approved five military bases for a rotational U.S. presence, and the U.S. government this week reportedly expressed its interest in five more military facilities.

However, the implementation of the agreement stalled following the election in mid-2016 of Rodrigo Duterte, who initiated a sharp turn against the U.S., and steered his government into friendlier relations with China – despite the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea.

Duterte’s six years in power were not good for the U.S.-Philippine alliance, which is rooted in the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951 but builds on the close relationship established during the half-century of direct U.S. colonial rule over the Philippine islands.

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Against a general backdrop of hostility to the U.S. – Duterte refused to visit the country during his time in office – he also aimed some of the load-bearing structures of the alliance. The most important of these was the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which lays out rules for the deployment of U.S. troops in the Philippines and is vital to the implementation of security cooperation under EDCA.

In early 2020, Duterte announced that he was canceling the VFA, in retaliation for a close ally being refused a visa to visit the United States. But under pressure from his own broadly pro-American defense and security establishment, the Philippine leader held off on putting the final nail in the agreement’s coffin, announcing three successive six-month stays of the cancelation. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin finally managed to secure the cancelation of the termination of the agreement during a visit to Manila last year.

The resumption of security cooperation under EDCA is just the latest sign that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who succeeded Duterte in July, is returning his country’s foreign policy to its historical mean of friendliness toward Washington. As Zachary Abuza of the National War College in Washington, D.C., put it on Twitter yesterday, “Duterte’s damage is slowly being undone.”

The Philippine announcement came ahead of a visit to the country by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who will become the highest-ranking American official to fly out to the Philippine island of Palawan, which lies adjacent to the disputed Spratly Islands, where both the Philippines and China have claims.

Reuters quoted a senior Biden administration official as saying that while in Palawan, Harris is expected to meet with “residents, civil society leaders and representatives of the Philippines Coast Guard.” One U.S. observer noted that she is also likely to visit Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa, one of the five Philippine bases earmarked for a rotational U.S. presence under EDCA.

Harris’ trip will demonstrate Washington’s “commitment to stand with our Philippine ally in upholding the rules-based international maritime order in the South China Sea, supporting maritime livelihoods and countering illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing,” Reuters quoted the official as saying.

Sebastian Strangio

Sebastian Strangio is Southeast Asia editor at The Diplomat.

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thediplomat.com · by Sebastian Strangio · November 16, 2022

25. To win the internet, the Pentagon's info ops need more humanity and a dash of absurdity

Excerpts:

By dropping the pretense of big government and attempting to be genuine — and perish the thought, human — America’s would-be information warriors might capture “hearts and minds” in a way even the most programmatic efforts likely cannot. The researchers at Graphika and SIO who outed the U.S. government’s latest attempt to sway public opinion echoed this recommendation, urging that as DOD pursues a more proactive posture in cyberspace, its efforts “focus on exposing those adversarial networks with radical transparency and winning hearts and minds with an underutilized weapon: the truth.”

Some within the U.S. government seem to be growing more adept at harnessing the idioms of the internet in trying to reach audiences. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, seems to have far more success raising awareness of disinformation using “Pineapple on Pizza” than with a formally constituted governance board. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly seems to gain more traction among the hacking community with Rubik’s cubes and knit beanies than she likely would with a brochure and a binder. Even Rob Joyce, the National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity, is using memes to communicate, wading into the esoteric meme pool and finding the water just fine.

On the one hand, the approach is unorthodox. On the other, the current orthodoxy seems to have veered from the principles of truth, transparency and democratic values the U.S. government ought to be defending — undermining the message by overthinking the delivery.

To win the internet, the Pentagon's info ops need more humanity and a dash of absurdity

cyberscoop.com · by Elias Groll · November 14, 2022

Written by Gavin Wilde

Nov 14, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP

Earlier this year, researchers at internet analytics firm Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory revealed the existence of a five-year influence operation that encapsulates the difficulties the U.S. government faces in covertly winning hearts and minds online. This campaign — that U.S. Central Command reportedly orchestrated — attempted to spread pro-U.S. messages and targeted audiences in the Middle East and Central Asia via the creation of false personas, the use of memes and phony independent media outlets.

In its apparent attempt to run a Russia-style info op, CENTCOM failed. In addition to exhibiting relatively unsophisticated tradecraft mimicking Russian operations — and possibly skirting the military’s own standing protocols — the operation was perhaps most notable for what it wasn’t: effective. Researchers assessed that the Pentagon’s own overt social media messaging had more engagement than the operation did by orders of magnitude.

Six years after Russian messaging targeted the 2016 U.S. election and reawakened the U.S. government to covert influence operations and political warfare, it still hasn’t figured out how best to approach this domain. Its recent failures — and other, more successful activities messaging campaigns — provide an opportunity for American info warriors to reassess doctrines and to place truth, transparency and dedication to democratic values at their heart. But to be successful online, American info ops need not only improved oversight — they need to make room for a little absurdity, too.

What Graphika and SIO revealed about CENTCOM’s apparent five-year campaign represented something of an “I told you so” moment for students of U.S. counterinfluence and counter-disinformation efforts. As Ambassador Dan Fried and Dr. Alina Polyakova warned in their sweeping report on disinformation from 2020, “We must not become them to fight them.” By embracing tactics of obfuscation and inorganic amplification, countries such as the United States risk undermining “the values that democracies seek to defend, creating a moral equivalence (one that would bolster the cynical arguments of Russian propagandists about democracy being mere fraud),” Fried and Polyakova argued.

In their view, there’s another, more practical reason for Western states to avoid covert information operations: “If the history of the Cold War is any guide, democracies are no good at disinformation.”

U.S. defense officials are working to make American information operations more sophisticated, but they have a long way to go. Last month, the Joint Staff updated its doctrine on information operations, or what the military dubs “operations in the information environment.” But beyond intending to break down parochial notions among the military services and arrive at a unified conception of information operations, not much is publicly known about the update. After the U.S. operation targeting the Middle East and Central Asia became public, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl reportedly ordered a review of all online psychological operations, which was supposed to be due last month.

Whether the Joint Staff’s doctrinal update will solve the basic definitional problems that have long bedeviled U.S. information operations remains to be seen. “We haven’t decided yet what is or isn’t information operations, information warfare, cyberspace operations, operations in cyberspace that enable information operations … is it about cognitive operations, beliefs and understanding and motivations for operations?” Retired Vice Admiral TJ White wondered earlier this year. “We just haven’t yet decided.”

Even the Department of Defense’s overt, “by the book” operations have a mixed record of success. For example, an apparent Cyber Command foray into the meme wars in October 2020 proved bureaucratically inept and stylistically cringeworthy, as an attempted contribution to online culture collided with the realities of military culture. A cartoon bear designed to accompany an public advisory regarding Russian malware reportedly required four weeks of review and ultimate sign-off by a brigadier general — somewhat ironic for a command that has rigorously sought to cut the red tape around operations in cyberspace.

So, in thinking about what U.S. information operations should look like, would-be information warriors in government would be well-served studying what works in online messaging.

At their core, successful information operations capture attention, play on existing biases, consolidate factions, and catalyze them to action. Consider the online phenomenon that is the North Atlantic Fella Organization. In short, NAFO involves a bunch of dogs in fatigues on Twitter, relentlessly punking a stuffy Russian diplomat for his shameless lying. Opportunistic while altruistic, spontaneous and uncoordinated, NAFO rode the momentum of a cultural touchstone. It was high-minded, yet low-brow, an unaffiliated, pro-Ukrainian support movement drawing inspiration from a long-running internet meme featuring Shiba Inu pups and their trademark facial expressions. Western heads-of-state, legislators, and even the Ukrainian defense minister all hopped on the bandwagon.

To those who came of age on the self-seriousness of Tom Clancy novels, NAFO might seem patently ridiculous. But, as CyberScoop’s Suzanne Smalley outlined earlier this month, therein lies the source of its power. Former Marine Matt Moores, the co-founder of the group, leveraged the absurdity of a senior Russian official “replying to a cartoon dog online,” to demonstrate a profound and galvanizing truth: When you, Mr. Ambassador, reach that point in the debate, “you’ve lost.”

These episodes raise questions as to whether the bureaucratization and outsourcing of online operations — by whichever doctrinal moniker one prefers — by the DOD might be precisely what dooms many of them to inefficacy. Both military officers and government contractors are naturally going to attempt amplification, automation or manipulation of online phenomena like NAFO. However, they risk trading valuable tax dollars and irreplaceable credibility for a fraction of the impact that comes for free to those willing to ride the zeitgeist and tap into something with inherent social resonance — rather than trying to create that resonance from scratch.

By dropping the pretense of big government and attempting to be genuine — and perish the thought, human — America’s would-be information warriors might capture “hearts and minds” in a way even the most programmatic efforts likely cannot. The researchers at Graphika and SIO who outed the U.S. government’s latest attempt to sway public opinion echoed this recommendation, urging that as DOD pursues a more proactive posture in cyberspace, its efforts “focus on exposing those adversarial networks with radical transparency and winning hearts and minds with an underutilized weapon: the truth.”

Some within the U.S. government seem to be growing more adept at harnessing the idioms of the internet in trying to reach audiences. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, seems to have far more success raising awareness of disinformation using “Pineapple on Pizza” than with a formally constituted governance board. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly seems to gain more traction among the hacking community with Rubik’s cubes and knit beanies than she likely would with a brochure and a binder. Even Rob Joyce, the National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity, is using memes to communicate, wading into the esoteric meme pool and finding the water just fine.

On the one hand, the approach is unorthodox. On the other, the current orthodoxy seems to have veered from the principles of truth, transparency and democratic values the U.S. government ought to be defending — undermining the message by overthinking the delivery.

Gavin Wilde is a Senior Fellow in the Technology and International Affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously worked as a managing consultant for the Krebs Stamos Group, a cybersecurity advisory, and served as a director on the National Security Council staff. The views expressed here are his own.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed who was reportedly responsible for an influence operation targeting audiences in the Middle East and Central Asia. It was attributed to United States Central Command, not Cyber Command.

cyberscoop.com · by Elias Groll · November 14, 2022

26. Putin’s Fear of Retreat – How the Cuban Missile Crisis Haunts the Kremlin

Conclusion:

The off-ramp in 1962 did not emerge out of U.S. statesmanship. It grew first from Russian fear, and then pragmatism. Perhaps the recent loss of Kherson, in southern Ukraine—and the Democrats’ relative success in the midterm elections—will force a pragmatic reappraisal in this Kremlin. Until a few weeks ago, Putin would have found intolerable the idea of retreating from the only Ukrainian provincial city his forces had managed to capture. And yet now he has. That withdrawal, however, does not signal any Russian desire to lower the temperature. Putin’s audacious annexation of the four provinces (including Kherson) makes selling a wider strategic retreat to the Russian people very difficult. Unlike Khrushchev, Putin has raised the stakes of confrontation as his gambit began to unravel. It will be harder for him to fall back—and save face. He also doesn’t seem to want an off-ramp, at least for now. Biden and those calling on the White House to pressure Kyiv to negotiate with Moscow ought to keep this difference in mind. The war in Ukraine is not like the Cuban missile crisis, and Putin, as he’ll gladly tell you, is no Khrushchev.

Putin’s Fear of Retreat

How the Cuban Missile Crisis Haunts the Kremlin

By Timothy Naftali

November 16, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Timothy Naftali · November 16, 2022

Sixty years ago, the White House and the Kremlin peacefully resolved the most dangerous nuclear crisis of the modern era. Neither superpower had wanted the dispute over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba to end in war, but both sides threatened the use of violence to defend their interests. It isn’t just the coincidence of the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis that has led some observers to search for lessons from that long ago clash to help de-escalate the current war in Ukraine. From the moment he announced the invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted that this conflict could evolve into a nuclear one. “Whoever tries to interfere with us,” he said, “should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never experienced in your history.” Putin repeated this threat after the Western world and its Asian allies rushed to help Ukraine, and as the war began to go badly for Russia. On September 21, he warned that the Kremlin was prepared to use “all weapons systems available” to protect Russia’s “territorial integrity” and its “independence and freedom.” Since no NATO countries had threatened Russian territorial integrity or its independence or freedom, this statement seemed like a deliberate nuclear threat or, at best, a dangerous bluff.

Both Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden are old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis, and Biden has already revealed that he is thinking about the crisis as he manages the U.S. response to Russia’s aggression. At a political fundraising event in New York in October, Biden shared his worry that the threat of a nuclear “Armageddon” is the greatest it has been “in 60 years.”

But the two leaders appear to have different understandings of the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis. In Biden’s view, and that of many American scholars, the crisis was largely solved through mutual respect, a shared desire in avoiding war, and smart and empathetic negotiation that allowed both sides to save face. “We are trying to figure out, what is Putin’s off-ramp?” Biden said at the fundraising event. He appears to see himself in the situation that President John F. Kennedy faced when he had to help Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev climb down from the possibility of overt conflict and nuclear war. “Where does he find a way out?” Biden asked of Putin. “Where does he find himself in a position that he does not only lose face but lose significant power within Russia?”

Putin, who nearly two decades ago signed off on the declassification of the Politburo (then known as the Presidium) minutes from the Khrushchev era, doesn’t share that version of events. As I discovered while writing two books with the Russian historian Aleksandr Fursenko, who was the key player in the release of those materials, it was Khrushchev who made the first move to retreat. Only two days after Kennedy gave his dramatic speech demanding that Moscow remove its nuclear missiles from Cuba, Khrushchev gathered his Presidium colleagues to tell them that to avoid war they had to accept Kennedy’s demand. Facing humiliation, Khrushchev also tried to build an off-ramp for himself that would maximize his ability to save face in the socialist world and prevent a war with the West.

Americans tend to remember the peaceful outcome of this effort, but Russian leaders then, as now, understood the humiliation that backing down before the United States signified. In the end, Khrushchev’s efforts to repackage the events of October 1962 as some kind of victory failed. Two years after the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev would be removed from office by his colleagues on the Presidium for incompetence. Whereas Biden sees the importance and promise of statesmanship in the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis, Putin unsurprisingly sees only weakness.

Where Biden sees statesmanship, Putin sees only weakness.

Just last month, Putin left no doubt of his view of the missile crisis and Khrushchev’s retreat when answering a question from the Russian journalist and foreign policy expert Fyodor Lukyanov during an extremely revealing three-hour session at the Valdai Discussion Club. Referring to the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis—“Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the main day of the Caribbean crisis, the climax, when, in fact, we decided to retreat”—Lukyanov asked Putin to place himself in Khrushchev’s shoes. The president refused to. “No way,” he said. “I cannot imagine myself in the role of Khrushchev, by no means.”

Putin had no wish to be identified with a Kremlin leader who backed down. And then he revealed more. He was prepared to lead negotiations, as Khrushchev did with the United States, but not about ending the current crisis in Ukraine. Like Khrushchev in 1962, he was concerned about the state of the strategic competition with the United States, but unlike him, he was in no rush to sit down with U.S. officials to cool nuclear tensions. “In December last year,” he told Lukyanov, “we proposed to the United States to continue the dialogue on strategic stability, but they did not answer us. . . . If someone wants to have a dialogue with us on this matter, we are ready, let’s go for it.”

Although there are no surface similarities between this year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago—the first involves the conventional invasion of a neighboring country by a superpower; the other, the use of an allied country thousands of miles away to threaten a superpower with nuclear weapons—it is telling that Putin and Biden have different takeaways about the quality of leadership in that crisis. To get a sense of their differences, it might be helpful to summarize what is known from Russian and U.S. sources about how Kennedy and Khrushchev found—and took—an off-ramp from a nuclear crisis, deescalating a confrontation that might have triggered an epochal war.

HOW TO CONJURE AN OFF-RAMP

The Cuban missile crisis was the unintended consequence of Khrushchev’s effort to achieve in one fell swoop three very ambitious Cold War goals: altering the international balance of power (the Soviets were behind in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles) by scaring the United States with missiles nearby, protecting Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and forcing a new settlement over the control of West Berlin. Khrushchev’s harebrained scheme involved transporting medium- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles by ship to Cuba, while somehow managing to avoid detection by NATO. Once the missiles arrived, he would announce their deployment in a theatrical presentation at the United Nations in November 1962.

This plan began to unravel on October 22, when Kennedy announced, in a major speech covered worldwide, that the United States had discovered the placement of medium-range Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Hours before the address, having received some warning that the Americans might know what he was up to, Khrushchev feared that Kennedy would initiate an immediate attack on Cuba. Instead of an attack, Kennedy declared a naval blockade of the island. Khrushchev had no intention of removing the missiles that were already in Cuba, but he also wanted to avoid a clash that could lead to nuclear war. To reduce the risk of war, he decided on October 23 that Cuba-bound ships carrying the intermediate-range missiles would turn around and not test the U.S. blockade.

Meanwhile, Khrushchev hoped for signs of U.S. weakness or opposition from U.S. allies to the blockade. They did not emerge. Instead, Soviet intelligence picked up evidence that U.S. officials were preparing reporters to join an armada that would strike Cuba and that the United States had raised the alert status of its strategic weapons. Fearing perilous escalation, Khrushchev gathered his colleagues on October 25 and said that it was time to find a way out of this mess. The Soviet leader didn’t use the term “off-ramp,” but that’s what he wanted. He also wanted to avoid humiliation. “This is not cowardice,” he told his colleagues. “This is a fallback position. . . . It is not worth forcing the situation to the boiling point.” Perhaps he could achieve, at least, one of his three goals. The next day he sent Kennedy a private letter offering, in a roundabout way, the removal of the missiles in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.

The crisis didn’t end there, but it was on the road to resolution. It took Kennedy and his advisers a day to understand what Khrushchev was offering. Meanwhile, hungry for a better way to save face, Khrushchev came up with a new demand, linked to another of his goals. In addition to pledging not to invade Cuba, he wanted the United States to remove a visible symbol of NATO’s threat to the Soviet Union: the U.S. intermediate-range missiles housed in Turkey. From the KGB, Khrushchev already knew that these missiles were about to be replaced with Polaris submarines, but he wanted to extract another tangible U.S. concession, however hollow. On October 27, Kennedy agreed to the first condition in writing and the second secretly, by way of a meeting between his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. As Soviet records arguably indicate—historians debate this point—Khrushchev gathered his colleagues to accept the terms of Kennedy’s letter before he even heard about what the president’s brother had told Dobrynin. The Kennedy brothers promised to remove the missiles in Turkey but, in return, insisted that the Soviets could never crow about it.

NO RETREAT

It is no wonder that Russians, especially Putin, might see the Cuban missile crisis as a failure for the Kremlin. Khrushchev upended his entire plan to create a Soviet missile base in Cuba in return for very little: a verbal promise from a U.S. president not to invade the island and the removal of soon-to-be obsolete U.S. missiles that the Soviets were not allowed to discuss publicly. Equally telling for an autocrat like Putin was the fact that the debacle in Cuba would later be cited as a reason for Khrushchev’s dismissal in 1964.

In the interview with Lukyanov, Putin defended his annexation in September of four provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine and dismissed as hypocrites those in the United States and Europe who support Ukrainian sovereignty. “We see that complex demographic, political, and social processes are going on in Western countries,” he said. “Of course, this is their internal affair. Russia does not interfere in these issues and is not going to do it—unlike the West, we do not climb into someone else’s yard. But we hope that pragmatism will prevail and that Russia’s dialogue with the genuine, traditional West . . . will become an important contribution to building a multipolar world order.”

What constitutes the “genuine, traditional West”? Putin was no doubt referring to the Republican Party and other right-wing parties in North America and Western Europe. He had clearly expected that the U.S. midterm elections would change the political climate in the country and weaken U.S. support for Ukraine; in the wake of a surprisingly strong showing by Biden’s Democratic Party, this prospect now seems much less likely. But unlike Khrushchev at the height of the missile crisis, Putin doesn’t yet seem convinced of U.S. and European resolve. In any case, Putin rejects any analogy comparing him to Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis because he isn’t yet prepared to give up any of his key goals, even though their pursuit has precipitated a seemingly insoluble crisis of the Russian president’s own making.

The off-ramp in 1962 did not emerge out of U.S. statesmanship. It grew first from Russian fear, and then pragmatism. Perhaps the recent loss of Kherson, in southern Ukraine—and the Democrats’ relative success in the midterm elections—will force a pragmatic reappraisal in this Kremlin. Until a few weeks ago, Putin would have found intolerable the idea of retreating from the only Ukrainian provincial city his forces had managed to capture. And yet now he has. That withdrawal, however, does not signal any Russian desire to lower the temperature. Putin’s audacious annexation of the four provinces (including Kherson) makes selling a wider strategic retreat to the Russian people very difficult. Unlike Khrushchev, Putin has raised the stakes of confrontation as his gambit began to unravel. It will be harder for him to fall back—and save face. He also doesn’t seem to want an off-ramp, at least for now. Biden and those calling on the White House to pressure Kyiv to negotiate with Moscow ought to keep this difference in mind. The war in Ukraine is not like the Cuban missile crisis, and Putin, as he’ll gladly tell you, is no Khrushchev.

• TIMOTHY NAFTALI is Clinical Associate Professor of History and Public Service at New York University and a co-author, with Aleksandr Fursenko, of “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 and Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary.
• MORE BY TIMOTHY NAFTALI

Foreign Affairs · by Timothy Naftali · November 16, 2022

27. Max Hastings On The Legacy Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

Max Hastings On The Legacy Of The Cuban Missile Crisis | HistoryExtra

History Extra · by Elinor Evans

Cuban Missile Crisis: In context

In July 1962 the USSR premier Nikita Khrushchev, in agreement with Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro, made the fateful decision to place nuclear warheads in Cuba, just 90 miles from the US mainland. The Americans’ discovery of the weapons in October 1962 sparked a 13-day standoff between the superpowers of east and west that became known as the Cuban missile crisis. It is widely regarded as the most dangerous period of the Cold War.

On 16 October, US president John F Kennedy convened his closest advisors in a secret body later known as ExComm (Executive Committee of the National Security Council), to discuss a response to the Soviet act of aggression. “Go to general war,” was the advice of some of the president’s closest advisors, who pushed for air strikes or a full-scale invasion of the island. After nearly six days of top-secret meetings, Kennedy – who had come to regard a nuclear strike and descent into war as “a final failure” – favoured a naval blockade. He delivered the news to the world in a televised speech on 22 October 1962; Cuba was cut off from any military aid from its communist ally in the east, and America had avoided a declaration of war.

A tense series of letters between the leaders followed, with Khrushchev and Kennedy eventually reaching a diplomatic compromise in which the Soviets agreed to remove missiles from Cuba, and in return Kennedy secretly agreed to remove American nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey. The crisis was diffused, and the world was brought back from the brink of nuclear war.

Can you introduce readers to your narrative of the crisis and how it seeks to handle this episode, 60 years on?

When I started to write this book, it seemed like simply a piece of history or archaeology. One thing that has been extremely spooky is that – as I researched and wrote this account of how the world, in the midst of the Cold War, came closer than at any time in its history to Armageddon, to a nuclear war – President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Suddenly the whole thing achieves an immediacy, because we are looking again at an incredibly reckless, dangerous and ruthless leader in the Kremlin who is prepared to take extraordinary risks to try and frighten the world into acquiescing in these acts of aggression.

Of course, this caused me to significantly change parts of the beginning and the end of my narrative. I’ve said: “Here is this terrifying episode that happened 60 years ago. And what can we learn from it about the experiences we’re going through today?” Alas.

Want to hear more about the Cuban Missile crisis? Browse more episodes in our four-part podcast series

Putin is obviously an inescapable figure on the world stage now. And you write in Abyss that, contrary to ideas that personalities play only a minor part in determining history, the figures involved in the Cuban missile crisis dominated decisions and decided the outcome. What can you tell us about the key players?

There have been many accounts of the so-called “13 days” in October 1962 that followed the Americans’ discovery that the Soviets had secretly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. I think it’s a mistake just to look at that brief period. To understand what it all means, you’ve got to know quite a bit about what the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba were at that time. And, of course, these three extraordinary personalities.

First is Fidel Castro, the guerrilla leader who took over Cuba from dictator Fulgencio Batista at the beginning of 1959. Then there’s President John F Kennedy who remains, I think, by far the most fascinating and extraordinary US president of the past century – even more so than Franklin Roosevelt. And finally, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, this frightening thug; curiously, an impressive thug in some ways – you didn’t get to the top of the Soviet Union in those days without climbing over

a mountain of corpses. A lot of the first half of my book is about these people and these countries.

When it became clear that the US was going to seek to isolate Cuba, Castro turned to the other superpower – to the Soviet Union

The first thing to understand is how appallingly the US had treated Cuba for the previous century. The Americans always like to think that they don’t have an empire, but they treated Cuba as a colony. They decided everything, and most of the profits from Cuban sugar and tobacco went straight into American pockets. American gangsters were running all the casinos in Havana. With the ascent of Castro, the Americans suddenly found that they had been kicked out. One of the people interviewed for the book was the so-called head of protocol for the Castro government. He said: “People from the American embassy would turn up at our offices and say, ‘Here’s what you’re going to do, we’re from the embassy and you’ll do it.’” And of course, the Cubans said: “It’s not like that anymore, this is our own country. We’re a sovereign country.”

How did the alliance between the Soviet Union and Cuba lead to such a dangerous crisis?

When it became clear that the US was going to seek to isolate Cuba and topple its leader, Castro turned to the other superpower – to the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev.

Khrushchev was absolutely enchanted by Castro. He was reminded of the 1917 revolutionaries, the young idealists who had taken over Moscow and Petrograd. He decided to give total support to Castro. In the spring of 1962, after a year of supplying weapons to Castro, Khrushchev was staying at his dacha [second home] on the Black Sea, looking through his binoculars. He was infuriated, knowing that 200 miles or so across the water, there were American nuclear missiles [in Turkey] pointed at his dacha. One day in April 1962, he said to his defence minister, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, “How would it be if we throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam’s pants?” In other words: “How would it be if we install nuclear missiles in Cuba?”

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Cuban premier Fidel Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev meet for the first time in New York in 1960, at the General Assembly of the United Nations. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Khrushchev knew that the Soviet Union was far weaker than the United States. He was obliged to face the fact that, at the same time as he was saying that socialism was going to take over the world, most of the Soviet Union was living in what Americans would think was abject poverty. Bread was rationed in some regions, and people had tiny televisions which they had to watch through water-filled magnifiers to make the picture big enough. Whereas on the other side of the world, you had Americans all eating steaks, with a growing audience for colour television.

This seemed so monstrously wicked and unfair to Khrushchev. It made him rage that – after all the Soviet Union had suffered in the Great Patriotic War, after losing 27 million people – the Americans should end up so rich and with this great nuclear arsenal, and that the Americans were trying to tell the world what to do. He was determined to even the score, to show the Americans that they didn’t rule the world.

Your book includes some staggering testimony from the ExComm meetings following the US discovery of the missiles in Cuba that shows just how close the west came to responding with a nuclear strike. How near did the world come to nuclear war?

The first thing Kennedy said, at the White House when he heard about this, was: “We’re probably going to have to bomb them.” At that stage, the Americans had no idea that there were also tactical nuclear weapons, they had no idea of the strength of the Soviet forces in Cuba. The US chiefs of staff wanted full bombing, an American invasion of Cuba. All through the crisis though, all the civilians around JFK, and the president himself, were always sure that they had to go very carefully, be very cautious. But America’s generals and admirals were saying “we’ve got to go in and zap these people. We’ve got to bomb them. We’ve got to invade them.”

My view, which I’ve expressed in my book very strongly, is that there is no doubt that neither the Kremlin nor the White House wanted a third world war, they didn’t want all-out war. But the Soviets had put hundreds of nuclear weapons in Cuba with no technical safeguards to stop local commanders from firing them. Had the Americans done what many people around the president wanted – bombed and invaded – I think the chances of these weapons not being used, and the idea the Russians would sit there and take devastating casualties to their own forces and not respond, is for the fairies. Once they started that, escalation would have been almost inevitable. You had a terrifying situation.

In those first days, as Kennedy presided over daily and sometimes hourly meetings of the so-called ExComm, they talked through every option: bombing, blockade, etc. The one thing they all agreed upon was that they could not do nothing. By around the Friday [19 October 1962], the chiefs of staff and McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s national security adviser, were urging towards bombing and probably invasion. But I think that – although JFK made many other mistakes in his time as president in his thousand days – when I listen to the recordings and read the transcripts of those meetings, he stands head-and-shoulders above all the others in his steadiness of purpose and his clear, unflinching understanding that if all this went wrong, we were going to have World War Three.

You write in Abyss of a collective wisdom on both sides that transcended the misjudgements of both the Kremlin and the White House. What was it about Kennedy and Khrushchev and their administrations that made this such an extraordinary episode?

I’m a passionate believer in diplomacy and diplomats. One of the scary things that’s happened in the last 20 years is that suddenly national leaders think the diplomats don’t matter anymore. I don’t think it’s just me as an old man being nostalgic. The quality of some of those top British diplomats and top American diplomats was so impressive.

Today, I’m afraid, there are no successors, because both American governments and British governments treat their diplomats with contempt. They get the diplomats they deserve, who are not people of remotely similar stature. It’s one of the things I’ve come to believe passionately about studying the Cold War. I hope anybody who reads my books will have a sense not only about the missile crisis, but about the wider Cold War. It was so important all the way through to keep talking. And even if the talks didn’t seem to get anywhere, just the fact there was dialogue was terribly important.

I was rather shocked a few years ago when a British general said to me, “You do realise, don’t you, that nowadays we talk less to the Russians than we did in the worst days of the Cold War?”

How do you think the international situation today, particularly regarding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, compares with that of the missile crisis?

President Putin today represents a terrifying threat. I personally believe that he’s a more dangerous and less stable figure than was Khrushchev, who had to consult the Soviet Presidium; although Khrushchev dominated the Presidium, its opinion still mattered. Putin appears to act entirely alone. I’m not suggesting that if we’d had better diplomats then Putin might have acted differently. But I think in general, in international affairs, it is so vital that we understand the importance of dialogue, and the importance of understanding each other in a way that, I’m afraid, I don’t think governments do today. And it is very scary.

Sure, you can say, what about Suez and Harold Macmillan, who only a few years earlier had been complicit in the British government being mad enough to invade Egypt in 1956? And of course later, the best and the brightest around Kennedy during Cuba, they got the United States into Vietnam.

Images of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin loom over a TV interview in October 2022 by journalist Caroline Roux with the French president Emmanuel Macron. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, hugely escalating a war that began in 2014. (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/FRANCE TELEVISIONS/AFP via Getty Images)

I’m not naive enough to suggest that those people all had the wisdom of Solomon all the time. But one effect of researching this book and reading all the transcripts of who said what during the crisis, is that one can see that people like Robert McNamara [US secretary of defense 1961–68], whom I met later and whose reputation was destroyed during Vietnam, was brilliant on the missile crisis. All the way through, he looked for ways of very graduated escalation, with the blockade as a first step. The chiefs of staff loathed him. After the missile crisis, one of them said – and I quote this in the book – that McNamara as defence secretary was the most dangerous man in America. They meant that he wouldn’t do the horrible things that they wanted to do, including risking nuclear war.

Even if these were not guys who got everything right all their lives, by gosh, they were guys who got a lot right in those days.

What did you make of the legacy of the Cuban missile crisis during your reporting in the US in the late 1960s, and in the years that followed?

I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to write this book about what’s overwhelmingly an American subject, but for the fact that I lived in the United States in 1967–68, and I always remember at the beginning of ’68, sitting in the White House Cabinet Room listening to President Lyndon B Johnson, with a group of other foreign journalists, talking about another American crisis, in Vietnam. I was taking a look around the Cabinet Room in those days and thinking, “This was the room where ExComm met earlier in the decade.”

When I was there as a young reporter, I met a lot of the people who were involved intimately in the missile crisis, including [secretary of state] Dean Rusk, [attorney general] Robert Kennedy, and McNamara, and [presidential speechwriter and historian] Arthur Schlesinger became a close friend.

Kennedy had a clear, unflinching understanding that if all this went wrong, we were going to have World War Three

Of course, at that period, America was racked by the whole Vietnam agony. It did give one an insight into how, on the one hand, it was the most exciting country on Earth. No one doubted its towering stature in the sixties; it was the absolute powerhouse of the world, for its technology, its wealth, its power. But on the other hand, one witnessed the United States doing terrible things, conspicuously including the appalling racial strife. There was always this contrast between the wonderful things about America – which remain true today – and also the terrible things; somehow America has a tragic talent for presiding over some of the worst things that have happened on the planet. I was there in the Vietnam period, and later reported in Vietnam. When I see all that’s going on in Ukraine – and I hasten to add that this does not make me an apologist for Putin – I can’t forget that “our side”, if you like, has its own share of shames, and some of them date from the 1960s.

I do feel it was a big help to me in writing this book to have been around in the sixties and to have known some of those people, and to remember how it all felt. Because in the 21st century, to you who were not even born until ages after that, it seems an eternity away. To me it almost seems like yesterday.

Max Hastings is a leading British journalist, author, broadcaster and former newspaper editor who is currently a columnist for The Times and Bloomberg Opinion. His latest book is Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (William Collins, 2022)

Hear what life was like for ordinary Cubans during the crisis in BBC World Service’s Witness History

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This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine

History Extra · by Elinor Evans

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