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Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like."

- E.L. Doctorow

"Lies. Let them come into the world… But not through me. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

- Thomas Paine

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 25, 2023

2. U.S. Abrams Tanks Reach Ukraine. Is It a Case of Too Little, Too Late?

3. Russia appears ready to accept Crimea as Ukraine's—on one condition

4. Opinion | The United States is morally obliged to secure the release of hostages

5. Tensions With China Cross a New Line in the South China Sea

6. Inside Iran’s influence operation | Semafor

7. India and US army chiefs call for free and stable Indo-Pacific as Chinese influence grows

8. The Rules-Based International Order Is Quietly Disintegrating

9. Justice Department Fights to Reinstate Bowe Bergdahl's Court-Martial Conviction

10. Opinion | A memorial to the war on terror is coming. Here is why you should care.

11. Opinion: Ukraine’s bumpy road ahead just got rockier

12. Pentagon Plan to Buy Thousands of Drones Faces Looming Snags

13. The Frontline States: Conversations and Observations About Russia's Other War in Europe

14. To Coup or Not to Coup: The Cold War Hangover of US Security Assistance

15. Phasing Out GPS Reliance in U.S. Military Operations: An Imperative in the Face of Emerging Threats

16. Russia, Ukraine, and the Future Use of Strategic Intelligence

17. Carter County in Tennessee part of warfare exercise ‘Robin Sage’ run by Fort Liberty as test for U.S. Special Forces

18. Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context

19. The Billionaire Keeping TikTok on Phones in the U.S.

20.

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 25, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-25-2023

Key Takeaways:

The tactical situation in Verbove remains unclear amid continued Ukrainian offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 25.
The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported on September 25 that a precision Ukrainian strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea, on September 22 killed 34 Russian officers, including BSF Commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov
Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the Khalino Airfield and a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Kursk Oblast during a series of drone strikes on September 24.
Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed-131/136 drone and missile strikes on the night of September 24-25 against Ukrainian port, grain, and military targets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on September 25 that US-provided Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine.
Russian military officials continue efforts to build out the Russian armed forces to suit the needs of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
The Kremlin and the Armenian government continue to deflect blame onto one another over the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan amidst deteriorating Armenian-Russian relations.
Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains.
Russian officials continue to deport children from occupied Ukraine to Russia.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

Sep 25, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 25, 2023

Angelica Evans, Christina Harward, Riley Bailey, Karolina Hird, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 25, 2023, 5:50pm 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.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on September 25. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 26 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

The tactical situation in Verbove remains unclear amid continued Ukrainian offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 25. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction and offensive assaults in the Bakhmut direction, inflicting losses on Russian manpower and equipment and depleting Russian forces along the entire front line.[1] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces reached northern Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv) but that Russian forces pushed them back to their original positions.[2] Russian sources have yet to directly address a claim from a source reportedly affiliated with the Russian Airborne (VDV) Forces that Ukrainian forces control half of Verbove as of September 24.[3]

The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported on September 25 that a precision Ukrainian strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea, on September 22 killed 34 Russian officers, including BSF Commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov.[4] Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported that the strike, which occurred during a meeting of senior BSF leadership, also wounded 105 Russian personnel.[5] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated on September 23 that the strike seriously wounded the commander of the Russian 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (Northern Fleet), Lieutenant General Oleg Tsekov, and the commander of the Russian grouping of forces in Zaporizhia Oblast, Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk.[6] Ukrainian Special Operations Forces also reported that the Ukrainian strike on the Minsk landing ship in Sevastopol on September 13 killed 62 personnel, noting that many personnel were present as the Minsk was scheduled to go on combat duty on September 14.[7] ISW has yet to observe confirmation that these Ukrainian strikes killed Sokolov or any other high-ranking Russian commanders, although the Russian command would be able to easily disprove Ukrainian reporting if these reports are false. Sokolov's and other Russian officers’ reported deaths would create significant disruptions in command and control in the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the Khalino Airfield and a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Kursk Oblast during a series of drone strikes on September 24. Ukrainian media reported on September 24 that sources connected to the Ukrainian GUR stated that Ukrainian forces struck an FSB building and an oil refinery near the Khalino Airfield in Kursk Oblast.[8] Russian Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoyt confirmed that a Ukrainian drone struck an administrative building in the Central District of Kursk City.[9] Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine's sources clarified on September 25 that Ukrainian forces struck the Khalino Airfield and killed an unspecified number of officers of the Russian 14th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (105th Guards Composite Aviation Division, 6th Air and Air Defense Forces Army, Russia Aerospace [VSK] Forces), which is based at the airfield.[10] The Russian 14th Guards Fighting Aviation Regiment is equipped with Su-30SM aircraft.[11] Russian sources confirmed the strike on the Khalino Airfield and the death of an unspecified number of Russian servicemen.[12]

Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed-131/136 drone and missile strikes on the night of September 24-25 against Ukrainian port, grain, and military targets. Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces launched 12 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles from the Black Sea, two Onyx cruise missiles from the Sevastopol area, and 19 Shahed drones from Krasnodar Krai.[13] Ukrainian air defenses shot down 11 Kalibr missiles and all 19 drones.[14] Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces struck port and grain infrastructure in Odesa Oblast, and footage shows that Russian strikes damaged a hotel in Odesa City.[15] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Russian forces struck a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter aircraft at the Dolhintsevo airfield in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[16] Moldovan government officials stated on September 25 that fragments of an S-300 missile fell in Chitcani (5km south of Tiraspol) in Transnistria and that the missile’s origin and flight path have not been confirmed.[17]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on September 25 that US-provided Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine.[18] The New York Times reported that US officials stated that the US delivered an unspecified number of Abrams tanks to Ukraine on September 23 and that the Biden administration intends to send 31 Abrams in total.[19] Politico previously reported on August 31 that Ukraine would receive the first 10 of 31 Abrams tanks in mid-September.[20]

Russian military officials continue efforts to build out the Russian armed forces to suit the needs of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. Russian outlet Izvestia, citing sources in the Russian military, claimed on September 25 that the Russian armed forces are forming reconnaissance and assault brigades in combined arms armies and newly formed army corps and that these brigades are already actively recruiting.[21] Izvestia reported that the new units will be comprised of assault troops intended to break through layered defenses and reconnaissance troops that will conduct reconnaissance at “tactical depth,” and noted that each brigade will receive tanks, light armored vehicles, artillery, and various drones.[22] Izvestia emphasized that these new brigades are meant to overcome pre-prepared Ukrainian defensive positions, particularly in areas of Donbas, where Ukrainian forces have been expanding and equipping fortifications since Russia’s first invasion in 2014. Colonel Valery Yuryev, chairman of the Russian Union of Paratroopers, told Izvestia that the war has stressed the “need to have specialized units for storming fortified areas” and that “separate assault units and formations are necessary.”[23]

The Russian military has previously attempted to adapt to lessons learned in Ukraine by forming similar assault-focused company-sized units intended to target urban and fortified areas in the form of “Storm-Z” companies, which have been primarily active and mostly unsuccessful along the Donetsk City-Avdiivka frontline and on the Luhansk-Kharkiv Oblast front.[24] ISW has been reporting on ongoing Russian military reforms and the creation of new combined arms army and army corps level formations, and it remains unclear how the Russian force generation apparatus will be able to recruit, train, and staff brigade, army, or army-corps level formations considering the multitude of endemic mobilization issues the Russian army faces at this time.[25]

The Kremlin and the Armenian government continue to deflect blame onto one another over the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan amidst deteriorating Armenian-Russian relations. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered an address on September 24 in which he criticized Russia by stating that the Russian-led security structures of which Armenia is a part are ineffective and by questioning the motives of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh.[26] Pashinyan blamed Azerbaijan and Russian peacekeepers for the recent events in Nagorno-Karabakh, which Pashinyan labeled as “a policy of ethnic cleansing.” The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) responded to Pashinyan’s statement on September 25, blamed Pashinyan for avoiding personal responsibility for “failures in [Armenian] domestic and foreign policy,” and heavily criticized Pashinyan’s recent turn to the West.[27] Russian milbloggers have consistently focused on anti-Pashinyan protests in Yerevan since the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities accepted a Russian peacekeeper-mediated ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan on September 20.[28] ISW previously reported that the Kremlin reportedly distributed a manual on September 19 instructing Kremlin-affiliated media to blame the West and Pashinyan for recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.[29] The initial protests in Armenia following the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan appear to be skewing in the direction of the Kremlin’s preferred narrative, although it is unclear if the Kremlin will retain strong Armenian support for Russia in the long-term following the inaction of Russian peacekeeping forces.

Key Takeaways:

The tactical situation in Verbove remains unclear amid continued Ukrainian offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 25.
The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported on September 25 that a precision Ukrainian strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea, on September 22 killed 34 Russian officers, including BSF Commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov
Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the Khalino Airfield and a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Kursk Oblast during a series of drone strikes on September 24.
Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed-131/136 drone and missile strikes on the night of September 24-25 against Ukrainian port, grain, and military targets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on September 25 that US-provided Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine.
Russian military officials continue efforts to build out the Russian armed forces to suit the needs of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
The Kremlin and the Armenian government continue to deflect blame onto one another over the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan amidst deteriorating Armenian-Russian relations.
Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains.
Russian officials continue to deport children from occupied Ukraine to Russia.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these 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 the Ukrainian 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.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces did not conduct any ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 25. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces did not conduct offensive actions in either the Kupyansk or Lyman directions.[30] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that there were three combat engagements near Berestove, Donetsk Oblast (31km south of Kreminna) and in the general direction of Loskutivka (29km southeast of Kreminna) on September 24.[31]

The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Central Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian assaults south of Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna) and that elements of the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Spirne (24km south of Kreminna) and Berestove in Donetsk Oblast on September 25.[32]

Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a strike on Russian logistics in a deep rear area of occupied Luhansk Oblast on September 25. Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces struck an unspecified industrial facility in Sorokyne (13km from the international Ukrainian-Russian border).[33] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces launched three Storm Shadow cruise missiles at Sorokyne.[34]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces continued offensive actions near Bakhmut on September 25 but did not make any confirmed gains. Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Ukrainian forces liberated an additional 2km of territory in the Bakhmut direction.[35] The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Mayorske (20km south of Bakhmut).[36] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to break through Russian defensive positions along the railway east of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[37] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut) after Russian forces reportedly captured the settlement, although ISW has still not seen visual confirmation that Russian forces have captured Orikhovo-Vasylivka.[38] A Russian milblogger noted that the front lines near Bakhmut have not changed recently.[39]

Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut on September 25 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Klishchiivka and east and southeast of Bohdanivka (7km northwest of Bakhmut).[40] Several Russian milbloggers claimed on September 24 and 25 that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces from their positions in Orikhovo-Vasylivka and that Russian forces now control the settlement.[41] One Russian milblogger acknowledged that there is no visual confirmation of these claims.[42] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are counterattacking near Kurdyumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut).[43]

Russian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 25. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Avdiivka and Marinka (on the western outskirt of Donetsk City) and unsuccessfully attempted to recapture lost positions near Novomykhailivka (36km southwest of Avdiivka).[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked near Marinka and on the southern approaches to Avdiivka but did not specify an outcome.[45]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not advance on September 25. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian infantry groups unsuccessfully attacked east of Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and conducted reconnaissance-in-force operations near Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[46]

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not advance on September 25. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces reached northern Verbove but that Russian forces pushed them back to their original positions.[47] Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Verbove, Novopokrovka (16km southeast of Orikhiv), Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), and Novoprokopivka.[48] Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 25. Ukrainian General Staff Spokesperson Pavlo Kovalchuk reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Mala Tokmachka (7km southeast of Orikhiv), Novodanylivka (6km south of Orikhiv), Robotyne, and Verbove.[49] A Russian source reportedly affiliated with the Russian VDV Forces claimed on September 24 that elements of the Russian 108th VDV Regiment (7th VDV Division) are operating against “superior” Ukrainian forces in the Zaporizhia direction without rotations or reinforcements.[50]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct operations on islands in the Dnipro River on September 25. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted active operations on islands in the Dnipro River delta and are attempting to land on the left (east) bank of the river.[51]

Russian opposition media outlet Astra reported on September 25 that Sevastopol occupation governor Mikhail Razvozhaev claimed that Russian air defenses shot down a Ukrainian missile near Sevastopol on September 23, but in reality, the missile actually hit the headquarters of the 758th Center for Black Sea Fleet Logistics and Technical Support.[52]

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

A report by Poland-based open-source intelligence organization Rochan Consulting found that Russia’s Baltic Fleet has been substantially degraded due to the war in Ukraine. Rochan Consulting noted that the Baltic Sea Fleet has lost its ability to conduct large-scale amphibious offensive operations because its Ropucha-class landing ships and 336th Naval Infantry Brigade have been involved in combat in Ukraine.[53] The report stated that three of the Baltic Fleet’s landing ships deployed to the Black Sea and are now unable to deploy back to their home ports in Baltiysk and that the 336th Naval Infantry Brigade has suffered extensive losses in combat in Ukraine, which substantially limits the Baltic Fleet’s power projection capabilities in the Baltic.[54] ISW has previously observed the commitment of naval infantry assets of the Baltic, Pacific, and Northern Fleets to various axes in Ukraine, and the degradation of these elements is likely to further impede Russian naval capabilities in the Baltic, Arctic, and Pacific.[55]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Ukrainian partisan channel “Mariupol Sprotyv” reported on September 25 that Ukrainian partisans destroyed an electrical transformer installation near occupied Staryi Krym, Donetsk Oblast.[56]

Russian officials continue to deport children from occupied Ukraine to Russia. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration amplified a report on September 25 that the Russian Ministry of Culture sent 90 children from occupied Kherson Oblast to Moscow and St. Petersburg for an unspecified amount of time.[57] The Russian Ministry of Culture will reportedly send another group of children of an unspecified size to Russia from occupied Kherson Oblast in October.[58]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on September 25 that territorial defense units in Mogilev Oblast held staff training and anti-sabotage and search exercises.[59] The Belarusian MoD announced that Belarusian territorial defense established a volunteer people’s militia detachment in Vyazevsky, Osipovichy Raion, Mogilev Oblast.[60]

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

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.

2. U.S. Abrams Tanks Reach Ukraine. Is It a Case of Too Little, Too Late?

I certainly admire the Ukrainians for having to deal with the huge logistical challenges of having to maintain multiple systems and types of weapons.

Excerpts:

Ben Barry, a former British tank commander who is now a land-warfare specialist with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said the Abrams will have some impact and offer many advantages, especially compared with the older Leopard 1 tanks Ukraine was given. But, he added, they will also be harder for the Ukrainians to maintain and service.

“The Abrams have phenomenal acceleration compared with other tanks, which makes it harder to hit them,” Barry said. Still, Ukraine will need to be careful in the use and “land forces are going to need the ability to counter enemy drones and to use their own drones at a very low tactical level, right down at company and platoon level.”

U.S. Abrams Tanks Reach Ukraine. Is It a Case of Too Little, Too Late?

The Abrams are among the world’s most sophisticated tanks and offer technical advantages that older tanks can’t match

https://www.wsj.com/world/u-s-abrams-tanks-reach-ukraine-is-it-a-case-of-too-little-too-late-f1fb5061?mod=hp_lead_pos6

By Ian Lovett

Updated Sept. 26, 2023 12:18 am ET

Polish soldiers riding an Abrams tank during trial drills before an artillery show at a military range near Orzysz, Poland, earlier in September. PHOTO: KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS

The first U.S.-made M1 Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine to help with its counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. The questions now are how quickly can they enter the fight and how much impact will they have on a shifting battlefield.

Advanced Western-made tanks and other armored vehicles have become a focus in debates between Ukrainian military leaders and their backers in the Pentagon, some of whom have wanted Kyiv to use the equipment more aggressively in battle.

Ukrainian military leaders, who initially attempted to follow the U.S. approach but faced setbacks because of Russian minefields and aerial attacks, have since shifted to a more gradual approach that has drawn criticism from some Western observers.

Still, the Abrams, which are among the world’s most sophisticated, have some technical advantages that could make them more useful to Ukraine than its other Western tanks. Their arrival also offers a morale boost to Ukrainian forces.

M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank

Turret 7.62 mm machine gun

12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine gun

Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

41.6 mph

2.49 miles

57.2 tons

1986

U.S.

Crew number

120 mm smoothbore

8 ft.

12 ft.

32.3 ft.

Source: Military Today

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Abrams are already in Ukraine and are preparing to reinforce our brigades,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram, adding that he was “thankful to allies for fulfilling the agreements” and he hoped to expand “the geography of supply.”

“We are moving forward,” Zelensky wrote.

Ukraine recently pierced the main Russian defensive line with armored vehicles, and is pushing to expand the breach. So far, however, the main axis of the counteroffensive, in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, has failed to produce a breakthrough that threatens to cut off the “land bridge” connecting Russia to Crimea.

Though the arrival of the American tanks is welcome, Ukrainian officials acknowledge that, four months into the offensive, the vehicles are unlikely to significantly alter the shape of the war.

U.S. Defense Department officials have repeatedly cautioned that no single weapons system will change the course of the war because of its complexity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with President Biden, during a recent visit to Washington where he met with members of Congress to make a case for additional military aid. PHOTO: JIM WATSON/PRESS POOL

With fall rains approaching, the ground will soon grow muddy, making it much more difficult for armored vehicles to maneuver through fields.

Also, the first months of the counteroffensive, when Ukraine pressed forward with German Leopard II tanks and American armed personnel carriers, showed that Western armored vehicles are prime targets for the Russians. Drones often quickly spot armored vehicles, calling their position in to artillery units and helicopters, which then target them.

Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service, recently said in an interview with a military news site that minefields had proved major obstacles for tracked vehicles such as tanks. Even minimal damage can disable the wheels and tracks, he said, stranding the vehicles, which then block the path forward.

The heavily armored vehicles were now mainly being used to transport soldiers, he said, but taking little part in the fighting.

“They should be used in a very tailored way for very specific, well-crafted operations because if they are used at the front line and just in a combined arms fight, they will not live very long on the battlefield,” Budanov said of the Abrams tanks.

Why Ukraine Might Struggle to Maintain U.S. M1 Abrams Tanks

Russia appears ready to accept Crimea as Ukraine's—on one condition

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · September 25, 2023

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has appeared to back the territorial integrity of Ukraine agreed upon after the break-up of the Soviet Union when Crimea was internationally recognized as part of the country Moscow has invaded.

Ukrainian social media users noted Lavrov's response at a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday when asked whether Russia will "recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine."

Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and Kyiv has repeatedly stated that one of its war aims is the recapture of the occupied peninsula, which has been the scene of a series of recent high-profile strikes conducted by Ukrainian forces.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is seen at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 23, 2023. He said that Russia recognized the territorial integrity of Ukraine agreed in 1991 under certain conditions. David Dee/Getty Images

Lavrov said that in 1991 Moscow "recognized the sovereignty of Ukraine on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, which it adopted upon leaving the USSR," in which Crimea was considered to be under the control of Kyiv.

He said that the declaration "contained a lot of good things," which formed part of Ukraine's constitution, including protecting minority rights and the status of the Russian language.

"One of the main points for us was that Ukraine would be a non-aligned country and would not enter into any military alliances, Lavrov said. "Under those conditions, we support the territorial integrity of this state."

This reiterates one of the Kremlin's justifications for its invasion, namely the alignment of Kyiv towards NATO and the encroachment of the alliance on Russia's borders.

Lavrov then repeated Kremlin rhetoric about American interference in Ukraine in a "coup" in 2004 and said that in 2014 Crimea "joined" Russia following a referendum, the results of which have been condemned internationally. He also claimed Kyiv instigated the war in the Donbas.

"We have no problems with the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It was destroyed by those who carried out and supported the coup, whose leaders declared war against their own people and began to bomb them," Lavrov added, according to a transcript of his comments on the Russian foreign ministry website.

"Surprise, surprise! Russia recognizes the territorial integrity of Ukraine within the framework of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of July 16, 1990," wrote Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko on X (formerly Twitter), next to a video clip of the comments.

Gerashchenko added that the declaration "also mentions twice the inviolability of the borders of the Ukrainian SSR," which as "a sovereign national state is developing within its existing borders."

Surprise, surprise!

Russia recognizes the territorial integrity of Ukraine within the framework of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of July 16, 1990. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his press-conference during the 78th session of the United… pic.twitter.com/VjddO6cihv

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 24, 2023

"The territory of the Ukrainian SSR within its existing borders is inviolable and cannot be changed or used without its consent," he added.

Maria Drutska, who works in Ukrainian foreign affairs, posted on X: " I hope this nonsense didn't fly with the Western audience. Although it's interesting, if you respect Ukraine's integrity so much, give Crimea back to us?"

Lavrov also used the press conference to accuse the West of "de facto" fighting against Moscow in Ukraine, and referred to Western military equipment supplied to Kyiv.

Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian foreign ministry for comment.

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · September 25, 2023

4. Opinion | The United States is morally obliged to secure the release of hostages

Opinion | The United States is morally obliged to secure the release of hostages

The Washington Post · by September 25, 2023 at 9:59 a.m. EDT · September 25, 2023

We read with interest and not a little surprise the Sept. 19 editorial “Five Americans today. How many tomorrow?,” which urged the Biden-Harris administration to forgo the difficult work of securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans overseas.

The editorial said the best deterrent to hostage-taking would be to simply “refuse to negotiate.”

Setting aside the fact that there is no evidence to support this claim, it seems to us a harsh, unrealistic and hypocritical take by your newspaper.

This is not what we heard from The Post when reporter Jason Rezaian was held in Iran. Instead, The Post urged us — publicly and privately — to use every tool at our disposal to bring him home.

This is not what we hear now when The Post flies a banner on its headquarters with Austin Tice’s name and urges us, in print and otherwise, to do everything possible to bring him home.

And we think we can be forgiven for expecting that it’s not what we will hear from The Post in the future should a Post employee face the choice between dying in captivity or coming home to family and friends.

Hopefully that day never comes. But if it does, rest assured we will labor just as hard to secure that reporter’s release as we do for Mr. Tice and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, as well as Paul Whelan and every other American wrongfully detained overseas.

Doing so means making tough decisions, such as the one we made last week. And now, as a result, the American people celebrate the return of seven of their fellow Americans, including five who endured unspeakable agony in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison.

The editorial also conveniently ignored other significant steps we are taking to prevent future hostage-taking, including additional sanctions against Iranians responsible for this barbaric practice and repeated warnings against Americans traveling to countries such as Iran.

Instead, the editorial suggested that we should let Americans languish in captivity now in the hope that doing so will — somehow — make things better for someone someday.

Well, we’re not going to do that. First of all, it won’t work. And, second, we find it morally reprehensible. Frankly, we’re surprised to learn The Post no longer feels the same way.

Joshua A. Geltzer, Washington

The writer is deputy assistant to the president and deputy Homeland Security adviser for the National Security Council.

Brett H. McGurk, Washington

The writer is deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa for the National Security Council.

Roger Carstens, Washington

The writer is the State Department special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

Our nation has made a commitment to never leave any American behind, so it was extremely disappointing to see some prominent voices against the deal to bring home Americans from captivity in Iran, saying we shouldn’t negotiate. Freeing these five Americans reflects the core values of our nation, and it was the right thing to do.

These debates are complicated, but it is crucial to remember that lives are at stake. Our father, Robert Levinson, was taken hostage in Iran in 2007 and spent more than a decade in captivity, the longest any American has been held hostage. He was a victim of inaction by officials of the U.S. government who chose to do nothing for years, in alignment with a “no negotiations” approach. He ultimately died in Iranian custody. His death was the consequence of not engaging in negotiations.

The U.S. government was right to free hostages last week, and, at the same time, we must pursue a comprehensive policy for implementing strategies to stop wrongful detentions and hostage-taking from continuing to occur. This is an urgent issue, with dozens of Americans currently wrongfully detained across the world. That number will most certainly continue to rise without immediate action.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. State-sponsored hostage-taking is a national emergency, and we should balance accountability with the safe return of every American. This means that we should build on the success of the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act — named for our father — to use a range of tools to deter would-be kidnappers. We saw an impactful first step when our government sanctioned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security under the Levinson Act last week.

We must systematically put pressure on these countries through sanctions, seizures, private litigation and by making wrongful detention in state-to-state relations both a U.S. and international crime. Additionally, Americans must stop traveling to these countries and putting themselves at risk, or nation states such as Iran, Russia, China and others will continue to have an endless supply of Americans available for seizure.

This is an issue that impacts all of us and deserves the full bipartisan attention and prompt action of Washington’s lawmakers, and the investment and commitment of our global allies. We should act in service of those currently held abroad and ensure other Americans never experience the same nightmare. Unfortunately, until we act to deter and punish hostage-taking and wrongful detention, the U.S. passport that stands for freedom and liberty abroad will instead be an invitation for unspeakable harm.

David Levinson, Wilton, Conn.

Sarah (Levinson) Moriarty, Chester, N.J.

The Washington Post · by September 25, 2023 at 9:59 a.m. EDT · September 25, 2023

5. Tensions With China Cross a New Line in the South China Sea

Tensions With China Cross a New Line in the South China Sea

By Sui-Lee Wee

Reporting from Bangkok and The Philippines

Sept. 26, 2023,

6:06 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Sui-Lee Wee · September 26, 2023

News Analysis

The Philippines is pushing back against China’s territorial claims. But Chinese forces have been unrelenting in using direct confrontation, raising worries about an escalation.

Chinese Coast Guard boats sailing close to a floating barrier near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea in September.Credit...Philippine Coast Guard, via Reuters

Sept. 26, 2023, 6:06 a.m. ET

The video may seem too simple, too understated to mark a serious international incident in the South China Sea: a quick clip of a diver using a knife to cut a section of rope underwater.

But that diver was with the Philippine Coast Guard, and the rope was part of a sea barrier placed by Chinese forces to keep Philippine boats away from an area they had a legal right to fish in. In that moment, the Philippines took one of the most forceful steps yet in contesting China’s unrelenting territorial claims ever closer to the Philippine Islands.

“The barrier posed a hazard to navigation, a clear violation of international law,” the Philippines said in a statement, adding that the action had come on direct orders from President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr.

Since he took office in June 2022, Mr. Marcos has signaled wanting a more muscular foreign policy approach toward China. But until now, those actions were confined mostly to rhetoric, deepening alliances with the United States and other countries, and releasing videos of aggressive activities undertaken by the Chinese Coast Guard against Philippine vessels.

The surprise this time was that the action was being taken by Manila. It has left little doubt that the Philippines is offering more forceful resistance to China’s territorial designs.

While the Biden administration is likely to see that as good news, apprehension is rising in the region about how China might counter that resistance, and whether there could be a risk of sparking a direct military clash among China and the Philippines and its allies, including the United States Navy fleet patrolling the region.

An image taken from video and released on Monday by the Philippine Coast Guard showing a diver cutting through the ropes that kept a Chinese barrier in place in the South China Sea.Credit...Philippine Coast Guard, via Associated Press

After the rope was cut and the Philippines lifted the anchor that kept it in place, China removed the barrier. On Tuesday, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry brusquely dismissed the Philippine statement. “We advise the Philippines not to cause provocation and cause trouble,” he said.

Song Zhongping, a commentator in Beijing who is a former military officer, said the Philippines was emboldened to cut the barrier “because the United States continues to encourage the Philippines to confront China in the South China Sea.”

“China must take decisive measures to put an end to the Philippines’ provocation,” Mr. Song said. “We can’t allow the Philippines to commit endless provocations and pose a serious threat to China’s national sovereignty and security.”

China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, some of it thousands of miles from the mainland and in waters surrounding Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines. In the past decade or so, China has asserted ever greater control over these waters, using two island chains called the Paracels and the Spratlys to expand its military footprint by building and fortifying outposts and airstrips.

These actions have alarmed much of Asia and the United States, which says it has a vested interest in maintaining freedom of navigation in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. China’s military buildup, and increasingly aggressive action by its coast guard and maritime militia, have also raised questions about China’s intentions in the region and its willingness to comply with international law and norms.

The tensions are particularly pronounced in the Philippines, where fishermen have been blocked by Chinese vessels from fishing, and Manila has been prevented from fully exploring oil and gas deposits within an area that an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in 2016 to be part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The anchor that held China’s floating barrier. The Philippines’ cutting of the barrier was one of its boldest moves amid tensions with China in the South China Sea.Credit...Philippine Coast Guard, via Associated Press

Many analysts say China is likely to stop short of taking any military action against the Philippines, a treaty ally of the United States, for fear of being embroiled in a broader conflict with Washington and other U.S. allies in the region. In August, the American defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, reaffirmed that a mutual defense treaty with the United States “extends to Philippine public vessels, aircraft and armed forces — to include those of its Coast Guard — in the Pacific, including in the South China Sea.”

“If the U.S. has to engage in a military confrontation with China in the South China Sea, you can’t expect Australia and Japan, for example, to just sit there and idle about while their American allies are fighting the Chinese,” said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. “They will be drawn into it somehow. So this is something that I believe any good Chinese planner will have to consider.”

Mr. Koh said he expects China to ramp up its presence in the South China Sea, perhaps by sending more vessels around disputed areas like Thitu Island and the Second Thomas Shoal to prevent Filipino fishermen from operating freely and to block maritime law enforcement vessels.

Bilahari Kausikan, a former ambassador at large with Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said he believes “Beijing has enough problems at home without wanting to add to them by picking a confrontation with the U.S. as well.”

Mr. Kausikan said “the risk of conflict would be higher” if the Philippines had not removed the barrier, “because then the Chinese would be tempted to push the boundaries even further.”

But Leonardo Cuaresma, president of the New Masinloc Fishermen’s Association in the Philippines, said that in the municipality where the barrier was cut, he was nervous about how China could react.

“Here in Masinloc, it’s natural to feel fear because should there be a conflict, we will be the first one to feel it,” Mr. Cuaresma said. “It’s difficult, because we don’t know if there will be a war or what. We are anxious.”

Mr. Cuaresma said he and his peers have not been able to fish in the Scarborough Shoal for years because of China. “The moment we get near the entrance of the shoal, they would immediately block us,” he said. “Their smaller boats would sail beside us and tell us: ‘Go away, Filipino.’”

A Chinese Coast Guard vessel shadowing Philippine fishing boats near the Scarborough Shoal in September. Both countries lay claim to that area of the South China Sea.

Alongside the high emotions, there is still anxiety in Manila about how to deal with China.

Koko Pimentel, the Philippine Senate Minority Leader, told a Senate hearing that he agreed with the Marcos government’s decision to remove the Chinese barrier. But later, in a text message to a New York Times reporter, he offered a cautious addition: “We should avoid conflict as much as possible. Do everything through dialogue and diplomacy. Differing positions are a fact of life, and we should be able to navigate through life with this reality.”

Antonio Carpio, a former Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice in the Philippines and an expert on the South China Sea, said the Philippines was just mirroring what Malaysia and Indonesia did recently when both countries sent their ships to survey in disputed waters despite threats from China.

“If you assert your right and you stand your ground, well, China will not do anything,” he added.

Mr. Carpio said that, more broadly, the international community must pay attention to what is happening in the South China Sea because “what is at stake in Ukraine and in the South China Sea are exactly the same.”

“All nations must oppose this, because this is not just a matter of the Philippines, it’s about the future of the world,” he said. “If the U.N. Charter, which outlawed the wars of aggression, is overturned, then only nuclear powers will be able to settle disputes according to their dictates. It will be ‘might is right’ again.”

Camille Elemia and Joy Dong contributed reporting.

Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times. She was part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. More about Sui-Lee Wee

The New York Times · by Sui-Lee Wee · September 26, 2023

6. Inside Iran’s influence operation | Semafor

A long but fascinating read. It would seem that members of the Iran Experts Initiative should have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act though as I understand it that act is very ambiguous and complex.

Excerpts:

They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

...

None of Malley’s associates whom Iranian diplomats cited as being part of the Iran Experts Initiative spoke directly to Semafor. But Vaez’s and Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, has a significantly different understanding of the IEI and Tehran’s role in it.

Elissa Jobson, Crisis Group’s chief of advocacy, said the IEI was an “informal platform” that gave researchers from different organizations an opportunity to meet with IPIS and Iranian officials, and that it was supported financially by European institutions and one European government. She declined to name them.

“To spell it out a bit more, it was a means to facilitate research discussions and not a more formal entity where participants could be directed by anyone,” she said. “The fact that participants were from a host of different think tanks demonstrates that it was merely an informal platform.” ICG also notes that all the work its staff publishes is vetted and agreed upon in-house; they dispute that Iran — or any government — could have directed any members of their team to take a position at odds with the organization’s official view.

Another European think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed that one of its senior fellows, Ellie Geranmayeh, also took part in the Iran Experts Initiative. An ECFR spokesman said a European government backed the IEI, but didn’t identify it, and stressed that that the think tank always covers the “core costs” of its staff’s research trips. “As part of its efforts to inform European policy, ECFR regularly engages with experts and think tanks across the world, including through research visits and workshops,” the spokesman said.

Malley didn’t respond to requests for comment. Both the State Department and Pentagon declined to comment on the substance of the correspondence related to the IEI, but said they support Ariane Tabatabai and the vetting process involved in the approval of her security clearance. “Dr. Tabatabai was thoroughly and properly vetted as a condition of her employment with the Department of Defense. We are honored to have her serve,” the Pentagon said in a statement.They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

Jay Solomon

Sep 26, 2023, 7:39pm GMT+9

SECURITY

POLITICS

NORTH AMERICA

Inside Iran’s influence operation | Semafor

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/25/2023/inside-irans-influence-operationhttps://www.semafor.com/article/09/25/2023/inside-irans-influence-operation

semafor.com · by Jay Solomon · September 26, 2023

The Scoop

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semafor and Iran International. The officials, working under the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative: At least three of the people on the Foreign Ministry’s list were, or became, top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance.

Robert Malley / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

The documents offer deep and unprecedented new insights into the thinking and inner workings of Iran’s Foreign Ministry at a crucial time in the nuclear diplomacy — even as Tehran’s portrayal of events is questioned, if not flatly denied, by others involved in the IEI. They show how Iran was capable of the kind of influence operations that the U.S. and its allies in the region often conduct.

The emails were obtained and translated by Iran International, a Persian-language television news channel headquartered in London — which was briefly based in Washington due to Iranian government threats — and shared with Semafor. Semafor and Iran International jointly reported on some aspects of the IEI. Both organizations have produced their own stories independently.

The communications reveal the access Rouhani’s diplomats have had to Washington’s and Europe’s policy circles, particularly during the final years of the Obama administration, through this network. One of the German academics in the IEI, according to the emails, offered to ghostwrite op-eds for officials in Tehran. Others would, at times, seek advice from the Foreign Ministry’s staff about attending conferences and hearings in the U.S. and Israel. The IEI participants were prolific writers of op-eds and analyses, and provided insights on television and Twitter, regularly touting the need for a compromise with Tehran on the nuclear issue — a position in line with both the Obama and Rouhani administrations at the time. The emails describe the IEI being initiated following Rouhani’s 2013 election, when he was looking to find an accommodation with the West on the nuclear issue. According to the emails, Iran’s Foreign Ministry, through its in-house think tank — the Institute for Political and International Studies — reached out to ten “core” members for the project, through which it planned to liaise over the next 18 months to aggressively promote the merits of a nuclear deal between Tehran and Washington, which was finalized in July 2015.

“This initiative which we call ‘Iran Experts Initiative (IEI)’ is consisted of a core group of 6-10 distinguished second-generation Iranians who have established affiliations with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US,” Saeed Khatibzadeh, a Berlin-based Iranian diplomat and future Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote to Mostafa Zahrani, the head of the IPIS think tank in Tehran, on March 5, 2014, as the project gained steam. Their communication veered between English and Farsi — which was translated by Iran International and independently verified by Semafor.

Khatibzadeh wrote again a week later, on March 11, and said that he had gained support for the IEI from two young academics — Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary — following a meeting with them in Prague. “We three agreed to be the core group of the IEI.”

Tabatabai currently serves in the Pentagon as the chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, a position that requires a U.S. government security clearance. She previously served as a diplomat on Malley’s Iran nuclear negotiating team after the Biden administration took office in 2021. Esfandiary is a senior advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a think tank that Malley headed from 2018-2021.

Tabatabai and Esfandiary didn’t respond to requests for comment on the IEI. Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, confirmed her participation in the initiative. But the Crisis Group, which promotes conflict resolution globally, said the IEI was an informal network of academics and researchers that wasn’t overseen by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and that it received funding from a European government and some European institutions, which they declined to identify.

The emails discussing the IEI were part of a trove of thousands of Zahrani’s correspondence that Iran International obtained. These include passport copies, resumes, invitations to conferences, airplane tickets, and visa applications. It’s not clear how complete or comprehensive the documents are concerning the IEI.

Know More

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s communications, the IEI project ramped up after this initial outreach. On May 14, 2014, a kickoff conference was held at the Palais Coburg hotel in Vienna — site of the international nuclear talks. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was listed as an attendee, according to an email, as well as members of his nuclear negotiating team and eight representatives from Western think tanks. Lower-level Iranian diplomats had initially proposed the meeting be held in Tehran, but Zarif’s deputy advised against it for logistical reasons.

Zarif was fixated during the discussions in Vienna on elevating, or creating, a public figure who could promote Iran’s views on the international stage concerning the nuclear issue, according to the emails. He specifically mentioned an Iranian version of Robert Einhorn, an Obama administration diplomat and expert on nuclear proliferation, who regularly published scholarly pieces on Iran’s nuclear program and appeared at U.S. and European think tank events.

“You were very right by saying that it is a shame that Iran has not its very own Bob Einhorn — someone who can foster attention on Iran’s case the way Einhorn does for the US or the P5+1 for that matter,” Adnan Tabatabai, a German academic who attended the IEI meeting in Vienna, wrote Zarif in English five days after it ended. The P5+1 was the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, and the diplomatic bloc negotiating the nuclear deal with Tehran. Adnan Tabatabai is not related to Ariane Tabatabai.

Adnan Tabatabai

Adnan Tabatabai also offered Iran’s Foreign Ministry to ghostwrite pieces on its behalf. “Our suggestion could be that we as a group, work on an essay (2000 words) regarding the ongoing talks,” Tabatabai told Zarif in the same email. “It could, for example, be published under a former official’s name, through the CSR or IPIS — of course after you and your team revised the piece.”

The foreign minister responded four days later, copying Zahrani. Zarif accepted the suggestion and recommended that “these articles or Op-Eds” be published under the names of various Iranian and non-Iranians abroad, as well as former officials. It’s unclear if, or how many, pieces were actually published through this process.

Adnan Tabatabai declined to comment about the IEI, saying the reporting by Iran International and Semafor was “based on falsehoods and factually wrong assumptions.” He also questioned the authenticity of the correspondence with Zarif. Iran International commissioned a forensic examination of the emails, and found no discrepancies in the metadata that would indicate they were inauthentic.

The IEI quickly pushed ahead with one of the initiative’s primary objectives — publishing opinion pieces and analyses in top-tier media in the U.S. and Europe, specifically targeting policy makers. Less than a month after the Vienna gathering, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, a close protégé of Robert Malley’s who is listed as part of the IEI, sent an article on defusing the nuclear crisis to Zahrani of IPIS, ahead of publication. “I look forward to your comments and feedback,” he wrote in Farsi on June 4, 2014, attaching a piece entitled, “The Conceptual Perils of Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran.”

The emails show that the article was shared by Zahrani with Foreign Minister Zarif the day it arrived. It was then published 12 days later in the National Interest, under the title, “False Dilemmas in the Iran Talks,” with some minor wording changes. It’s unclear if Zarif made any fixes as no reply email from him is in the chain. While many think tanks and media outlets have policies against sharing articles before publication, ICG said in a statement to Semafor that it routinely and actively solicits the views of the primary actors involved in a conflict and shares relevant text with policymakers.

Ariane Tabatabai / Columbia SIPA via YouTube

Ariane Tabatabai, the current Pentagon official, on at least two occasions checked in with Iran’s Foreign Ministry before attending policy events, according to the emails. She wrote to Zahrani in Farsi on June 27, 2014, to say she’d met Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal — a former ambassador to the U.S. — who expressed interest in working together and invited her to Saudi Arabia. She also said she’d been invited to attend a workshop on Iran’s nuclear program at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. “I am not interested in going, but then I thought maybe it would be better that I go and talk, rather than an Israeli like Emily Landau who goes and disseminates disinformation. I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go.”

Zahrani replied the same day: “All things considered, it seems Saudi Arabia is a good case, but the second case [Israel] is better to be avoided. Thanks.” Tabatabai answered a few hours later: “Thank you very much for your advice. I will take action regarding Saudi Arabia and will keep you updated on the progress.” There’s no evidence Tabatabai went to the conference in Israel, though her books and research reports suggest she’s interviewed a number of senior Israeli officials.

Ariane Tabatabai told Zahrani that she was slated to give testimony before the U.S. Congress on the nuclear deal. On July 10, 2014, she wrote that she had been asked to appear before multiple congressional committees alongside two Harvard academics — Gary Samore and William Tobey — whom she viewed as hawkish on Iran. “I will bother you in the coming days. It will be a little difficult since both Will and Gary do not have favorable views on Iran,” she wrote.

Tabatabai shared a link with Zahrani to an article she’d published in the Boston Globe that outlined the “Five Myths about Iran’s Nuclear Program.” The piece explained why Iran needs nuclear power and highlighted a fatwa, or religious edict, that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei allegedly issued forbidding the development of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. Some Western officials have questioned the legitimacy of the fatwa.

The View From Tehran

The Iranian officials behind the IEI — Zahrani and Khatibzadeh — boasted to their superiors in internal emails about the initiative’s successes. They tracked how often the academics in the IEI wrote or were cited in the media during the week after a preliminary nuclear agreement was reached between Tehran and world powers on April 2, 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The media data was shared with others in the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran.

“Following our phone conversation, I attached here for your review only a few of the most significant works some of our friends published during the week after the Lausanne framework agreement was reached,” Khatibzadeh wrote in Farsi. “We were in constant contact and worked vigorously around the clock. Some friends performed as resourceful as a media outlet all by themselves.”

On April 14, 2015, Khatibzadeh emailed Zahrani, who then forwarded the message to Zarif and one of the foreign minister’s deputies on the nuclear negotiating team, Majid Takht-Ravanchi. Khatibzadeh attached 10 separate Word documents to the email, each referencing the media footprint of each IEI academic. These included Ariane Tabatabai, Ali Vaez and Dina Esfandiary, all of whom have worked closely with Malley over the past decade.

Dina Esfandiary / RUSI via YouTube

Khatibzadeh, the future Foreign Ministry spokesman boasted in the email: “These are in addition to hundreds of tweets, posts and…on the internet that were definitely unique and trend-sending in their own right. It should be noted that these works were not only published in English, but also in several other international languages.”

The list shared by Khatibzadeh showed that in one week, Ariane Tabatabai published four articles, including in Foreign Policy, and gave interviews to the Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, which is linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, mostly supporting Tehran’s views on the nuclear talks. In an article for the National Interest co-written with Dina Esfandiary, they argued that Iran was “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need any agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”

Ali Vaez was also extremely prolific in his media outreach. The ICG analyst was cited in virtually all of the U.S.’s major newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, from the initiation of the IEI in March 2014 to the finalization of the Iran nuclear deal in July 2015.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the IPIS think tank, and Zarif, Zahrani, and Khatibzadeh didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Jay’s view

Covering Iran, either as an academic or a journalist, is a minefield. Access to both the country and Iranian officials is tightly controlled. And even opportunities come with serious caveats. During my visits to Iran as a reporter, I needed to provide my questions and story ideas to the Foreign Ministry ahead of arrival and hire a government-appointed fixer. This individual provided translations, but also clearly monitored my movements and meetings. I assumed Iran’s intelligence services were closely tracking me.

Tehran also aggressively pushes its information operations overseas, sometimes with success, sometimes not. An Iranian academic and permanent U.S. resident who used to contact me with his insights on Tehran’s nuclear program, a man named Kaveh Afrasiabi, was arrested in a Boston suburb in 2021 for allegedly working as an unregistered agent for the Iranian regime. He’s allowed to return to Tehran as part of the prisoner-swap agreement reached this month between the Biden administration and Iran, though Afrasiabi said he plans to stay in the U.S.

Al Lucca/Semafor

The Iranian regime is also factionalized, and navigating these fissures is hazardous for diplomats and journalists. The Iran Experts Initiative was born from a Rouhani administration eager to end Tehran’s pariah status following eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency in which he courted Holocaust denial and promoted the eradication of Israel. Rouhani’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had developed extensive ties to Western politicians and academics during his earlier tenure as Tehran’s ambassador to the United Nations. Participants in the IEI, as well as most Western governments, saw Rouhani’s tenure and Zarif’s ascendence as an opening to try and integrate the Islamic Republic into the global economy and end the nuclear crisis. The Obama administration used both overt and covert channels to do this.

But Rouhani never represented the Islamic Republic’s more radical or hardline face, particularly the Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC. And the election in 2021 of President Ebrahim Raisi, who’s been sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses, largely closed the window on these channels. In fact, Raisi’s government has turned on Robert Malley and some IEI members in recent weeks, accusing them in state media of seeking to incite racial and ethnic unrest in the country. The Tehran Times, an English-language media outlet associated with Raisi’s office, has reveled in Malley’s suspension: It’s claimed in a string of columns that the diplomat’s disciplinary action is tied to the very types of outreach to Iran he and some of his colleagues pursued.

“Malley’s suspicious interactions with his aides of Iranian descent contributed to his downfall,” the Tehran Times wrote in a column published last month. The State Department has declined to comment on the reasons behind his suspension. The FBI is also investigating Malley, suggesting the diplomat’s actions may be more serious than just the mishandling of classified information.

Malley is hardly the first U.S. official to be ensnared in the machinations of the Islamic Republic. The opacity of Tehran’s system and the expansive work of its intelligence services can mask the government’s true intentions. The IEI emails offer a unique look into the Iranian system.

Room for Disagreement

None of Malley’s associates whom Iranian diplomats cited as being part of the Iran Experts Initiative spoke directly to Semafor. But Vaez’s and Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, has a significantly different understanding of the IEI and Tehran’s role in it.

Elissa Jobson, Crisis Group’s chief of advocacy, said the IEI was an “informal platform” that gave researchers from different organizations an opportunity to meet with IPIS and Iranian officials, and that it was supported financially by European institutions and one European government. She declined to name them.

“To spell it out a bit more, it was a means to facilitate research discussions and not a more formal entity where participants could be directed by anyone,” she said. “The fact that participants were from a host of different think tanks demonstrates that it was merely an informal platform.” ICG also notes that all the work its staff publishes is vetted and agreed upon in-house; they dispute that Iran — or any government — could have directed any members of their team to take a position at odds with the organization’s official view.

Another European think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed that one of its senior fellows, Ellie Geranmayeh, also took part in the Iran Experts Initiative. An ECFR spokesman said a European government backed the IEI, but didn’t identify it, and stressed that that the think tank always covers the “core costs” of its staff’s research trips. “As part of its efforts to inform European policy, ECFR regularly engages with experts and think tanks across the world, including through research visits and workshops,” the spokesman said.

Malley didn’t respond to requests for comment. Both the State Department and Pentagon declined to comment on the substance of the correspondence related to the IEI, but said they support Ariane Tabatabai and the vetting process involved in the approval of her security clearance. “Dr. Tabatabai was thoroughly and properly vetted as a condition of her employment with the Department of Defense. We are honored to have her serve,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

semafor.com · by Jay Solomon · September 26, 2023

7. India and US army chiefs call for free and stable Indo-Pacific as Chinese influence grows

Excerpts:

Neither Pande nor the U.S. Army chief, Randy George, explicitly mentioned China in their remarks.

When asked about Chinese expansion at a press briefing, George said the region was a critical priority for the U.S. “It’s why we are out here and why we exercise more than anywhere else in the Pacific, to build all of this. What this conference proves... is (our) unity and commitment,” the U.S. chief said.

India and US army chiefs call for free and stable Indo-Pacific as Chinese influence grows

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · September 26, 2023

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s army chief on Tuesday said the country was committed to maintaining a free and stable Indo-Pacific, where the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations is respected, as global concern grows over Chinese influence in the region.

General Manoj Pande made the comments at the Indo-Pacific Army Chiefs Conference, hosted by India and the U.S., which is focused on boosting military diplomacy and collaboration as well as promoting peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Army chiefs and delegations from 30 countries are attending the two-day event, which concludes Wednesday.

Pande said that while countries in the region are working toward a free Indo-Pacific, “we are witnessing manifestations of interstate contestations and competition” — a veiled reference to China, which has stepped up its activities in the region.

Neither Pande nor the U.S. Army chief, Randy George, explicitly mentioned China in their remarks.

When asked about Chinese expansion at a press briefing, George said the region was a critical priority for the U.S. “It’s why we are out here and why we exercise more than anywhere else in the Pacific, to build all of this. What this conference proves... is (our) unity and commitment,” the U.S. chief said.

At the opening ceremony held after, Pande said India’s outlook was focused on the peaceful resolution of disputes, avoiding force and adhering to international law. He added that in addition to challenges in maritime security, the region also faced security and humanitarian concerns on land, including territorial disputes and over “artificially expanded islands to acquire real estate and establish military bases” — another veiled reference to China.

China’s territorial claims in the East China and South China seas over islands have rattled Beijing’s smaller neighbors in Southeast Asia as well as Japan. Meanwhile the relationship between New Delhi and Beijing has deteriorated since 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops clashed along their undefined border in the Himalayan Ladakh region, leaving 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · September 26, 2023

8. The Rules-Based International Order Is Quietly Disintegrating

Excerpts:

There was a time when people would have cared what the U.N. had to say about international crises ranging from the string of coups across Africa and the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict to the alleged Indian involvement in the assassination of a Khalistan activist in Canada. Nobody today thinks that the deadlocked Security Council or the farcical General Assembly has a constructive role to play in these matters.

It isn’t only the United Nations. Messrs. Xi and Putin also ditched this month’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi. Meantime, China was busy demonstrating its utter contempt for the World Court ruling against its “Nine-Dash line” territorial claims in the South China Sea. Beijing continues to develop military facilities on Mischief Reef, part of the internationally recognized Exclusive Economic Zone belonging to the Philippines, and increasingly polices its claimed maritime boundaries in defiance of Western protests.

...

States are imploding and the rule of law is disappearing across large parts of the world. In Latin America, narco-trafficking crime organizations have infiltrated or supplanted weak states. Something similar is happening in the Sahel, with jihadist groups and bandits openly defying the authority of shambolic governments. Russia, China and Iran are happily fishing in these troubled waters, with few signs of effective Western responses to a growing security threat. The ignominious collapse of French power across Africa has been more dramatic, but the palsied incompetence of American responses to the erosion of civil order among our own neighbors is at least equally disgraceful, and equally grave.

Threatened by powerful and relentless adversaries from without, undermined by political decadence and institutional decay from within, the rules-based international order has not been this imperiled since the 1930s.

The Rules-Based International Order Is Quietly Disintegrating

It hasn’t been this threatened since the 1930s.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-co-tear-up-the-global-rule-book-international-affairs-world-order-b797ead4?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

By Walter Russell Mead

Sept. 25, 2023 6:06 pm ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sept. 23. PHOTO: PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA/ZUMA PRESS

The most important fact in world politics is that 19 months after Vladimir Putin challenged the so-called rules-based international order head-on by invading Ukraine, the defense of that order is not going well. The world is less stable today than in February 2022, the enemies of the order hammer away, the institutional foundations of the order look increasingly shaky, and Western leaders don’t yet seem to grasp the immensity of the task before them.

This isn’t just about the military threats to the international system in such places as Ukraine and the Taiwan Strait. Even as the global geopolitical crisis becomes more acute, the core institutions and initiatives of the American-led world order and the governments that back them are growing progressively weaker and less relevant.

The United Nations was supposed to be the crown jewel of the rules-based order, but lately the power and prestige of this perennial underperformer has sunk to new lows. Among the leaders of the five permanent members of the Security Council, only Joe Biden bothered to show up for the General Assembly last week. Emmanuel Macron was too busy welcoming King Charles III on an entirely ceremonial state visit to Paris. Apparently neither the British king nor the French president thought the U.N. important enough to affect his plans. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak blew off a letter from the heads of more than 100 international-development nongovernmental organizations urging him to attend, the first prime minister in a decade to skip the annual meeting.

Mr. Putin and China’s Xi Jinping also ditched the U.N. meeting, but they weren’t staying at home and washing their hair. Both ostentatiously demonstrated their contempt for Western norms by inviting international pariahs for high-profile visits. Just before the U.N. meeting, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un headed to a Russian space-launch site, where Mr. Putin courted him and both leaders bragged about their deepening relations. And during the General Assembly, Mr. Xi welcomed Syria’s beleaguered Bashar al-Assad to Hangzhou.

There was a time when people would have cared what the U.N. had to say about international crises ranging from the string of coups across Africa and the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict to the alleged Indian involvement in the assassination of a Khalistan activist in Canada. Nobody today thinks that the deadlocked Security Council or the farcical General Assembly has a constructive role to play in these matters.

It isn’t only the United Nations. Messrs. Xi and Putin also ditched this month’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi. Meantime, China was busy demonstrating its utter contempt for the World Court ruling against its “Nine-Dash line” territorial claims in the South China Sea. Beijing continues to develop military facilities on Mischief Reef, part of the internationally recognized Exclusive Economic Zone belonging to the Philippines, and increasingly polices its claimed maritime boundaries in defiance of Western protests.

The World Trade Organization is a shadow of its former self. As protectionist sentiment intensifies around the world, the WTO is largely toothless and voiceless. The Doha Round of trade talks collapsed years ago, and there is no prospect of a revival of the free-trade agenda that was an integral element of the rules-based order from the Bretton Woods negotiations during World War II on.

Arms-control and disarmament negotiations, another pillar of the rules-based order, are off the agenda. China has launched a massive nuclear buildup. Russia seems more interested in threatening the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine than in disarmament. As Iran nears the nuclear threshold, the early signs of a proliferation cascade are visible in the Middle East. Mr. Kim’s trip to Russia signals the final collapse of U.S. attempts to constrain North Korea’s nuclear program through U.N. sanctions. South Korea, where a majority of voters favor developing nuclear weapons, is paying attention. The development of hypersonic missiles, cyber attacks and biological weapons persists, with no meaningful attempt to address these problems through multilateral institutions, arms talks or anything else this side of the law of the jungle.

States are imploding and the rule of law is disappearing across large parts of the world. In Latin America, narco-trafficking crime organizations have infiltrated or supplanted weak states. Something similar is happening in the Sahel, with jihadist groups and bandits openly defying the authority of shambolic governments. Russia, China and Iran are happily fishing in these troubled waters, with few signs of effective Western responses to a growing security threat. The ignominious collapse of French power across Africa has been more dramatic, but the palsied incompetence of American responses to the erosion of civil order among our own neighbors is at least equally disgraceful, and equally grave.

Threatened by powerful and relentless adversaries from without, undermined by political decadence and institutional decay from within, the rules-based international order has not been this imperiled since the 1930s.

9. Justice Department Fights to Reinstate Bowe Bergdahl's Court-Martial Conviction

Justice Department Fights to Reinstate Bowe Bergdahl's Court-Martial Conviction

military.com · by Patricia Kime · September 25, 2023

The Justice Department is fighting a federal judge's decision to dismiss the court-martial sentence of former Staff Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, asking the U.S. District Court of Washington to "leave intact the orders of the military courts."

Bergdahl's conviction and sentence, which included a dishonorable discharge, monetary fine and demotion to private, should be preserved, the Justice Department has argued in court filings.

Bergdahl's attorneys have also asked in court that the decision handed down by Senior Judge Reggie Walton on July 25 be altered or amended.

In July, Walton ruled in favor of Bergdahl's argument that the military judge in his case failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest, and then Walton vacated all orders and rulings issued by the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, when Bergdahl pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

Bergdahl's attorneys have asked Walton to reconsider a ruling that there was no unlawful command influence by former President Donald Trump -- in light of his ruling that the Army judge in Bergdahl's court-martial failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest.

Nance was asked on Oct. 17, 2017, when Bergdahl pleaded guilty whether he had any reasons why he might not be impartial in the case. He said at the time that he was a "terminal colonel" and that he wasn't heading anywhere but "to retirement pastures."

But Nance had, in fact, just applied for a position as a federal immigration judge.

Bergdahl, a former member of 1st Battalion, 501st Regiment, walked away from his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was captured by the Taliban, triggering a military search. He was held captive for five years before being released in a prisoner swap for five U.S. detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2021, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces upheld Bergdahl's court-martial and conviction on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

The following year, Bergdahl filed a suit in civilian court arguing he was denied a fair trial as a result of his judge's failure to disclose future employment aspirations as an immigration judge in the Trump administration. He also alleged that the case was influenced unlawfully by Trump and the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who both made public disparaging remarks about him prior to the proceedings.

In July, Walton ruled that no unlawful command influence had taken place, but he upheld Bergdahl's argument that Nance failed to disclose the potential. In his decision, Walton heavily cited as precedent a case in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which a military judge also failed to disclose his application for a civilian immigration judicial post.

In their argument to uphold Bergdahl's court-martial, Justice Department attorneys argued that the Guantanamo case, which resulted in that judge's decisions across four years being voided, was nothing like the Bergdahl case and instead should be held to different standards.

The department claims that Bergdahl pleaded guilty and requested his sentence, and that the case had come to its rightful conclusion in a trusted court of law -- the military court system.

Bergdahl's attorneys are arguing that the unlawful command influence issue be reconsidered, because Nance misled him by claiming he was unaffected by any comments by senior officials, including Trump, raising the question as to whether he could have been counted on to rule impartially as a result of his pending job application.

The Justice Department also has asked that if Walton decides to uphold his decision to vacate Bergdahl's conviction, that he clarify that the case be allowed to be sent back to the military court system for another court-martial.

Bergdahl's attorneys argued against the request, noting Bergdahl has been a civilian for more than two years, endured 14 years of his legal case and five years of brutality in captivity of the Taliban.

"At the moment, he stands convicted in the court of public opinion, out of the mouth of the President of the United States, as a traitor -- the uniquely infamous category that includes Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, and a handful of other turncoats over the course of American history. This is tremendously unfair," his attorneys wrote in court documents.

Given the complexity of the case, a decision by Walton is not expected for months.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com.

military.com · by Patricia Kime · September 25, 2023

10. Opinion | A memorial to the war on terror is coming. Here is why you should care.

Excerpts:

It is easy to be skeptical about a war memorial having a substantive, positive impact on society. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial offers a powerful counterargument to this skepticism. Unlike the World War II Memorial or Korean War Veterans Memorial, it was built when the war was fresh in America’s consciousness. At its dedication, 150,000 veterans and their families descended on the National Mall. It became a reunion, not only of veterans with one another but also between veterans and the society they had served. More than one Vietnam veteran has credited the memorial with saving his life. It remains the second-most-popular site on the National Mall, attracting some 5 million visitors annually.

The Global War on Terrorism Memorial will also make its debut when the war is fresh in the minds of the public. Its success depends on the engagement of as many Americans as possible.

We look forward to the day when Americans will walk down the National Mall to dedicate our memorial, to imagine the experiences we have had. In doing so, we will reunite veterans with the society that they served, and take our final steps home together.

Opinion | A memorial to the war on terror is coming. Here is why you should care.

By Elliot Ackerman and Jennifer Ballou

September 25, 2023 at 6:45 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Elliot Ackerman · September 25, 2023

Elliot Ackerman, a Marine veteran and author, and Jennifer Ballou, an Army veteran and Gold Star wife, are the co-chairs of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation’s Design Advisory Council.

“I can’t imagine what you went through over there …”

Most veterans of the Global War on Terrorism have heard this line at some point. Usually, it is delivered with compassion, by someone wishing to convey appreciation for the difficulties of deploying to a combat zone, or of losing a friend. But this idea, of not imagining the experiences of veterans, only forces those veterans further apart from the society they served.

Before we left for war, the experience of most veterans was completely recognizable. We might not have attended your high school, but we went to a high school. We might not have rooted for your sports team, but we rooted for a sports team. The rhythms of our lives matched your rhythms. Then, we went to war. And, yes, war changed us.

But it did not make us so different from you. If you’ve ever loved someone and lost them suddenly, or felt intense fear, or experienced despair and needed to pull yourself back from that darkness, you can empathize with the emotional cost of fighting in a war. If you still believe we had truly unimaginable experiences at war, then it follows that we — America’s veterans — were forever altered in ways that make us unknowable. And, if that is true, it means we never really get to come home.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over. Yet today, too many American veterans remain mired in those wars. Our rates of suicide and homelessness exceed those of the general population. The veterans community has struggled to reintegrate into the society we served. In the two decades since the start of the Global War on Terrorism, veteran service organizations, in partnership with the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, have, through myriad programs, worked to heal the wounds of the roughly 1.9 million Americans who served in it, and their families, particularly the Gold Star families of the more than 7,000 war dead.

The reintegration of the veteran into society isn’t the job of the veteran alone. It’s the job of society, too. This is particularly true for a war that has played quietly in the background of American life for decades. It was not a war that affected the entire country, like World War II or Vietnam, during which massive demonstrations disrupted daily life and dominated the news. Mostly, life went on as normal for most Americans, with neither the nation nor its veterans reconciled to the war’s enduring costs.

In the past, the memorialization of wars has proved an important tool in reconciling those experiences. This is why our national memorials are epicenters of healing.

Last year, the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, in consultation with several federal advisory commissions, selected a site for a memorial to this conflict. It will sit within the Reserve of the National Mall. This is sacred ground. It will be only the fourth war memorial built within the Reserve — the others being for Vietnam, Korea and World War II. It will sit immediately north of the Lincoln Memorial, across the street from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The latter, dedicated in 1982, was designed by Maya Lin, then a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate and the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Although her design was controversial when it was unveiled, those who have visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial attest to its power, the way it brings visitors to silence, the way its designer — who herself had never been to war — created a work of art that allowed generations of Americans to remember, and to honor, those who lost their lives.

Although the site for the new memorial has been selected, the design has not. An essential part of that process is the gathering of public input, reinforcing the fact that this memorial isn’t only for veterans; it’s for all Americans. As of Sept. 26 — the day 22 years ago when U.S. personnel first landed in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks — any American can offer thoughts on the design process. Each of us, whether a veteran or a civilian, will have an opportunity over the next 22 days to express views.

After that time, an advisory council, of which we are co-chairs, will work with an architect and use those ideas to finalize plans for the memorial. One of us, Elliot, is a combat-decorated Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, while the other, Jennifer, was deployed at the same time as her husband, Staff Sgt. Edwardo Loredo, to Afghanistan and escorted home his remains after he was killed in action in 2010. Other members include the widow of the first American killed in Afghanistan as well as Gold Star children who lost parents in these wars. But it’s not our contributions that will determine the success of this memorial or help America come to terms with its longest war.

The process by which the final design is chosen is as important as the design itself. The Global War on Terrorism — particularly the war in Afghanistan — has often been referred to as a forgotten war. This memorial represents a chance to show that Americans have not forgotten those who fought. It is also an opportunity for our country to reconcile itself to the implications of this era. Participation matters. A memorial with mass participation will convey a more profound meaning than one with narrow participation.

Even though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, the Global War on Terrorism persists. U.S. service members continue to undertake missions in Syria, the Horn of Africa and Pakistan, among other locales. Parents who fought in this war have watched their children come of age and then join them on the battlefield.

A memorial to an ongoing war is a unique prospect in the history of American war memorials. So, too, is one that gives us the opportunity to confront humankind’s penchant for fighting. War is, of course, a part of human nature. Perhaps this will be an opportunity for our society to make the truest war memorial possible: a monument to this fault in our nature.

It is easy to be skeptical about a war memorial having a substantive, positive impact on society. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial offers a powerful counterargument to this skepticism. Unlike the World War II Memorial or Korean War Veterans Memorial, it was built when the war was fresh in America’s consciousness. At its dedication, 150,000 veterans and their families descended on the National Mall. It became a reunion, not only of veterans with one another but also between veterans and the society they had served. More than one Vietnam veteran has credited the memorial with saving his life. It remains the second-most-popular site on the National Mall, attracting some 5 million visitors annually.

The Global War on Terrorism Memorial will also make its debut when the war is fresh in the minds of the public. Its success depends on the engagement of as many Americans as possible.

We look forward to the day when Americans will walk down the National Mall to dedicate our memorial, to imagine the experiences we have had. In doing so, we will reunite veterans with the society that they served, and take our final steps home together.

The Washington Post · by Elliot Ackerman · September 25, 2023

11. Opinion: Ukraine’s bumpy road ahead just got rockier

Excerpts:

There is a sense of toxic stasis that has a number of officials in other Western countries worried about how long they can continue to supply Ukraine at the pace to which it has become accustomed. “Ukraine fatigue” is spreading slowly but inexorably. This past week German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his country would be sending a new round of arms shipments to Ukraine, but without the bunker-busting cruise missiles Kyiv had urgently requested.

The problem is that all of this is converging at a delicate time. The EU is weighing up a mammoth four-year, 20 billion euro ($21.3 billion) fund to finance weapons purchases for Ukraine. It requires, however, unanimous consent of all 27 member states — an increasingly heavy lift.

Opinion: Ukraine’s bumpy road ahead just got rockier

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/opinions/challenges-for-ukraine-russia-war-andelman/index.html?utm

Opinion by David A. Andelman

Updated 6:34 AM EDT, Tue September 26, 2023

Editor’s note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at SubStack’s Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

CNN —

The vast store of goodwill accumulated among the forces of democracy for Ukraine and its courageous and utterly unorthodox president may be running dry.

David A. Andelman

David Andelman

That is the clearest and most present danger to the security of Europe and the entire Western alliance. It is surely also the fervent hope on which Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to pursue his carnage and the reason he has chanced his whole presidency on what once seemed like a sure bet, and is instead turning into a morass of quicksand and violence with no easy exit.

America — and its allies — must under no circumstances allow that to happen.

The dangers for Ukraine are even more profound than simply waffling by a handful of right-wing Republicans in Congress over appropriations — those prepared to throw under the bus an entire nation to their overweening ambition and distrust of Democrats.

Fissures are appearing across the hitherto united Western front that can only be sending shivers of joy up Putin’s spine. The worst of it is that at least some of this has been Ukraine’s own doing.

The slow pace of the counteroffensive, the rapidly expanding needs for ever more advanced weapons, the fears of enmeshing all of the NATO alliance in an expanded conflict and a host of more immediate issues have all converged in recent days into what could become a perfect storm of horrors for Ukraine.

Opinion: Ukraine is actually making progress against Russia

But first there is the sudden convergence of grain, food and politics. Putin quite rightly appreciated the stakes — and the opportunity — when he first launched his heartless blockade of Ukraine’s grain, grain that helps feed not only Europe but also vast stretches of Africa now plunged into the threat of devastating hunger.

But Ukraine was not deterred. It found other avenues for its crops than the embargoed Black Sea ports. These trade routes, however, were across Ukraine’s neighbors Poland and Slovakia, where politically powerful farming interests felt threatened by new, cheaper sources of supply pouring across their frontiers — even if most of it was destined for other markets abroad.

Poland has a major parliamentary election coming up on October 15, and the government has recognized its need to pander to the roughly 1.3 million Poles who describe themselves as farmers. They are a powerful voting bloc, dating back to the communist era when I was able to take the pulse of the Polish people by traveling to a chicken farm in the village of Bialobrzegi, 50 miles south of Warsaw, where, even then, one farmer I spoke to was fearless in his disgust of a government he felt had lost interest in him and his priorities.

Fast-forward some four decades later, and the Polish government this month reacted quickly to rural concerns. It — along with Slovakia and Hungary — defied the European Union and extended a ban on the import of Ukrainian grain.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the UN General Assembly last week in New York City.

Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, himself a master of the cut and thrusts of political theater, hasn’t been reluctant to strike back, telling the UN General Assembly in New York last week that “it is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain.” The fear he enunciated is that they “are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki quickly followed with a threat to halt the export of weapons to the country for which it was once a wholehearted supporter. (Poland has since moved to walk back those comments, promising that it will still send weapons it has already committed to provide.)

Still, on the sidelines at the UN General Assembly, Polish President Andrzej Duda compared Ukraine to “a drowning person clinging to anything available.”

Opinion: The myth of the ‘wonder weapon’

Nearby Slovakia also has an election coming on Saturday, and it appears as though Robert Fico, former prime minister and leader of the populist Smer Party — which has campaigned on a pro-Russian message — is the front-runner. On the campaign trail last week in the village of Banovce nad Bebravou, Fico proclaimed: “We are a peaceful country. We will not send a single round to Ukraine.”

Ukraine has only provided its detractors with more verbal ammunition by threatening to file a suit in the World Trade Organization against Poland, Hungary and Slovakia over their grain embargoes.

There is a sense of toxic stasis that has a number of officials in other Western countries worried about how long they can continue to supply Ukraine at the pace to which it has become accustomed. “Ukraine fatigue” is spreading slowly but inexorably. This past week German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his country would be sending a new round of arms shipments to Ukraine, but without the bunker-busting cruise missiles Kyiv had urgently requested.

The problem is that all of this is converging at a delicate time. The EU is weighing up a mammoth four-year, 20 billion euro ($21.3 billion) fund to finance weapons purchases for Ukraine. It requires, however, unanimous consent of all 27 member states — an increasingly heavy lift.

Hungary continues to hew closely to the Kremlin’s line and retains what has been an often toxic veto amid the rule of unanimity in all EU decision-making. And with Russia now eyeing up potential weapons deals with North Korea, Ukraine needs the West’s support more than ever.

Opinion: These GOP candidates are key to Zelensky’s fate

The West has been waiting eagerly and increasingly anxiously for some significant progress in a still plodding summer offensive before fall rain and winter snow set in.

Zelensky may also now be facing other troubles at home. In The Times of London this week, there was a dramatic report of growing threats of desertion, even rebellion by scattered Ukrainian troops, apparently fed up with corruption spreading through the ranks. The report came just as Zelensky is grappling with allegations of corruption in the military and beyond — earlier this month he sacked the defense minister, followed by the dismissal last week of six deputies. (The government gave no official reason for the dismissals.)

What can America and the West do? The simple answer is, stand firm with Ukraine. It may not be easy, especially in the face of polls that show more than half of voters oppose any more aid to Ukraine. Fortunately, there are still some leaders who will continue to lead. “American support for Ukraine is not charity,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. “It’s an investment in our own direct interests. Degrading Russia’s military power helps to deter our primary strategic adversary, China.”

China does still appear to be avoiding tying itself too closely to Russia, congruent politically, but with waning military power that is a potential drag on its own image and capacities.

“When the hard right-wingers attempt in Congress to block renewed aid to Ukraine, they do Putin’s work,” Robert I. Rotberg, founding director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, wrote this week. “As such, they are Putin enablers.”

The same could equally be said for an all-too-rapidly expanding collection of leaders abroad.

All parties, more than ever, need to act like allies and continue singing from the same songbook.

12. Pentagon Plan to Buy Thousands of Drones Faces Looming Snags

Pentagon Plan to Buy Thousands of Drones Faces Looming Snags

Booming jetliner and air-taxi markets leave shortages of parts and skilled labor, causing a production crunch

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-plan-to-buy-thousands-of-drones-faces-looming-snags-6b30a1bb?mod=hp_listb_pos3

By Doug Cameron

Sept. 25, 2023 11:00 am ET

Drones such as Boeing’s Ghost Bat, developed in partnership with Australia, cost a fraction of the price of a crewed aircraft. PHOTO: JAMIE FREED/REUTERS

The Pentagon wants to acquire thousands of drones over the next two years that can fly to their targets, confuse radar, overwhelm enemy defenses, fire missiles and gather intelligence. But making the uncrewed aircraft quickly and cheaply is another matter.

Mass production of large and small drones is crucial to the Pentagon’s plan to build big stocks of weapons and ammunition to deter China, which the Defense Department describes as the U.S.’s prime strategic competitor.

U.S. military leaders have lined up to warn of China’s ambitions to absorb Taiwan, perhaps in the next few years. The scale of China’s own military buildup, including thousands of missiles, jets, ships and drones, can only be challenged by the U.S. making more, and soon, say Pentagon leaders.

The Pentagon has proposed two marquee drone concepts. The Replicator program championed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks would produce a huge fleet of air-, land- and sea-based drones that could be deployed by the thousands. These would swarm to ensure some evade defenses to reach their target or relay information, and be cheap enough to use just once.

Supply-chain turmoil

Existing defense programs are already being hit by supply-chain snarls.

Boeing has blamed staff and parts shortages for delays on programs such as the jets that will fly as the new Air Force One. “Industry is having a very hard time meeting targets with fighter jets that have extremely well-established supply chains and contractor bases,” said Richard Aboulafia, a supply-chain expert at consultant AeroDynamic Advisory.

To build weapons faster, cheaper and in greater quantities than ever before, the Pentagon is looking beyond the major defense contractors to smaller firms, often backed by venture capital.

Mass production of drones would be crucial to the Pentagon’s plan to build big stocks of weapons and ammunition to deter China. PHOTO: JOSH SMITH/REUTERS

Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s chief weapons buyer, acknowledges the challenge of securing hundreds of the large jet drones in a short period, but said they are being designed for high production, with simpler systems and digital design tools.

“The vendor base is pretty robust today,” Hunter said. Contenders include the Valkyrie from Kratos, which got its start making drones for use as shooting targets.

Boeing has its Ghost Bat, developed in partnership with Australia.The Pentagon hasn’t disclosed how much it expects the drones to cost, only that it would be a fraction of the $40 million to $100 million price of crewed aircraft they would support.

Manufacturers are concerned that the Pentagon’s drone program doesn’t involve new money.

“It’s unclear how they get funded, and at what scale,” said Richard Jenkins, chief executive of Saildrone, a California-based maker of uncrewed naval drones that can stay at sea for as long as a year. “We don’t have two to three years to make these decisions. You have to start building now.”

The Replicator program is on a tight timetable, given the scale of manufacturing required to produce thousands of drones.

A model of a Kratos-made Valkyrie drone, a contender for the Pentagon’s planned acquisitions. PHOTO: JUSTIN TALLIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Just outside Dallas, Shield AI has built a factory to produce small drones that have already been used by the U.S. military.

The San Diego-based company was one of the early entrants to the business of making autonomous flying vehicles that rely on artificial intelligence to navigate and complete missions, and one of the best-funded.

Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president, said the company aims to boost output to 100 drones this year, ultimately seeking annual production of 1,000 over the next several years.

Looking to Tesla

Tseng said the Pentagon’s plans for mass production could take solace from the experience of Elon Musk’s

Tesla, which increased output to a forecast 1.8 million electric vehicles this year from about 100,000 in 2017.“Tesla proves it can be done,” Tseng said.

White said the Air Force has developed its own plans for low-cost production that can be scaled up and is taking other steps to broaden the pool of potential suppliers. That includes lowering the security classification on some parts of projects so companies don’t require as many workers with top-secret clearances.

The emerging air-taxi makers present another challenge. Roughly a dozen companies are vying to develop propeller-driven vehicles that can take off and land like helicopters, potentially cutting journey times in New York City, Los Angeles and other big urban areas.

Flush with cash from venture capital, stock offerings and military contracts, the sector is moving closer to large-scale production. That places more strain on the pool of skilled workers and stocks of materials.

Joby Aviation, one of the largest air-taxi manufacturers, last week announced plans for a factory in Dayton, Ohio, that would employ as many as 2,000 workers, right on the doorstep of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.Write to Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 26, 2023, print edition as 'Pentagon Faces Drone Production Crunch'.

13. The Frontline States: Conversations and Observations About Russia's Other War in Europe

Download the 48 page report here: https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/the-frontline-states-final.pdf

The Frontline States: Conversations and Observations About Russia's Other War in Europe - Foreign Policy Research Institute

https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/09/the-frontline-states/

fpri.org · by Philip Wasielewski

Philip Wasielewski

Philip Wasielewski is the Director of FPRI's Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and a 2023 Templeton Fellow. He is a former Paramilitary Case Officer who had a 31-year career in the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All Soviet efforts…will be negative and destructive in character, designed to tear down sources of strength beyond reach of Soviet control. This is only in line with basic Soviet instinct that there can be no compromise with rival power and that constructive work can start only when Communist power is dominant.

– George Kennan, 1946[1]

Key Points

From late June to mid-July 2023, I visited Georgia, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania on a research trip. The analysis and conclusions in this report are based, in part, on conversations with a wide variety of individuals from former government officials, university students, academics, and members of non-governmental organizations to ordinary citizens.
The Kremlin desires to reestablish a sphere of influence in former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states between the Black and Baltic Seas. To do so, it is fighting a conventional war in Ukraine and political wars elsewhere to remove Western influence and reestablish hegemony.
Russia’s political warfare operations have a major flaw; they only offer people the past and not a future. However, US efforts against them could be more effective and citizens in frontline states facing Russian subversion have constructive criticisms to improve them.
Resisting Russian subversion depends as much on the political health of the targeted state as Western countermeasures. Efforts to oppose backsliding on democratic norms are vital, even if they spark tensions with partners and allies.
Several countries in the region will hold elections between the fall of 2023 and 2025 that will determine their geopolitical orientation. If the war in Ukraine is a battle of modern weapon systems, these elections will be a war of ideas between East and West. It is important that the United States not cede the narrative for these elections to Moscow and work with allies and partners to counteract anti-Western propaganda.

Lithuanians protesting against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, February 2022. (Dovile Ramoskaite/Unsplash)

Executive Summary

To regain its sphere of influence in the former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states, Russia is fighting a conventional war in Ukraine and political wars elsewhere. States targeted by Russian political warfare tools of subversion and economic pressure have a different type of frontline than Ukraine, but a frontline nonetheless. Many are NATO members; some are not. I traveled to five of them—Georgia, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania—to learn how Russian political warfare was working and the implications for US foreign policy.

While Georgia’s government supports Moscow’s war in Ukraine, many Georgians do not and fear being on the wrong side of a new iron curtain. Moldova’s government believes the Russo-Ukraine War shows that neutrality no longer provides security and wants to integrate into Western institutions. Its population, however, is torn between East and West and remains uncertain in which direction security can be found. Hungary, a NATO and European Union (EU) member, rejects many NATO/EU principles while enjoying their security and economic benefits. Protected by geography and motivated by a selective history, its leader has made common cause with Russia to be a pivot between East and West, but more importantly, to stay in power. Poland, with a similar domestic situation to Hungary but a different historical and geographical one, strongly opposes Russia. However, its disagreements with the European Union, fractious domestic politics, and painful historical legacies might create political instability that could undermine its efforts. Finally, of the countries I visited, Lithuania is the most loyal adherent to NATO and EU principles, but fears that if Russia is not deterred, a war could destroy Lithuania even if it is on the winning side.

Russia’s political warfare strategy is to remove Western influence and reestablish Moscow’s hegemony in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. It’s attempting to do so by exploiting peoples’ fears that their identity and welfare are threatened. Key identity issues are minority group grievances, and religious and cultural values. Welfare issues are based on economic needs or threats to those needs. These fears are turned into narratives to convince people that the West is the source of their problems and that Russia and pro-Russian governments are the solution.

However, Russia’s political warfare strategy has a major flaw; it offers people only the past and not a future. The United States has an opportunity to combat these operations, overturn Russian successes, and reinforce liberal democratic values. While America is already engaged in these frontline states, many of their citizens offer constructive criticism on how US efforts can be improved. There is a palpable fear of Russian aggression in most states, but also a belief that only the United States has the military, economic, and moral power to protect them.

Download the 48 page report here: https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/the-frontline-states-final.pdf

14. To Coup or Not to Coup: The Cold War Hangover of US Security Assistance

Excerpts:

If not a military approach to weak states, perhaps Western military assistance missions could focus less on developing partner military capacity, and instead focus on peacebuilding and whole-of-society solutions. Such peacebuilding activities could be an effective tool for stabilizing a political context by fostering dialogue and a shared consensus for shared security across the spectrum of formal and informal powerbrokers.

Similarly, the US and its allies and partners could also emphasize the development and professionalization of many African militaries by helping build engineering corps. Many commentators that critique the role and value of militaries tend to forget that the US Army Corps of Engineers played an important role in the development of the United States in the 1800s, as did West Point. By giving each military a domestic purpose through a Sustainable Development Engineering Corps, it would put the human capital of the military to constructive use. Botswana and Senegal present a perfect example of countries that have engineering corps military units dedicated to domestic development purposes. Most importantly, Botswana and Senegal have never suffered a military coup attempt.

Regrettably, there will be more coups this decade and beyond in the developing world. The question is not whether to stop providing military education and training, but rather how the US and its allies and partners can provide whole-of-society approaches (e.g., interagency) to these fragile states. Improving such an approach to weak states will address the root causes of underdevelopment, corruption, and violent extremism – but security assistance will still be an important part of the equation in helping the host-nation security forces maintain peace, security, and stability. Achieving this might allow many of these countries to escape the coup trap by achieving harmonious civil-military relations whereby society and the military is astutely committed to civilian, democratic rule no matter what. Removing US security assistance from the global equation will do more harm than good. Effective American strategic competition in Africa and other underdeveloped parts of the world means identifying where the US can out-compete China and Russia through the right blend of soft and hard power that fosters the Western rules-based order.

To Coup or Not to Coup: The Cold War Hangover of US Security Assistance - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Jahara Matisek · September 26, 2023

With recent military coups in July in Niger and in August in Gabon, commentators have heaped blame on the United States. Last year it was a coup in Mali and two in Burkina Faso, and, according to The Intercept, “at least 14 US-trained officers have taken part in coups in West Africa since 2008.” Piling on in a House Armed Services Committee hearing in March 2023, Congressman Matt Gaetz grilled the Commander of US Africa Command, insinuating, “why should US taxpayers be paying to train people who then lead coups in Africa?”

Asked for his perspective on the US military being blamed for the recent coup in Niger, a senior Nigerian military officer called that assessment “laughable,” adding, “You can say the same for Nigeria as after the US.” He then explained that many of the Niger coup-leaders, along with many other African military personnel, receive substantial military training and education from the Nigerian armed forces. And much like the US, Nigeria also emphasizes to foreign military personnel the need to respect civilian control, human rights, and international law.

Blaming the United States for coups is part of a Cold War hangover. The reality is that Africa has problems with governance and instability, which leads to a competitive security assistance marketplace. Western military powers and strategic competitors like China and Russia provide military aid for multiple reasons, but ultimately it serves the national interest in gaining access and influence with host-nation leadership. Having interviewed hundreds of military personnel from over 30 African countries over the last 8 years, I contend that many of these officers trained by the US and other Western countries have also been militarily trained and educated by authoritarian countries, such as China and Russia, and less democratic countries such as Brazil, India, and Pakistan. Providing military aid, education, and training to the average African country is an attempt to empower countries to combat extremism and provide for the safety, security, and stability of their society. For many Western countries, the strategic hope is that such security assistance will transform young democracies into established democracies capable of addressing internal and regional threats.

A competitive security assistance marketplace

Western military assistance is not causing the growing insecurity across Africa. True, the US military has been courting the coup leader, General Moussa Salaou Barmou, for almost 30 years. The seeming correlation between US security assistance and coups leads many commentators to imply that the Pentagon is militarizing underdeveloped nations. However, the July 2023 coup in Niger comes at a time where other strategic competitors, like China and Russia, have been making inroads across the continent for influence via military assistance. Likewise, the 2023 Gabon coup leader, General Brice Oligui Nguema, received some of his military education from the Moroccan military, and seems to have no educational or training ties to the US or other Western powers.

The marketplace of security assistance in Africa is competitive because many powers have an interest in shaping and influencing military leadership, professionalism, and effectiveness. Accordingly, over 40 African countries are receiving various forms of military assistance (e.g., contractors, weapons, advisors, etc.) from China and/or Russia, which is sometimes provided purely out of realpolitik reasons of gaining access to markets, protecting investments, and resource extraction projects. In fact, due to Russia’s preoccupation with its invasion of Ukraine, Russian military assistance has significantly declined, with China boosting its economic and security assistance across Africa to outcompete the US, Russia, and others. The filling of gaps and seams by China is best reflected by the sentiment of one African naval officer: “All Africans want democracy. We all want to be like the United States. We need help with roads and infrastructure, but our governments cannot work with USAID and the World Bank. Who can the people get help from? If not China, who?” With the recent BRICS Summit, there appears to be an attempt at building an alternative system to the US-led international rules based system. Security assistance in Africa appears to be a step in this direction, especially to fill voids (e.g., investments, security, infrastructure, etc.) that the US and other Western powers will not.

It is true that the US provides more foreign military and assistance than any other country. In total, the amount exceeds $400 billion since 2000. Just because the US military interacts with another military does not mean such aid causes coups. Even though there have been over 30 successful military coups around the world since 2000, many of these countries were receiving minimal amounts of US security aid and training compared to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia that collectively received over $130 billion in military assistance. Likewise, Ukraine has received over $40 billion US security assistance since Russia invaded in February of 2022.

However, if money is to blame, one could also blame Canada or Europe for the coups in Mali and Niger. Canada has spent hundreds of millions on aid and training for both countries over the last two decades. Put in context, since 2000, the US has provided about $207 million and $259 million in security assistance to Mali and Niger respectively. Similarly, the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) in Mali had been operating since 2013. EUTM training helped “the Malian Armed Forces in restoring their military capacity through of the provision of advice, education and training.” In this same timeframe, the EU conducted Common Security and Defence Policy missions to Mali and Niger – to strengthen the “capacity of internal security forces” – spending approximately €66 million and €69 million on Mali and Niger respectively.

But beyond security assistance, growing evidence suggests other causes may undermine stability, which are precursors to military coups. For example, climate change across the Sahel region, decreased rainfall, and shrinking freshwater sources are leading to increased violence and more extremist groups. In turn, this causes more instability and the perception of failing governance, leading some citizens and military personnel to believe that an overthrow of the regime would facilitate better responses and solutions.

More US military assistance, more coup?

Critiques about the ills of American security assistance abound. There is of course the standard discourse that security assistance, especially to fragile states, undermines the authority, legitimacy, and capacity of the government. There is also the “Fabergé Egg” army problem, where too much US military assistance to a weak state creates a corrupt rent-seeking foreign military dependency, “contingent on advisors babysitting partner forces indefinitely.” Such expensively built militaries (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, South Vietnam, etc.) eventually “crack” in the face of lesser-equipped insurgents.

One could even be contrarian and suggest that the US should actually be providing more military aid and training to foreign militaries in weak states to reduce the likelihood of coups. Similar logic was suggested in a 2018 article in Democratization, whereby young democracies can avoid the coup trap by increasing military expenditures to meet the “corporate interests” (i.e. benefits, weapon systems, etc.) of the military. Likewise, normative arguments arise in the discipline to describe notions of a “good coup, bad coup,” where a coup is deemed good for protecting “against other threats to democracy… paving the way for fresh elections and a handover to a democratically elected government.” But a coup is deemed bad when the “military plays an increasingly assertive and influential role in the country’s affairs… martial law becomes the norm.”

There are also human capital arguments. Jesse Dillon Savage and Jonathan Caverley argued in a 2017 article that US military training leads to increases in the human capital of foreign military personnel, which “alters the balance of power between the military and the regime resulting in greater coup propensity.” While they are correct that a more educated individual might find their corrupt regime bad enough to decide to overthrow it, this should not implicate the US or any foreign education program. Through fieldwork interviews with many officers from African countries, I have discovered that US military and education training programs are the most coveted slots. Thus, sometimes an officer gets a slot to a war college in the US due to regime patronage purposes, and in other cases the officer gets the slot based on merit and motivation.

Others, such as investigative journalist Nick Turse, take a more conspiratorial view of any and all American military activities around the world. For instance, he has suggested that the US Global War on Terror has led to the doubling of extremist groups and stated that American “trained and educated officers are toppling governments and expanding American proxy power.” Such tropes suggest that the US is bent on militarizing these societies, but the core of any Western military assistance curricula is democratic civil-military relations, a non-partisan military, and civilian control of the security forces.

Other outlets appear influenced by such fallacious logic. For example, the United States Institute of Peace and Cato Institute have published articles suggesting that Western military aid contributed to coups occurring in Mali and Guinea. Suspicion of American and Western security assistance is a hangover from the Cold War tropes about the US sacrificing its values in certain parts of the world to out-compete the Soviet Union and defeat communism.

The fallacious Cold War hangover

The Cold War hangover is understandable. The US facilitated 64 covert regime changes during the Cold War. It was a time when the US government supported military leaders in the overthrow of occasionally democratically elected leaders because the country had changed its pro-US alignment to the Soviet Union.

However, continued suspicion of US military assistance in a post-Cold War era to support pro-US regime change, is becoming a shaky assertion. This is because the US has increasingly promoted a rules-based international order, which has meant advocating democracy, human rights, democracy, and rule of law. In fact, the US government indirectly intervened against coup plotters in The Gambia to prevent a coup in December of 2014. Even though Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh was running “The Worst Dictatorship you’ve Never Heard of,” the US chose to preserve the rules-based order in lieu of a Gambian regime change led by some “middle-aged American immigrants.”

To be fair, critics of American military aid can point to Egypt. In 2013, Egyptian Army General Sisi, who is a 2006 US Army War College graduate, staged a coup against democratically elected President Morsi. Due to larger geopolitical concerns, the US continued providing tens of billions of economic assistance and military aid to Egypt, likely because General Sisi was viewed as a better alternative than Morsi, who was perceived by some for growing totalitarianism and Islamic fascism. US interests in Niger are equally caught in the balance of realpolitik and Western values, because the US has two drone bases in Niger that are heavily relied upon for counterterrorism operations in the region.

Unfortunately, geopolitics and strategic competition leads to such a realpolitik outcome. Nevertheless, the US had adopted many policies to discourage coups and punish countries for remaining military regimes. For example, several US laws on the books include coup-related restrictions that cease US foreign aid, and 2022 research illustrated that the presence of deployed US forces in a host-nation country actually decreased the risk of coup d’état. Similarly, Renanah Miles Joyce contends that Liberian soldiers that received more US training were more likely to support liberal norms of democracy and human rights. Finally, laws meant to punish military regimes can be easily manipulated, as happened with the 2008 Mauritanian coup d’état. General Abdel Aziz led the new military regime, retired from the military several months after, and then ran as a civilian to ‘democratically’ win the presidency in 2009.

Even though General Barmou is the Niger junta leader that previously trained at Fort Moore (then Fort Benning) and graduated from the US National Defense University in 2008, this does not mean he was primed for coup-making behavior. One could just as easily conclude that General Barmou’s previous experience in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions similarly primed him for the coup. In fact, Jamie Levin, Joseph MacKay, and Anthony Sealey wrote in a 2020 article that “developing states where UN peacekeeping remuneration exceeds per-soldier costs, deployment produces a windfall for militaries … and fearing the loss of them in the future, they may act to depose the incumbent regime.” Knowing that many military personnel in underdeveloped countries become dependent on additional pay through peacekeeping deployments creates a cycle of dependency, creating incentives for the military to maintain the status quo of such high-paying deployments as seen in countries like Burundi.

Returning to the thoughts of my interview with the senior Nigerian military officer, he confided that many of these countries experiencing coups have “limited resources and opportunities” and that military officers in these countries are usually the only “empowered” people in that country. Once being educated or trained anywhere abroad, “most return bitter and feel the only way to enhance their status is to plan a coup.” This begs the ultimate, unanswerable paradoxical question: Should Western governments and militaries not educate or train military personnel from poor, underdeveloped countries because this ‘enlightenment’ might lead to their own self-destructive ‘coup’ behaviors once back in their home country?

Entanglement and fragile states

To overcome the Cold War security assistance hangover, the US and the West must increase transparency and sustain training efforts on respecting humanitarian and international law and deference to civilian control of the armed forces.

For instance, since 1996 the US has released data on how much security aid was spent and the number of foreign military personnel trained. Since then, the International Policy program has compiled that data into an open-access database known as “Security Assistance Monitor.” However, there are few open-releases of how much military assistance Western countries have provided to other countries, besides one database tracking support to Ukraine from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

If not a military approach to weak states, perhaps Western military assistance missions could focus less on developing partner military capacity, and instead focus on peacebuilding and whole-of-society solutions. Such peacebuilding activities could be an effective tool for stabilizing a political context by fostering dialogue and a shared consensus for shared security across the spectrum of formal and informal powerbrokers.

Similarly, the US and its allies and partners could also emphasize the development and professionalization of many African militaries by helping build engineering corps. Many commentators that critique the role and value of militaries tend to forget that the US Army Corps of Engineers played an important role in the development of the United States in the 1800s, as did West Point. By giving each military a domestic purpose through a Sustainable Development Engineering Corps, it would put the human capital of the military to constructive use. Botswana and Senegal present a perfect example of countries that have engineering corps military units dedicated to domestic development purposes. Most importantly, Botswana and Senegal have never suffered a military coup attempt.

Regrettably, there will be more coups this decade and beyond in the developing world. The question is not whether to stop providing military education and training, but rather how the US and its allies and partners can provide whole-of-society approaches (e.g., interagency) to these fragile states. Improving such an approach to weak states will address the root causes of underdevelopment, corruption, and violent extremism – but security assistance will still be an important part of the equation in helping the host-nation security forces maintain peace, security, and stability. Achieving this might allow many of these countries to escape the coup trap by achieving harmonious civil-military relations whereby society and the military is astutely committed to civilian, democratic rule no matter what. Removing US security assistance from the global equation will do more harm than good. Effective American strategic competition in Africa and other underdeveloped parts of the world means identifying where the US can out-compete China and Russia through the right blend of soft and hard power that fosters the Western rules-based order.

Lieutenant Colonel Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, PhD, (@JaharaMatisek) is a military professor in the National Security Affairs department at the US Naval War College, fellow for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, and US DoD Minerva researcher, having published over ninety articles and essays on strategy, warfare, and security assistance.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Naval War College, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, or Department of Defense. This article was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-20-1-0277.

Main image: Forces Armées Nigeriennes soldiers conduct close quarters combat training with U.S. Special Forces advisors during Flintlock 2018, on April 13, 2018 in Agadez, Niger.

15. Phasing Out GPS Reliance in U.S. Military Operations: An Imperative in the Face of Emerging Threats

Phasing Out GPS Reliance in U.S. Military Operations: An Imperative in the Face of Emerging Threats

By Carlo J.V. Caro

September 26, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/09/26/phasing_out_gps_reliance_in_us_military_operations_an_imperative_in_the_face_of_emerging_threats_981890.html?mc_cid=fed86a481f&mc_eid=70bf478f36

The United States' military reliance on the Global Positioning System (GPS) poses significant vulnerabilities in the face of emerging threats from adversarial nations like Russia, China, and North Korea. At the moment, Europe is witnessing a conventional war between two nations. In this context, the role of technology, particularly navigation systems, has emerged as a decisive factor for military success.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the American GPS, Europe's GALILEO, China's BEIDOU, and Russia's GLONASS, play an essential role in modern warfare. Despite their different technical specifications—like frequencies and orbits—these systems are designed to be compatible, allowing for greater positional accuracy. However, their signals are susceptible to various forms of interference, such as jamming and spoofing. While there are security measures like anti-spoofing in place, these are not foolproof.

Inaugurated during the Cold War, the Global Positioning System (GPS) was originally developed to provide the U.S. military with unparalleled navigation and timing capabilities. Over the years, this system has become deeply integrated not just into military functions but also in civilian applications. However, this ubiquitous dependency on GPS exposes the U.S. military to substantial vulnerabilities, especially given the anti-satellite capabilities and cyber warfare competencies of Russia, China, and North Korea.

In the current war in Ukraine, Russia has upped the ante by developing Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missiles capable of destroying GPS satellites. Such a move could effectively cripple NATO's long-range weaponry. Surprisingly, Russia seems unafraid of a similar attack on its own GLONASS system. This is because Russia has revitalized a pre-existing radio navigation system known as Long Range Navigation (LORAN).

Developed initially during World War II, LORAN is a hyperbolic radio navigation system. Unlike GNSS systems, LORAN calculates a receiver's position based on the time difference between signals emitted from three or more synchronized ground stations. In this setup, absolute time is less important than the differences in arrival times, a concept known as multilateration.

The origins of LORAN date back to 1940, when Alfred Lee Loomis introduced it at the U.S. Army Microwave Conference. The system originally offered an accuracy of one nautical mile within a 200-mile radius. Over time, it evolved through various iterations and names, ultimately becoming part of the MIT Radiation Laboratory under the name Project 3.

Several versions of LORAN emerged through experimentation. One such version, LF LORAN, appeared in 1945 and operated at much lower frequencies, requiring balloon antennas. After WWII, the CYCLAN and Whyn systems were created to support the navigation of American B-47 bombers. CYCLAN in particular proved successful, showing that using two frequencies instead of one resulted in better performance.

By 1952, the success of CYCLAN inspired the development of the Cytac program by Sperry. Its main objective was to operate at even lower frequencies while maintaining accuracy. Despite achieving impressive accuracies around 10 yards, the system was not widely adopted due to concerns about signal strength and interference.

Out of these experiments, LORAN B and the more successful LORAN C were developed. LORAN C became the most widespread version, operating at frequencies between 90 to 110 kHz and multiple operational chains of radio beacons worldwide. LORAN C represented a significant advancement in the speed and accuracy of obtaining positions. However, it was not without drawbacks; its technology was rooted in the 1950s, which posed limitations on the required electronic equipment.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, LORAN systems underwent significant upgrades, incorporating solid-state electronics and the first microcontrollers. Although versions D and F of LORAN were developed, their improvements were eclipsed by the emergence of GPS. The satellite-based navigation system soon made traditional radio navigation like LORAN largely obsolete. GPS became so efficient and cost-effective that maintaining LORAN systems seemed financially unjustifiable.

The ubiquitous use of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) like GPS has led to a widespread dependence on these technologies for navigation and positioning. This mutual reliance has often been seen as a deterrent against intentional disruptions; the thinking goes, 'If we all need them, we won't sabotage them.'

Despite this reliance on GNSS, the U.S. government considered rejuvenating the LORAN system as a GPS alternative. The Obama administration allocated a budget for upgrades. However, skepticism led it to slash this budget. This decision seemed questionable, especially given the vulnerabilities of the GPS system. Consequently, LORAN has languished in obscurity, with most of its stations dismantled.

Russia has been actively upgrading its radio navigation system, known as CHAYKA ('seagull' in Russian), which is similar to LORAN. Initially developed to address GPS's limitations in Russia—a problem later resolved with their GNSS system, GLONASS—CHAYKA has nonetheless remained in active service. Russia has not only modernized CHAYKA but has also expanded its operational scope to include areas of geopolitical interest, like Ukraine. This robust backup to satellite-based systems allows Russia to credibly threaten the disruption of global GNSS systems, knowing they have a reliable alternative for navigation.

Technological innovations don't exist in a vacuum; they often reshape military doctrines and strategies. For example, the precision and real-time capabilities introduced by GNSS have redefined modern engagement forms, from drone warfare to real-time data analytics for situational awareness. However, the robust and less vulnerable nature of LORAN-like systems lends itself well to scenarios where satellite communications can be compromised. This co-evolution of technology and strategy necessitates a reevaluation of both the tactical and geopolitical landscapes.

The military's use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation and precision targeting is a double-edged sword. While the system offers unparalleled advantages in command and control, its inherent flaws pose substantial risks that could be exploited by adversaries like Russia, China, and North Korea.

The first layer of vulnerability is grounded in the technical limitations of GPS. Signal strength and propagation present immediate concerns; GPS signals must travel vast distances through Earth's atmosphere to reach surface receivers. Their strength can be weakened not only by natural factors such as weather conditions but also by intentional jamming. In a military context, this vulnerability could be seized upon by an adversary using focused signal disruption tactics to degrade operational efficiency. Equally alarming is the issue of spectrum congestion. The L-band in which GPS operates is becoming increasingly crowded. This escalating congestion elevates the risk of unintentional signal interference, which can further be exploited intentionally through high-power transmissions in the same band.

While modern military GPS applications often feature encrypted signals for better security, legacy systems and interoperability requirements occasionally force the use of civilian GPS signals. These unencrypted signals become low-hanging fruits for spoofing attacks. A well-executed spoofing operation can mislead a GPS receiver into calculating a false position, leading military assets astray or into traps. Moreover, the central control infrastructure—the Ground Control Segment—becomes a single point of failure. Despite redundancies and hardened facilities, its centralized nature remains a chink in the armor, vulnerable to both kinetic and cyber-attacks.

The technical limitations manifest into operational constraints that further complicate the military's heavy reliance on GPS. The Time-to-First-Fix (TTFF), which is the duration a GPS receiver takes to obtain an initial position, can induce delays. In high-stakes, time-sensitive operations, such delays can prove fatal.

Operational planning becomes a herculean task when considering potential GPS failures. The necessity for alternative navigation strategies adds layers of complexity to missions, which traditionally rely on the predictability and accuracy of GPS. This burden extends to tactical behavior. Over-reliance on GPS can induce predictable patterns, such as using certain well-navigated routes, thus exposing military assets to enemy observation and potential ambushes.

The ripple effects of GPS vulnerabilities reach far beyond immediate operational timelines. Should a mission need to be aborted due to GPS failure, the larger strategic goals could be compromised. In addition to the immediate tactical impact, the economic and logistical burdens of equipping military assets with redundant systems and countermeasures are not insignificant. These entail not only economic costs but also added weight and power requirements that could limit mission duration and mobility.

Perhaps the most insidious impact is the skill atrophy among military personnel who have become overly reliant on GPS for navigation. The erosion of traditional navigation skills, such as map reading and celestial navigation, could severely impede operational effectiveness in GPS-denied environments.

Given these interconnected technical and operational vulnerabilities, it is imperative for the U.S. military to reconsider its GPS-centric strategy. The adoption of multi-modal redundancies, the revival of traditional navigation skills, and long-term investments in quantum navigation are not just options but necessities. By doing so, the military can mitigate these risks and preserve its operational effectiveness in increasingly contested and complex battlefields.

Carlo J.V. Caro is a political and military analyst. He has a graduate degree from Columbia University.

16. Russia, Ukraine, and the Future Use of Strategic Intelligence

Long read.

Excerpts:

The Ukraine conflict also suggests that the lessons of America’s post-Iraq intelligence reviews, as well as those conducted in the United Kingdom, are just as applicable and relevant today as when they were first drafted. There remains a fine balance between intelligence produced to inform policymakers and the use of intelligence to achieve desired effects. Maintaining this balance between assessment, analysis, and advocacy requires officials who understand and respect the difference. The temptations to blur the distinctions by omission or commission are very real, and the consequences are potentially disastrous.

While there exist processes and protocols for the declassification of information and its dissemination within the government and to the public, these processes are not designed for the demands of information warfare. The ad hoc process undertaken by the Biden Administration in regards to Ukraine, while effective, needs a procedural framework and template for future administrations to follow. That will be especially true in crisis situations where the politicians in power are not as savvy in the use of classified information and the distinctions between different kinds of intelligence. Equally, future administrations must be prepared for the possibility that the intelligence community might get it wrong.

The Ukraine War has shown that competing in the modern information domain requires leveraging all tools of national power. Intelligence, hitherto used primarily to inform policymakers, will be an increasingly key asset in that arsenal when judiciously and appropriately used. The role of intelligence will become even more important as the West seeks to recapture the initiative in the information war.

America’s intelligence community and the policymakers it supports demonstrated the potential utility of this information in the 2022 Ukraine conflict and the information war against Russia. Changes in modern warfare will necessitate adjustments in the way the intelligence community views intelligence—not just as a product to be provided to policymakers, but a ready-made tool to achieve strategic effects in a crisis scenario. Drawing the right lessons from its use in the Ukraine War—cognizant of that which has changed and that which has not—will ensure that Washington is better placed to wage the information wars of the future

Russia, Ukraine, and the Future Use of Strategic Intelligence

By Joshua C. Huminski PRISM Vol. 10, No. 3

ndupress.ndu.edu

Download PDF

Joshua Huminksi is Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence and Global Affairs at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

Selected intelligence disclosures have helped maintain NATO cohesion on Ukraine. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III hosts the sixth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Oct. 12, 2022. Photo By: Chad J. McNeeley, DOD (https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3186086/allies-are-unified-in-support-for-ukraine-ahead-of-nato-meetings-defense-offici/).

Before Russia’s unprovoked February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom undertook an aggressive public and private information campaign to attempt to achieve two concurrent objectives. The primary goal was to convince their allies of the threat of Russia’s pending offensive (and to smooth the mobilization of support to Ukraine after the fact) and to a lesser degree a secondary goal was to attempt to deter Moscow from acting. Central to this campaign was the very visible and highly publicized use of intelligence. Indeed, as Dan Drezner wrote in the Washington Post, “The U.S. intelligence community sure has been chatty as of late about what it thinks Russia is doing.” The use of intelligence to support policy or diplomatic efforts and to achieve a strategic effect is, in and of itself, not novel. Intelligence is meant to inform policymakers and their decisions.

What was novel was the speed, frequency, and extent to which intelligence was disclosed to the broader public—intelligence which demonstrated significant human or digital penetrations into Russia’s political and military hierarchies, and which was designed to achieve a specific effect. These disclosures also benefited from an unplanned development: the existence of an external third-party validator in the open-source intelligence community. This nascent and maturing field offered a means by which some information, though not all, could be validated in near real-time. Tactical-level activity verified by these communities helped to reinforce Washington’s broader message that policymakers were advancing using sensitive intelligence capabilities.

This use of intelligence, the perceived success of the effort, and the utility of that information will likely lead to an increase in demands both by politicians and the public writ large. This raises new issues and reaffirms preexisting challenges that affect and influence the use of intelligence. In that sense, the Ukraine campaign reflects lessons from past successes while, more importantly, also reflecting the lessons from past failures and offering warnings of risks for the future. Many of these lessons are not new. The need to protect sources and methods; the risk that politicians will selectively use intelligence for political aims; the importance of tailoring messaging to competing and differing audiences; all of these are familiar themes encountered throughout the history of intelligence.

What is perhaps most novel about the use of intelligence in Ukraine, and likely going forward, is that this represents an effort by the United States to recapture the initiative in the information war, which it largely ceded to Russia by omission and commission. This effort brings with it additional policy challenges and new considerations.

Goals and Efficacy

It is important from the outset to establish the broad outlines of what the United States and the United Kingdom hoped to achieve with the use of intelligence and the audiences at whom it was directed—namely policymakers at home and amongst allies, the adversary (Russia), and the broader world.

At a strategic level, the West’s efforts in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had two primary goals. The first, and arguably most successful, was to convince skeptical policymakers in Western allies and even Ukraine of the imminent threat from Moscow. The selective and sustained release of information, often augmented by considerable open-source information (though perhaps not always by design or intention), sought to allay allies’ doubts about the imminence of the threat. This contributed to the subsidiary goal of beginning the process of mobilizing a collective allied response after the invasion. In this aim, the effort was decidedly successful.

Throughout the winter of 2021 and the early months of 2022, the United States highlighted a steady drumbeat of indicators and warnings about Russian intentions and likely plans vis-à-vis Ukraine. In December 2021, an unnamed administration official warned, “The Russian plans call for a military offensive against Ukraine as soon as early 2022 with a scale of forces twice what we saw this past spring during Russia’s snap exercise near Ukraine’s borders.” They added, “The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel, along with armor, artillery and equipment.” This was a concerted effort to prepare the battlefields of public opinion and private policymaking with intelligence.

By disclosing sensitive intelligence—even at possible risk to sources and methods—the United States signaled to Russia that it knew its plans and intentions in advance, thereby possibly achieving a deterring effect. After laying its cards on the table about what the intelligence community knew, the Biden Administration communicated the likely consequences should Moscow choose to act on the plans. According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, to try to deter Putin they “needed to send somebody to Moscow to sit with the Russians at a senior level and tell them: ‘If you do this, these will be the consequences.’” President Biden, for his part, noted, “What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be, will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do.”

How effective the efforts were in deterring Russia is an open question. It was effective in getting ahead of false flag operations—operations designed to appear as being carried out by another actor—and disclosing what provocations Moscow planned to initiate to serve as a casus belli for its military activity. It does appear that America’s warnings of imminent provocations may have prevented Russia from acting on those plans. Carrying out such an attack after the fact would have been undercut by the advance warning. This does assume that Russia needed the provocation in the first place and/or that the West was the primary audience of the said provocative act.

The U.S. intelligence revelations did not change Putin’s plans to expand his invasion of Ukraine. They did, however, change the information environment in which his war took place. By disclosing the intelligence before the invasion, the West undermined Russia’s ostensible casus belli, removed potential provocations as justifications for invasion, and forced the Kremlin to concoct ever-evolving narratives for both foreign and domestic audiences, the development of which took time and energy, and which ultimately achieved little for Russia, in the West’s estimation.

While the ultimate efficacy of the overall intelligence effort is subject to debate—especially as it is difficult to prove a negative or a counterfactual outcome—certain trends could, arguably, be divined. America’s effort to convince its allies that the threat from Russia was imminent appears to have at the very least laid the foundation for a swifter response to Moscow’s aggression than may have otherwise been possible. It is clear from reporting from the Washington Post and others that the effort was far from smooth. At times the United States struggled to convince its allies (beyond the United Kingdom and the Baltic States), and even Ukraine, of the seriousness of the threat. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the differing assessments of the threat posed by Russia. Doubts about U.S. intelligence among allies also reflected comparable weaknesses in terms of their intelligence services’ access and penetration of Russian security services.

Indeed, America’s performance in the run-up to the Ukraine War was, in many ways, a contrast to the flawed use of intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. America’s intelligence community is seen as having been unduly influenced by the zeal of some members of the Bush Administration to invade Iraq, who selectively used intelligence to make their case for invasion. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the subsequent chaos that resulted in the wake of the removal of Saddam Hussein were seen as a stain on the credibility of American intelligence. In the case of Ukraine, Germany and France, in particular, were thus skeptical of American claims about Russian intentions, especially after Washington declined to share all of the intelligence available regarding Moscow’s aims.

In reality it would have been naïve to expect that the selective disclosure of American and allied intelligence would ultimately dissuade Russia from acting. It is unlikely that any amount of dissuasion—publicly or privately—could have halted Russia’s movement to war. At best it perhaps stalled or interrupted elements of the Kremlin’s plans, but it would be too much to expect that it would halt a looming invasion. If there were such expectations that selective intelligence revelations would deter war, they likely resulted from assuming too much about the West’s ability, and too little about President Putin’s intentions. Arguably, there was little that the United States or the West writ large could have done to dissuade Moscow from acting, short of outright capitulation by Kyiv.

As for the wider world, the effort to use intelligence to control the narrative of the Ukraine War proved markedly less successful, and remains a challenge to this day. While it is arguable whether there was high value in convincing the Global South of the imminence of the threat or the need to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, messaging to China and India is of critical importance. Given the relatively strong relationships of both Delhi and Beijing with Moscow, their voices on the international stage matter—particularly as calls for a resolution to the crisis are now growing.

Intelligence in Policy and Diplomacy

The use of intelligence to inform policy in a messaging manner is not a novel development. The United States, and indeed all powers, have sought to use intelligence at every level of political and military conflict to dissuade adversaries, convince allies, or communicate with the public more broadly. Even the use of sensitive intelligence—obtained via exquisite means or through high-level sources—to support policy aims is itself not a novel development.

The United States declassified photos obtained by the U-2 aircraft during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, and used these photos in Adlai Stevenson’s speech before the United Nations. The United States and the United Kingdom also undertook extensive efforts to sanitize and release information through unofficial means during the Cold War—e.g., selectively providing intelligence to friendly outlets, think tanks, and unwitting activist groups. In the wake of the 1986 bombing of the La Belle discothèque in West Berlin, Washington used declassified signals intelligence intercepts to prove the case that Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya was responsible. More recently, and perhaps most controversially, the United States used human intelligence of dubious value in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq over Baghdad’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program.

Indeed, in the aftermath of the failed intelligence related to Iraq’s WMD program, several reviews were undertaken to evaluate what went wrong, and how, and to make recommendations for the future. There is a careful balance to be struck between providing intelligence for assessment and the use of that intelligence in policymaking. It is often the case that the latter omits the caveats of the former, caveats that are vitally important to accurately portray the information in question. In the United Kingdom, the “Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” also known as the Butler Report, found that:

If intelligence is to be used more widely by governments in public debate in the future, those doing so must be careful to explain its uses and limitations. It will be essential, too, that clearer and more effective dividing lines between assessment and advocacy are established when doing so.

The Iraq Inquiry report, also known as the Chilcot Report, echoed this conclusion, finding that, “The statements prepared for, and used by, the UK Government in public from late 2001 onwards conveyed more certainty than the [Joint Intelligence Committee] Assessments about Iraq’s proscribed activities and the potential threat they posed.” In many ways, as discussed below, the use of intelligence in Ukraine reflected these lessons.

Risks to Sources and Methods

Perhaps the most significant issue resulting from the West’s use of intelligence in this most recent crisis is the tension between protecting sources and methods and the utility of collected intelligence. This is not a new challenge. There is a fine balance between the intelligence officer’s mission of ensuring the protection of their agent, or the cyber intelligence protection of a unique exploit or vulnerability, and the need to inform policymakers, who then seek to shape the political and diplomatic environment. Whenever intelligence is sanitized and released, there is the risk of heightening adversary awareness of capabilities and the resulting loss of that asset or exploit.

There are, and always will be, concerns about risks to sources and methods—it is the cardinal rule of intelligence collection: protecting agents and capabilities. Yet, in the words of one former senior intelligence officer, it can be followed to a fault. There is a risk that the zeal to protect sources and methods could restrict their attendant utility. Too much protection reduces their utility, too much use risks their exposure and loss. This can be avoided by the judicious and select release of information, but it remains a delicate balance between protection and usefulness.

Certainly, in the run-up to Ukraine, it appeared that the Biden Administration was willing to err on the side of utility over protection. The administration’s disclosures about Russia’s capabilities and intentions were impressive for their specificity. For example:

“Intercepted communications obtained by the U.S. have revealed that some Russian officials have worried that a large-scale invasion of Ukraine would be costlier and more difficult than Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin leaders realize, according to four people familiar with the intelligence.”
Speaking to the New York Times, a U.S. official noted that “the United States has acquired intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video that would build on recent disinformation campaigns.”
“The U.S. intelligence community had penetrated multiple points of Russia’s political leadership, spying apparatus and military, from senior levels to the front lines, according to U.S. officials.”

This intelligence could only have been acquired through high-level penetrations or compromised Russian communications networks. The very release of this information, sanitized as it was, could jeopardize the access of the agent in question or the vulnerability or exploit leveraged. While there is an argument to be made that Russia and others likely assume to some degree that they are subject to near-constant surveillance—attempted or successful—the specificity of the warning (if Moscow was paying attention) would likely have been disquieting. It is undoubtedly the case that Moscow has launched or will launch a robust counterintelligence effort to identify the source of the information used by the United States. If successful, that exploit or agent may be “burned” in intelligence parlance and no longer useful.

It is possible, though far less plausible, that the intelligence community wished to create the impression that it had insights into Russia’s decision-making process when, in fact, it did not, to sow doubt and confusion. While generating such intelligence is possible, doing so would have almost certainly been exposed by the Russians or allies and would have certainly eroded the credibility of the community at a time when that credibility was vital amongst allies.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell holds a vial of anthrax during his presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. UN Photo/Mark Garten.

In the case of Ukraine, it was clear that the urgency of the threat and the need to mobilize allied support trumped some, but not all, of the concerns about sources and methods. As reported by the Washington Post, and discussed above, the United States disclosed some intelligence related to what it knew about Russian intentions, but did not provide raw intelligence intercepts or reports to many of its European allies. This caution is not surprising, as such information is restricted even amongst the Five Eyes. While this was undoubtedly a prudent move, it fueled existing skepticism about the quality and veracity of American intelligence, and undoubtedly rekindled concerns from Berlin and Paris about the politicization of said intelligence (especially in light of their pre-existing skepticism of the threat from Russia and likely limited access of their own intelligence agencies to the Kremlin).

Open Source Validation

In the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom did enjoy an advantage that did not exist to the current degree in previous crises: open-source intelligence. Throughout the run-up to Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, there was, and now remains, a robust body of open-source intelligence analysis. Derived through publicly available tools, commercial satellite imagery, and a dedicated cadre of social media sleuths, the open-source community served as an external validator or check for some of the claims made by the United States and the United Kingdom. Government claims about mobilization activities could, at least at a macro level, be verified against what commercial imagery revealed, and through collated analysis from groups like Bellingcat. Further validation of this information was found through social media channels like Telegram—troop movements could be tracked via the chattiness of Russian soldiers and the observations of the communities through which units moved. Perhaps most amusingly, the movements of Russian soldiers were tracked through their use of dating apps, according to reports.

Robust open-source intelligence served as a semi-transparent check on information released by governments. Bellingcat and others demonstrate their work, opening it up to public scrutiny in a way that the intelligence communities of the United States and the United Kingdom could not and almost certainly would not. There are attendant risks, however, in relying on these well-meaning amateurs and semi-professional intelligence analysts. There is an uneven quality to the open source community—not every organization is Bellingcat, and there is not always wisdom in crowds. In theory, the free market nature of this community offers a check on the quality of the analysis. Outlets that are misleading, misguiding, or peddling inaccurate information will be outed and castigated if the system works as intended.

According to one former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations officer, in the case of Ukraine, the United States had the most significant advantage in that truth was on its side, and this truth was validated by open-source analysis. While open-source intelligence is certainly a novel development and reliant on technologies still in their relative infancy in many cases, there is a risk of self-fulfilling expectations. External checks such as Bellingcat and others were and are helpful in the present crisis, but only to a degree. In the future, these external checks will provide validation for the West’s information in some cases, and in others it will contradict the information being offered by Western intelligence. In this sense the open-source community itself could well become part of the competitive information warfare terrain moving forward. While the West had the advantage of the truth, that will not necessarily always be the case. Counter-open source intelligence efforts could well emerge, either through direct state-sponsorship of institutions—an anti-Bellingcat of sorts—or penetration of existing organizations.

Moreover, while the open-source community has performed admirably in many cases, there are limits to what it can verify. The government will still retain exquisite means that will remain beyond the ability of open-source analysts to confirm or validate. Open-source intelligence will, in the future, be able to corroborate the presence of forces and the movement of those forces, or even conduct small-scale intelligence investigations of their own—e.g., the identification of the GRU officers responsible for the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury, England. It will not, however, be able to divine the intentions of those within the Kremlin (or in the future, perhaps within Zhongnanhai in Beijing). This will remain the unique selling point of the intelligence community.

There is also the question of what would happen if open-source intelligence contradicts official government sources of information. Russia’s expanded invasion in February 2022 presented a perfect testbed for when things go right, and when truth and interests aligned seamlessly. Such alignment will not always be the case. Governments will undoubtedly have information the open-source community will not be able to access. There will also be times when governments are interested in pursuing a policy and using intelligence selectively to support that policy, which may result in contradictions with the open-source community. Squaring this difference will be a challenge as it all feeds into the broader information ecosystem; e.g., a trusted open-source community disagrees with the government assessment, the media picks up on said disagreement, the media questions the government assessment, and so on.

The question of utility, then, inevitably follows. The open-source community has proven to be a particularly useful aid in the present crisis, but a useful aid only for the Western body politic. For Russia, China, India, and the Global South, the fact that Bellingcat and other open source outlets verified the West’s intelligence matters far less, as does the intelligence itself. In fact, on the global stage, open-source intelligence is likely competing in a much more contested information environment. There are already innumerable accusations that Bellingcat and others are merely arms of the CIA or Special Intelligence Service, allowing those predisposed to be skeptical of their claims to dismiss them as Western propaganda, no different than that which is being produced by Moscow. Given the United States’ and the United Kingdom’s Cold War support for dissident movements, think tanks, and journalistic outlets, such claims are not without some historical grounding, however questionable they are today.

The Future of Intelligence as an Effect

There is a temptation to believe that the West’s performance in the run-up to the Ukraine War will become the norm in the future—in other words, that the frequent disclosures of sanitized sensitive intelligence will become commonplace. While not wholly misguided, it’s important to remember that the situation in Ukraine was unique. In the prelude to the largest war in Europe since the Second World War, Washington and its allies believed that all measures and steps were necessary. It was a crisis in which the United States was working to convince its allies of a clear and present danger and, to a lesser degree, to attempt to deter Russia from its course of action.

To expect the United States and its allies to attempt to communicate or signal through the use of strategic intelligence in a similar manner in every crisis would be misguided. Public dissemination of strategic intelligence can be a useful tool, but as University of Nottingham intelligence historian Rory Cormac noted, it is not a magic bullet. CIA Director William Burns also noted as much, saying, “I think we’re going to have to be careful looking at other instances, whether it’s in terms of cyber threats or other kinds of challenges that the United States and our allies will face in the future.”

There is also a risk of confirmation bias in light of the Ukraine effort. The campaign to convince skeptical European allies was to a degree successful due in no small part to the accuracy of the information and the fact that the Biden Administration was and is seen as an honest broker or trusted source. Should the Intelligence Community get it wrong in the future, or should the intelligence be seen as used to support a political purpose, as was the case in 2002 and 2003 vis a vis Iraq, that goodwill will rapidly erode. Intelligence is not perfect—in the words of one former operations officer, it is never confirmed, it is only corroborated, building an incomplete picture and filling in the missing bits with analysis.

The Donbass Devushka social media accounts are the largest English-speaking, pro-Russian accounts that engage in “Russian–style information warfare,” according to podcaster Sarah Bils. (https://nypost.com/2023/04/17/prorussian-propagandist-idd-as-us-navy-vet-whohelped- pentagon-intelligence-leak/).

While public dissemination of intelligence may not become the “new normal,” it is also unlikely to be a one-off development. Its efficacy in this crisis may well presage a change in the attitude of the intelligence community. The pendulum may have swung away from the hoarding of intelligence and risk aversion. Instead, the United States and the West may subsequently use intelligence more often and more frequently in a public manner.

There is also a risk that policymakers and the public more broadly come to expect this to be the “new normal,” nonetheless. Representatives of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) noted that they had not expected their Twitter threads on the Ukraine conflict to become as popular or as widely sought after as they eventually became. The MoD team quickly became a victim of its own success, with journalists, ministers, and the public alike clamoring for the latest releases. This forced the team to quickly staff up to support the effort, one that was intended only to be a temporary activity (indeed, it continues as of this essay’s drafting to post content nearly every day). This creates a risky dynamic—not every crisis will be the equivalent of Ukraine and receive similar attention—and resolving that dynamic will require careful and astute policymaking.

Another risk is blending the public use of intelligence with public affairs activities. The former requires nuance and context, while the latter requires pith and often snark, which eliminates the care necessary in intelligence products. Striking the right balance between the two will present both a challenge and a risk. Managing the expectations of both the public and politicians will also be critical. Simply because there is a snarky Twitter thread on the crisis du jour does not mean that the issue is not serious or that the government lacks insight into what is happening.

Striking the right balance between intelligence used by policymakers for advocacy, versus intelligence provided by the community for assessment, will require continuous due diligence and attention. The Butler Report highlighted this tension in the government’s case to the British public concerning Iraq’s WMD program:

The Government wanted an unclassified document on which it could draw in its advocacy of its policy. The JIC sought to offer a dispassionate assessment of intelligence and other material on Iraqi nuclear, biological, chemical and ballistic missile programmes…. But this will have put a strain on them in seeking to maintain their normal standards of neutral and objective assessment.

Will the United States and the West find themselves in a similar crisis scenario necessitating a similar campaign to publicly reveal strategic intelligence in the future? Almost certainly. In the run-up to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the United States would almost certainly selectively disclose intelligence to allies in the region, and to the public more broadly. Such a disclosure could follow a similar pattern to the run-up to Ukraine—an aggressive campaign of private communication with regional allies and Beijing, backed by sanitized high-level intelligence to convince policymakers of the imminence of the threat (and the West’s awareness thereof), supported by a public campaign of signaling and communication. Once again, the goal would not primarily be deterrence alone. It is unlikely in that instance that Beijing could be deterred from its decided course of action. Rather, such disclosures would seek to convince regional and Western allies of the threat in a bid to mobilize their support.

The Politics of Intelligence as an Effect

The Biden Administration’s conduct in the run-up to the expanded invasion of Ukraine was an example of the professional and measured use of sensitive intelligence to achieve the desired effect. The administration, to its credit, is fairly au fait with the practice, consumption, and use of intelligence, and its associated sensitivities.

In the future, this may not always be the case. It is possible that future administrations will not be as well-versed and knowledgeable about the use of intelligence and the process by which it is produced, or as circumspect in its use. Increased tensions between the intelligence community and elected officials and political appointees are not beyond the realm of possibility. Recent history has demonstrated significant tensions between the White House and the more apolitical intelligence community. It is incumbent upon the analysts and officers to inform policymakers of the limitations of intelligence. This was a key finding of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq.” The committee found that “The Intelligence Community did not accurately or adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.” Whether or not policy makers read the National Intelligence Estimate is another matter.

The success—perceived or real—of the United States’ and United Kingdom’s intelligence efforts in Ukraine may well have set expectations of both availability and utility far higher than results justify. This could create a cycle of increased pressure for more publicly usable intelligence in both crisis and non-crisis scenarios—pressures that the intelligence communities in Washington and London may feel compelled to meet. The metaphorical genie is out of the bottle as the public and politicians alike may well demand increased intelligence to support or justify state actions.

Indeed, by way of example, how does one turn off the social media taps from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence “Intelligence Update”? Concerning internal bureaucratic politics, the success of this effort could well be seen as a way to advance bureaucratic interests and gain increased political exposure and potential resources. It could become the “shiny new object” within the government toolkit. That path could easily lead to the increased politicization of intelligence, which is anathema to intelligence agencies.

The tension between policymakers and intelligence professionals is not new or unique—it is inherent to the push-pull of politics and intelligence. This is not a strategic challenge, but more of a tactical problem set. As found in the Butler Report:

We also recognise that there is a real dilemma between giving the public an authoritative account of the intelligence picture and protecting the objectivity of the JIC from the pressures imposed by providing information for public debate. It is

difficult to resolve these requirements. [emphasis added]

Successfully managing intelligence in the future will require additional considerations to reflect this new environment. This becomes increasingly relevant in the domain of information warfare. To this end, for example, one former senior Ministry of Defence representative suggested that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively, should establish clear guidelines on the use of intelligence in the public space, particularly in an information warfare context. Once again, this is not a novel development, but rather a response to the evolution of both the pace of events and the broader information ecosystem.

The efficacy of the Biden Administration’s efforts to convince allies of the threat from Russia was due in no small part to the discipline of the messaging effort. Both publicly and privately, tailored messages were delivered to specific audiences. In the case of Ukraine, this campaign would not have been nearly as successful had it been uncoordinated, the messaging unclear, and elements of the administration working at cross-purposes. Indeed, throughout the summer there appeared at times breaks in this messaging discipline. For instance, the disclosure in May of this year from unidentified American officials that Washington helped Ukraine target and kill Russian generals was quickly rolled back.

Leaks or selective disclosures outside of the central narrative, or even well-meaning private initiatives, could undermine the overall effort. This highlights the imperative of controlling the use of intelligence to avoid disclosures that are unintentionally escalatory or inflammatory—again, not a novel development, but one that has taken on new urgency given the speed at which information travels. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, prior to the February invasion, was at times critical of the information narrative, urging the West not to create a panic. While perhaps understandable, it does highlight the challenges of competing information narratives and the risks of unintended consequences.

In the main, there is the risk that intelligence is stretched beyond its intended meaning and is selectively used to support government policy. Avoiding this requires a set of savvy intelligence consumers who understand the limitations and capabilities of the product they receive. Equally, it requires a community of intelligence professionals able to push back when political considerations appear to be driving intelligence and analytical products toward a specific end.

Intelligence in Information Warfare

The United States’ use of intelligence in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is, arguably, part of an attempt by Washington to regain the information narrative against Moscow’s disinformation campaign. Russia’s use of the information space as a domain of warfare is well understood and stands in contrast with the United States’ understanding of that space.

As has been well documented, Russia wields a firehose of disinformation, falsehoods, propaganda, and “what about-ism.” It saturates the information space with conflicting narratives seeking to confuse, disrupt, and convince adversaries, allies, and domestic audiences alike.

By contrast, Cormac notes that there is a consistent Western modernist assumption that the truth will speak for itself. Yet, the West’s “truth” is but one narrative in an increasingly tumultuous information space in which adversaries constantly attempt to undermine the very concept of objective truth. The challenge for the United States and the United Kingdom is finding a way for the truth to cut through the noise, and for their intended signal to reach the targeted audience for maximum effect. Because disinformation has far more avenues to spread while trusted sources are fewer in number and prominence, the speed of disinformation is far outpacing the speed of truth.

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea via “little green men” and later involvement in Eastern Ukraine were conducted with sufficient obfuscation and subterfuge to muddle the West’s response. While there was significant reporting on the ground that the forces were Russian or Russian-backed, political obfuscation and an unwillingness to act ceded the information battlefield to Moscow. The United States’ aggressive campaign in the run-up to the expanded invasion in February 2022 should then be seen as a corrective to this failure, and a sign of a growing recognition of the importance of the information space and the need to better integrate intelligence into the toolkit of national power.

There is a balance to be struck between intelligence to inform policymakers and intelligence for the information war. While they can be mutually reinforcing, tensions between the two are likely to exist. The information warfare calculus will require careful calibration, particularly as it pertains to intelligence. This goes to the heart of the use of intelligence in an era of information warfare—what is the desired effect (or effects) and what is the best way of achieving them? What is gained and what is lost in sanitizing and disclosing intelligence? Will a source or exploit be exposed and, if so, at what cost? Will it be a short-term tactical gain at the expense of a long-term strategic benefit?

Such a calculus will inform policymakers and intelligence professionals in deciding what kind of intelligence is best suited for their objectives. Questions will naturally follow as to whether the information is appropriate for disclosure given the risks to sources and methods—a risk calculus that likely has changed in the wake of Ukraine. Does the immediacy of the crisis imply that greater risks to sources and methods are warranted? Or does the risk to long-term access outweigh the need for tactical intelligence successes? The messenger matters as much as the message. Statements from the White House or Department of State carry weight with traditional outlets, but feeding information to nontraditional partners or mediums may be more effective with different audiences.

In this new era of information warfare, the complexity of maintaining messaging discipline while communicating to differing audiences—policymakers at home and amongst allies, the adversary (Russia), and the broader world—will only grow. Discrepancies or differences in narratives will be easily discovered—what is said to a Russian audience could easily be compared with what is told to a European ally or even the American electorate. Social media has made this challenge infinitely more difficult—a quick Google search or scraping of Twitter’s API will allow easy analysis.

There is also the temptation to engage in straightforward deception through official channels, which carries great risk. Once again, this is not new. During the Second World War nearly every outlet available to the allies was fed similar information as part of Operation Fortitude to deceive Nazi Germany into believing the invasion was coming across the English Channel at a different point, and not to Normandy. Prior to D-Day, the Allies engaged in complex and multi-layered deception operations to convince Berlin that an invasion was targeting Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily.

The Cold War is also replete with examples of selective leaks to friendly journalists and the feeding of supported think tanks with official but off-the-record information to ensure the production of content supportive of the government’s narratives. While not outright propaganda, it certainly supported the government’s aims of undermining the Soviet Union. Of course, there is a difference between an official disclosure of accurate information for a desired political outcome and outright propaganda. There are legal restrictions, such as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Executive Order 12333, that are meant to control the production of propaganda and are intended to prohibit information designed for foreign audiences from reaching the American public. Maintaining these prohibitions and boundaries is arguably as important now in the era of social media as at any point prior.

The success of the efforts by the United States and Great Britain to use sensitive intelligence to seize the narrative before the most recent invasion of Ukraine was founded on the accuracy of the information presented, often validated by external open-source information. This is a marked recovery from the crisis of trust that resulted from the botched intelligence surrounding Iraq’s WMD program. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that, by omission or commission, a government could seek to advance narratives that are false or contain seeds of falsehood but carry the imprimatur of “intelligence.”

The reputational damage caused if such falsehoods are subsequently revealed, however, would be significant. That the UK’s Defence Intelligence Twitter account has been so successful is due in no small part to its accuracy and the fact that it carries the weight of the official Ministry of Defence seal. The information is factual, not speculative, and generally limited to the realm of that which is known or verifiable. Were Defence Intelligence to push unverified speculation—as it was seen to be doing by highlighting news stories alongside its own analysis—or to attempt to embark on a deception campaign, that trust would rapidly erode.

This is not to say that the government should not engage in deceptive activities. Arguably in the future deception and obfuscation will become even more important on the information battlefield. Rather, it is the mechanisms and vehicles that carry that information, and the labels that it carries, that will require greater due diligence. The Washington Post will want to know that the information that carries the label of “intelligence” is as factual as possible, and not being spun to suit a specific administration’s requirements or political narrative. Again, this is not a new challenge, but one that is likely to be exacerbated in this new information era.

Planning, Measurement, and Information Warfare

The future successful use of intelligence as part of an information warfare narrative requires prior planning and internal interrogation. In the run-up to Ukraine, intelligence was largely used in a crisis response manner. Russia’s invasion was looming; the United States sought to rally its allies, convince Ukraine of the urgency of the threat, and dissuade Moscow from acting. As discussed above, this effort was only partially successful.

Reflecting on the campaign in Ukraine and considering future scenarios, there is an opportunity to better plan how intelligence will be used. The key question underpinning any information effort must focus on the desired effect—what are policymakers trying to achieve? What are the desired effects or blend of effects? With the benefit of hindsight regarding Ukraine, was it a realistic goal to try to deter Putin or coerce Russia into not invading? Was a more realistic goal to sow dissent or mistrust within Putin’s inner circle by the selective release of information, or to convince him that there is a mole within the Kremlin? More broadly, was the goal to expose Russian propaganda to the world at large? Was the desired effect introducing an element of chaos and distraction within Kremlin’s counsels? A more modest goal, and one that was arguably achieved, might have been to simply make the operational environment for the Kremlin far more difficult than it would have otherwise been.

Russian military convoy marches towards the contact lines – Sputnik (https://npasyria.com/en/73303/).

Having decided on the desired effects, what information or intelligence is available to support this effort or this narrative? What or who is the best medium for conveying this information? How can all elements of the government be leveraged to achieve the desired effect? Finally, how will the efficacy of the information operation be judged?

This raises critical questions as to the intended audience, and whether it is even possible to achieve the desired effect given their preconceptions. In the case of France and Germany, for instance, there was considerable skepticism about American intelligence. This was the result of past failures of American policymakers in handling intelligence (e.g., Iraq), and built-in skepticism about the possibility of a major land war on the European continent. Skepticism may also have resulted from the limitations and failures of their own intelligence agencies to anticipate events. Parochial economic and political interests of residents in Paris and Berlin may also have played a role.

These questions are not fundamentally new. The United Kingdom’s robust efforts in the Second World War and both Washington and London’s campaigns throughout the Cold War were all informed by these very questions. What is new is the effort by the West to recapture the information narrative in an era characterized by chaotic social media, growing open-source intelligence, and disinformation that travels at the speed of light.

Conclusion

The United States’ use of intelligence in the run-up to Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine marked an evolution of statecraft. Washington learned from past failures and sought to recapture an information space that had largely been ceded to an aggressive Moscow.

The nature of the crisis—the first major state-on-state conflict in Europe since the Second World War—demanded a unique response. The United States thus sought to leverage intelligence in a manner to convince allies of the imminent threat and, to a lesser degree, dissuade Moscow from acting, while signaling that it had deep insights into the Kremlin’s plans. More than anything else, the United States had the benefit of the truth on its side—Washington was seen as a trusted information broker by most, particularly in the face of a belligerent and perceived pathological liar in Russia. Furthermore, the truth of the intelligence was validated by a far more established third-party open-source community than in previous incidents.

In many ways, the lessons to be drawn from this crisis are not unique. Future decisions on the use of intelligence to support military and diplomatic efforts will depend on a familiar calculus: Will the disclosure of information put sources and methods at risk? Will the gain outweigh the loss? Who is the best medium for the message? Most important, what is the desired effect?

What is unique is a rapidly evolving information domain, one in which information flows far faster and decisions must be made quicker. While the audiences may remain the same—domestic, adversary, and international—their habits of information consumption will demand far greater savviness in information operations than in the past. Washington may have achieved a nominal success in seizing the narrative in the Ukraine conflict, but it also potentially unleashed greater demands for its intelligence products than it is willing to provide. Not every crisis will be of the scale or scope of interstate war, nor will every crisis benefit so clearly from some intelligence informed truth-telling.

The Ukraine conflict strongly suggests that the use of intelligence in modern information warfare needs deeper consideration and analysis. We have seen selective intelligence releases by policymakers designed to achieve a signaling effect, for instance—not the least of which is related to the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. The West has also used intelligence to signal to its ostensible partner, Ukraine, its displeasure over the assassination of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist polemicist.

The Ukraine conflict may also prove somewhat unique. In a future crisis scenario, for instance, the attending pressures and rapid build-up toward an impending war may also work against an administration’s efforts to similarly craft or control the narrative, a situation one could easily imagine in the scenario of a rapid Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The reality to always keep in mind in all modern warfare is that the delta between the speed of disinformation and the speed of information will always favor the former over the latter.

The intelligence community will continue to be sine par in terms of exquisite collection and analysis. Suggestions that it will simply offload its intelligence collection requirements to the open-source community are spurious. It will undoubtedly increasingly leverage this community where appropriate (as well as increase its own in-house open-source capabilities), but as noted above, the OSINT community’s abilities are and will remain limited and will not always be suitable for a policymaking agenda. As General Sir Jim Hockenhull, Commander of the United Kingdom’s Strategic Command, recently said, the linkage of open-source and secret intelligence will prove invaluable in the future:

Whilst open source doesn’t provide the lid of the jigsaw box, it gives an almost infinite number of jigsaw pieces. The challenge now is that you can make an almost infinite number of pictures as a consequence of the available pieces. It also introduces a challenge in terms of discretion around the information, and we must filter with a view to being able to refine. This is where the combination of open source intelligence and secret sources of intelligence becomes invaluable in being able to see whether we can define greater understanding as a consequence.

The Ukraine conflict also suggests that the lessons of America’s post-Iraq intelligence reviews, as well as those conducted in the United Kingdom, are just as applicable and relevant today as when they were first drafted. There remains a fine balance between intelligence produced to inform policymakers and the use of intelligence to achieve desired effects. Maintaining this balance between assessment, analysis, and advocacy requires officials who understand and respect the difference. The temptations to blur the distinctions by omission or commission are very real, and the consequences are potentially disastrous.

While there exist processes and protocols for the declassification of information and its dissemination within the government and to the public, these processes are not designed for the demands of information warfare. The ad hoc process undertaken by the Biden Administration in regards to Ukraine, while effective, needs a procedural framework and template for future administrations to follow. That will be especially true in crisis situations where the politicians in power are not as savvy in the use of classified information and the distinctions between different kinds of intelligence. Equally, future administrations must be prepared for the possibility that the intelligence community might get it wrong.

The Ukraine War has shown that competing in the modern information domain requires leveraging all tools of national power. Intelligence, hitherto used primarily to inform policymakers, will be an increasingly key asset in that arsenal when judiciously and appropriately used. The role of intelligence will become even more important as the West seeks to recapture the initiative in the information war.

America’s intelligence community and the policymakers it supports demonstrated the potential utility of this information in the 2022 Ukraine conflict and the information war against Russia. Changes in modern warfare will necessitate adjustments in the way the intelligence community views intelligence—not just as a product to be provided to policymakers, but a ready-made tool to achieve strategic effects in a crisis scenario. Drawing the right lessons from its use in the Ukraine War—cognizant of that which has changed and that which has not—will ensure that Washington is better placed to wage the information wars of the future. PRISM

Notes

1 Dan Drezner, “Why is the U.S. intelligence community so chatty about Russia?” Washington Post, February 8, 2022, available at <https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/08/why-is-us-intelligence-community-so-chatty-about-russia/>.

2 Shane Harris and Paul Sonne, “Russia planning massive military offensive against Ukraine involving 175,000 troops, U.S. intelligence warns,” Washington Post, December 3, 2021, available at <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russia-ukraine-invasion/2021/12/03/98a3760e-546b-11ec-8769-2f4ecdf7a2ad_story.html>.

3 Shane Harris et al., “Road to war: U.S. struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion,” Washington Post, August 16, 2021, available at <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2022/ukraine-road-to-war/>.

4 Harris and Sonne, December 3, 2021.

5 Amy Mackinnon, Jack Detsch, and Robbie Gramer, “Russia Planning Provocation in Ukraine as Pretext for War,” Foreign Policy, January 14, 2022, available at <https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/14/russia-provocation-war-pretext-false-flag-ukraine-eastern-us-intelligence>.

6 Katherine Lawlor and Kateryna Stepanenko, “Warning Update: Russia May Conduct A Chemical or Radiological False-Flag Attack As a Pretest for Greater Aggression Against Ukraine,” Institute for the Study of War, March 9, 2022, available at <https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/warning-update-russia-may-conduct-chemical-or-radiological-false-flag-attack-pretext>.

7 David Stern and Robyn Dixon, “Ukraine’s Zelensky’s message is don’t panic. That’s making the West antsy,” Washington Post, February 7, 2022, available at <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/30/ukraine-zelensky-russia-biden/>.

8 Holly Ellyatt, “Germany urged to ‘wake up’ over Ukraine-Russia crisis, before it’s too late,” CNBC, February 7, 2022, available at <https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/germany-forced-to-defend-itself-over-ukraine-crisis.html>.

9 Maia de la Baume, “France spooked by intelligence failures,” Politico.EU, April 6, 2022, available at <https://www.politico.eu/article/france-military-intelligence-failure-russia-invasion-ukraine>.

11 Norman Kempster, “Cables Cited as Proof of Libyan Terror Role: 2 Messages to Kadafi Headquarters Predicted, Confirmed W. Berlin Bombing, Reagan Says,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1985, available at <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-15-mn-4815-story.html>.

12 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (Washington, D.C.: Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, 2004), available at <https://irp.fas.org/congress/2004_rpt/ssci_concl.pdf>.

13 Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (London, England: Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, July 2004), 87, available at <https://irp.fas.org/world/uk/butler071404.pdf>, The Butler Report.

14 The Report of the Iraq Inquiry (London, England: Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, July 2016), 115, available at <https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20171123122743/http:/www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/>.

15 Interview with the author.

16 Natasha Bertrand, Jim Sciutto, and Katie Bo Lillis, “US intel indicates Russian officers have had doubts about full scale Ukraine invasion,” CNN, February 7, 2022, available at <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-15-mn-4815-story.html>.

17 Julian Barnes, “U.S. Exposes What It Says Is Russian Effort to Fabricate Pretext for Invasion,” New York Times, February 3, 2022, available at <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/us/politics/russia-ukraine-invasion-pretext.html>.

18 Harris et al. August 16, 2022.

19 Central intelligence Agency. 2022. “Director Burns’ Remarks at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit,” September 8, 2022, <https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/director-burns-remarks-at-the-billington-cybersecurity-summit/>.

20 The Five Eyes is an intellingency-sharing alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

21 Pranshu Verma, “The Rise of the Twitter Spies,” Washington Post, March 23, 2022, available at <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/23/twitter-open-source-intelligence-ukraine/>.

22 Ian Birrell, “Ukraine’s online Mata Hari: Russian troops are being duped by woman, 18, using dating app to lure them into giving away their location in Ukraine by flirting with them,” Daily Mail, March 23, 2022, available at <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11289159/Invaders-duped-dating-app-teen-lures-Russian-soldiers-giving-away-location.html>.

23 Interview with the author.

24 Bellingcat Investigation Team, 2018, “Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga,” Bellingcat, September 26, 2018, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/.

25 Sarang Shidore, 2022, “Global South Again Shows Ambivalence on the Ukraine War,” Responsible Statecraft, October 13, 2022, <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/10/13/global-south-again-shows-ambivalence-on-the-ukraine-war/>.

26 Lauren Williams, 2022, “Sharing Secrets Has Been ‘Effective’ against Russia, but the Tactic Has Limits, CIA Chief Says,” Defense One, September 8, 2022, <https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2022/09/sharing-secrets-has-been-effective-against-russia-tactic-has-limits-cia-chief-says/376882/>.

27 Interview with the author.

28 The Butler Report, 113.

29 Karen DeYoung, “Tension between CIA and Trump White House persists over personnel and policy,” Washington Post, March 15, 2022, available at <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tension-between-cia-and-trump-white-house-persists-over-personnel-and-policy/2017/03/15/0694bf76-09b5-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html>.

30 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (Washington, D.C., Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, 2004), 16, available at <https://irp.fas.org/congress/2004_rpt/ssci_concl.pdf>.

31 The Butler Report, 114.

32 Interview with the author.

33 Matt Seyler, “U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say,” New York Times, May 4, 2022, available at <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/politics/russia-generals-killed-ukraine.html>.

34 Matt Seyler, “Officials push back on report US intel helping Ukraine target Russian generals,” ABC News, May 5, 2022, available at <https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/officials-push-back-report-us-intel-helping-ukraine/story?id=84518393>.

35 Karen DeYoung, “Ukraine crisis: Don’t create panic, Zelensky tells West,” BBC News, January 28, 2022, available at <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60174684>.

36 Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016), available at <https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html>.

37 Interview with the author.

38 Helene Cooper, Julian E. Barnes, and Eric Schmitt, “Russian Military Leaders Discussed Use of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Officials Say,” The New York Times, November 2, 2022, sec. U.S., <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/politics/russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html>.

39 Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman, Adam Entous, and Michael Schwirtz, “U.S. Believes Ukrainians Were behind an Assassination in Russia,” The New York Times, October 5, 2022, sec. U.S., <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/us/politics/ukraine-russia-dugina-assassination.html>.

40 Ministry of Defence, “How Open-Source Intelligence Has Shaped the Russia-Ukraine War,” GOV.UK. December 9, 2022, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/how-open-source-intelligence-has-shaped-the-russia-ukraine-war>.

ndupress.ndu.edu

17. Carter County in Tennessee part of warfare exercise ‘Robin Sage’ run by Fort Liberty as test for U.S. Special Forces

It is great to be an alum of Pineland University. So many great memories :-)

Training in Tennessee is new to me.

Carter County in Tennessee part of warfare exercise ‘Robin Sage’ run by Fort Liberty as test for U.S. Special Forces

cbs17.com · by Rodney Overton · September 24, 2023

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — For the first time in recent years, Robin Sage, the elite warfare exercise run out of Fort Liberty for would-be Green Berets includes part of Tennessee.

“Robin Sage,” the name of the test for candidates of U.S. Special Forces, is also underway in 26 North Carolina counties until Sept. 28, according to officials at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg.

The war games are the litmus test for soldiers striving to earn the Green Beret for more than 40 years. Those who run the simulated warfare typically alert residents about the event, as civilians could see flares or hear blank gunfire during the training.

Robin Sage, Fort Liberty combat test for Special Forces, starts later this month in 26 NC counties

The final test in Carter County in Tennessee “has minimal impact on the local population,” officials said Friday.

Soldiers during Robin Sage in 2023. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens)

The more than 6,700 Army Green Berets are highly trained commandos who usually work in 12-person teams that are often used for specialized combat and counterterrorism operations and to train other nations’ forces in battle skills.

During the Robin Sage training, students will be fighting in a fictional nation called “Pineland” which in the past has been an “environment of political instability characterized by armed conflict, forcing soldiers to analyze and solve problems.”

This year, Carter County in Tennessee is part of the test. Officials with the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School said there will be just one night in Tennessee as part of Robin Sage this year.

Soldiers in a past Robin Sage field exam. DVIDS photo

“Carter County was selected as a premiere location because the Appalachian Mountains provide mountainous terrain that simulate conditions Special Forces soldiers will likely encounter in future real-world missions,” Elvia Kelly, spokeswoman for the warfare center said in a statement to CBS 17.

Throughout the exercise, Special Forces candidates and Robin Sage role-players not only conduct warfare training missions such as controlled assaults but also live, eat and sleep in these civilian areas.

The state line also is significant in the Robin Sage test, Kelly said.

“Additionally, Carter County is located on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The state border provides a simulated international border crossing for Green Berets, who will likely encounter these kinds of situations in the real world,” Kelly wrote.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School prepare to assault a group of Special Forces students during the final phase of field training known as Robin Sage in central North Carolina, September 28, 2021. (U.S. Army Photo by K. Kassens)

In North Carolina, the 26 Robin Sage areas include Wake County, Moore County, Lee County, Hoke County, Guilford County and Harnett County.

Following the completion of the two-week Robin Sage exercise, soldiers will graduate from the Special Forces Qualification Course training. From there, they move on to their first assignments in the Army Special Forces.

Robin Sage has been conducted since 1974. Carter County in Tennessee has been used at various times since 2008, but a review of recent exercises has not found the county included in the test.

For a realistic experience, the role-playing “unconventional warfare exercise” involves more than the Special Forces candidates. Military service members will act as “guerrilla freedom fighters,” Special Forces officials say.

Blackhawk helicopters prepare to land with Special Forces candidates assigned to the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School as they take part in the final phase of field training known as Robin Sage in central North Carolina, September 28, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens)

Civilian volunteers usually also take part.

Fort Liberty military members act as realistic forces opposing the students and as guerrilla freedom fighters, also known as Pineland’s resistance movement.

The training mission exercises could include “controlled assaults” and “engagements” while soldiers train, eat, and sleep in the area.

Other North Carolina counties in this year’s Robin Sage are: Avery, Alamance, Anson, Bladen, Brunswick, Cabarrus, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Davidson, Duplin, Montgomery, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Stanly, and Union.

The Special Forces exam also takes place in the South Carolina counties of Chesterfield, Dillon and Marlboro.

cbs17.com · by Rodney Overton · September 24, 2023

18. Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context

Excerpts:

Outsiders watching the conflict should have humility, especially when pushing U.S.-led training in combined arms maneuver as a panacea to any military problem. Context matters in war, and the U.S. military does not train to prevail in the context that Ukraine faces.

...

The U.S. military should not push the Ukrainian military to conduct a high-risk form of warfare in the hope of a spectacular victory. Hans Delbrück explained that Ludendorff tried to wage a war of annihilation that revolved around a single, decisive victory, not recognizing that the strategic context of World War I was fundamentally different from the wars of the 19th century. Delbrück contrasted a strategy of annihilation with a strategy of exhaustion, which sought to gradually wear down an enemy across military, political, and economic fronts until continuing a war was no longer worthwhile. In its current context, Ukraine, with the support of all countries that are against wars of imperial conquest, should pursue an attritional operational approach as part of a broader strategy of exhaustion.

Some might fear that such a theory of victory plays into the Russian military’s strategy, but there is no perfect alternative. Prematurely pursuing maneuver will only allow Russia to attrit Ukrainian forces. Ukraine will need to destroy Russian artillery and inflict casualties that thin Russian reserves at a favorable rate that outstrips Russia’s ability to replace those losses. It will be slow and grinding with constant competitive adaptation. It may not produce spectacular victories for social media consumption. Winston Churchill said of defeating the German U-boats’ campaign of exhaustion in the North Atlantic: “It did not take the form of flaring battles and glittering achievements, it manifested itself through statistics, diagrams, and curves unknown to the nation, incomprehensible to the public.”

At some point, vulnerabilities might begin to appear in the Russian lines and present Ukraine with an opportunity for spectacular victories. Such an opportunity previously arose with Ukraine’s Kharkiv offensive in 2022. Similarly in 1918, the Allies finally could conduct a successful massed attack during the Hundred Days offensive when the German Army began to collapse. Any attempt to conduct large-scale maneuver before then would be suicidal.

It can be hard to convey the context in which Ukraine fights. In western Kandahar, I did not have to deal with triple-stacked T-62 mines designed to cripple any breaching vehicle. But I still remember the strange sense of freedom of movement that I felt when, the day after returning from Afghanistan, I went for a hike in the evergreen trees of Washington. Being able to step anywhere without following closely behind two mine detectors seemed a surreal luxury. Ukraine does not have the luxury of conducting maneuver. It needs to pursue unglamorous attrition, and we must be prepared to support it until it exhausts the Russian invaders. And the United States should not forget how poorly its last attempt to remake an army in its image fared.

Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Robert Rose · September 26, 2023

Among the vineyards seeded with improvised explosive devices in Zhari, Kandahar, there was no possibility of maneuver. By 2012, the Taliban had emplaced such a density of improvised explosive devices that any attempt at the battle drills taught by the U.S. Army to suppress and maneuver on an enemy were suicide. The Taliban were innovative. They knew that when they ambushed us, we would seek cover and then attempt to maneuver on them. So the Taliban emplaced improvised explosive devices along walls, berms, and any piece of terrain in the flat floodplain of the Arghandab River that we might use for cover. When we received fire, our best reaction was to not seek cover; it was to simply lay down and return fire. It went against all our training, but it was the correct approach for the context of our fight in Zhari.

Today, at a much larger scale, the Ukrainian military is facing an enemy that impedes maneuver. As a result, the Ukrainian Army is pursuing an attritional approach appropriate for the context of its fight. U.S. government sources, speaking anonymously to the media, have not appreciated the importance of Ukraine’s current situation. They have criticized the Ukrainian Army for not conducting “combined arms maneuver.” One narrative is that some form of American training, with a bit more synchronization and air support, would cut through the minefields and drive the Russian military from their trenches.

Outsiders watching the conflict should have humility, especially when pushing U.S.-led training in combined arms maneuver as a panacea to any military problem. Context matters in war, and the U.S. military does not train to prevail in the context that Ukraine faces.

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The U.S. Army trains “combined arms maneuver” as supposedly the secret sauce of its prowess. But combined arms maneuver is a comforting cliché. It mixes two concepts that, while related, do not necessarily follow. “Combined arms” simply means the sum of different capabilities is more than their parts. Separate arms used in conjunction will cover for the vulnerabilities of the others. It is not a novel idea. Thutmose III combined chariots, infantry, and archers at the Battle of Megiddo in 1457 BC. All effective armies use combined arms with context driving the specific mixes of the appropriate capabilities. Moreover, combined arms is not only associated with maneuver. It is useful for both maneuver and attrition.

Understanding Maneuver versus Attrition

“Maneuver” is a new term for an old concept. The idea seeks victory by breaking the cohesion of an opponent. In 331 BC, at the Battle of Gaugamela, Alexander the Great displayed a maneuver approach: He created a gap in the Persian line and charged at King Darius III, causing him to flee and breaking the command structure of the Persian army.

Though maneuver is often confused with simple movement, maneuver should be defined by its intended effect on an enemy. In 1989, the Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting, provided the most succinct definition of maneuver warfare: “A warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a series of rapid, violent, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which he cannot cope.” In its ideal form, maneuver repeatedly out-decides the enemy and exploits vulnerabilities until enemy forces are in such chaos that they cease to provide effective resistance.

Maneuver and attrition are on opposite ends of a sliding scale. All combat involves a blend of the two. Attrition seeks the material wearing down of an enemy through the efficient and synchronized use of combat power that results in favorable loss ratios. Attrition focuses on cumulative destruction and allows operational simplicity, provides relative predictability, and minimizes vulnerabilities.

Both approaches have their place in conflict. The Soviet theorist Georgii Isserson recognized that modern conflicts tend to open with a period of movement, which provides open flanks and gaps to exploit with maneuver. Every major war in the 20th and 21st centuries began with a period of movement, as the aggressor used strategic surprise to attack a defender before the defender could fully mobilize and establish a continuous front. If one side does not suffer defeat in the opening phase of a war, wars have tended to ossify as both sides mobilize enough forces to create a deep and continuous front. Today’s commentators should recognize Isserson’s insight when discussing maneuver.

Often seen as the epitome of maneuver, the German victories at the outset of World War II were enabled by specific contexts. In Poland, Germany’s victory was significantly assisted by the Polish Army’s incomplete mobilization and its vulnerable forward positioning. In France, the German Army took advantage of gaps in the flanks of the French Army as the bulk of the French forces moved to reinforce positions in Belgium. In 1941, the Soviet Union forward-deployed its forces in a vulnerable position. This allowed for the German military to again achieve impressive successes. But by 1943, the Soviet Union had fully mobilized its population and adopted effective defense techniques, leading to German tanks floundering during their attempted breakthrough in the dense minefields during the Battle of Kursk.

While the context early in the war for Germany made maneuver appropriate, later in the war, the context for the United States supported attrition. General Dwight Eisenhower pursued a broad-front approach in Western Europe that synchronized America’s material advantages to dependably grind down Germany while minimizing vulnerabilities for the German military to exploit.

The last time that the United States faced a continuous defense in depth was during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. After the initial war of movement ended and both China and the United Nations had the force densities to form an unbroken front, the U.S. military pursued an attritional approach. Due to this context, the United States did not pursue maneuver, even with air dominance and commanders experienced in the combined arms of World War II.

The U.S. Army Does Not Train for Such a Context

Commentators on the Ukraine War have sought to place North Atlantic Treaty Organization and particularly American training as central to Ukraine’s success. It provides a comforting story for American military superiority. While training on weapon systems and battle drills undoubtedly has proven valuable, it is unclear what insights the United States has offered Ukraine in understanding a threat it has been fighting since 2014.

As the Ukrainian military conducts its counteroffensive, it is pursuing an appropriate attritional approach. Ukraine faces an enemy that has created a continuous defense in depth. Russia has spent months scattering minefields, digging trenches, and emplacing obstacles. The Russian military can mass artillery on any force attempting to breach minefields and has reserves prepared to counterattack any breakthrough. It is possible that Ukraine was pushed too hard by overly optimistic Western advisors to gamble on a mechanized breakthrough of Russia’s defense at the start of its counteroffensive. During this offensive, the Ukrainian military lost an estimated 20 percent of the equipment provided by the West.

The U.S. Army does not train for this type of attritional fight. Any commentator who thinks that Ukraine is failing due to insufficient training from the West in “combined arms maneuver” should observe an American brigade training rotation at a combat training center. Any of the failings found in Ukraine’s attack — such as the timing of a suppressive artillery barrage or vehicles not identifying a cleared lane through a minefield — I have personally observed with nearly every brigade training at the 30 rotations I have participated in at the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center. While the combat training centers provide these brigades with superb training, they are not replicating the problem set experienced by the Ukrainian Army (nor should they; they should replicate the context in which the U.S. military expects to fight).

The last time the U.S. Army exercised a division with all its subordinate elements in a force-on-force exercise was during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the last few years, U.S. Army Forces Command’s training guidance has prioritized training at the company level and below. The rare time when U.S. Army brigades train as a whole unit is when they deploy to a combat training center, which occurs approximately once every 18 months. At these training events, brigades face a reinforced battalion of opposing forces that are only notionally a part of a larger scenario. During training, opposing forces are not tied into a continuous defense in depth. They are thinly spread and provide attacking forces opportunities for enveloping or bypassing them. Opposing forces do not employ mines anywhere near the density faced by the Ukrainian military, they do not mass artillery with decisive effects (it is unproductive to wipe out a battalion after a few minutes of training an attack when it spent millions to come to the training), and they do not employ operational-level reserves for counterattacks.

Meanwhile, when working with the Army, the U.S. Air Force focuses on the corps-level deep fight against high-payoff targets. Some commentators think that American airpower would clear enemies from their trenches, but the Air Force has moved away from close air support and is not employed for such tasks during the Army’s simulated warfighter exercises. Furthermore, the Army is centralizing artillery in divisions to concentrate on the deep fight, so it is unclear how the United States would provide massed, sustained, and responsive fires during an attack on a large-scale trench system to achieve a breakthrough.

Within this attritional approach, the Ukrainian military has employed effective combined arms at a small unit level that is not seen in U.S. forces. Based on simulations that lack context and the friction of war, the U.S. Army has been moving toward centralizing assets in a manner similar to France’s methodical battle of the 1930s. This approach will continue to slow decision-making and operational tempo. When situations at the front change, soldiers will need to wait for the prolonged planning processes of headquarters removed from the fight to make a decision. They waste precious minutes and will risk being overrun as they call for a fire mission that is routed from battalion, to brigade, to division, then back down to a divisional artillery headquarters, a field artillery battalion, and finally a firing battery. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has decentralized to an impressive degree with unmanned aerial systems tied into platoon operations and artillery working on demand with an Uber-like app. The Ukrainian approach is a much quicker and more flexible form of warfare than the centralized target working groups and 72-hour air tasking orders that drive American operations.

A further critique has been that “Ukraine hasn’t been able to master combined arms warfare at scale.” Instead of attempting a single, massed breakthrough, they are attacking along three axes in dispersed attacks. Soviet interwar theorists, such as Aleksandr Svechin and Vladimir Triandafillov, examined the difficulty of overcoming a continuous defense in depth. They recognized the value of multiple axes of attack to prevent an enemy from massing their operational reserves on a single breakthrough. They highlighted the Brusilov offensive in 1916 as an example of a broad front offensive with multiple breakthroughs that overwhelmed the Austro-Hungarian reserves. Ukraine is attempting a similar approach, which is even more appropriate given the contemporary threat of Russian unmanned aerial systems providing observation for concentrated artillery fires on any massing of Ukrainian forces.

Biting and Holding

To deal with these threats, Ukraine leads attacks with small groups of infantry supported by tanks and artillery in a combined arms approach. This method is similar to Australian General John Monash’s synchronized, limited attacks in 1918. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery later said, “I would name Sir John Monash as the best general on the western front in Europe.” Monash valued his soldiers’ lives and pursued well-synchronized, limited attacks at favorable casualty rates compared to the war’s earlier offensives. Monash wanted to avoid the “inefficiency” of previous victories.

By 1918, the Allies had recognized that the context of the war meant that a massed “big push” as so murderously attempted at the Somme would not create a breakthrough against an enemy defending in depth with large operational reserves. In 1917, the German military had developed an effective, elastic defense that could absorb attempts at a breakthrough. The German military’s elastic defense placed fewer troops in the first lines of trenches, which minimized losses from artillery barrages. Troops were postured in successive trench lines to counterattack the flanks of vulnerable Allied troops after the attackers culminated by pushing out of artillery and logistics range. The Russian military follows the fundamentals of Germany’s elastic defense today in Ukraine.

In response, the British military developed the “bite and hold” approach that Monash perfected. The approach put Germany’s elastic defense in a dilemma. British attacks did not attempt to exploit initial successes but instead transitioned to the defense and defeated Germany’s expected counterattacks. “Bite and hold” took advantage of the German military’s thinly defended forward trench lines and did not risk culmination. The Germany military could either abandon its elastic approach or gradually lose in a war of exhaustion.

Instead of the Allies, it was the German military that attempted a decisive breakthrough in the 1918 spring offensive. The German army massed forces brought in from the Eastern Front after Russia withdrew from the war. It used stormtroopers trained in fast-moving infiltration tactics that had previously produced lopsided victories in the battles of Riga in the Baltic and Caporetto in Italy. Germany’s offensive no doubt seemed like what many commentators hoped Ukraine would have attempted. But Erich von Ludendorff launched the German offensive in an act of desperation. He did not understand that a decisive battle of annihilation was impossible in the context of the Western Front. It did not provide the same opportunities as the collapsing Russian Army in a postrevolutionary crisis or the shaky Italian Army clinging to mountainsides. While the German military had some initial success by exploiting a vulnerable seam between the British and French armies, the offensive bled and exhausted its army as the Allies brought in their reserves. The offensive broke the German Army and any hopes of victory.

Have Humility in Ourselves and Faith in Ukraine

The U.S. military should not push the Ukrainian military to conduct a high-risk form of warfare in the hope of a spectacular victory. Hans Delbrück explained that Ludendorff tried to wage a war of annihilation that revolved around a single, decisive victory, not recognizing that the strategic context of World War I was fundamentally different from the wars of the 19th century. Delbrück contrasted a strategy of annihilation with a strategy of exhaustion, which sought to gradually wear down an enemy across military, political, and economic fronts until continuing a war was no longer worthwhile. In its current context, Ukraine, with the support of all countries that are against wars of imperial conquest, should pursue an attritional operational approach as part of a broader strategy of exhaustion.

Some might fear that such a theory of victory plays into the Russian military’s strategy, but there is no perfect alternative. Prematurely pursuing maneuver will only allow Russia to attrit Ukrainian forces. Ukraine will need to destroy Russian artillery and inflict casualties that thin Russian reserves at a favorable rate that outstrips Russia’s ability to replace those losses. It will be slow and grinding with constant competitive adaptation. It may not produce spectacular victories for social media consumption. Winston Churchill said of defeating the German U-boats’ campaign of exhaustion in the North Atlantic: “It did not take the form of flaring battles and glittering achievements, it manifested itself through statistics, diagrams, and curves unknown to the nation, incomprehensible to the public.”

At some point, vulnerabilities might begin to appear in the Russian lines and present Ukraine with an opportunity for spectacular victories. Such an opportunity previously arose with Ukraine’s Kharkiv offensive in 2022. Similarly in 1918, the Allies finally could conduct a successful massed attack during the Hundred Days offensive when the German Army began to collapse. Any attempt to conduct large-scale maneuver before then would be suicidal.

It can be hard to convey the context in which Ukraine fights. In western Kandahar, I did not have to deal with triple-stacked T-62 mines designed to cripple any breaching vehicle. But I still remember the strange sense of freedom of movement that I felt when, the day after returning from Afghanistan, I went for a hike in the evergreen trees of Washington. Being able to step anywhere without following closely behind two mine detectors seemed a surreal luxury. Ukraine does not have the luxury of conducting maneuver. It needs to pursue unglamorous attrition, and we must be prepared to support it until it exhausts the Russian invaders. And the United States should not forget how poorly its last attempt to remake an army in its image fared.

Become a Member

Maj. Robert G. Rose, U.S. Army, is the operations officer for 3rd Squadron, 4th Security Forces Assistance Brigade. He previously served at the National Training Center and the Joint Readiness Training Center. He deployed to Afghanistan as the J35 counterthreat finance planner for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and with 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, for Operation Enduring Freedom. He holds an undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and graduate degrees from Harvard University and, as a Gates scholar, from Cambridge University.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Robert Rose · September 26, 2023

19. The Billionaire Keeping TikTok on Phones in the U.S.

The Billionaire Keeping TikTok on Phones in the U.S.

Financier Jeff Yass made a big bet on the app, and he’s a top donor to lawmakers who support it

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/jeff-yass-tiktok-bytedance-ban-congress-15a41ec4?mod=RSSMSN

By John D. McKinnonFollow

and Stu WooFollow

Sept. 20, 2023 12:01 am ET

WASHINGTON—TikTok had hardly any friends in government earlier this year as the Biden administration, Congress and state legislatures were threatening to ban the Chinese-owned video giant.

TikTok now has many more friends, with something in common: backing from billionaire financier Jeff Yass. They’ve helped stall attempts to outlaw America’s most-downloaded app.

Yass’s investment company, Susquehanna International Group, bet big on TikTok in 2012, buying a stake in parent company ByteDance now measured at about 15%. That translates into a personal stake for Yass of 7% in ByteDance. It is worth roughly $21 billion based on the company’s recent valuation, or much of his $28 billion net worth as gauged by Bloomberg.

Yass is also one of the top donors to the Club for Growth, an influential conservative group that rallied Republican opposition to a TikTok ban. Yass has donated $61 million to the Club for Growth’s political-spending arm since 2010, or about 24% of its total, according to federal records.

Club for Growth made public its opposition to banning TikTok in March, in an opinion article by its president, at a time when sentiment against the platform among segments of both parties was running high on Capitol Hill. Days later, Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) stood up on the Senate floor and quashed an attempt to fast-track a bill by Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) to ban downloading of the TikTok app.

“We will be acting like the Chinese government if we ban TikTok here,” Paul said around that time.

In June, Yass donated $3 million to a political committee backing Paul. Including that contribution, Yass and his wife, Janine Yass, have donated more than $24 million to Paul or committees that support him since 2015, according to federal records. Club for Growth has given a Paul-supporting political committee $1.8 million since 2020.

Another Club for Growth-backed Republican who came out against a TikTok ban was Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), an important ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Massie urged House GOP leadership to oppose a different effort in the Senate, a bipartisan bill targeting TikTok that had the backing of the Biden administration, people familiar with the situation say.

Since 2020, Jeff and Janine Yass have given $32,200 to Massie or a political-action committee supporting him.

Club for Growth has been Massie’s biggest overall political contributor since 2011, directing $192,000 to him from the organization’s supporters, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks political contributions.

A spokesman for Massie said the congressman doesn’t like TikTok, but banning it wasn’t right because “the cure is worse than the disease.” A spokeswoman for Paul said his “opposition to censorship and his unwavering support for the First Amendment are consistent and deeply held libertarian beliefs.” Both libertarian-minded Republicans have broken party lines in the past to take hard-line stances on protecting free speech.

Rep. Thomas Massie came out against a TikTok ban. PHOTO: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Other Republicans in Congress, including at least five others besides Paul and Massie who received financial support from Club for Growth, have also objected to legislation targeting TikTok. With many Democrats already skeptical of a ban, the whittling away of Republican support killed momentum for several bills, including the bipartisan Restrict Act backed by the Biden administration.

The lobbying effort by Yass is notable in part because of the extent of his political spending—he and his wife were the third-largest conservative donors nationally in the 2022 election cycle, chipping in about $49 million to support conservative candidates and causes, according to OpenSecrets.

The investment Yass has been seeking to protect in Washington is both valuable and vulnerable. While much of the potential legislation could affect multiple companies, and many businesses including Chinese e-commerce giant

Alibaba Group and Australian financial services firm Macquarie Group have been lobbying Congress to protect these interests, the laws would have an outsize effect on TikTok.

“I’ve supported libertarian and free market principles my entire adult life,” Yass said. “TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals. The idea of banning TikTok is an anathema to everything I believe.”

TikTok parent ByteDance often is described as the world’s most valuable startup—last year it valued itself at $300 billion when it bought back shares from existing investors. Its ultimate goal is to go public, most likely in Asia, and the value of its IPO would be badly damaged if TikTok were banned in the U.S.

Some leading Biden administration officials and Congress members say the Chinese government could order ByteDance to spy on American TikTok users, or determine what videos they watch. A spokeswoman for TikTok said the company wouldn’t comply with such a request and that it has proposed to the Biden administration a $1.5 billion plan to silo its U.S. operations from China.

TikTok’s own lobbying efforts in Washington have included hundreds of meetings and other contacts, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of its main arguments to Republicans has been that a majority of ByteDance’s shareholders are Americans, and some are well-connected conservatives, this person said.

Influence campaign

The lobbying appears to have helped push House Republican lawmakers to back away from the idea of a ban on TikTok and focus instead on legislation that would put new legal protections in place for users’ personal data.

“One idea was to ban it, another idea was to protect the data,” McCarthy, the House speaker, said in an interview. “At one time, it looked like the ban was the most powerful, but now it looks like maybe this [is the] real solution…It’s like, I’m taking a different road to a different place, but we’re all going the same place.”

Hawley chalks the change up to the TikTok influence campaign. “TikTok and its dark-money cronies are spending vast amounts of money to kill these bills,” he said when asked about the role of Yass and Club for Growth in the debate over TikTok.

Along with backing GOP candidates who support its views, the Club for Growth often targets Republican incumbents who don’t agree with its priorities by supporting rivals in primary contests.

Some conservatives and libertarian members of Congress have traditionally rejected what they believe are intrusions by the government into free speech and how businesses operate, issues some have raised with the TikTok bills.

Others have also opposed the legislation, including media figures such as Tucker Carlson.

Club for Growth president David McIntosh, shown in 2017. He said individual Americans, not the government, should decide what content people can view. PHOTO: TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL/ZUMA PRESS

Club for Growth began making TikTok a priority around late 2022, when the U.S. government banned federal employees from using TikTok on work devices, said Club for Growth president David McIntosh.

McIntosh said the group started asking political candidates seeking Club for Growth’s financial support a new question: What’s your view on the TikTok ban?

As TikTok faced growing political risk, Yass consulted with Club for Growth periodically, asking which members of Congress would be willing to take a side on the issue, said McIntosh, a former Republican congressman from Indiana.

McIntosh wrote his opinion column without consulting Yass beforehand, he said, though he did show Yass the column after it was published on the Fox News website.

“He liked it,” McIntosh said.

Both Yass and Club for Growth oppose a TikTok ban because they say individual Americans, not the government, should decide what content people can view, McIntosh said.

“It’s a natural alignment of his libertarian philosophy, which is what he uses to direct his political giving,” McIntosh said of Yass. “It also aligns in this case with his financial interests.”

Sam Chen, a Pennsylvania-based Republican political consultant who has worked for some Yass-backed candidates, said Yass’s financial interests align with his philosophy of limited government.

“Jeffrey Yass is a libertarian,” Chen said. “He’s supporting people that vote this way. This is kind of how politics works.”

Tech startups

The 65-year-old Yass, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., made his first riches when he and poker-playing buddies from the State University of New York at Binghamton found ways to tilt horse-racing odds in their favor.

The classmates went on to found Susquehanna. In the 1980s, the Philadelphia-area firm helped pioneer the use of quantitative models and computers to make rapid-fire trades for stock options and other securities.

Poker is central to Susquehanna’s approach. New hires train by playing Texas Hold’em, Yass told a podcast in 2020, where they learn to analyze probabilities and to size up their rivals. “The analogy between being a poker player and a trader—the same kind of decision-making theory—is very similar,” said Yass, who finished 12th in a World Series of Poker event in 2013.

More recently Susquehanna has moved into venture-capital and private-equity investments, including in Chinese tech startups.

Susquehanna invested $2.08 million in ByteDance in 2012, the year it was founded, and its funds have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars since, according to a lawsuit over compensation brought against Susquehanna by contractors who worked in China.

Besides ByteDance, Susquehanna’s Chinese office lists on its website nearly 400 other companies it has invested in. They include Home Inn, one of China’s largest budget hotel chains, and a variety of tech companies.

At Club for Growth, McIntosh said the question about the TikTok ban posed to candidates was designed to “suss out how they think about issues” and that Yass never insisted Club for Growth take a stand on TikTok. “Jeff would never direct the Club for Growth to take an action or a position on things,” said McIntosh. “But we naturally aligned on how we choose candidates.”

ByteDance offices in Beijing. PHOTO: ANDREA VERDELLI/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Some Club-endorsed politicians, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), have strongly supported a TikTok ban.

Club for Growth also supports issues such as free trade, school choice and spending cuts.

Some GOP Congressional staffers took note of the Yass-TikTok connection this spring. “Club for Growth shilling for TikTok and what a coincidence that Jeff Yass is invested,” one staffer wrote in a text to others, seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fla.), who according to OpenSecrets received $61,000 from Club for Growth supporters for her 2022 election campaign, said she hasn’t discussed a TikTok ban with Yass or McIntosh. She said she supports a ban on TikTok but considers the Biden-backed Restrict Act to be government overreach. She said she prefers legislation that bans TikTok without giving officials broader powers.

Luna attributes the stalling of TikTok legislation to two factors: lawmakers who underestimate the national security risk of the Chinese-owned app, and lobbying by TikTok and its allies.

As calls for banning the social-media app grew louder earlier this year, TikTok hired top-flight political strategists and rallied the platform’s popular influencers to show members of Congress the app’s popularity.

U.S. companies with operations in China, which could be vulnerable to potential retaliation from Beijing if the U.S. moved against TikTok, also opposed a ban. Many other U.S. companies have a stake in TikTok’s continued operations, including Oracle, which hosts TikTok data on its cloud servers.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said she supports a ban on TikTok but considers the Biden-backed Restrict Act to be government overreach. PHOTO: ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES

“There’s a lot of money [going into] keeping TikTok on people’s phones,” Luna said.

TikTok has disputed claims that user data could be turned over to the Chinese government ever since former President Donald Trump sought to ban the app in 2020, an effort blocked by two federal judges who ruled that Trump exceeded his authority.

TikTok later announced its $1.5 billion plan to further safeguard U.S. data, dubbing it “Project Texas” in a nod to the expanded role it meant for Austin-based

Oracle. The plan is designed to protect the data of American users from China by storing it in a U.S.-based subsidiary operated by U.S.-government-approved employees and board directors.

Campaign trail

The Treasury Department-led national-security panel called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. earlier this year ordered ByteDance to sell or face a ban, according to people familiar with the matter. ByteDance in recent weeks met with Cfius officials again to discuss its proposal to protect data, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The Biden administration hasn’t indicated any change in its effort to ban the app or force its sale. It could still try to use executive powers to ban it, or force a sale to remove Chinese control. But without legislation, analysts say those orders could be overturned in court, as shown by the Trump-era court rulings.

Such doubts helped trigger a range of legislative proposals such as the proposed Restrict Act by Sens. Mark Warner (D., Va.) and John Thune (R., S.D.), which would give the Commerce Secretary authority to ban information platforms owned by companies in adversarial countries such as China.

TikTok and its allies said the Restrict Act would give the government too much power—a point that dovetails with the libertarian ethos of Yass and Club for Growth.

Rep. Rick McCormick (R., Ga.), said he didn’t know Club for Growth opposed a TikTok ban when he received $115,000 from the group’s supporters, according to OpenSecrets, for his 2022 campaign. But he said the group’s position is “very much consistent with my worldview.”

“It’s a dangerous precedent to start telling society what they can or can’t access, even if it’s detrimental,” he said. “Communist countries do that.”

Other Club for Growth-backed House Republicans who oppose the Warner-Thune bill include Harriet Hageman (R., Wyo.) and Barry Moore (R., Ala.).

Hageman said she has concerns about TikTok but that she opposed the Warner-Thune bill because of “overreach and constitutionality issues” that would enable more censorship of free speech. Moore said the legislation “poses a threat to the First Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

Sen. John Thune and Sen. Mark Warner proposed the Restrict Act, which would give the Commerce Secretary authority to ban information platforms owned by companies in adversarial countries such as China. PHOTO: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

More recent proposals still under development on Capitol Hill have scaled back the powers the government could wield against platforms such as TikTok compared with the Restrict Act, but would still allow for forced divestment of companies that pose an undue national-security risk, according to a draft of the Senate Commerce Committee plan.

The debate over banning TikTok has also surfaced on the GOP presidential primary campaign trail. The candidates Yass has backed—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina—both share his support for school choice and other issues. They have also taken a measured approach on TikTok compared with Trump. Representatives for Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Yass gave a committee backing DeSantis $100,000 in February 2022, then added $2.5 million a year later.

DeSantis signed a bill to ban TikTok on state-issued devices in May, months after 21 other GOP governors had approved similar bans during a six-week period from last November to January.

Sen. Tim Scott is alone among leading GOP presidential primary candidates in not advocating for a TikTok ban. PHOTO: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

In July, DeSantis said he would weigh a nationwide ban of TikTok if elected president.

That came after Yass donated a total of $600,000 between March and June to a political committee backing Scott.

Scott is alone among leading GOP presidential primary candidates in not advocating for a TikTok ban, although he has said he thinks it’s best to separate the data of American users from China.

The DeSantis campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Scott campaign said the candidate has consistently fought for tougher action against China.

Brody Mullins and Raffaele Huang contributed to this article.

Write to John D. McKinnon at John.McKinnon@wsj.com and Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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