Quotes of the Day:
"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."
- Sigmund Freud
"It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue."
- Aristotle
"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."
- Coco Chanel
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 11 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here's What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies. by Mark Hertling
3. Army generals to be nominated to lead European Command, Special Operations Command: report
4. Leaders Update Special Ops Vision, Strategy
5. SOF Vision and Strategy
6. 70 years and Counting: U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School celebrates anniversary
7. Security Assistance to Ukraine Continues Unabated
8. For America’s security aid programs, who will run the show?
9. British veteran of US Marines who battled ISIS is now helping Ukraine's special forces take the fight to Putin's battalions
10. Opinion | America Needs to Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real
11. Ukraine Situation Report: Leopard Tanks Could Arrive In Six Weeks With Germany's Approval
12. U.S. SOF Vision & Strategy - 2022 | SOF News
13. Analysis | Congress comes off the sidelines on Ukraine. Will it stay on the field?
14. Opinion | Trump is wrong about war. Russia’s failure in Ukraine shows why. By Max Boot
15. Mariupol mayor says siege has killed more than 10K civilians
16. Concern over possible use of chemical weapons as battle rages in besieged Ukrainian port
17. The Army’s transformation begins with these new units
18. Russia’s war in Ukraine is about to enter a new phase
19. The US Navy SEALs just turned 60. Here are the missions that have made them legendary.
20. What the U.S. Military Needs to Learn from the Ukraine War by James Stavridis
21. Supporting Ukraine for the Long War
22. The Clarion Call of Failure in Afghanistan
23. A Chinese Invasion of Taiwan: What Response Would Americans Support?
24. What Ukraine Needs Now
25. FDD | To be effective, US policy on PRC must be actioned early and often
26. The Ukraine Temptation – Biden Should Resist Calls to Fight a New Cold War
27. FDD | Putin’s war perverts a personal geography
28. FDD | Uyghur Tribunal Emerges as a Model for Addressing War Crimes in Ukraine
29. FDD | The U.S. Should Sanction Gaza’s Popular Resistance Committees
30. The Right’s Speech-Code Moment
31. Russia Used ‘Mobile Crematoriums’ to Dispose of Mariupol Dead, Mayor Says
32. Russia ‘using weapons smuggled by Iran from Iraq against Ukraine’
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 11 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 11 (PUTIN'S WAR)
Mason Clark, Karolina Hird, and George Barros
April 11, 8:30pm ET
Special Edition: Army General Aleksandr Vladimirovich Dvornikov
US intelligence reported over the weekend of April 9-10 that Russian Army General Aleksandr Vladimirovich Dvornikov, commander of the Southern Military District, is now in overall command of Russian operations in Ukraine. This news is unsurprising; Dvornikov is the most senior of the three Russian military district commanders involved in the invasion, and the Russian military is concentrating its efforts almost exclusively in the area of Ukraine that Dvornikov had already been commanding. Had Putin selected another officer to command the entire war effort, he would likely have had to relieve Dvornikov for these reasons. There is no reason to suppose, therefore, that Dvornikov was specifically selected to take control of the war effort for any particular skills or experience he might have. Nor is there reason to think that the conduct of the Russian war effort will change materially more than it was already changing from the abandonment of the drive on Kyiv and the focus on the east. This update, which we are publishing in addition to our regular military operations assessments, explains Dvornikov’s career history and experience in Syria, the challenges he faces, and what his appointment means for the Russian campaign in Ukraine.
Dvornikov has commanded the Southern Military District since September 2016, capping a military career that began in 1978. He graduated from the Ussuriysk Suvorov Military School—a Soviet military boarding school—at age 18 in 1978.[1] Dvornikov then served as a platoon commander, company commander, and battalion chief of staff in the Far Eastern Military District (the predecessor of Russia’s current Eastern Military District) throughout the 1980s.[2] From 1991 to 1994, Dvornikov served as deputy commander and then commander of a motorized rifle battalion assigned to the Western Group of [Soviet] Forces in Germany. From 1995 to 2000, Dvornikov served as chief of staff and then commander of an unspecified motorized rifle regiment of the Moscow Military District (which merged into the current Western Military District in 2010). He then served as chief of staff and commander of another motorized rifle regiment in the North Caucasian Military District (now part of the Southern Military District) until 2003, during which time he likely participated in the Second Chechen War. From 2005 to 2008 Dvornikov served as a deputy commander and then chief of staff of the 36th Army (part of the current Eastern Military District). Dvornikov commanded the 5th Red Banner Combined Arms Army of the Far Eastern Military District from 2008 to 2010. Dvornikov served as a deputy commander of the Eastern Military District from 2010 to 2012, then as chief of staff of the Central Military District from April 2012 to 2015.
Dvornikov commanded Russia’s forces in Syria from the official beginning of the Russian intervention in September 2015 to July 2016.[3] He has commanded the Southern Military District since September 20, 2016.[4] Putin promoted Dvornikov on June 23, 2020, to the rank of army general, the second-highest rank in the Russian military and one not held by any other military district commander.[5] Dvornikov is Russia’s senior-most military district commander, outranking the other two military district commanders involved in the invasion of Ukraine, and a likely candidate (along with the commander of the Aerospace Forces, Army General Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin), to succeed Valery Gerasimov as Russia’s next chief of the general staff. [6]
Dvornikov’s career path is not unusual among senior Russian general officers.[7] Dvornikov’s foundational military experience—like many of his fellow general officers—was his assignment as a regimental chief of staff and then regimental commander in the North Caucasian Military District from 2000 to 2003, during which period he almost certainly participated in the Second Chechen War. Dvornikov’s promotion path from regimental command to Military District Commander was typical. Russian officers usually change military districts with each promotion, as Dvornikov did—moving through the contemporary equivalents of the Southern, Eastern, and Central military districts until taking command of the Southern Military District.[8] Dvornikov’s career path through 2015 was thus unremarkable for a very successful general officer.
Dvornikov’s experience commanding the Russian deployment to Syria—and targeting of civilians during that deployment—was also not in itself unique or an indicator of a particular skill set. Many Western media outlets have focused on Dvornikov’s experience in Syria and highlighted Russian targeting of civilians under his command. All of Russia’s current military district commanders, as well as the commanders of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, Airborne forces, and Military-Political Directorate, have served at least one tour of duty in Syria as chief of staff or commander of Russia’s forces in Syria.[9] It appears to have been Russian military policy to rotate senior officers through service in Syria and then select for further promotion only those who had served in Syria.[10] Dvornikov, in fact, has less experience in Syria than many of his contemporaries, serving one 10-month tour as commander. By comparison, Western Military District Commander Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlev and Eastern Military District Commander Colonel General Alexander Chayko served in Syria for two tours each, totaling 24 and 20 months respectively.[11] Dvornikov’s command of Russian operations in Syria that killed large numbers of civilians is similarly, and tragically, not unusual. Dvornikov has gained attention in Western media as the “Butcher of Aleppo,” but Russian forces targeted Syrian civilians and critical infrastructure throughout the Russian intervention in Syria, making all Russia’s current military district commanders and many of its senior military leaders complicit in such crimes.[12]
Dvornikov’s one unusual skill may result from his particular experience establishing new command structures in complicated coalition settings because he was the first Russian commander in Syria. Dvornikov established Russia’s initial command structure in Syria from the beginning of the Russian intervention in September 2015. Dvornikov has written extensively on the experience of standing up Russian operations in Syria, including a March 2016 retrospective published while he was still serving in Syria and several articles following his return to Russia.[13] He stressed the importance of establishing a unified command and control structure for Russian advisers, the Russian Air Force, and various conventional and unconventional pro-Assad forces. Dvornikov particularly claimed (likely exaggerating) in “Staffs for New Wars” (July 2018) that he rebuilt the shattered and demoralized pro-Syrian forces into a cohesive fighting force. Dvornikov’s writing additionally stresses the importance of creating a unified command structure for all Russian forces cutting across unit and service boundaries. Dvornikov’s Syrian experience may help him integrate the battered elements of the Western, Eastern, and Central military districts coming his way as reinforcements, as well as the Chechen forces of Ramazan Kadyrov and the proxy militias of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
His experience overseeing the pro-Assad offensive that recaptured Aleppo also likely gave him more insight into the conduct of modern urban warfare than his successors in Syria, although urban warfare in Syria was not confined to Aleppo. Dvornikov commanded the final pro-Assad offensive that recaptured Aleppo—Syria’s largest city, with a pre-war population of over 2 million—in 2016. Aleppo was one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Syrian Civil War and likely the main source of recent Russian lessons learned on modern urban combat.[14] But Dvornikov was not specially selected for command because of any experience in urban warfare. To begin with, he took command of the Southern Military District in 2016, likely years before Putin planned to invade and occupy Ukraine. If Putin or Gerasimov were specifically choosing an officer with experience in urban warfare experience to command something, moreover, it would have made much more sense to assign Dvornikov to the battle for Kyiv. Dvornikov has commanded Russian operations in Mariupol in the current Russian invasion of Ukraine all along. He may have been applying—or attempting to apply—many of the lessons learned in Syria, but his conduct of urban warfare in Mariupol has been unremarkable in terms of its success, speed, and cost in casualties. There is no reason to think that Dvornikov had been selected to command in Syria because of any skill or theoretical work on urban warfare, for that matter. He commanded the Aleppo campaign because it was Russia’s major campaign during his tenure in Syria, not as a specific appointment. The tactics and approaches used by Russian forces in both Syria and Ukraine are not unique to Dvornikov or any other individual Russian commander. Neither are they particularly effective.
Dvornikov is the natural choice of military district commander to command current Russian operations in Ukraine due to his command of the primary Russian area of operations and his seniority. Dvornikov’s command of the SMD from 2016 to 2022 grants him the greatest familiarity with operations in eastern Ukraine, as he oversaw the largely frozen conflict in Donbas in that period and is the direct commander of the primary Russian forces in the region—the 8th Combined Arms Army and forces of Russia’s proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Dvornikov has commanded the Donbas and southern axes since the beginning of the current Russian invasion on February 24, and his forces have achieved the greatest successes of the initial period of the war. Had Putin chosen another officer to command the overall war effort now that he has condensed it to a focus on Dvornikov’s area of responsibility he would almost certainly have had to relieve Dvornikov of his command. Considering that Dvornikov’s performance in command was no worse, and in some ways better, than the performances of his lower-ranked colleagues, such a decision would have been odd indeed.
The Kremlin’s belated appointment of a single overall commander in Ukraine will not automatically solve Russian command, logistics, and morale issues, and Dvornikov faces several ongoing operations that may exceed his span of control.
Russian forces are currently carrying out the following missions in Ukraine:
- Defenses of their positions in Kherson Oblast from Ukrainian counterattacks from the west and north
- Possible advances north from Crimea toward Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro
- The capture of Mariupol
- Frontal assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Offensive operations on the Izyum-Slovyansk axis to encircle Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine (previously led by WMD forces)
- Operations to fix Ukrainian forces in place in Kharkiv (previously led by WMD and CMD forces)
- Efforts to reconstitute damaged and demoralized forces from all four Russian military districts to reinforce two axes, Izyum and Donbas
The Russian military’s previous approach to command in the war in Ukraine was apparently for three military district commanders (South, West, and East) to independently command their own axes of advance, leading to disjointed offensive operations. Collapsing the war effort into the east and south itself eliminates some of that problem, whoever took command. Dvornikov’s appointment as sole commander may well challenge his ability to conduct simultaneous operations focused on even this reduced list of Russian offensive operations, especially given the severe losses of senior commanders the Russian military has experienced. We have already seen indicators that Russian forces are unable to conduct simultaneous major offensive operations between Kherson, Donbas, and Izyum, and this challenge will likely continue.
Dvornikov will likely struggle to integrate units redeployed from western to eastern Ukraine into his ongoing operations, which have to date been conducted by Southern Military District troops under his direct command. ISW has assessed throughout the war that the SMD had been the most effective Russian district due to its unity of command, high readiness, and rate of large-echelon military exercises prior to the war—in contrast to units from Russia’s other districts, which were cobbled together prior to the invasion with little time to cohere unified structures and practice the high-end conventional warfare necessary for the current Russian campaign.[15] Damaged Russian units withdrawn from Kyiv and northeastern Ukraine continue to deploy to the Izyum axis and may eventually redeploy to Donbas. These units are unlikely to perform better just because Dvornikov is leading them as overall commander. Dvornikov will in fact likely face significant challenges integrating these units into ongoing operations.
Key Takeaways
- Russian Commander of the Southern Military District Army General Alexander Dvornikov is the natural choice to take overall command of Russian operations in Ukraine. There is no reason to suppose Dvornikov was selected for any particular skills or experience, nor is there reason to think the conduct of the Russian war effort will materially change more than it was already changing due to the Russian abandonment of northeastern Ukraine and focus on the east.
- Russian forces may have used chemical weapons against Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol, though ISW cannot independently verify Ukrainian claims at this time.
- Russian forces failed to make significant advances in continued assaults on Severodonetsk, Popasna, and Rubizhne in eastern Ukraine.
- Russian forces continued to amass troops in Kharkiv Oblast to reinforce offensive operations on the Izyum axis and conducted several minor attacks.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate main effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol claimed late on April 11 that Russian forces used drone-delivered chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in Mariupol on April 11.[16] Victims reported shortness of breath and ataxia. ISW cannot independently confirm these reports. However, DNR Defense Spokesperson Eduard Basurin said Russian forces would likely use unspecified chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces in Mariupol earlier on April 11.[17] Basurin said Russian forces should use “chemical troops” against Ukrainian defenders of the Azovstal Steel Plant to “smoke moles out of their burrows” due to the difficulty of storming the facility. Kremlin media outlets amplified Brasurin’s claim prior to the Ukrainian claim of a chemical attack. ISW will continue to monitor the situation.
Russian forces continued assaults in the past 24 hours and claimed further advances, but ISW cannot independently verify any territorial changes.[18] Russian media outlet RT shared unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) footage on April 11 confirming that Russian forces have bisected Ukrainian defenders between the Azovstal Plant in eastern Mariupol and a second group of Ukrainian forces in the Port of Mariupol in the southwest, which ISW previously reported on April 10.[19] DNR head Denis Pushilin claimed that Russian forces have cleared 80% of Mariupol (which ISW cannot independently confirm) and falsely claimed they fully control the Port of Mariupol as of April 11, directly contradicting the RT claim and ISW‘s assessment that Ukrainian forces retain control of the port.[20] The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces stated the Ukrainian defense is continuing to “hold the city, durably and sustainably.”[21] Russian forces will likely complete the capture of Mariupol in the coming week but have likely suffered high losses.
Subordinate main effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces failed to make significant advances in continued assaults on Severodonetsk, Popasna, and Rubizhne on April 11.[22] The Ukrainian General Staff stated Ukrainian forces repulsed four Russian attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and claimed Ukrainian forces destroyed a battalion tactical group (BTG) of the 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment, killing the battalion commander and his Chief of Staff.[23] The Russian 60th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade of the 5th Combined Arms Army is likely preparing to deploy into Donbas.[24] Russian forces continue to redeploy from northeastern Ukraine to support operations in Donbas, and social media users filmed a large column of Russian military equipment reportedly withdrawn from the Kyiv axis moving west toward Donetsk in Matveev Kurgan, Rostov Oblast on April 11.[25]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast, and fix Ukrainian forces around Kharkiv in place)
Russian forces continued to amass troops in Kharkiv Oblast to reinforce offensive operations on the Izyum axis on April 11. Elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army and Northern Fleet continued operations to fix Ukrainian forces in place in Kharkiv city and screen Russian assembly areas.[26] Satellite imagery showed likely elements of the 237th Tank Regiment accumulating in new camps in Russia’s Belgorod region, about 30km from the Ukrainian border.[27]
Russian troops reinforced forward positions and conducted limited attacks near Izyum on April 11.[28] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that two Russian Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) unsuccessfully attempted to take Dovhenke and Dmytrivka, about 26 and 35 km south of Izyum respectively.[29] Kharkiv Regional Administration Head Oleg Synegubov claimed that Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed a large column of Russian equipment and manpower heading toward Izyum on April 10, but ISW cannot independently confirm this claim.[30]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern axis: (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces did not make any significant advances against Ukrainian positions in Kherson Oblast and continued to attempt to improve their defensive positions on April 11.[31]
Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
There has been no significant activity reported on this axis in the last 24 hours.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will renew offensive operations in the coming days southeast from Izyum, possibly diverting first to the southwest to avoid Ukrainian defensive positions, in an effort to reach and seize Slovyansk.
- Russian forces have bisected Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol and will continue efforts to complete the seizure of the remaining pockets of Ukrainian resistance, possibly including through the use of chemical weapons.
- Russian forces will likely continue to conduct attacks to seize Rubizhne, Popasna, and Severodonetsk in the coming days, although they may wait for reinforcements and for Russian troops to complete the encirclement of this area along the Izyum-Slovyansk-Debaltseve road.
[1] https://tass dot ru/encyclopedia/person/dvornikov-aleksandr-vladimirovich
[2] www.svu dot ru/biographies/biography/24.html
[7] ISW will publish a collection of biographies of current Russian general officers in the coming weeks. We are drawing on this currently unpublished research to inform this assessment of Dvornikov’s career.
[8] The Russian Ministry of Defense overhauled its Military District structure in 2010. The names of the current, post-2010 equivalents of the districts Dvornikov served in are given here for ease.
[20] https://riafan dot ru/22875772-narodnaya_militsiya_dnr_i_rossiiskie_voennie_na_80_osvobodili_port_mariupolya; https://riafan dot ru/22928118 na_poroge_azovstali_kak_rossiya_i_dnr_unichtozhayut_poslednii_oplot_natsistov_v_mariupole; https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/14345547.
2. I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here's What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies. by Mark Hertling
Conclusion:
My experiences with the Russian and Ukrainian armies over the two decades reminded me of a passage from Jean Larteguy’s The Centurions. In a moment of frustration, a French officer summarizes the two purposes an army can serve:
I’d like [France] to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering Generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their General’s bowel movements or their Colonel’s piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country. The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage uniforms, who would not be put on display, but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.
For all their bellicose rhetoric and Victory Day parades on Red Square, I sometimes wonder if Putin and Shoygu know the difference between the two types of armies. The Ukrainians sure do.
I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here's What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies.
The two armies at war today couldn’t be more different.
In March 2011, I began a new posting as the Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, in command of all U.S. Army forces stationed in various countries throughout Europe. It was a dream job as it was in that command – in a different time and under much different circumstances – that I had begun my career 36 years earlier as a 2nd lieutenant platoon leader, leading tanks on patrols of the then-West German border. Back then, it was our job to defend against the Soviet hordes.
But by 2011, things had changed. The size of the U.S. Army in Europe had shrunk dramatically from the quarter-million soldiers stationed there during the Cold War, and it would shrink even more during my two years in command. The Warsaw Pact countries who had been our foes during the Cold War were now our NATO allies and sovereign partners, and there was no border wall splitting Germany in two. Countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states, and others had transformed their governments and their militaries since the early 1990s, and a few of them were even fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over the course of nearly four decades, I spent a lot of time either engaging or working with the two armies now engaged in a bitter struggle in Ukraine. I met their leaders, observed their maneuvers, and watched their development closely either up close or through reading intelligence reports. Strangely, one memory that stands out had more to do with trumpets and rim-shots than tanks and rifles.
“The Ukrainians—they got it going on!”
It was an event I witnessed secondhand—a visit by our U.S. Army Europe band to Moscow. I had been back in the United States when, according to the band’s director, “America’s Musical Ambassadors in Europe” had “rocked Red Square in six performances.” Russia had invited military bands from a half-dozen countries to perform modern music from their respective countries, and soldiers’ from our European Army band had knocked-em-dead with a Michael Jackson medley outside the Kremlin.
A very young sergeant, a trumpet player, confirmed to me that the Red Square concert had been a smashing success. When I pressed her for more details, she offered that the Russian musicians “were good, but they really weren’t very impressive. They weren’t really soldiers; they were musicians dressed like soldiers. And their leadership. . . well, we wouldn’t allow leaders like them in our Army. I wasn’t impressed.” I asked which countries had impressed her. “Germany was really good, and France performed some great music. But the Ukrainians—those soldiers really got it going on!”
What can you learn about a military from its band? Usually, not much. But putting on great performance requires some of the same skills as conducting a military operation. It requires recruiting the right people with the right talents (and many militaries, including the American military, use bands as a recruiting tool). It requires equipping those people with the right technology—often highly specialized—so they can do their job. It requires training those people to work together to perform complicated tasks with impeccable timing. It requires developing young leaders, managing logistics, and maintaining high morale. The sergeant I spoke to observed that what came through in the Ukrainians’ performance is that they wanted to be there, they wanted to be great, and their leaders were inspirational.
Podcast · April 11 2022
Trump couldn’t resist endorsing fellow TV huckster Dr. Oz, despite PA Senate candidate David McMormick…
An interesting anecdote from an army bandsman. In the military, stories like these are called “war stories”—and as often as not, they aren’t about war or combat. War stories are parables, and like much of military life, they’re sometimes about finding purpose—even profundity—in the mundane.
My war stories about the Russian and Ukrainian militaries are also anecdotes, with no associated metrics or figures, but they give indications of what I’ve seen of the performance of two armies now facing each other on the battlefield. My experiences observing or participating in exercises, personal engagements, and training aren’t meant to explain, much less predict, what’s going on in Ukraine as that nation’s military fights its Russian foe. But I like to think they offer a little depth and color about who the people fighting in Ukraine are.
First Impressions
In 1994, I was a Lieutenant Colonel squadron commander at Fort Knox, Kentucky, leading a unit of about 1000 people helping others learn to be tankers. One day, my regimental commander called and asked if my passport was valid—the Pentagon had done a file search of all lieutenant colonels looking for those who were current commanders of tank units, who had experience in Europe, and who were veterans of Desert Storm. My name popped up, so I’d be going to Russia for two weeks to see the potential for an initiative called Partnership for Peace. President Clinton had suggested NATO find ways to cooperate with Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries, and this visit would help start that program.
I traveled to Russia with a civilian Russian expert from the State Department, a brigadier general from the Army Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, and a few staffers from the Defense Department. Another battalion commander and I were potted plants on this trip because the Russians wanted to talk to American “subject matter experts” on U.S. tanks and U.S. command and control methods. That was fine by us. Our itinerary had us visiting Russian armor and signal units, going into Russian military barracks, observing Russian units on firing ranges and conducting exercises, and climbing on military vehicles displayed in motor pools near Moscow. Our job was to stay quiet, observe, and take lots of mental notes.
The Russian barracks were spartan, with twenty beds lined up in a large room similar to what the U.S. Army had during World War II. The food in their mess halls was terrible. The Russian “training and exercises” we observed were not opportunities to improve capabilities or skills, but rote demonstrations, with little opportunity for maneuver or imagination. The military college classroom where a group of middle- and senior-ranking officers conducted a regimental map exercise was rudimentary, with young soldiers manning radio-telephones relaying orders to imaginary units in some imaginary field location. On the motor pool visit, I was able to crawl into a T-80 tank—it was cramped, dirty, and in poor repair—and even fire a few rounds in a very primitive simulator.
The only truly impressive and surprising part of the tour was when we walked through a “secret” field museum that had tanks from all the armies in the world—including several from the United States. The Russians had somehow managed to obtain an M1 Abrams tank (probably from one of their allies in the Middle East), and we all believed the reason they allowed us into this facility was to show us they had our most modern armor.
We then visited our host unit’s motor pool, stationed just outside Moscow. By that time, the Russian regimental commander and I had become friendly, and as he walked us toward the display of vehicles, he proclaimed that I was lucky to be one of the few Americans to see a Russian T-72 up close. With tongue firmly in cheek, I told the translator to tell the colonel that having fought in Desert Storm, I had seen many T-72s—but none of them still had the turret attached. The interpreter hesitated and asked me if I really wanted to say that to his colonel. Nodding my head, I watched my new friend’s face turn red, but then transition to a slight grin. “Those were the export versions we gave the Iraqis.”
At the end of the visit, our State Department colleague asked us to record our observations, focusing on what struck us about leadership, equipment, training, facilities, and capabilities. I remember saying the Russian Army was “all show and no go.” While I knew the Russian tankers had experienced battlefield trauma during their final days in Afghanistan and were more recently dealing with the dissolution of the Soviet empire, to include firing a tank round at their own Parliament a year earlier, I came away from my first formal exchange with the Russian Army doubtful they were the ten-foot-tall behemoth we thought them to be.
My first experience with Ukraine’s army a decade later was not much different. In 2004, I was the assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. Our unit was in the midst of completing a 12-month combat tour when the Shia irredentist Muqtada al-Sadr began a popular uprising in the Iraqi capital. A large percentage of our 30,000-soldier unit had already redeployed to Germany, but Secretary Rumsfeld believed it was appropriate we recall those forces and move south to Wasit Province to counter Sadr in the cities of Najaf, Karbala, and Al-Kut. The Sadr uprising started just as Polish, Spanish, and Ukrainian forces were departing Wasit. Al-Kut was the area of operation for the Ukrainian contingent and one of our tasks was to relieve them.
Al-Kut was a mess, as were the Ukrainian units responsible for it. The Ukrainian soldiers were undisciplined and poorly trained, their combat vehicles were in terrible shape, the officers and appointed sergeants appeared corrupt, and there were even indicators that some of the Ukrainian contingent were selling old Iraqi artillery rounds to the insurgents for their roadside bombs. The Ukrainian-trained Iraqi border forces were in terrible shape and organized crime in the area was rampant. We found Ukraine’s soldiers rarely if ever conducted patrols off base. All of the soldiers in our unit that took over for the Ukrainian force immediately formed a negative opinion about the readiness of Ukraine’s army—me included.
When our unit finally redeployed to Germany after an additional three months in Iraq, I left the job as the assistant division commander and started a new posting as commander of the Army’s training center in Germany. One of my tasks was to ensure a U.S. National Guard unit received the right kind of training as it prepared to deploy with the Kosovo peacekeeping force, aka KFOR, a multinational force under a German commander whom I knew well. I had the opportunity to ask him about the challenges he was facing with his multinational force. He specifically mentioned that the Ukrainian Army unit in KFOR was undisciplined, poorly trained, and had corrupt officers (he claimed a few had established a scheme for siphoning gas out of military vehicles and selling it on the black market in Pristina). His comments only reinforced my bias formed in Iraq, and I remembered thinking that the Ukrainian Army would have a hard time shaking off the ill-effects of their recent connection to the Soviet Union.
Over the next several years, my observations of both Russian and Ukrainian armies would change. One for the worse, one for the better.
Different Directions
The next year, I had another new assignment: Moving from the Training Center at Grafenwoehr in southern Germany to a new job as the G3, or deputy chief of staff for operations at U.S. Army Europe Headquarters in Heidelberg. The G3 is responsible for contingency (read: war) plans, operations, training, resources, deployment of forces, and—a major facet of our European mission—engaging with all 49 countries on the continent.
The engagement element of the portfolio was time-consuming but extremely interesting. The U.S. Army Europe commander relayed to me those American commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were not happy with the state of training of units from European allies and partners that were reinforcing their ranks—especially those from our Eastern European partners. Since the Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was about two-thirds U.S. forces and one-third allied forces, my commander wanted us to find ways to better train allied armies for that mission before they began their deployment.
We offered pre-deployment training opportunities to all the contributing nations, but we focused on the forces coming from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Ukraine. The training we offered consisted of classroom schooling, training events, and shared exercises. Our Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) Academy, where young soldiers were trained in leadership and small unit tactics, was expanded, and opened to allies, and soon that leadership course included more young sergeants from allied nations than Americans. The exercise program also expanded, and U.S. Army Europe “co-hosted” multinational training events. Soon, at places like Drawsko-Pomorski in Poland, Cincu in Romania, Krtsanisi in Georgia, Novo Selo in Bulgaria, and Yavoriv in Ukraine, the multinational training and exercises were in full swing.
The Poles and Romanians had energetic support from their governments and their military leadership on these transformational efforts; those two governments realized early on that they could use these opportunities to transform their armies and train their soldiers. Ukraine’s government voiced some initial interest, and Ukrainian generals seemed supportive, but there was less initial energy from Kyiv. Corruption in Ukraine’s bureaucracies prevented more early cooperation with the U.S. military.
While Russia was not a contributing nation to ISAF, we still offered the Russian Army opportunities to participate in many of our outreach programs. Our NCO Academy offered to allow the same number of Russian soldiers into each class as every other country. Russia accepted the invitation, but with conditions. They would send three of their “common soldiers” (their term), but they wanted a “senior officer” to also attend all classes and training events with them. They also wanted separate barracks for their soldiers instead of a “common barracks space with soldiers from other nations.” Finally, they would not adhere to the requirement only to send soldiers who could speak and read English (with so many languages represented, it was impossible to translate everything for everyone). While I was adamantly against acquiescing to these requests, my commander disagreed. The preparation for the Russian arrival was onerous, and their soldiers seemed much more interested in going to the post exchange—the subsidized on-base general store—than in learning leadership and tactical skills. We didn’t invite them back, and the Russian military never made any inquiries about returning.
While U.S. Army Europe was expanding our multinational outreach programs, the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group in Europe also began ramping up training for allied and partner special operations forces. The training the Green Berets led over more than a decade, working with foreign armies on unconventional warfare tactics, training of host-nation armies and civilians for resistance activities—targeting key enemy elements, gathering information, and protection of facilities and supply chains—was instrumental in the counterinsurgencies we were fighting together. These programs also became a building block for how to counter any enemy conventional offensive. The U.S. Air Force Europe provided analogous opportunities to multinational air forces, and those participating nations, including Ukraine, received training in advanced fighter techniques, the intricacies of close air support for ground troops, and suppression of enemy air defense.
The Russian Army
After another 15-month tour commanding the 1st Armored Division in Iraq during the early part of the “surge,” I was back in the United States training soldiers when Army Chief of Staff George Casey informed me of my next assignment: return to Europe to command the organization I loved. A few weeks before I left for Germany, Casey called again to invite me to dinner at his quarters in Washington. Colonel-General (corresponding to an American lieutenant general) Aleksandr Streitsov, commander of the Russian Ground Forces, was in our capital, and the Chief wanted me to meet him.
The dinner was pleasant and engaging. Not surprisingly, Streitsov knew I had been previously assigned to Europe and that I had been to his country several times. Through an interpreter, he proclaimed he had never visited Germany, which I perceived as a hint. I invited him to our Headquarters in Heidelberg and told him we could spend a few days traveling around the U.S. Army Europe footprint. This was, after all, part of our continuing effort, before the Russian invasion of Crimea and Donbas, to foster better relations with our competitor in Europe. Streitsov accepted the offer and then provided some dates when he could visit. Things were moving fast.
The agenda the U.S. Army Europe staff developed for Streitsov’s visit was purposely vague and flexible, based on my guidance. Although I was the “new guy,” I also knew the intricacies of the command well from experience. Unlike my previous visits to Russia, I had no intent to stage any training demonstrations, and I didn’t want him to see carefully orchestrated displays at pre-arranged locations. Instead, the goal was to show this Russian general that we were transparent and prepared to show him any of our units. Streitsov examined the menu of events we presented, then picked a few locations and training opportunities of interest. Our helicopter crews filed a flight plan across Germany, and we were on our way.
Over two days, we visited several units in training—a tank range, a helicopter gunnery, and a small unit maneuver. Also on the agenda were a barracks, where we were escorted not by a commander, but by a savvy first sergeant and command sergeant major, and a housing area, where Streitsov talked to several military spouses and visited a Department of Defense elementary school. At the end of the second day, he spied a store where soldiers buy uniforms, boots, and other items and asked to stop by. For the next two hours, he talked with the German civilian who ran the place and was amazed by the connection between the German work force and the American soldiers. He was also shocked by the number and types of combat boots for sale.
Later, as we waited at the airfield for his flight home, it was just the two of us and an interpreter. Obviously impressed by what he had seen, he was particularly amazed by the competency of the junior officers and sergeants. Hesitating, he posed a simple question: “What contributes to your success in preparing these young men and women to lead and fight?” I responded that it was partly due to our inculcation of our seven Army values—loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage (LDRSHIP)—and our constant leadership training at all levels of professional schooling. But in any good unit, the personal example of young commanders and NCOs, who set high standards and then personally trained their soldiers to meet them, made the difference. He mused: “I’m wondering if we could create that kind of culture in the Russian Army?”
A few months later, Streitsov sent me an invitation to Russia for a reciprocal exchange. The itinerary his staff sent to me had specified visits to the famed Frunze and Voroshilov Military Academies in Moscow and the opportunity to observe units conducting drills and exercises at different field locations. The visits didn’t look at all like spontaneous drop-ins I had offered him.
After landing in Moscow, but before meeting with Streitsov, our small group had preliminary meetings with the Moscow Embassy. My old friend, neighbor, and former U.S. Army Europe teammate Brigadier General Peter Zwack, who was serving as the Defense Attaché in Moscow, confirmed much of the detailed classified intelligence I had read in preparation for the visit. He confirmed that Putin was attempting to expand his influence in Europe and Africa, and the Russian Army, while still substantive in quantity, continued to decline in capability and quality. My subsequent visits to the schools and units Streitsov chose reinforced these conclusions. The classroom discussions were sophomoric, and the units in training were going through the motions of their scripts with no true training value or combined arms interaction—infantry, armor, artillery, air, and resupply all trained separately. It appeared Colonel-General Streitsov had not attempted to change the culture of the Russian Army or had failed. There were also rumors of his upcoming retirement.
Streitsov was replaced in April 2012 by Colonel-General Vladimir Chirkin, who had commanded Russian forces in the Second Chechnya War. Soon after the announcement, we invited Chirkin to join all the ground force commanders of the 49 European nations at an annual meeting hosted by U.S. Army Europe. This Conference of European Armies (CEA) was an extremely popular event where all the army chiefs of Europe openly shared concerns about security issues, army force organization and modernization, deployment issues, lessons learned from their ISAF rotations, and multinational training opportunities. My personal note on the invite told Chirkin he would be the first Russian to attend this event, and that he would be interested to hear what other Europeans nations were doing. He accepted the invitation.
This was the last CEA I would attend as the commander of U.S. Army Europe, as it was planned for October and my retirement was scheduled for December. In a bilateral discussion, Chirkin told me he found the sessions fascinating, frank, and transparent. He was active in this exchange, and he promised to send his forces to take part in future training events. I later learned Chirkin did not keep his promises, partially because Putin fired him in December 2013. He had been convicted on bribery charges (accused of taking a bribe from a subordinate officer who asked for help in getting a Moscow apartment from the Defense Ministry), stripped of his rank and most of his state awards, and sentenced to five years in a labor colony. I never found out if he actually committed the crimes, or what he did to get them noticed.
The Ukrainian Army
During my assignment as commander of U.S. Army Europe, I also spent a significant amount of time with the Ukrainian Army and was amazed as I watched them grow in professionalism and effectiveness.
My Ukrainian counterpart during that time was Colonel-General Henadii Vorobyov, the Chief of the Ukrainian Ground Forces (CGF). Henadii (as he demanded I call him) was a true field soldier. He had grown up in the Soviet Army and started his career in a Soviet motorized rifle regiment in the steppes and marshes of the Transbaikal in Russia’s Far East. He graduated from the Frunze Academy at about the same time Ukraine gained its independence as a nation. From 1993 until I met him, he served in various units in Ukraine, rising to command a division and then a corps before being named CGF. He loved to tell stories about his experience as a soldier, and while he was normally quiet and reserved, he would come alive whenever he was with the troops. Our first meeting was at Ukraine’s Yavoriv training area when I was visiting our 173rd Airborne Brigade during a bilateral training event with Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade.
After shaking my hand, Henadii started talking about the state of his army and his plans for the future while paratroopers dropped around us. He thought this exercise was the best he had seen in his first year as CGF, and he felt his army had made great strides in the last several years at building a professional force and developing a core of career sergeants. He thought our NCO Academy at Grafenwoehr had been instrumental in developing the young leaders he was seeing make a difference in Ukrainian units, and he immediately asked if there was a way to get more slots for his soldiers at the course. During a later visit to our headquarters in Germany, he asked for a one-on-one meeting with Command Sergeant Major Dave Davenport, the top NCO in Europe, about how the Ukrainians could plan to train and educate their senior sergeants.
Henadii was closely tracking the combat activity of his soldiers and units serving in the Balkans as part of KFOR and in eastern Afghanistan as part of the Polish Brigade. He outlined an innovative plan to improve his junior officer corps and complained about the low quality of his senior officers. In a one-on-one discussion over beer, he confessed that his senior officers were his biggest problem, and he needed to find a way to replace the corrupt generals who were “Russian-trained” and too close to Ukraine’s older politicians. Again, he asked if I could help him get more young colonels into the exchange program at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania. That question gave me the idea to design and execute a “mini-war college,” which we offered to high-potential allied and partner colonels at our U.S. training center in southern Germany.
We were together dozens of times at either Yavoriv and Kyiv, or at Grafenwoehr and Heidelberg. Right before retiring, I presented Colonel-General Vorobyov with the U.S. Legion of Merit, an award only a select group of multinational colleagues achieved. Henadii was the only non-NATO awardee approved by the Secretary of the Army.
After My Time
Colonel-General Vorobyov and I lost contact with each other after I retired in 2013 and he retired in 2014. But I did receive a note from Ukraine’s ambassador telling me that my friend had defended a doctoral dissertation entitled “Creation and Development of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” His document was the basis for the Ukrainian government’s white paper on the future of Ukraine’s army. A year after his retirement, Henadii was called back into service to be the President of Ukraine’s National Defense University (their war college, for senior colonels and junior generals), and he served there for over a year. He died of a heart attack on February 11, 2017, and I recently heard that Ukraine honored him by naming the street in front of their war college after him.
The Ukrainian Training Center at Yavoriv also saw massive changes starting in 2014, likely driven as much by the Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas as by Vorobyov’s vision. In April 2015, elements of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade stationed in Italy again deployed to Yavoriv and established an ongoing operational program called “Fearless Guardian.” The program was progressive, training everything from individual soldier skills to battalion-level operations, all based on lessons learned from the eastern and southern Ukrainian combat zones. The increasing energy at Yavoriv showed the need for a permanent enhanced training center, modeled after the U.S. Army’s training programs in the United States and Germany. In December 2015, U.S. Army Europe formally established Joint Multinational Training Group – Ukraine (JMTG-U), where a multi-national team of Americans, Poles, Canadians, Lithuanians, and Brits began training Ukrainian battalions as combined arms teams. Command Sergeant Major Davenport sent me a note a few years ago saying Ukraine had formally established an NCO corps, with standardized training and leadership requirements. Henadii’s vision had become a reality, accelerated by the urgencies of the Russian existential threat.
As for the Russians, their recent battlefield failures—their staged maneuvers, lack of leadership development, absence of a logistics plan to support operations, inability to coordinate and conduct air-ground-sea joint operations and continued use of conscript soldiers in critical missions—all indicate a larger failure to modernize their army. Just as Russia and Ukraine followed different political courses over the past 30 years, so did their armies, and it shows. While Ukraine’s democracy is still addressing issues of government corruption, those violations pale in significance and scope to the embezzlement, graft, and corruption of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, his predecessor Anatoly Serdyukov, and Vladimir Putin himself. Colonel-General Chirkin had, if nothing else, proved that he was acting in line with the role models in his senior leadership.
My experiences with the Russian and Ukrainian armies over the two decades reminded me of a passage from Jean Larteguy’s The Centurions. In a moment of frustration, a French officer summarizes the two purposes an army can serve:
I’d like [France] to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering Generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their General’s bowel movements or their Colonel’s piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country. The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage uniforms, who would not be put on display, but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.
For all their bellicose rhetoric and Victory Day parades on Red Square, I sometimes wonder if Putin and Shoygu know the difference between the two types of armies. The Ukrainians sure do.
3. Army generals to be nominated to lead European Command, Special Operations Command: report
Note also that LTG Fenton has more Asian experience (SOCPAC and Dep Cdr USPACOM) than any previous SOCOM commander and is the first career Special Forces officer to command USSOCOM. The previous "Green Berets" were Special Forces qualified by not career Special Forces.
It is also very significant that General Cavoli is a Foreign Area Officer.
Army generals to be nominated to lead European Command, Special Operations Command: report
The current heads of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and Joint Special Operations Command have been chosen for new posts, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The White House and Pentagon declined to comment on the nominations Monday. Neither has been officially sent to the Senate to prepare for confirmation hearings.
Fenton, a career Special Forces officer, took command of JSOC in July, after serving in the defense secretary’s office as an adviser. Prior to that, he was the deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Fenton would be the first Green Beret in nearly 20 years to lead SOCOM. The current head of the command, Gen. Richard Clarke, cut his teeth in the 75th Ranger Regiment, as did Gen. Tony Thomas before him.
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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs suggested locally built bases in Eastern Europe, without permanently stationed U.S. troops.
An infantryman-turned-foreign area officer, Cavoli previously lead the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division.
If confirmed, he would take over for Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, who has been at the center of the U.S. and NATO responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
EUCOM commanders automatically take on a second role as NATO’s supreme allied commander.
As the war in Ukraine has ramped up, the U.S. has mobilized more than 12,000 troops to Germany and eastern Europe. At the same time, there’s ongoing discussion at the Pentagon and within NATO on what the U.S. force posture should look like on the continent going forward.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
4. Leaders Update Special Ops Vision, Strategy
I cannot recall another document of this importance signed by both the USSOCOM Commander and the ASD SO/LIC. It is good to see USSOCOM and ASD SO/LIC joined at the hop and ASD SO/LIC exercises its ADCON responsibilities.
Leaders Update Special Ops Vision, Strategy
The civilian and military leaders of America's special operations forces have combined to issue the new Special Operations Forces Vision and Strategy to guide the force into the future.
Christopher P. Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote the document as a handbook for the changing world security environment.
Immersion Training
An Army ranger participates in cold-water immersion training at Fort McCoy, Wis., Feb. 18, 2022.
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VIRIN: 220218-A-UY387-9034A
This is especially important as the National Defense Strategy emphasizes the return of strategic competition with China and Russia.
"The updated Special Operations Force Vision and Strategy reflects our overarching strategic guidance to the enterprise, highlighting force modernization, force employment, development and design, and helps ensure forces are postured to support the National Defense Strategy," Maier said in a written statement. "Aligned with national policy and strategy, the Vision and Strategy serves as the foundation for the shaping of SOF near-term and in the future as an adaptive, agile and capable force that can compete and prevail against any adversary, in any environment, while also recognizing the need to preserve and grow readiness and strengthen our force and families."
The joint release of the Vision and Strategy highlights the cooperation at the highest levels of the community. "Special Operations Forces' full range of core activities, tailored capabilities and deep partnerships provide critical options for campaigning to bolster deterrence," Clarke said in a written statement. "These documents underpin our efforts to build enduring advantage. They ensure our special operations forces remain the most capable and credible in the world by providing a lasting foundation to guide future activities and investments focused on innovation, modernization and taking care of our most critical resource — our people."
The vision statement takes the Special Ops core values of honor, courage, excellence, creativity and respect and pushes that basis into the future. Special operators must be "a resilient enterprise capable of conducting integrated all-domain special operations."
Special operators, of course, have a role to play in countering moves by China America's pacing challenge — and Russia — whose action in invading Ukraine shows the threat they may become.
"China is currently the only nation capable of combining the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to rival the U.S. and destabilize the international system that has advanced our interests for 75 years," the Vision and Strategy document says.
But this doesn't mean the threats are any smaller from Iran, North Korea or from violent extremist organizations. Organizations like the Islamic State seek to reconstitute anywhere they can find a safe haven. Ungoverned, little governed or corruptly governed areas of the Middle East, Southwest Asia and especially Africa could provide that necessity.
Artic Edge
Navy SEALs conduct a high-altitude, low opening airborne operation in support of exercise Arctic Edge 2022 in Deadhorse, Ala., March 4, 2022.
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The strategy looks to establish a 10-year framework of strategic aims, strategic efforts and resources to "create strategic and asymmetric advantages" for the United States.
Over the next decade, special operators must be prepared "to conduct operations to support priority missions in critical locations as part of integrated deterrence, to reduce strategic risk and to facilitate integration with conventional forces during high-end conflict."
The community also must modernize for the missions of the future. This is more than simply buying new equipment, but examining new concepts, doctrine, methods and capabilities.
Staying true to its roots is yet another priority in this strategy with its strong emphasis on recruiting and retaining the best people for the missions. The force will also sustain the Defense Department's deployment-to-dwell and mobilization-to-dwell ratios.
Again, regarding personnel, the strategy calls for emphasizing diversity and inclusion within the community while also calling for accountable leadership.
Special operations forces will be key in helping the greater military operate with partner and allied military organizations, according to the strategy.
Maier and Clarke see the Vision and Strategy as a chance to continue discussions within the special operations community. Still, they delineate what qualities they deem important and the path they would like to take — together — moving ahead.
5. SOF Vision and Strategy
I can work with this document (though I would have preferred to see a greater emphasis on UW and resistance but that is my bias - I can interpret a lot from reading between the lines to focus on what needs to be done in these critical areas - though I wish they had incorporated unconventional deterrence as a part of integrated deterrence - that is one of the key contributions SOF can make through the two "SOF trinities:" irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, and support to political warfare and influence, governance, and support to indfgenous forces and populations).
Conclusion:
Just as our adversaries adapt to and shape the strategic environment, SOF will continue to evolve in order to fulfill the vision of creating strategic, asymmetric advantages for the nation in integrated deterrence, crisis, and conflict. Guided by SOF core values — honor, courage, excellence, creativity, and respect —
— this strategy establishes the path to achieve that vision.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES VISION
VISION STATEMENT
Create strategic, asymmetric advantages for the Nation in integrated deterrence,
crisis and conflict.
CORE VALUES
Honor. Earn the trust of the Nation by doing what is right.
Courage. Be steadfast in the face of physical and moral danger.
Excellence. Commit to achieving the highest possible standards.
Creativity. Seek innovative and novel solutions to the hardest, most complex problems.
Respect. Treat our teammates and partners with the highest regard.
WHO WE ARE
• Innovative problem solvers tackling the most complex challenges and creating strategic impacts through special operations actions and activities.
• Cohesive and disciplined teams committed to our core values and the SOF Truths.
• Mission-ready today, preparing for the future, and inspired by our rich history.
• A community of dedicated and trusted SOF professionals -military, civilian, contractors, and our families.
WHAT WE DO
• Shape the environment to reduce risk, prevent crises, and set conditions for success in
competition and conflict.
• Respond swiftly to crises worldwide and accomplish high-risk, politically-sensitive missions with a low signature and small footprint.
• Cultivate strong relationships with our global network -allies, partners, joint, interagency, multinational, industry, and academia.
• Illuminate irregular threats, foster partners’ resilience, and create dilemmas for our adversaries.
• Care for the well-being of our SOF family -mentally, spiritually, and physically.
WHERE ARE WE GOING
• Balanced force employment and readiness for integrated deterrence, crisis, and conflict.
• Sustainable counterterrorism to safeguard the Nation.
• Modernized formations, concepts, and capabilities leveraging emerging technologies.
• A resilient enterprise capable of conducting integrated all-domain special operations.
While China is our number one pacing challenge, the United States continues to face numerous advanced and persistent threats globally, including the enduring threat posed by non-state actors.
6. 70 years and Counting: U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School celebrates anniversary
70 years and Counting: U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School celebrates anniversary
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - This year, the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School celebrates its 70th anniversary.
1 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Brig. Gen. William P. Yarborough, U.S. Army Special Warfare Center Commander, met with President John F. Kennedy during the President’s Oct. 12, 1961, visit to Fort Bragg, NC. This moment inspired the statue of the two men that currently stands outside Kennedy Hall on the USAJFKSWCS campus. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL
2 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Col. Charles H. Karlstad, Psychological Warfare Center & School commandant, and Col. Aaron Bank, Center Executive officer, along with Lt. Col. Lester L. Holmes, 6th RB&L Group commander, and Lt. Col. John O. Weaver, Chief of the Psywar Division of the Army General School at Fort Riley, Kansas, pose by the Headquarters sign on Smoke Bomb Hill, Fort Bragg, N.C. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL
3 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – The Psywar Center distinctive unit insignia, first approved in 1952, remains the DUI for the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School 70 years later. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL
The U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School is the Army’s Special Operations Center of Excellence, serving as the proponent for all U.S. Army Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, and Special Forces doctrine and training.
In April 1952, with war raging on the Korean Peninsula and Cold War divides deepening globally, the U.S. Army formally established the Psychological Warfare (Psywar) Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Assigned to the Third U.S. Army, the Psywar Center absorbed all psywar-related functions and personnel previously located at Fort Riley, Kansas. Then-Brig. Gen. Robert A. McClure, the Army’s Chief of Psywar, selected Col. Charles H. Karlstad as the Center’s first commander. A combat veteran of two World Wars and former Chief of Staff of the Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Georgia, Karlstad was the right man for the job.
Early Psywar Center missions included conducting individual training and supervising unit training for Psywar and Special Forces; testing and evaluating equipment; and developing doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures for Psywar and Special Forces, the Army’s unconventional warfare specialists.
Assigned units were the 6th Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group, the Psychological Warfare Board, and 10th Special Forces Group. The latter was the first of its kind, having been activated June 11, 1952.
That October, the Center added the Psychological Warfare School, consisting of Psywar and Special Forces departments. The Army approved the Center and School’s insignia design on Nov. 28, 1952, which is still in use today.
In December 1956, the Army renamed the Psywar Center and School as the Special Warfare Center and School.
During the early 1960s, the Special Warfare Center and School grew in response to the massive expansion of Special Forces and increasing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Much of this growth occurred under the leadership of Brig. Gen. William P. Yarborough. The Center added counterinsurgency operations courses and created an Advanced Training Committee to develop methods of infiltration and exfiltration, such as military freefall and underwater operations.
In 1964, the Center was redesignated as the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. This was to memorialize the recently slain President, who was an avid supporter of U.S. Army Special Operations Forces. A year later, the Center consolidated all unit-level dive training into the Special Forces Underwater Operations course, conducted at Key West, Florida.
In May 1969, the Center was renamed the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance, and the School was renamed the U.S. Army Institute for Military Assistance.
On Sept. 15, 1971, the U.S. Army Civil Affairs School transferred from Fort Gordon, Georgia, to Fort Bragg, coming under the Center, alongside Special Operations and Psychological Operations.
A year later, the Center was assigned to the new U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), becoming the Army’s proponent for Army Special Operations Forces.
Meanwhile, Special Forces regrouped amid post-Vietnam War force reductions, refining its mission and how it trained. One result of this was the implementation of the Robin Sage unconventional warfare exercise in 1974, which replaced earlier exercises such as Operation Snowdrop, Cherokee Trail, and Gobbler’s Woods.
The 1980s were a period of revitalization and transformation for Army Special Operations Forces, and the Center was deeply involved in this process. In 1982, it became an independent TRADOC activity, under the name U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center.
Concurrently, the Army activated 1st Special Operations Command, which assumed command of operational Army Special Operation units, allowing the Center to focus on special operations training and doctrine.
In 1986, the Center was redesignated once more, taking its current name of U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS). It reorganized into six training departments: Special Forces; Special Operations Advanced Skills; Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, based on the Vietnam-era POW experience of Special Forces officer James N. ‘Nick’ Rowe; Foreign Area Officer; Civil Affairs; and Psychological Operations.
It established a Noncommissioned Officer Academy in 1987, later named in honor of Master Sgt. David K. Thuma.
The following year, the Center initiated a three-week Special Forces Assessment and Selection course to test Special Forces candidates physically and psychologically, prior to entering the Special Forces Qualification Course.
In 1989, 1st Special Warfare Training Group was activated, initially consisting of three training battalions and one support battalion.
In June 1990, USAJFKSWCS was reassigned from TRADOC to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, activated on Dec. 1, 1989 to control all components of Army Special Operations forces, less forward deployed units.
During this decade, the Special Operations Academic Facility (now Bank Hall) opened, military freefall training relocated from Fort Bragg to Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, and foreign language training was instituted as part of Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, and Special Forces qualification.
In the two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, USAJFKSWCS expanded and evolved to meet the growing demand for Army Special Operations forces, imposed by the Global War on Terrorism.
Organizational changes included the activation of the Special Warfare Medical Group; the creation of the Special Warfare Education Group and Special Forces Warrant Officer Institute; and the activation of additional battalions under 1st Special Warfare Training Group.
Additionally, Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations instituted their own assessment and selection courses, modeled off Special Forces Assessment and Selection. In 2012, the Army designated USAJFKSWCS as the U.S. Army Special Operations Center of Excellence.
Today, USAJFKSWCS consists of the Special Warfare Center, Special Forces Warrant Officer Institute, Noncommissioned Officer Academy, and three training groups: 1st Special Warfare Training Group, 2nd Special Warfare Training Group, and Special Warfare Medical Group.
Combined, they offer over 100 separate courses to Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, Special Forces, Allied and Sister Service students, from assessment and selection and military occupational specialty qualification, to foreign languages, advanced skills, and leader development.
After 70 years, USAJFKSWCS continues to provide the nation with highly trained, educated, disciplined, and adaptive Army Special Operations Soldiers, capable of operating in a complex, multi-dimensional world.
For more information, please visit https://arsof-history.org.
7. Security Assistance to Ukraine Continues Unabated
Security Assistance to Ukraine Continues Unabated
While Russia targets Ukraine's Donbas region for continued aggression and Ukrainians shift their efforts to confront that aggression, the U.S., allies and partners continue their efforts to get security assistance to the Ukrainian military.
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"Regardless of the Russian refocus on the Donbas, we're not slowing down," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. That stuff continues to move, [and] it's going to continue to move. We said as much as we can, as fast as we can — and we mean it."
Just last Wednesday, President Joe Biden authorized an additional $100 million in security assistance to support Ukraine. Included in that were additional Javelin anti-armor systems for Ukrainian forces. This most recent package was the sixth drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021.
Along with the $300 million in military assistance announced in April, the total U.S. security assistance commitment to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion has been more than $1.7 billion.
Securing a Pallet
Airmen secure a pallet of equipment bound for Ukraine from Joint Base McGuire-Dis-Lakehurst, N.J., March 24, 2022.
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Securing a Pallet
U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Rafael DeGuzman-Paniagua, 305th Aerial Port Squadron special handling representative, secures a pallet of equipment bound for Ukraine from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., March 24, 2022.
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Kirby said equipment still flows to Ukraine to help that nation defend its sovereignty against an unprovoked Russian invasion that began Feb. 24.
"We are working very, very hard every single day to continue to get security assistance to the Ukrainians," Kirby told reporters, adding that anywhere from eight to 10 flights full of ammunition, hardware and other equipment are headed to Ukraine every day.
"[It's] not just from the United States, but from other nations, as well," Kirby said. "And that stuff isn't sitting around ... it gets to these transshipment sites. They're put onto trucks, and they're moved into Ukraine very, very quickly. In some cases, stuff coming from the United States takes no more than four to six days from the time the president authorizes drawdown authority [until] it gets into the hands of the Ukrainians. That's an incredible rate of speed, and we aren't slowing down."
Establishing Security
Soldiers with the Ukrainian army recon the perimeter and establish security at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center near Yavoriv, Ukraine, Feb. 11, 2016.
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Kirby told reporters that despite Russia's efforts to refocus their fight on the eastern part of Ukraine, in the area called the Donbas, nothing has changed about how the U.S. is getting much-needed supplies to the Ukrainians.
"The reprioritization of the Russians on the east hasn't had an effect on our ability to help coordinate the delivery of massive amounts of security assistance from the United States and other nations,” he said. "That flow still continues."
8. For America’s security aid programs, who will run the show?
Let's set aside the DOD-DOS debate in peacetime. (I do not have a problem with State in the lead in peacetime).
In my simple mind we need a separation between peacetime security assistance programs and contingency or wartime "quartermastering" of friends, partners, and allies. Let's use Title 22 for peacetime and let's include security assistance activities for in extremis and contingency operations, and wartime support in Title 10 as part of named operations. Congress should act to provide authorities for efficient processes for security assistance to support active operations of our friends, partners, and allies if the president deems it in US national interest. Congress should grant the president authority to provide security assistance in an expedited manner. If the president so designates as a priority we should be able to provide equipment, weapons, and ammunition in as rapid a manner as we would provide to US troops. This is especially necessary in situations like Ukraine where US forces are not engaged and the US is simply "quartermastering" the war. This may be the way we conduct contingency operations and support some wars in the future.
I am standing by for incoming from the security assistance experts.
For America’s security aid programs, who will run the show?
But it’s not just about public attention. With Democrats holding the reins in Washington, State Department officials have recommended a list of reforms to America’s globe-spanning security aid programs.
These programs provide billions of dollars in training, equipment and assistance directly to foreign governments, militaries, and international organizations and groups. They tilted in favor of the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; now, the State Department and allies on Capitol Hill say they need to be tilted back.
“It’s time for a reckoning,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said at a recent hearing, where the State Department offered its reform ideas. Powerful lawmakers indicated they were supportive, and Menendez said he will spearhead legislation in the coming months with the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho.
The State Department’s proposals range from elevating human rights concerns to offering countries more attractive financing for weapons purchases.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., confers with Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, titled Examining U.S. Security Cooperation and Assistance, on March 10, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The potential for a shakeup comes as the Biden administration rushes aid to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. The administration had already committed about $2 billion in weapons and other aid to Kyiv, when Congress recently enacted a $13.6 billion package for the region, with $3.5 billion for Ukraine.
The U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last two decades for programs that provide security assistance and cooperation to foreign countries, according to the Congressional Research Service. In particular, this work has become a core mission for the Pentagon since 9/11.
As building up foreign forces in Iraq and Afghanistan became key to post-9/11 national security plans, Congress gave the Defense Department new authorities and funding. From 2001 to 2022, the budgets for those programs tripled to $18 billion. The proportion managed by the Pentagon grew from 20% to slightly more than half.
Critics of the tilt toward the Pentagon say it relies too much on the military to solve foreign policy problems better handled by, or at least coordinated with, trained diplomats.
And at the center of the current conversation are some high-profile failures of recent years. Despite billions of dollars spent on the Iraqi security forces, for instance, many of them collapsed in the face of attacks from the Islamic State group in 2014. And $125 billion spent to bolster Afghan security forces didn’t stop the same from happening under Taliban pressure last year.
At the recent hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the $87 billion in U.S. security assistance to Afghanistan “went up in smoke overnight” when the Afghan military collapsed, calling it “an extraordinary waste of money.
“Clearly there is something very wrong with the way in which we are flowing military assistance to partner countries, especially in complicated war zones,” Murphy said.
A diplomatic wish list
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s recent hearing aired a long-running debate over the State-DoD divide. The assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, Jessica Lewis, who previously worked for Menendez as his panel’s staff director, detailed the department’s suggestions for change.
The State Department is asking for more money to improve its workforce, but is primarily seeking process-oriented reforms.
The State Department is asking for more money to retain and hire experts to better collaborate with the Pentagon. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
Ever since the Pentagon’s resources mushroomed after 9/11, the State Department says it has lacked flexibility. Because of the way aid has historically been structured, Lewis said, nearly all of the $7 billion in assistance her bureau gets annually is bound by congressional directives; after Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Iraq are accounted for, only $1.8 billion is left for the rest of the world.
State is now asking for flexibility in peacekeeping operations, and for the funding of some foreign military financing loans to be appropriated by region rather than country.
Lewis also wants to break countries of the “latent expectancy” they’ll receive aid in the U.S. budget every year. That could have a trickle-down effect on which countries get to buy their equipment of choice with American dollars.
Another recommendation is to elevate the goal ― in Washington’s dealings with allies over aid ― of making foreign forces more effective, transparent and accountable, and building their capacity. That aligns with Lewis’ argument that while security assistance is an important alliance-building tool in America’s competition with authoritarian Russia and China, that contest is fundamentally about democratic values and norms.
“We must keep the importance of security sector governance and respect for universal human rights front and center as we consider where to provide security assistance, and as we engage partner nations’ security institutions and empower them toward modernization, accountability and reform,” she said.
When it comes to acquisition, the DoD needs to better manage requests from allies for equipment outside existing departmental programs, and foreign military financing must provide more competitive loan options, Lewis said. She also said the State Department needs an improved contracting process to expedite urgent arms transfers.
The State Department is asking for more money to also retain and hire experts to better collaborate with the DoD. The State Department has a “political-military workforce that numbers in the low hundreds,” in contrast with the Pentagon’s security cooperation workforce of 20,000, Lewis said.
“While State actively supports many DoD security sector assistance activities, the Department currently lacks sufficient staff and bandwidth to fully participate in DoD planning processes and to thoroughly review proposed programs, including when some authorities include ‘joint formulation’ requirements,” Lewis said in a statement.
The $125 billion spent to bolster Afghan security forces didn’t stop the country from falling to the Taliban again. Here, Taliban fighters check the cockpit of a damaged Afghan Air Force helicopter at a hangar at the airport in Kabul on Sept. 14, 2021. (Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images)
The State Department hasn’t framed its proposals as a competition with the Pentagon, but it is asking ― in the name of efficiency and coordination ― to expand requirements that the DoD get State Department “concurrence” — or approval — before it executes security assistance programs.
Concurrence requirements already apply to 25 such DoD efforts, but not all in existence, as the State Department would like.
While Lewis did not name specific programs as targets, one that offers the Pentagon broad latitude and could see scrutiny is the 127 Echo program, which funds surrogate forces in counterterrorism missions, often in Africa. The fund has quadrupled to $25 million since its inception in 2005.
Bipartisan support
Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who authored security assistance reform recommendations last year, said efforts to shift greater authority to the State Department will succeed only if the White House prioritizes them. In a high-stakes competition with China, the U.S. can’t afford for parallel security-assistance bureaucracies to undermine statecraft, he said.
“What is critical is that we have full control over that lever, and not have it be a bureaucratic mess where one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing and it’s difficult for any senior policymaker in the White House to know what the hell’s going on,” said Bergmann, now a senior fellow at Center for American Progress.
Meanwhile, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on both sides of the aisle are generally supportive of shifts, arguing for an overhaul of the current setup.
“As the Defense Department continues efforts to cut the State Department out of security cooperation, we’ve seen a greater focus on short-term tactical capabilities than on sustainable forces aligned with strategic foreign policy,” Risch said. “We must address governance challenges like corruption in all our activities, and we need to professionalize our security assistance workforce.”
Likewise, a congressional source familiar with Menendez’s thinking said the chairman wants an integrated approach to foreign assistance that spans the U.S. government, but is led by the State Department. The idea is to help countries holistically and not measure success in the numbers of units trained or rifles sent.
“You could do these short-term, tactical things for years and the overall security situation in a country doesn’t improve because you have governance problems, corruption problems, and all the other things that alienate a populace from its government and [fosters] a terrorist group,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Some concerns have surfaced in the House as well. After a series of coups in Mali and other Sahel countries, which were carried out by American- and French-trained and -equipped personnel, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and other lawmakers wrote to President Joe Biden on Feb. 4 to express alarm.
“We strongly recommend your administration focus on identifying and addressing the complex challenges surrounding conflict and violence, improve the efficacy of assistance designed to reform national security sectors and institutions, and — given the anti-democratic trends in the region — strengthen governance, civil society, and accountability based on rigorous conflict analysis and diplomacy,” said the letter, led by Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif.
In an exchange with Jacobs at a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing, the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, Sasha Baker, said the U.S. has restricted security assistance as a result of the coups.
“We work closely with the State Department to ensure that we are vetting all security assistance partners in compliance with U.S. law, with local screening of biometrics as it’s required,” Baker said. “There’s always more that we can do in this space.”
The Pentagon’s efforts
In an interview with Defense News, the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, Mara Karlin, said the Pentagon is already undertaking significant organizational reforms aimed at better coordinating and scrutinizing security assistance programs.
The changes, spearheaded by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and executed in December, moved the Defense Security Cooperation Agency ― which manages foreign military sales as well as international military education and training ― under Karlin’s office. What had been the DoD’s security cooperation programs were combined with elements of the Office of Stability and Humanitarian Affairs.
“Hopefully that helps us take a more strategic approach to security cooperation more broadly,” Karlin said several weeks after she and Lewis testified together before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
As required by the 2017 defense authorization act, the Pentagon is critically reviewing its own efforts, Karlin said, noting several studies are underway to evaluate whether its security assistance programs were successful.
“The U.S. military, has worked with partner militaries quite robustly since World War II in particular,” she said. “There was a bit of a sea change in the post-9/11 era, and I think that now as we move forward into a different era, we see the urgent need to look at how and in what ways we’re achieving our goals.”
The assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, Mara Karlin, insists the Pentagon is already undertaking significant organizational reforms aimed at better coordinating and scrutinizing security assistance programs. (Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase/U.S. Defense Department)
Beyond the 2022 defense policy bill’s mandate for a commission to study U.S. involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, the Pentagon is contracting with an outside agency for a comprehensive assessment of the strategic and operational lessons collected from the war there, Karlin said.
It has other efforts afoot to find and disseminate the lessons from its security cooperation efforts.
“We’re developing a learning and evaluation agenda for partnerships that focus on evidence-based policymaking, which will include the most critical learning questions for security cooperation, and prioritize a range of evidence-building activities, including evaluations, monitoring, research studies and tabletop exercises,” Karlin said. “These are hard issues to figure out, and you need to make some kind of a quantitative and qualitative approach.”
For example, the DoD made public a seven-page internal study of U.S. Africa Command’s maritime security cooperation activities in the Gulf of Guinea from 2007 to 2018. It found those efforts managed to spur Ghana and Senegal to an increased interest in policing their waters. But on the flip side, maintenance and parts issues plagued the effort, which included riverine patrols and offshore interdiction of illegal fishing and human trafficking.
Among the programs up for review is the Counter-ISIS Train and Equip Fund, budgeted at $500 million for FY23, which supports a range of Syrian and Iraqi forces, including the Kurdish peshmerga, with pay, equipment and infrastructure.
Another is the International Professional Military Education program, which has faced criticism that it duplicated the State Department’s long-running International Military Education and Training program.
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Karlin wouldn’t say whether the Pentagon supports the State Department’s legislative reform efforts, but she did note the two are in lockstep philosophically over the importance of security sector governance.
Defense policy legislation in 2017, she explained, worked to streamline what had been a patchwork of security assistance authorities and encouraged greater collaboration between the two departments.
“The vast majority of the security cooperation authorities that we have mandate State Department concurrence,” Karlin said. “Virtually all other security sector assistance in both directions is co-vetted in different forums that we have. There are discretionary authorities on both sides of the river, but our coordination does feel pretty exceptional.”
Asked if the State Department ought to have a broader say in the Defense Department’s security cooperation programs, Karlin said, “I think what we’re finding is that the approach we have right now is working pretty well,” as evidenced by the massive shipments of security aid continuously flowing to Ukraine from the U.S. and its partners.
“Whether it’s something like that or with more longer-term programs, we are quite literally in daily conversations with our colleagues at State,” she said.
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
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9. British veteran of US Marines who battled ISIS is now helping Ukraine's special forces take the fight to Putin's battalions
Andrew Milburn making it happen. A nice touch - the Mozart Group to counter the Wagner Group - a form of strategic competition.
British veteran of US Marines who battled ISIS is now helping Ukraine's special forces take the fight to Putin's battalions
- Colonel Andrew Milburn spent 31 years with the United States Marine Corps
- He is using former British service personnel to train Ukrainian Special Forces
- He is passing on skills to make the Ukrainians more effective on the battlefield
- He said some Western volunteers are shooting themselves to escape the war
PUBLISHED: 11:45 EDT, 9 April 2022 | UPDATED: 13:01 EDT, 9 April 2022
Daily Mail · by Darren Boyle for MailOnline · April 9, 2022
A former US Special Forces commander who was born in Hong Kong but grew up in the UK is training Ukrainian forces to battle Russians.
Andrew Milburn, who joined the US Marine Corps as a private but retired 31 years later as a Colonel established the military training centre in Ukraine, dubbed the Mozart Group, to pass on special forces skills to Kyiv.
According to Forces.net, several British Army veterans have joined the Mozart Group to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Former US Marine Colonel Andrew Milburn, centre, is in Ukraine training local special forces with a group of former British Army personnel
Colonel Milburn, who was born in Hong Kong, but grew up in London spent 31 years in the Marine Corps. He is now teaching Ukrainians how to spot IEDs and tactical awareness which will improve their chances on the front line
Colonel Milburn, pictured, said Ukrainian authorities should screen potential foreign recruits to determine if they have enough experience to allow onto the front line
Colonel Milburn commanded the first Marines to take the fight directly against ISIS
An estimated 5,000 people have volunteered to fight for Ukraine, though a surprising number of them have lacked basic military training.
Colonel Milburn said some of the non-military volunteers, including Britons and Americans have been shooting themselves to get sent back from the front lines.
He said better streaming of volunteers was necessary to determine if they have the required skills and temperament to fight on the front line.
Commenting on his programme, Colonel Milburn said: ‘We work through contacts in Ukraine’s special operations command and came up with a programme where guys are rotating out of the front line and we give them badly needed training, to make sure they at least “zero” their weapons right, they get medical training, EOD training and situational awareness training about spotting IEDs. The Russians have laid in plenty as they withdraw.’
The UK trainers, according to Colonel Milburn, ‘will not get their gun on and go on the front line and kill Russians’.
He said: ‘There are times, inadvertently or by design that we have to go on the front line to talk to units.
‘It’s a mitigated risk. We are not a reckless group of Angola-style mercenaries. We are building capability.’
‘We have had a series of incidents of guys wounding themselves purposefully to get out of combat. Westerners, Brits and Americans. There is not one nationality that are especially heinous.
‘There needs to be an assessment part, a screening point on the border before they get in country. Within a few minutes someone like myself or my guys, or veterans can tell if someone has been in the military.’
Colonel Milburn said he has been watching some commentary on Twitter with ‘armchair critics’ claiming the Russians are being pushed back or are being defeated.
Colonel Milburn said some volunteers who headed to the warzone - even from Britain and the United States - have lied about their military experience. Some, having got scared by the intense fighting have shot themselves to get away from the front lines
He said: ‘The Russians are best in the defence and they have been inept in the offence, but they have reams of mines and they have got no shortage of artillery for shells. The barrages they bring down very quickly have to be seen to be believed.'
Colonel Milburn said he had planned to become a barrister in London having completed a law degree. Instead he deferred his entrance into Lincoln Inns for five years having enlisted into the US Marine Corps.
However, after his first enlistment he decided to continue with the US Marines, rising to the rank of Colonel.
Daily Mail · by Darren Boyle for MailOnline · April 9, 2022
10. Opinion | America Needs to Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real
But getting real does not mean taking the gloves off the law of armed conflict (Professor Kupchan is not advocating that - I would just like to make sure the headline is not misinterpreted). We need to ensure we and our allies, and friends and partners (Ukraine) maitin the moral high ground. We are in a new Cold War and it will be won by those with superior values, can execute superior political warfare, and have the military strength to prevail in proxy fights.
Excerpts:
What, then, is the path forward? The war in Ukraine now confronts the United States with the need to tilt back toward the practice of realpolitik. Washington’s commitment to keeping NATO’s doors open to Ukraine was a laudable and principled stand against an autocratic Russia. Yet America’s idealist cause has run headlong into Russian tanks; Washington’s effort to do right by Ukraine has culminated in Russia’s ruthless effort to put the country back under Moscow’s sway.
Mr. Putin has just sent history into reverse. The United States should seek to foil and punish Moscow’s aggression, but Washington also needs to be pragmatic to navigate a world that, even if more unruly, is also irreversibly interdependent.
...
In effect, the United States and its allies, even as they impose severe sanctions on Russia and send arms to Ukraine, are revealing that they do not deem the defense of the country to be a vital interest. But if that is the case, then why have NATO members wanted to extend to Ukraine a security guarantee that would obligate them to go to war in its defense?
NATO should extend security guarantees to countries that are of intrinsic strategic importance to the United States and its allies, but it should not make countries strategically important by extending them security guarantees. In a world that is rapidly reverting to the Hobbesian logic of power politics, when adversaries may regularly test U.S. commitments, NATO cannot afford to be profligate in handing out such guarantees. Strategic prudence requires distinguishing vital interests from lesser ones and conducting statecraft accordingly.
...
As during the Cold War, a world of rival blocs could mean economic as well as geopolitical division. The severe impact of the sanctions imposed on Russia underscores the dark side of globalization, potentially driving home to both the United States and China that economic interdependence entails quite considerable risk. China could distance itself from global markets and financial systems, while Washington could seek to further decouple the United States from Chinese investment, technology, goods and supply chains. The world may be entering a prolonged and costly era of de-globalization.
The United States will always be an idealist country struggling to navigate a realist world. That’s as it should be; the globe is a better place for it. But Russian’s invasion of Ukraine is a geopolitical watershed: A more realist world is back, requiring that America’s idealist ambitions yield more regularly to inescapable strategic realities.
Opinion | America Needs to Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real
Guest Essay
America Needs to Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real
April 11, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
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Mr. Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
During his recent speech in Warsaw, President Biden said that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” only to clarify a few days later that he was merely expressing outrage, not announcing a new U.S. policy aimed at toppling Russia’s leader. The episode, interpreted by many as a dangerous gaffe, underscored the tension in U.S. foreign policy between idealism and realism.
Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should provoke moral outrage in all of us, and, at least in principle, it warrants his removal from office. But Mr. Putin could well remain the leader of a major power into the next decade, and Washington will need to deal with him.
This friction between lofty goals and realpolitik is nothing new. The United States has since the founding era been an idealist power operating in a realist world — and has on balance succeeded in bending the arc of history toward justice. But geopolitical exigency at times takes precedence over ideals, with America playing power politics when it needs to.
During the Cold War, Washington promoted stability by tolerating a Soviet sphere of influence and cozying up to unsavory regimes willing to fight Communism. In contrast, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America operated under conditions of geopolitical slack; great-power rivalry was muted, enabling Washington to put front and center its effort to promote democracy and expand a liberal, rules-based international order.
What, then, is the path forward? The war in Ukraine now confronts the United States with the need to tilt back toward the practice of realpolitik. Washington’s commitment to keeping NATO’s doors open to Ukraine was a laudable and principled stand against an autocratic Russia. Yet America’s idealist cause has run headlong into Russian tanks; Washington’s effort to do right by Ukraine has culminated in Russia’s ruthless effort to put the country back under Moscow’s sway.
Mr. Putin has just sent history into reverse. The United States should seek to foil and punish Moscow’s aggression, but Washington also needs to be pragmatic to navigate a world that, even if more unruly, is also irreversibly interdependent.
The Gap Between Means and Ends
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed a gap between America’s ideological aspirations and geopolitical realities that has been widening since the 1990s. During the heady decade after the end of the Cold War, Washington was confident that the triumph of American power and purpose cleared the way for the spread of democracy. A primary instrument for doing so was the enlargement of NATO.
But from early on, the American foreign policy establishment allowed principle to obscure the geopolitical downsides of NATO enlargement. Yes, NATO membership should be open to all countries that qualify, and all nations should be able to exercise their sovereign right to choose their alignments as they see fit. But geography and geopolitics still matter; major powers, regardless of their ideological bent, don’t like it when other major powers stray into their neighborhoods.
It’s true that Moscow’s dismay at the prospect of Ukraine’s membership in NATO most likely is fed in part by nostalgia for the geopolitical heft of the Soviet days, Mr. Putin’s paranoia about a “color revolution” arising in Russia, and mystical delusions about unbreakable civilizational links between Russia and Ukraine. But it is also true that the West erred in dismissing Russia’s legitimate security concerns about NATO setting up shop on the other side of its 1,000-mile-plus border with Ukraine.
All major powers desire strategic breathing room — which is precisely why Russia has objected to NATO’s eastern expansion since the end of the Cold War. NATO may be a defensive alliance, but it brings to bear aggregate military power that Russia understandably does not want parked near its territory.
Indeed, Moscow’s objections to NATO membership for Ukraine are very much in line with America’s own statecraft, which has long sought to keep other major powers away from its borders.
The United States spent much of the 19th century ushering Britain, France, Russia and Spain out of the Western Hemisphere. Thereafter, Washington regularly turned to military intervention to hold sway in the Americas. The exercise of hemispheric hegemony continued during the Cold War, with the United States determined to box the Soviet Union and its ideological sympathizers out of Latin America. When Moscow deployed missiles to Cuba in 1962, the United States issued an ultimatum that brought the superpowers to the brink of war.
After Russia recently hinted that it might again deploy its military to Latin America, the State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, responded, “If we do see any movement in that direction, we will respond swiftly and decisively.” Given its own track record, Washington should have given greater credence to Moscow’s objections to bringing Ukraine into NATO.
NATO’s open door policy has meanwhile encouraged countries in Europe’s east to lean too far over their strategic skis. While the allure of joining the alliance has encouraged aspirants to carry out the democratic reforms needed to qualify for entry, the open door has also prompted prospective members to engage in excessively risky behavior.
Not long after NATO in 2008 pledged that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO,” Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, launched an offensive against pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia with whom the country had been sporadically fighting for years. Russia promptly carved up Georgia, grabbing control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Mr. Saakashvili thought the West had his back, but he miscalculated and overreached.
In similar fashion, NATO encouraged Ukraine to beat a path toward the alliance. The 2014 Maidan Revolution toppled a pro-Moscow regime and put Ukraine on a westward course, resulting in Russia’s intervention in Crimea and Donbas. NATO’s open door then beckoned, prompting Ukrainians in 2019 to enshrine their NATO aspirations in the Constitution.
Now Russia has again invaded the country to block its westward path. Given its unenviable proximity to Russia, Ukraine would have been better off playing it safe, quietly building a stable democracy while sticking with the neutral status that it embraced when it exited the Soviet Union. Indeed, Ukraine’s potential return to neutrality figures prominently in the talks between Kyiv and Moscow to end the war.
NATO has wisely avoided direct involvement in the fighting in Ukraine in order to avert war with Russia. But NATO’s unwillingness to protect Ukraine has exposed a troubling disconnect between the organization’s stated goal of making the country a member and its judgment that defending Ukraine is not worth the cost.
In effect, the United States and its allies, even as they impose severe sanctions on Russia and send arms to Ukraine, are revealing that they do not deem the defense of the country to be a vital interest. But if that is the case, then why have NATO members wanted to extend to Ukraine a security guarantee that would obligate them to go to war in its defense?
NATO should extend security guarantees to countries that are of intrinsic strategic importance to the United States and its allies, but it should not make countries strategically important by extending them security guarantees. In a world that is rapidly reverting to the Hobbesian logic of power politics, when adversaries may regularly test U.S. commitments, NATO cannot afford to be profligate in handing out such guarantees. Strategic prudence requires distinguishing vital interests from lesser ones and conducting statecraft accordingly.
Beginning the World All Over Again
Americans have long understood the purpose of their power to be not only security, but also the spread of liberty at home and abroad. As Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, “We have it in our power to begin the world all over again.”
Paine was surely engaging in hyperbole. But successive generations of Americans have taken the nation’s exceptionalist calling to heart, with quite impressive results. Through the power of its example as well as its many exertions abroad — including World War I, World War II and the Cold War — the United States has succeeded in expanding the footprint of liberal democracy.
But the ideological aspirations of the United States have at times fueled overreach, producing outcomes at odds with the nation’s idealist ambitions. The founding generation was determined to build an extended republic that would stretch to the Pacific Coast. The exalted banner of Manifest Destiny provided ideological justification for the nation’s westward expansion — but also moral cover for trampling on Native Americans and launching a war of choice against Mexico that led to U.S. annexation of roughly half of Mexican territory.
President William McKinley in 1898 embarked on a war to expel colonial Spain from Cuba, insisting that Americans had to act “in the cause of humanity.” Yet victory in the Spanish-American War turned the United States itself into an imperial power as it asserted control over Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific, including the Philippines. The resulting Filipino insurgency led to the death of some 4,000 U.S. soldiers and more than 200,000 Filipino fighters and civilians.
As he prepared the country for entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson declared before Congress that “the world must be made safe for democracy.” After U.S. forces helped bring the war to a close, he played a leading role in negotiations over the League of Nations, a global body that was to preserve peace through collective action, dispute resolution and disarmament. But such idealist ambitions proved too much even for Americans. The Senate shot down U.S. membership in the League; Wilson’s ideological overreach cleared the way for the stubborn isolationism of the interwar era.
“The Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty,” President George W. Bush proclaimed just before launching the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the war resulted in far more bloodshed and chaos than liberty. Likewise, two decades of exhaustive U.S. efforts to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan fell far short, with the American withdrawal last summer giving way to Taliban rule and a humanitarian nightmare. Across these historical episodes, noble ambitions became divorced from strategic realities, yielding dreadful results.
Getting Real
NATO meant well in opening its doors to Ukraine, yet good intentions have again stumbled on geopolitical realities. To be sure, Mr. Putin had the opportunity to settle his objections to Ukraine’s membership in NATO at the negotiating table. Last June, President Biden admitted that whether Ukraine joins the alliance “remains to be seen”; more recently, President Emmanuel Macron of France floated the idea of “Finlandization” for Ukraine — effective neutrality — and proposals for a formal moratorium on further enlargement circulated. Mr. Putin could have picked up these leads, but he instead opted for war — and now owns the resulting death and destruction.
Russia’s relationship with the West is fast heading toward militarized rivalry. In light of the tight strategic partnership that has emerged between Moscow and Beijing — and China’s own geopolitical ambitions — the next Cold War may well pit the West against a Sino-Russian bloc stretching from the Western Pacific to Eastern Europe.
The return of a two-bloc world that plays by the rules of realpolitik means that Washington will need to dial back its efforts to expand the liberal order, instead returning to a strategy of patient containment aimed at preserving geopolitical stability and avoiding great-power war. A new strategic conservatism will require avoiding the further extension of defense commitments into geographic areas that Russia and China consider their rimlands.
Instead, the United States should seek stable balances of power in the European and Asia-Pacific theaters. Washington will need to strengthen its forward presence in both theaters, requiring higher and smarter military spending and the strict avoidance of demanding wars of choice and nation-building adventures in the Middle East or other peripheral regions.
At the same time, taming an interdependent world will require working across ideological lines. Washington should ease off on the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad and the Biden administration should refrain from its tendency to articulate a geopolitical vision that too neatly divides the world into democracies and autocracies. Strategic and economic expedience will at times push the United States to partner with repressive regimes; moderating oil prices, for example, may require collaboration with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Even though the United States will continue teaming up with its traditional democratic allies in Europe and Asia, many of the world’s democracies will avoid taking sides in a new era of East-West rivalry. Indeed, Brazil, India, Israel, South Africa and other democracies have been sitting on the fence when it comes to responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia clearly poses the most immediate threat to geopolitical stability in Eurasia, but China, due to its emergence as a true competitor of the United States, still poses the greater geopolitical challenge in the longer term. Now that Russia and China are regularly teaming up, they could together constitute an opposing bloc far more formidable than its Soviet forebear. Accordingly, the United States should exploit opportunities to put distance between Moscow and Beijing, following the lead of the quintessential realists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who in the 1970s weakened the Communist bloc by driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union.
The United States should play both sides. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks a fundamental breach with the Atlantic democracies, yet the West cannot afford to completely turn its back on Russia; too much is at stake. As during the Cold War, Washington will need a hybrid strategy of containment and engagement. Russia should remain in the penalty box for now, with the United States pushing back against the Kremlin’s territorial expansionism and other aggressive behavior by reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank and maintaining harsh economic sanctions.
But Washington should also remain on the lookout for opportunities to engage Moscow. Its invasion of Ukraine has just made Russia an economic and strategic dependent of China; Mr. Putin will not relish being Xi Jinping’s sidekick. The United States should exploit the Kremlin’s discomfort with becoming China’s junior partner by signaling that Russia has a Western option.
Assuming an eventual peace settlement in Ukraine that permits the scaling back of sanctions, the Western democracies should remain open to cautious and selective cooperation with Moscow. Areas of potential collaboration include furthering nuclear and conventional arms control, sharing best practices and technologies on alternatives to fossil fuels, and jointly developing rules of the road to govern military and economic activity in the Arctic.
Russia needs China more than China needs Russia, so Washington should also seek to pull Beijing away from Moscow. Beijing’s ambiguous response to the invasion of Ukraine suggests at least a measure of discomfort with the economic and geopolitical disruption that has been produced by Russian recklessness. Yet Beijing continues to benefit from Russian energy and strategic cooperation and from the fact that Mr. Putin is forcing the United States to focus on Europe, thereby stalling the U.S. “pivot to Asia.” Nonetheless, Washington should keep an eye out for opportunities to work with Beijing in areas of common interest — trade, climate change, North Korea, digital governance, public health — to improve relations, tackle global problems and potentially weaken the bond between China and Russia.
As during the Cold War, a world of rival blocs could mean economic as well as geopolitical division. The severe impact of the sanctions imposed on Russia underscores the dark side of globalization, potentially driving home to both the United States and China that economic interdependence entails quite considerable risk. China could distance itself from global markets and financial systems, while Washington could seek to further decouple the United States from Chinese investment, technology, goods and supply chains. The world may be entering a prolonged and costly era of de-globalization.
The United States will always be an idealist country struggling to navigate a realist world. That’s as it should be; the globe is a better place for it. But Russian’s invasion of Ukraine is a geopolitical watershed: A more realist world is back, requiring that America’s idealist ambitions yield more regularly to inescapable strategic realities.
Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author, most recently, of “Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself from the World.”
11. Ukraine Situation Report: Leopard Tanks Could Arrive In Six Weeks With Germany's Approval
It is a lot harder to move real equipment in real life than moving them on a table top map or a computer simulation.
As an aside we should be anticipating the future needs of Ukrainian forces. "Just in time" or too late logistics leads to high casualties or mission failure.
As Cohen and Gooch wrote long ago all military failures are a result of three things: failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate.
Ukraine Situation Report: Leopard Tanks Could Arrive In Six Weeks With Germany's Approval
Ukraine has been asking for tanks as a major Russian offensive in Ukraine’s east looms.
The head of German defense contractor Rheinmetall says the company could begin sending Cold War-era Leopard 1 main battle tanks to Ukraine in six weeks if authorities in the country approve the plan. This public statement can only add to the pressure on the German government to green-light this transfer. Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reportedly been holding all this up despite growing support for giving the tanks to the Ukrainian military from within his own Social Democratic Party and others in the country's current coalition government.
If officials in Germany do authorize the transfer of the Leopard 1s, they would join a number of other countries that have recently sent, or announced plans to send, tanks and other armored vehicles to Ukraine. How Ukrainians would be trained to operate or maintain the tanks, and how various necessary supply chains would be established, is unclear. Regardless, this is part of a broader push lately on the part of Ukraine's international partners to get higher-end weapons into the country, including surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles and artillery systems.
All of this comes as the Russian military increasingly appears to be preparing to launch a reinvigorated offensive to secure various objectives in and around Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Over the weekend, commercial satellite imagery provider Maxar Technologies released images showing Russian armored vehicles, artillery, and trucks, stretched along roughly eight miles of road to the east of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The convoy, which could contain hundreds of vehicles in total, appeared to be heading south toward the front lines.
Before getting into the most recent news below, readers of The War Zone can first get up to speed on the current state of conflict in Ukraine here.
WARNING: Some of the updates below contain graphic material.
The Latest
POSTED: 2:35 PM EST—
German newspaper Handelsblatt
If the transfer is authorized, Papperger said that the tanks would be sent via Rheinmetall's Italian subsidiary, Rheinmetall Italia, raising the possibility that the vehicles in question previously belong to the Italian military, which operated Leopard 1s until 2008. The government in Berlin typically places strict controls on the re-transfer of weapon systems of German origin from one foreign country to another. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht had also said over the weekend that the country had "now reached a limit" in terms of what it could transfer to Ukraine directly.
Whether the Leopard 1s are ex-Italian or not, approving a transfer via a third country might ease any political concerns in Germany over such a deal, including fears of a direct backlash from authorities in Russia. Though officials in Germany have insisted that the country is working to wean itself off of Russian-supplied natural gas, this remains a key energy source at present. With that in mind, Germany has approved a number of third-party transfers to Ukraine already, including one involving upgraded ex-East German BMP-1 infantry vehicles from the Czech Republic.
There are separate concerns about how readily Ukrainian forces could actually put Leopard 1s into service after receiving them. The Ukrainian military has no institutional experience operating or maintaining this type of tank nor does it have established supply chains for spare parts or ammunition for their 105mm main guns.
Rheinmetall's Papperger told Handelsblatt that he believed that Ukrainian personnel with certain unspecified existing skill sets could be trained to operate a Leopard 1 in a timeframe measured in days. "You have to be trained a bit more intensively on the Leopard 1. But if the Ukrainians want the tank, a way should be found," Marcus Faber, a defense policy spokesperson for Germany's Free Democratic Party, which is part of the current parliamentary coalition running the country, separately told the newspaper.
In the context of this potential transfer, an old German report comparing the Leopard 1A5 variant to the Soviet T-72M1 tank interesting assessed that the latter design was less well suited to defensive operations. This is something that could certainly be relevant to the Ukrainian military.
Regardless of whether the Ukrainian military ultimately receives any Leopard 1 tanks or not, other countries have steadily announced plans to deliver more substantial military aid packages in the past two weeks or so. Just this weekend, the British government notably confirmed that is working out the details of a transfer of anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, though it has not identified the exact weapon system in question. So far there is nothing to substantiate rumors that British authorities are planning to deliver a shipment of Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles, or that they may have done so already.
Interestingly, a video clip, seen below, has emerged that appears to show a British-made Martlet missile being employed in the surface-to-air role in Ukraine. Authorities in the United Kingdom had previously confirmed the transfer of Starstreak shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS), to Ukraine, but no deliveries of Martlets have been officially announced. Martlet missiles can be fired from the same hand-held and pedestal-mounted launchers as the Starstreak. Martlet missiles can also be employed against certain maritime threats and other targets on the surface depending on the configuration of the complete weapons system.
The U.S. military is currently looking for ways to train more Ukrainian personnel on the use of Switchblade loitering munitions, also commonly referred to as "suicide drones." It first emerged four weeks ago that the U.S. government would supply hundreds of these weapons, which you can read more about here, to the Ukrainian armed forces. Over the weekend, the Pentagon disclosed that it had recently trained Ukrainian personnel in the United States to use these drones. The members of Ukraine's armed forces had been in the country prior to the start of the invasion to attend an unrelated training course at the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS) in Biloxi, Mississippi. U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin spoke to those individuals yesterday ahead of their return to Ukraine.
A senior U.S. defense official said today that there is no evidence that the S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile battery that Slovakia transferred to Ukraine last week has already been destroyed. There had been reports that the S-300 battery had been among the targets destroyed during Russian strikes on the airport serving the southern city of Dnipro over the weekend. Local Ukrainian officials had said the airport was effectively destroyed as a result.
Authorities in Ukraine have repeatedly asked for additional tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as other higher-end weapon systems in recent weeks. This comes as the Russian military's primary operational focus has shifted to areas in the east and southeast of the country. Satellite imagery that Maxar technologies released over the weekend of a large Russian convoy, possibly containing hundreds of vehicles moving south toward the front lines in Ukraine's eastern Donbas, is the latest indication that a new major offensive may be in the works.
The latest assessment of the conflict from the U.K. Ministry of Defence says that Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian-controlled areas in the Donbas with artillery fire, but that a number of their attacks have been repulsed so far. British officials also warn about the potential that Russia's units may employ controversial white phosphorus incendiary munitions in their ongoing battle to fully secure Mariupol. That strategic southeastern port city on the Sea of Azov has been under siege for more than a month, but a pocket of Ukrainian resistance continues to hold out. Fully securing this area is a key component of Russia's larger objective of securing a land bridge to the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
A senior U.S. defense official has said that there are no indications yet that a new Russian offensive in the Donbas is about to kick off, but that some units withdrawn from areas of northern Ukraine do appear to be moving in that direction. That individual also said that there are concerns that Russian forces could employ the same devastating tactics that they have been using in Mariupol against other Ukrainian cities.
There are also indications that some of Russia's battalion tactical groups have been rendered entirely combat ineffective as a result of the fighting so far.
Heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine is certainly continuing. Thousands of civilians have evacuated from this portion of the country already. Ukrainian authorities say that some 160,000 people have now fled the city of Kramatorsk, specifically. A Russian missile strike last week on the railway station there, which has been an evacuation hub, killed at least 57 people, including five children, and injured 114 more.
Russian forces have now launched more than 1,500 ballistic and cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets since the invasion began, according to the U.S. military. New pictures have emerged showing Kh-35U anti-ship cruise missiles, one of the types of missiles Russia has been employing in the conflict, with slogans written on them. Given that Ukrainian warships have been effectively a non-factor in the fighting so far, Russian forces may be using these weapons in a secondary land-attack role, as they have with other anti-ship cruise missiles.
The picture and video below show the wreckage of another Russian helicopter shot down in Ukraine. The Mi-8MTSh Hip was reportedly destroyed on March 4.
The video clip below shows what appears to be a member of Ukraine's armed forces engaging an aircraft with a MANPADS while under air attack.
The video in the Tweet below shows Georgian volunteers in Ukraine armed with a variety of weapons, including Javelin and NLAW anti-tank guided missiles, and a Stinger MANPADS. You can read more about all of these shoulder-fired missiles here.
The video below gives a sense of the remnants of war that Ukraine will have spent significant effort cleaning up across the country whenever the current conflict comes to an end.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer says he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow today. Nehammer would be the first Western leader to meet with Putin since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in February. The Austrian leader recently met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. A number of European leaders have now made that trip.
We will continue to update this post with new information until we state otherwise.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com
12. U.S. SOF Vision & Strategy - 2022 | SOF News
U.S. SOF Vision & Strategy - 2022 | SOF News
sof.news · by John Friberg · April 12, 2022
U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations / Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SO/LIC) have released its Special Operations Forces Vision & Strategy document (April 11, 2022).
Vision Statement. The document leads off with the USSOCOM and ASD SO/LIC vision statement: “Create strategic, asymmetric advantages for the Nation in integrated deterrence, crisis and conflict”. It goes on to list ‘core values’, ‘who we are’, ‘what we do’, and ‘where are we going’.
Strategy. Since 9/11, SOF has been primarily focused on countering terrorists. Now, the United States faces adversaries “increasingly capable of counteracting our gains, threatening our Homeland, reducing our influence, and eroding our advantages globally.” The document states that the new SOF strategy will provide a framework to move from a Counter Terrorism (CT) force into one suited to be a part of the nation’s integrated deterrence. SOF will continue to conduct priority CT operations, support integrated deterrence, and prepare for potential high-end conflict.
Strategic Environment. China is the biggest concern as it is “capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to rival the U.S. and destabilize the international system that has advanced our interests for 75 years.” Russia continues to demonstrate its “determination to use its considerable resources and capabilities to enhance its global influence, challenge our interests, and disrupt globally.” Other nations, like Iran and North Korea, are also threats that challenge regional stability. The Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) remain an active and persistent threat to our homeland and vital national interests worldwide.
Strategic Approach. The SOF Strategy establishes a 10-year framework of strategic aims, strategic efforts, and resources to create strategic and asymmetric advantages for the United States. The ‘aims’ include conducting operations to support priority missions, modernize SOF concepts, capabilities, and doctrine, broaden readiness for critical missions, enhance relationships with allies, partners, and other U.S. government organizations, and strengthen the SOF community. The SOF Strategy adopts a comprehensive approach by taking action in five strategic efforts: compete and win for the nation, innovate for future threats, preserve and grow readiness, advance partnerships, and strengthen the force and family. Each of these ‘strategic efforts’ have several sub-categories.
SOF Resources. The SOF enterprise will leverage several resources and organizations to achieve the strategic aims of the SOF Strategy. Key organizations include ASD SO/LIC, Secretariat for Special Operations (SSO), Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD), USSOCOM, SOF Service Components, JSOC, TSOCs, and other resources.
The document concludes with:
“Just as our adversaries adapt to and shape the strategic environment, SOF will continue to evolve in order to fulfill the vision of creating strategic, asymmetric advantages for the nation in integrated deterrence, crisis, and conflict. Guided by SOF core values – honor, courage, excellence, creativity, and respect – this strategy establishes the path to achieve that vision”.
**********
Special Operations Forces Vision & Strategy, ASD SO/LIC and USSOCOM, April 2022, PDF, 16 pages.
sof.news · by John Friberg · April 12, 2022
13. Analysis | Congress comes off the sidelines on Ukraine. Will it stay on the field?
Analysis | Congress comes off the sidelines on Ukraine. Will it stay on the field?
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. Olivier is off this week, but we have a group of stellar guest authors lined up for you. First up? Ace congressional reporter Mike DeBonis.
The big idea
What more will Congress be able to do on Ukraine?
Just hours before leaving for a two-week recess Thursday, the Senate made what, on its face, looked like a stunning display of unity and resolve against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On rare 100-to-0 roll call votes, the Senate passed measures sending U.S. imports of Russian energy, cracking down on trade with Russia and Belarus, and permanently reauthorizing human rights sanctions authority named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Putin critic who died in regime custody. The House quickly passed the bills, and President Biden signed them both Friday.
But consider the context.
Six weeks had already passed after Russia began its assault. The legislation was in limbo for weeks as lawmakers bickered about details, with the impasse breaking only after fresh reports of Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians. And the practical impact of the bills is negligible: Biden had already issued executive orders cracking down on Russian energy and trade.
So the reaction on Capitol Hill ran more toward relief than triumph.
- "We dither sometimes," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, told me. "And I'm not sure that what we ended up agreeing to couldn't have been agreed a couple of weeks ago."
As I wrote earlier this month, the whole episode has raised serious questions about whether the modern Congress is simply too polarized and sclerotic to play a leading role in foreign affairs.
But the whole tale is yet to be told.
A protracted conflict
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee last week that the Ukraine conflict would be "measured in years." And that assessment, which echoed lawmakers' private intelligence briefings, has pricked the ears of Menendez and other lawmakers who see plenty of opportunity for Congress to make its mark.
A Senate bill from Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) to streamline U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine in the style of the World War II lend-lease program is now in the House. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants to unwind tax breaks for companies doing business in Russia. Other lawmakers are looking to freeze Russia's gold reserves, make it harder for oligarchs to shelter assets abroad, backfill weapons that other NATO allies have provided to Ukraine and more.
But, as the past few weeks have proved, nothing on Capitol Hill is simple. A bipartisan bill that would allow the U.S. government to sell seized Russian assets and use the proceeds to benefit Ukraine, my colleague Jeff Stein reports, has floundered because of objections from the American Civil Liberties Union. The Magnitsky reauthorization passed only after its sponsors agreed to change language that some social conservatives believed could lead to an American crackdown on antiabortion and anti-gay-rights leaders abroad. And dozens of other bills have simply withered on the vine as the Senate has tackled other matters, including a Supreme Court nomination.
Some senators, particularly Republicans, have concluded that their most valuable role is to push Biden — not pass bills. When I asked Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), the top Republican on Foreign Relations, about his legislative priorities, he talked about the "need to keep the pressure on."
"I think probably what all of us are doing is urging the administration and members of the administration to get some urgency," he said.
Money, money, money
There is one big thing that can spur Congress to action — money — and Milley's warning has members starting to think about more funding.
The big exception to congressional inaction on Ukraine was the $13.6 billion aid package that was included in the massive omnibus spending bill last month. Already, lawmakers are starting to want more missiles, more ammo, more anything. "If it shoots, we should ship it," Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) has taken to saying.
But it's not just military aid, either. Menendez and several other senators told me last week they are focused intently on a potential global food crisis not only in Ukraine, but in scores of countries that depend on Russian and Ukrainian agriculture to feed their citizens. Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) told me he plans to call an appropriations hearing with U.S. and United Nations officials to discuss confronting the crisis.
- "I expect that we'll be — by the end of this month, maybe early next month — talking about the combination of additional military assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces and our eastern-flank NATO allies and humanitarian assistance, both hunger and refugee and covid relief," Coons said.
His mention of covid relief was not offhand — and it could be the crucial factor. Right now, a $10 billion covid aid package is stuck in the Senate because of immigration politics, and Democrats are frustrated that $5 billion in planned global covid relief was cast aside in negotiations with Republicans.
Could the overwhelming bipartisan support for Ukraine be enough to unstick things? It can be hard to see anything sweeping away border politics in an election year, but last week’s action showed what is possible, said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who played a leading role in clearing roadblocks.
“It shows that there is absolutely solid bipartisan support for Ukraine, but it also shows that if you work through these issues that you can find yes-yes solutions,” he said.
Austrian chancellor to tell Putin that Russia has ‘lost’ in Ukraine
“Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer is set to speak face-to-face with Vladimir Putin on Monday, in the Russian president’s first meeting with a Western leader since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February. Austria’s foreign minister defended the sit-down as a chance to send ‘a very clear political message’ to Putin ‘that he is isolating Russia’ and ‘has lost’ already on moral terms," Annabelle Timsit, Bryan Pietsch, Miriam Berger, Jennifer Hassan and Julian Duplain report.
More key updates:
14. Opinion | Trump is wrong about war. Russia’s failure in Ukraine shows why. By Max Boot
Not sent as a partisan view but for Mr.Boot's military commentary.
Excerpts:
Professional armed forces, such as the U.S. military, occasionally commit abuses, but they try to limit “collateral damage” to the extent possible not just because that is what international law demands but also because that is what military success requires. The Russians in Ukraine are learning what the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the Nazis in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: Indiscriminate violence simply generates more domestic and international opposition, thereby creating more enemies than you eliminate.
There are only a few examples in the modern era when a “scorched earth” strategy worked — and that was when the invaders had overwhelming numerical superiority and could cut off the defenders from outside support. Those conditions applied in Chechnya but not in Ukraine — or even in Syria. The Assad regime, after all, still hasn’t been able to snuff out a rebellion seven years after Russia’s intervention.
So spare me the caterwauling about the “woke” U.S. military. The U.S. military’s “wokeness” — its commitment to the humane treatment of soldiers and civilians alike — is actually a major source of strength.
Opinion | Trump is wrong about war. Russia’s failure in Ukraine shows why.
Right-wingers have long claimed that the U.S. military should not be hobbled by humanitarian considerations or even the laws of war. During the Vietnam War, when U.S. aircraft dropped more bombs than during World War II, many conservatives fumed that we were fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. “Bomb them back into the Stone Age,” Gen. Curtis LeMay demanded. Most of the public supported 2nd Lt. William L. Calley, the only perpetrator of the infamous My Lai massacre (when U.S. troops killed more than 500 civilians) to be convicted by a court-martial. He served only three years of house arrest.
More recently, former president Donald Trump has been an enthusiastic advocate for war crimes: He endorsed torture, vowed to “bomb the s--- out” of terrorists, suggested killing terrorists’ families and said that the United States should steal Iraq’s oil. Trump did not order the U.S. military to carry out war crimes — the military would never have done so — but he did pardon members of the military accused of war crimes. Since Trump left office, Republicans have been loudly complaining that the U.S. military has become so “woke” that it can’t win wars.
By right-wing lights, Russia should have the world’s greatest army. The Russian military, after all, is as illiberal, or “un-woke,” as it is possible to get.
In Ukraine, the Russian military is deliberately targeting civilians with artillery, air and missile strikes and summary execution, torture and rape. The Russian strategy is to raze any towns that refuse to surrender. When the Russians take over towns, they launch a reign of terror. My Post colleagues report that investigators in Bucha have “uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses.”
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The Russian soldiers are even following Trump’s advice to make war pay for itself. They have not been taking Ukraine’s oil because it’s still underground, but they have been avidly looting anything they can get their hands on, from washing machines to flat-screen TVs. Naturally, they have been helping themselves to whatever liquor they find.
The Russian high command has as little regard for its own soldiers as it does for civilians who are in their path. Rest assured, Republicans, there is no “diversity training” in the Russian ranks. There is, instead, brutal hazing of conscripts that includes “robbery, torture, and sexual assault.” In 2019, a Russian private was so badly abused that he snapped and killed eight fellow soldiers. The Russian army also deals with simmering tensions between ethnic Russians and other ethnic groups, particularly from the Caucasus, who form gangs that prey on fellow service members.
Yet, despite the Russian army’s lack of wokeness and its proclivity for war crimes, it is not, in fact, a capable military force. Although Russia has a much larger and better-funded military than Ukraine, its combat performance has been abysmal. The war is not yet over, but, as the Associated Press noted, “Russia’s failure to take Kyiv was a defeat for the ages.”
How do you explain this, Republicans?
There are many reasons the Russians are losing this war — in particular the valor and skill of their Ukrainian adversaries — but I would argue that a big part of the explanation is the Russians’ very lack of “wokeness,” meaning their disdain for civilized norms of behavior.
The brutalization of Russian soldiers, combined with the corruption of their officers, detracts from unit cohesion and therefore from combat performance. No doubt the abuse inflicted on Russian soldiers by their comrades makes them more willing to abuse civilians, but this, too, undercuts the professionalism of the Russian military.
Soldiers engaged in rape, looting and murder are distracted from their primary task, which is to close with, and destroy, the armed forces of the enemy. There is a reason Viking-style marauders gave way long ago to professional, disciplined armies obedient to the chain of command and bound by the laws of wars. It’s not just because disciplined armies are more humane; it’s also because they are more militarily effective.
Professional armed forces, such as the U.S. military, occasionally commit abuses, but they try to limit “collateral damage” to the extent possible not just because that is what international law demands but also because that is what military success requires. The Russians in Ukraine are learning what the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the Nazis in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: Indiscriminate violence simply generates more domestic and international opposition, thereby creating more enemies than you eliminate.
There are only a few examples in the modern era when a “scorched earth” strategy worked — and that was when the invaders had overwhelming numerical superiority and could cut off the defenders from outside support. Those conditions applied in Chechnya but not in Ukraine — or even in Syria. The Assad regime, after all, still hasn’t been able to snuff out a rebellion seven years after Russia’s intervention.
So spare me the caterwauling about the “woke” U.S. military. The U.S. military’s “wokeness” — its commitment to the humane treatment of soldiers and civilians alike — is actually a major source of strength.
15. Mariupol mayor says siege has killed more than 10K civilians
These are incredible numbers that will surely continue to rise.
Mariupol mayor says siege has killed more than 10K civilians
AP · by YURAS KARMANAU, ADAM SCHRECK and CARA ANNA · April 11, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city, and that the death toll could surpass 20,000, as weeks of attacks and privation leave the bodies of Mariupol’s people “carpeted through the streets.”
Speaking by phone Monday with The Associated Press, Mayor Vadym Boychenko also accused Russian forces of having blocked weeks of thwarted humanitarian convoys into the city in an attempt to conceal the carnage there from the outside world.
Mariupol has been cut off by Russian attacks that began soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in late February, and has suffered some of the most brutal assaults of the war. Boychenko gave new details of recent allegations by Ukrainian officials that Russian forces have brought mobile cremation equipment to Mariupol to dispose of the corpses of victims of the siege.
Russian forces have taken many bodies to a huge shopping center where there are storage facilities and refrigerators, Boychenko said.
“Mobile crematoriums have arrived in the form of trucks: You open it, and there is a pipe inside and these bodies are burned,” he said.
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Boychenko spoke from a location in Ukrainian-controlled territory but outside Mariupol. The mayor said he had several sources for his description of the allegedly methodic burning of corpses by Russian forces in the city, but did not detail the sources of his information.
The discovery of large numbers of apparently executed civilians after Russian forces retreated from cities around the capital, Kyiv, this month already has prompted widespread condemnation and charges from Ukrainians and the West that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.
Elsewhere Monday, U.S. officials pointed to new signs that Russia’s military is gearing up for a major offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, switching its focus after Russian forces failed in their initial drive to capture Kyiv.
Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region since 2014, and have declared independent states. A major confrontation between the two countries’ fighters in Donbas would allow Russia to try to use its numbers and greater military might to capture more territory there. Western military strategists say Russia also hopes to force Ukrainian fighters out into the open in more conventional battles in the east, rather than the successful hit-and-run attacks Ukrainian fighters have often employed so far.
Russia has appointed a seasoned general to lead its renewed push in the eastern Donbas region.
A senior U.S. defense official on Monday described a long Russian convoy now rolling toward the eastern city of Izyum with artillery, aviation and infantry support, as part of redeployment for what appears to be a looming Russian campaign in the east.
More artillery is being deployed near the city of Donetsk, while ground combat units that withdrew from around the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas appear destined for refitting and resupplying before they position in Donbas, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments.
With their offensive in many parts of the country thwarted, Russian forces have relied increasingly on bombarding cities — a strategy that has flattened many urban areas and killed thousands of people.
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In Bucha on Monday, the work of exhuming bodies from a mass grave in a churchyard resumed.
Galyna Feoktistova waited for hours in the cold and rain in hopes of identifying her 50-year-old son, who was shot and killed more than a month ago, but eventually she went home for some warmth. “He’s still there,” her surviving son, Andriy, said.
In Mariupol, about 120,000 civilians are in dire need of food, water, warmth and communications, the mayor said.
Only those residents who have passed the Russian “filtration camps” are released from the city, Boychenko said.
Ukrainian officials say Russian troops are confiscating passports from Ukrainian citizens then moving them to “filtration camps” in Ukraine’s separatist-controlled east before sending them to distant, economically depressed areas in Russia.
Boychenko said Monday that improvised prisons were organized for those who did not pass the “filtering,” while at least 33,000 people were taken to Russia or to separatist territory in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians on Monday that Russia might use chemical weapons in Mariupol. “We take this as seriously as possible,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
Western leaders have warned since before Russian troops moved into Ukraine that Russia could resort to unconventional weapons there, particularly chemical agents.
A Russia-allied separatist official, Eduard Basurin, appeared to urge their use Monday, telling Russian state TV that Russian-backed forces should seize a giant metals plant in Mariupol from Ukrainian forces by first blocking all the exits out of the factory. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” he said.
A Ukrainian regiment, without evidence, also claimed Monday that a drone had dropped a poisonous substance in Mariupol but said there were no serious injuries.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement that the U.S. could not confirm the drone report out of Mariupol. But Kirby noted the administration’s persistent concerns “about Russia’s potential to use a variety of riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents, in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations children’s agency said nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have fled their homes in the six weeks since Russia’s invasion began. The United Nations has verified that 142 children have been killed and 229 injured, though the actual numbers are likely much higher.
Elsewhere, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he met Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for talks that were “very direct, open and tough.”
In a statement released by his office, Nehammer said his primary message to Putin was “that this war needs to end, because in war both sides can only lose.” Nehammer said he also raised the issue of war crimes committed by the Russian military and said those responsible “will be held to account.”
Austria is a member of the European Union and has backed the 27-nation bloc’s sanctions against Russia, though it so far has opposed cutting off deliveries of Russian gas. The country is militarily neutral and is not a member of NATO.
In other developments, the head of the separatist rebel government in Donetsk claimed Ukrainian forces have lost control of the port area of Mariupol.
“Regarding the port of Mariupol, it is now under our control,” Denis Pushilin, president of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told Russian state television, according to Russian news agencies. The claim could not immediately be confirmed.
But Mariupol’s mayor said fighting continues at the port. “It is difficult, but our heroic military holds on,” Boychenko said.
Both sides are digging in for what could be a devastating war of attrition.
Russian forces will likely try to encircle the Donbas region from the north and the south as well as the east, said retired British Gen. Richard Barrons, co-chair of the U.K.-based strategic consulting firm Universal Defence & Security Solutions.
The ground in that part of Ukraine is flatter, more open and less wooded — so the Ukrainian ambush tactics used around Kiev may be less successful, Barrons said.
“As to the outcome, it’s finely balanced right now,” Barrons said. If the Russians learned from their previous failures, concentrated more force, connected their air force to ground forces better and improved their logistics, “then they might start to overwhelm the Ukrainian positions eventually, although I still think it would be a battle of enormous attrition.”
In a video address to South Korean lawmakers Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy specifically requested equipment that can shoot down Russian missiles.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov claimed the military used cruise missiles to destroy four S-300 launchers near the central city of Dnipro on Sunday. He said the military also hit such systems in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.
The Pentagon said it had seen no evidence to support Russia’s claims. And Lubica Janikova, spokeswoman for Slovakia’s prime minister, denied Monday that the S-300 system it sent Ukraine had been destroyed.
Questions remain about the ability of depleted and demoralized Russian forces to conquer much ground after their advance on Kyiv was repelled by determined Ukrainian defenders.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said Monday that Ukraine has already beaten back several assaults by Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions — which make up the Donbas — resulting in the destruction of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery.
Western military analysts say Russia’s assault increasingly is focusing on an arc of territory stretching from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the north, to Kherson in the south.
A residential area in Kharkiv was struck by incoming fire on Monday afternoon. Associated Press journalists saw firefighters putting out the fire and checking for victims following the attack, and saw that at least five people were killed, including a child.
Oleh Synyehubov, the regional governor of Kharkiv, said earlier Monday that Russian shelling had killed 11 people over the last 24 hours.
___
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Anna reported from Bucha, Ukraine. Associated Press Writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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AP · by YURAS KARMANAU, ADAM SCHRECK and CARA ANNA · April 11, 2022
16. Concern over possible use of chemical weapons as battle rages in besieged Ukrainian port
How will the international community respond to the use of chemical weapons?
Concern over possible use of chemical weapons as battle rages in besieged Ukrainian port
- Summary
- Ukraine and allies check reports of chemical weapons use
- Battle for Mariupol reaches decisive stage
- Russian troops mass for eastern offensive
- U.N. official cites growing reports of rape
- U.S. urges India to cut Russian oil and gas
LVIV, Ukraine, April 12 (Reuters) - Civilians were fleeing from areas of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday ahead of an anticipated Russian offensive, while Kyiv said it was checking reports that Russian forces had used chemical weapons in the besieged port city of Mariupol.
The battle for Mariupol, where the regional governor said tens of thousands may have been killed, appeared to be reaching a decisive phase, with Ukrainian marines holed up in the Azovstal industrial district.
Should the Russians seize Azovstal, they would be in full control of Mariupol, the lynchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east. The city has already been laid waste by weeks of Russian bombardments.
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Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said the government was checking unverified information that Russia may have used chemical weapons while besieging Mariupol.
"There is a theory that these could be phosphorous munitions," Malyar said in televised comments.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said on Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it massed troops in the eastern Donbas region for a new assault on Mariupol. He did not say if they actually had been used.
The United States and Britain said they were trying to verify the reports.
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said he had seen incident reports on possible chemical weapons use in Mariupol but could not confirm them.
"We know that last night around midnight a drone dropped some so-far unknown explosive device, and the people that were in and around the Mariupol metal plant, there were three people, they began to feel unwell," he told CNN.
They were taken to hospital and their lives were not in danger, he said.
Asked about the total number of dead in Mariupol, Kyrylenko said: "We are currently discussing 20-22,000 people dead", adding that the figure needed to be checked very carefully.
Chemical weapons production, use and stockpiling is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Although condemned by human rights groups, white phosphorous is not banned under the CWC.
Russia's defence ministry has not responded to a Reuters request for comment. Russian-backed separatist forces in the east denied using chemical weapons in Mariupol, the Interfax news agency reported.
But should it prove to be the case, it would mark a dangerous new development in a war that has already left a trail of death of destruction since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops over the border on Feb. 24.
About a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million population have been forced from their homes, cities turned into rubble, and thousands of people have been killed or injured - many of them civilians.
REDOUBLING EFFORTS
Putin calls the action a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine but it has drawn condemnation and alarm in the West, which has imposed a wide range of sanctions to squeeze the Russian economy.
After their troops got bogged down in the face of Ukrainian resistance, the Russians abandoned their bid to capture the capital Kyiv for now. They are redoubling their efforts in the east and Ukrainian forces are digging in to face a new offensive.
The governor of Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaidai, urged residents to evacuate using five humanitarian corridors agreed for the east.
"It's far more scary to remain and burn in your sleep from a Russian shell," he wrote on social media. "Evacuate, with every day the situation is getting worse. Take your essential items and head to the pickup point."
In all, nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed for Tuesday, including one from Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said that aside from trying to take control of Mariupol, Russian forces were intent on capturing Popasna, a town about two hours drive west of Luhansk, and were set to launch an offensive in the direction of Kurakhove in Donetsk.
Ukrainian troops had repulsed attacks in both Luhansk and Donetsk, it said.
President Zelenskiy pleaded overnight for more weapons from the West to help it end the siege of Mariupol and fend off the expected eastern offensive.
"Unfortunately we are not getting as much as we need to end this war faster...in particular, to lift the blockade of Mariupol," he said.
Separately, in an address to the Lithuanian parliament, Zelenskiy urged the European Union to impose sanctions on all Russian banks and Russian oil and to set a deadline for ending imports of Russian gas.
"We cannot wait," he said.
WAR CRIMES ALLEGATIONS
The departure of Russian forces from the outskirts of Kyiv brought to light allegations of war crimes, including executions and rape of civilians. Moscow dismisses these and has in turn accused Ukrainian forces of sexual violence.
United Nations official Sima Bahous told the Security Council on Monday: "We are increasingly hearing of rape and sexual violence.". read more
Kateryna Cherepakha, president of rights group La Strada-Ukraine, told the council via video: "Violence and rape is used now as a weapon of war by Russian invaders in Ukraine."
Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador denied the allegations. The
Russian defence ministry said Ukraine's government was being directed by the United States to sow false evidence of Russian violence against civilians despite what it said was Moscow's "unprecedented measures to save civilians".
Putin said on Tuesday Moscow's military operation would undoubtedly achieve what he said were its "noble" objectives.
Speaking at a ceremony at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, Putin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies that Moscow had no choice but to act to protect Russia and that a clash with Ukraine's anti-Russian forces had been inevitable.
He is scheduled to meet Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to discuss Ukraine and Western sanctions. Belarus is a staging area for Russian forces.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Angus MacSwan; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie
17. The Army’s transformation begins with these new units
The Army’s transformation begins with these new units
Major changes to the Army’s doctrine, equipment and operations have arrived in upgraded gear, future-focused technology and new ways to do battle.
But where these elements converge is in units filled with soldiers. And the Army isn’t letting its soldiers sit around and wait for new gear before figuring out how to fight a peer threat in large scale combat. They’re making major shifts in how big formations contribute while also tinkering with the look, function and capabilities of smaller, subordinate units.
Experts who spoke with Army Times looked at the formations to put the Army’s work into context. They agreed that the Army’s making many decisions that are warranted, some that are overdue and some that are still up for debate.
“The Army’s this huge organization that does a lot of things all at once. It’s a jack of all trades,” said Chris Dougherty, senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security.
RELATED
From guns to formations to soldiers, the Army is finding old and new ways to bring back some big firepower.
Sometimes it’s difficult to discern coherence in these moves, Dougherty said. But even with the range of missions, from Europe-centered land warfare, to maritime-focused fires and logistics in the Pacific, as well as quick-reaction duties across the globe, the Army has one primary mission.
“Core to the Army’s existence should be the ability to conduct large-scale, combined arms maneuver warfare,” Dougherty said. “Once you lose that ability it’s really hard to retrain. It’s an incredibly important task and the Army needs to retain that. It’s one of the few forces on earth that can do it and do it well.”
To do that, the Army is looking top to bottom at existing and not-yet-created formations that will deliver decisive capability.
An M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle lumbers toward an objective during a multinational exercise in Cincu, Romania, Sept. 23, 2021. (Spc. Joshua Cowden/Army)
The Corps is back in the fight
For Cold War-era soldiers, the Army’s divisions and corps were what they were going to take to war.
Following the 9/11 attacks, the Army had to pivot.
And it made a big pivot, ripping apart its large-scale combat formation structure and reconfiguring the service as a brigade-centric Army, said retired Lt. Gen.Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation.
While the brigades were nimble and capable in the previous fight, they’re too small to take on heavily armored enemy divisions alone.
The biennial Army Warfighter Exercise this September — a 10-day “capstone training event” for both corps and divisions — will for the first time focus on joint forcible entry operations. That means soldiers will have to fight to get to the fight.
The Army’s I Corps out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, will coordinate units as far-flung as the 25th Infantry Division out of Hawaii, the 4th ID out of Fort Carson, Colorado, and opposition forces and logistical components at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Fort Lee, Virginia, respectively.
Back in 2020, the Army resurrected V Corps in Europe, which was deactivated seven years before both to cut overseas stationing costs and to provide manpower and capabilities for the Global War on Terror missions.
UH-60 Black Hawks and a CH-47 Chinook from the 25th Aviation Regiment conduct an air assault. (Sgt. Sarah D. Sangster/Army)
But the Army is taking a different approach to how the corps controls the fight than in the Cold War.
In the Pacific, I Corps teams are going out to establish command, Brig. Gen. Pat Ellis, I Corps chief of staff, told Army Times.
Ellis’s crew of two dozen soldiers flew four Strykers from JBLM to the Marshall Islands and then to Guam earlier this year. The soldiers offloaded the aircraft and boarded a pier-side ship, linking into the vessel’s communications to simulate how it would divvy up control of the Corps’ assets across the theater. At the start of the fight, those assets will stretch from California to as far as Japan and Australia.
The experiment connected corps staff via the computing cloud to stay linked-in regardless of their time zone or platform – tent, ship or Stryker.
“If you have to unplug and the commander loses situational awareness for days or hours as they move about the theater, it kind of wastes time,” Ellis said.
It’s all about the data, Ellis said. And not just moving it around but what’s needed by what entity and when they need it.
The earth shakes as an M109A6 Paladin fires a gas propelled 155mm Howitzer round in Mosul, Iraq, April 2010. (Army)
Future iterations of the Corp-level disparate C2 might be much larger, he said. But they’ll still be in small, spread-out teams, not in 600-soldier command posts. An experiment this summer will push out more nodes with the ultimate goal of running three to five nodes across the theater.
As dry as it might sound to trigger-pullers, the real work for Ellis and others will be getting the processes down. Frankly, he said, soldiers are comfortable working in large centers, being able to talk directly with their counterparts and support staff. That just won’t work in this new fight.
The re-established V Corps in Europe didn’t get time to rest after reforming less than two years ago. After limited multi-domain exercises last year, V Corps got a sample of the Great Power Competition that drove its re-establishment.
In early March, as the war in Ukraine continued to ramp up, 300 V Corps soldiers deployed as the main headquarters to both Germany and Poland for command and control of U.S. soldiers on the continent.
The Corps’ primary mission was to coordinate with Polish and German forces, as they’d do in a joint fight.
Division cavalry and the Corps
Cavalry soldiers will start a pilot program this year to conclude in 2024 that could be the template for the future of Army division scouting.
Maj. Gen. John B. Richardson laid out the work that 1st Cavalry Division has been doing at Fort Hood, Texas, to modernize the Army’s division at the 2022 Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning, Georgia, in February.
The newly named “Penetration Division” concept looks to fill gaps that arose over the past two decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism wars that focused instead on the brigade as the center of Army force deployment.
And Richardson shared at least 17 “critical gaps” in the current division design.
Aerial drone image of Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews from the 1st Armor Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, conducting gunnery at Fort Stewart. (Army)
These include shortages or non-existent capabilities in these areas: adequate tactical mobility to sustain, move and survive; deep sensing; long-range fires convergence; sufficient attack and reconnaissance aviation assets or air assault at the scale for large combat operations; brigade-level organic electronic warfare capability; division-level, mobile, short-range air defense or air defense artillery; division-sized bridging capabilities; and a paltry ability to shape the deep fight with existing long-range fires.
Dougherty questioned the value of armored ground reconnaissance survivability with the availability of low-cost drone strike capabilities. Though he qualified his criticism, saying that there may be aspects he’s not fully considered.
“There are a whole lot of other ways to do reconnaissance that don’t involve sending out a platoon of tanks or Bradleys,” he said.
The purpose of a cavalry squadron, Richardson said, is to enable the division to contact the enemy “on our terms” in large-scale combat. The squadron will continue being the “eyes and ears” of the division.
The idea is to first “penetrate” with long-range fires and then push units out to disintegrate the enemy’s defenses.
Success requires follow-through. That’s where Richardson sees division cavalry’s contribution.
“Critical to a successful penetration is the execution of an exploitation, a type of offensive operation that follows a successful attack, designed to disorganize the enemy in-depth and win decisively,” Richardson said.
U.S. and Canadian paratroopers jump onto Donnelly Drop Zone in March 2022. (John Pennell/Army)
The key is speed, momentum and leveraging multi-domain capabilities to reveal enemy positions, he said.
The draft plans would split armored brigade combat teams and cavalry squadrons into separate pieces. The cavalry squadron will hold about 947 soldiers and will detach from its current place within the brigade structure. The armored brigade would hold an armored cavalry troop of 182 soldiers along with six battalion scout platoons of three dozen soldiers each and associated support units.
The squadron would also see two more air cavalry troops that would provide more deep reconnaissance and operational reach. And each brigade will have its own armored cavalry troop as part of its reconnaissance and surveillance assets.
“We will build, reorganize, train and certify this division cavalry during my tenure and pass before fiscal year 2024,” Richardson said.
A paratrooper shoulders a round for the M777 Howitzer in the Hohenfels Training Area, Germany, on Oct. 18, 2021. (Staff Sgt. John Yountz/Army)
Fires units
The Army’s number one modernization priority, in case you hadn’t heard, is long-range precision fires. And the technology they’re bringing to bear on that problem will require new units.
In early March, at an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville referenced two dozen modernization projects that soldiers will see in the regular Army by 2024.
Topping that list were fire platforms and units.
“We’re going to have a hypersonic missile battery in 2024,” the four-star said.
Other fires formations include a mid-range missile that can sink a ship, a Precision Strike Missile battery and an Extended Range Cannon Artillery battery, which is a farther-ranging howitzer unit, all also expected by 2024.
“They could sink ships, they can penetrate into the force, they can be augmented with air and missile defense and provide anti-access, area denial,” McConville said. “I can envision them providing no-fly and no-sail areas.”
Recent advances in ammunition and platform technology have doubled the ranges of conventional 155mm howitzer artillery, pushing out to more than 65km.
The mid-range missile battery will plug a gap in Army long-range fires between the long-reaching hypersonic missiles and the soon-to-arrive Precision Strike Missile, which reaches nearly 500km.
U.S. soldiers assigned to 2nd Cavalry Regiment load Stryker Fighting Vehicles on rail cars at Rose Barracks’ railhead station in Vilseck, Germany, in 2016. (Army)
Multi-Domain Task Force
The newest of the formations, one that breaks from simply adding new equipment or shifting personnel around the echelons, are the Multi-Domain Task Forces.
The task force structure now houses an air defense battalion, brigade support battalion and strategic fires battalion with rocket, mid-range fires and long-range hypersonic batteries.
A unique piece is its intelligence, information, cyber, electronic warfare and space battalion, which holds military intelligence, signal, extended-range sensing/effects and information defense companies, according to official documents.
The task forces serve a vital role as the Army moves forward, whether they become permanent units or dissolve into the larger Army construct in coming years, Spoehr said.
A 36-year Army vet, Spoehr noted that his service can be quite tribal. Each branch can become siloed and see new equipment or tactics only from their previous experiences.
“I think [MDTFs are] a vehicle for change,” Spoehr said. The task forces allow the Army to see what’s possible at the Corps level.
McConville and other Army leaders have characterized these units as providing not just coordination for fires but “long-range precision effects.”
Soldiers fire an M777A2 Howitzer during an exercise at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, Oct. 25, 2021. (Staff Sgt. John Yountz/Army)
Plans call for these MDTFs to be dedicated to specific regions. Two will go to the Indo-Pacific, one to Europe and a fourth to the Arctic.
McConville said the service would stand up to five task forces.
A nascent version of the task force participated during the 2018 Rim of the Pacific Exercise. Pieces of that MDTF structure, mostly artillery and rocket forces, conducted fires exercises across multiple nations in September 2021 in Europe.
Mark Cancian, former chief of the Pentagon’s force structure and investment division, now a senior advisor with the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees the multidomain focus looming large in the Army’s thinking about its own future but not in the ways initially planned.
“I think the Army has developed a concept that’s less revolutionary than they initially thought,” Cancian said. “It may expand some of the capabilities at the division or corps level but for the brigade, battalion or company, it’s not going to make much of a difference.”
Beefing up Infantry brigade firepower
Infantry brigades built to fight insurgents and terrorists are outgunned in large-scale combat operations, experts said.
Current plans call for the Mobile Protected Firepower, or a 105mm cannon-carrying light tank battalion at the division level. The battalion would then farm out companies to each brigade, said Christopher Stone, deputy director of the Army’s capability manager for the infantry brigade combat team and retired colonel and career infantry leader.
And that decision came after a 2013 Operational Needs Statement from the 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps, which saw gaps in the formation’s firepower. The statement led to various developments and two years of experimentation and testing by the 82nd, using Marine Corps’ Light Armored Vehicles with 25mm cannons as surrogates for a light tank.
Soldiers ran scenarios in two experiments at Fort Bliss, Texas and another at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany.
What they found, Stone told Army Times, was that in an infantry brigade with as many as 39 companies the single light tank company consumed more than a quarter of the brigade executive officer’s resources.
So, instead of a company at the battalion level, designers instead shifted to a light tank battalion at the division level to help streamline getting firepower spread where it was needed most.
A soldier with 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, pulls security around a helicopter landing zone on Oct. 18, 2021, at Pohakuloa Training Area, Hawaii. (Spc. Rachel Christensen/Army)
Dougherty, a former infantryman, said infantry brigades absolutely need more speed, protection and firepower. But that won’t radically change what they can do against heavy divisions of the enemy.
“If you’re a super light infantry force and you encounter a large formation of main battle tanks, okay, ‘we’re going to launch a bunch of Javelins then we’re getting the ever-loving heck out of here,’” he said.
Final decisions await big Army approval and a platform selection for the MPF, expected by June.
And work on the formation must start soon.
The 82nd Airborne Division, the 173rd Airborne Brigade and a not-yet-identified Army National Guard unit are expected to be the first IBCTs to receive the MPF, Stone said. The first will go to Fort Bragg, North Carolina by fiscal year 2025.
Modernizing armor
The existing armored brigades are seeing an overhaul and upgrade of their equipment, as well.
While that new gear flows to the force, maneuver center experts are developing the concept of an armored assault company that would house two Bradley platoons led by an armor lieutenant and a full crew of 19C MOS-holding soldiers with a kind of armor jack-of-all-trades training regimen, Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe previously told Army Times.
The upgraded systems are now converging at the 2nd ABCT, 3rd ID out of Fort Stewart, Georgia.
In less than a year, the brigade has seen more upgrades, testing and fielding than such a unit might have witnessed in a decade.
They’ve added: the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle; the M2A4 Bradley Fighting Vehicle; the M109A7 Paladin howitzer; the M1A2 Sepv3 Abrams tank; and also tested the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle.
Enlisted leaders Staff Sgt. Sebastian Grabacki, a combat engineer with 2nd ABCT, and Staff Sgt. Devin Lancaster, master gunner for the 3rd BN, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd ABCT, told Army Times the new equipment is improving how their teams engage the enemy.
“Part of the qualification for gunnery, there is a multiple target engagement and before in the (Bradley) A3 variations you would not be able to immediately move from one target directly on to another,” Grabacki said.
But the new Bradley allows shooters to immediately acquire and fire on the next target, he added.
The M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams tank has the Common Remote Operated Weapons System, or CROWS.
The system adjusts for the right ballistic balance depending on the round, has newer thermal sights, better optics and other features that have pushed fires accuracy out by an additional kilometer.
Maj. Jeffery Jennings, the division’s chief of future operations, told Army Times that the recent technology won’t fundamentally change doctrine, but it provides enhancements.
“We’re retaining our competitive edge and fielding new capabilities that allow soldiers to do their jobs, their core competencies with improved efficacy,” Jennings said.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
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18. Russia’s war in Ukraine is about to enter a new phase
Russia’s war in Ukraine is about to enter a new phase
This isn't over.
BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED APR 11, 2022 12:27 PM
Nearly seven weeks after launching its full-scale attack on Ukraine, the Russians are regrouping for a new offensive in the hopes of regaining the initiative.
Yet it’s important to note that the problems that have sapped the Russian military’s effectiveness so far have not gone away, said Khrystyna Holynska, a defense and security policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization.
A Ukrainian serviceman walks on a destroyed Russian fighting vehicle in Bucha, Ukraine, Thursday, April 7, 2022. (Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press)
“While it is expected that Russian forces will regroup and restart their offensive, it is very important to remember that this is still the same Russian military with low morale, distrust in the ranks, weapons systems and logistics problems, and many other issues that have been widely discussed,” Holynska told Task & Purpose. “These problems cannot be solved quickly. Building the airplane in flight is likely not a task Russia is able to fulfill successfully in the coming weeks or months.”
One issue the Russians have sought to address is clarifying the chain of command by appointing one overall commander for the invasion: Gen. Alexander Dvornikov. Since 2016, Dvornikov has led Russia’s Southern Military District, which has purview over Ukraine’s Donbas region, the focus of Russia’s impending offensive, tweeted former Marine Capt. Rob Lee, who spent a year with a defense-focused think tank in Moscow
Much like the fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II, the conflict in Ukraine has become a war without pity. When the Ukrainians liberated the suburb of Bucha, the world was aghast to discover that Russian forces had killed scores of civilians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 7 that the situation in the town of Borodyanka, roughly 37 miles northwest of Kyiv, is “significantly more dreadful” than in Bucha, according to Reuters.
“Earlier, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said in the Kyiv region, which includes Borodyanka, Bucha and other towns and villages such as Irpin, the authorities had found ‘650 dead bodies, from them it is 40 dead bodies only kids,’” Reuters reported.
A Ukrainian special police officer walks next to a destroyed building as he patrols during night curfew in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 27, 2022. (Felipe Dana/Associated Press)
Germany has reportedly also intercepted radio communications in which Russian soldiers discussed killing Ukrainian troops and civilians at random, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
It is becoming harder for the Kremlin to spin the war in Ukraine as a success. The Russian government initially downplayed the number of casualties that its forces were taking, but on April 7 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that Russia has suffered “significant losses of troops.”
A view of a destroyed armored vehicle during ongoing conflicts in the city of Mariupol under the control of the Russian military and pro-Russian separatists, on April 09, 2022. (Leon Klein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
On April 8, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made a bizarre claim at a news conference, when she told reporters that the Ukrainians had refused to share their recipe for borscht, adding: “The xenophobia, the fascism, the extremism.”
It’s clear that Russia’s decision to move its troops away from Kyiv has had a profound effect on both sides of the conflict, Holynska said.
“Russians started to admit more losses and changed their rhetoric to justify their focus on Donbas,” Holynska said. “This is drastically different from the early days when the narrative revolved around the need for a ‘de-nazified’ government for the country as a whole. For Ukraine, it is a major boost to morale. Keeping control of Kyiv was one of the main defense objectives, and it has been successfully achieved so far. The images of people cleaning up the streets of Bucha and Irpin give hope for normalcy even if it remains distant.”
In this image provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right, and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, center left, hold souvenirs presented by a civilian woman in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via Associated Press)
Indeed, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kyiv over the weekend and a video posted on social media showed Johnson and Zelensky touring the city on April 8.
Despite all this assistance, the situation in southern and eastern Ukraine remains precarious for the defenders. The city of Mariupol has been under siege for weeks. Like Leningrad during World War II, the city faces both starvation as well as enemy troops.
On April 8, a Russian missile attack on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed 50 people, including children. The civilians were trying to travel to a safer part of Ukraine after local authorities told them to leave ahead of Russia’s expected offensive.
Ukrainians’ outrage over the killings of civilians at Bucha, Borodyanka, and Kramatorsk will make it harder for the Ukrainian government to agree to any concessions as part of a peace deal with Russia, Holynska said.
“The suffering of the Ukrainian population, with so many dead, so many families torn apart, homes and everyday lives lost, is an important variable to account for in any peace talks,” Holynska said.
What’s new on Task & Purpose
Jeff Schogol is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.
19. The US Navy SEALs just turned 60. Here are the missions that have made them legendary.
The US Navy SEALs just turned 60. Here are the missions that have made them legendary.
US Navy Seal trainees during the Hell Week portion of selection, in Coronado, California in August 2010.
GETTY/Charles Ommanney
- In January 1962, President John F. Kennedy authorized the creation of SEAL Team One and SEAL Team Two.
- Since then, US Navy SEALs have fought all over the world, making their name in high-profile operations.
- While fame has helped SEALs promote themselves, the unit itself has been tarnished by their exploits.
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Special-operations forces have been at the heart of US combat operations in recent years, earning a high profile and a reputation for pulling off high-risk operations.
But that hasn't always been the case. US special operators have had to work very hard to take their place at the tip of the spear.
Among those forces, the US Navy SEALs stand out. In the 60 years since their unit was formed, the SEALs have operated all over the globe, fighting on their own or in support of other US military units.
Here's how the SEALs have made their mark.
Frogmen and Underwater Demolition Teams
Underwater Demolition Team members off of Okinawa in 1945.
CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
The Navy SEALs trace their origins back to the frogmen of World War II.
During the war, the US military established several special-operations units to fight Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Notable ones that influenced the creation of the Navy SEALs are the Amphibious Scouts and Raiders, Special Mission Naval Combat Demolition Unit, and the Underwater Demolition Teams.
These units carried out special and hydrographic reconnaissance, cleared beaches, and conducted unconventional-warfare missions in support of Marine Corps and Army units during the island-hopping campaign across the Pacific.
Although Naval Special Warfare units primarily fought in the Pacific theater, mainly because of the maritime element, the predecessors of the Navy SEALs also fought in Europe.
US Navy SEAL candidates during Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training in Coronado, January 23, 2018.
US Navy/Petty Officer 1st Class Abe McNatt
The D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, remain the deadliest day in the history of the Naval Special Warfare community, with 37 killed and 71 wounded in action — a 52% casualty rate.
In January 1962, with the war in Vietnam brewing, President John F. Kennedy authorized the creation of SEAL Team One and SEAL Team Two, which drew from and worked in conjunction with the existing Underwater Demolition Teams.
Since their inception, Navy SEALs have participated in almost all minor and major US military operations.
A fearsome reputation
US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge tows Maersk Alabama's lifeboat to the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer after Capt. Richard Phillips' rescue, April 13, 2009.
US Navy/Megan E. Sindelar via Getty Images
The Navy SEALs' most famous mission is Operation Neptune's Spear in May 2011.
SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group — formerly known as SEAL Team 6 — flew from Afghanistan to Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the middle of the night to raid a compound believed to home to Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader and mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Another high-profile operation conducted by Navy SEALs was the rescue of Richard Phillips, the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia in April 2009.
An assault squadron from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group — the Navy special missions unit responsible for direct-action raids and counterterrorism operations — parachuted into the Indian Ocean and linked up with US warships monitoring the situation, including guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge.
The pirates had taken Phillips off the cargo ship in a lifeboat and were trying to negotiate when the Navy commander on the scene determined Phillips' life was in danger. Three SEAL snipers then ended the standoff by firing from USS Bainbridge and hitting the three Somali pirates in their heads.
A SEAL Team 8 member, left, and looks at a map with other US Navy officers in USS Harry S. Truman' mission planning room while in the Mediterranean Sea, March 19, 2003.
US Navy/Michael W. Pendergrass via Getty Images
Another notable SEAL operation took place in the opening hours of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Navy SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen operators worked with Polish and British special-operations forces to attack and capture several Iraqi oil platforms.
The platforms were the end of Iraq's only oil pipeline to the Persian Gulf, and they funneled millions of barrels of oil into supertankers every day. US officials worried that Iraqi forces would use them to dump oil into the Gulf and dispatched the SEALs to neutralize them.
In a 40-minute operation, SEALs with shotguns and crowbars burst into the platforms, facing no resistance and with no losses on either side. "'When they saw our guns, they put their hands right up,'' one of the SEALs said at the time.
SEAL operations only increased in the 2000s. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, prompted the SEALs ranks to swell by 50%. Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, remains the operation that employed the largest number of Navy SEALs in history.
Four of the seven Navy SEALs who have received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor under fire, earned it for their actions during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other three received it for their actions in the Vietnam War.
The cost of fame
US Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher leaves court at Naval Base San Diego after being found not guilty of murder and attempted murder, July 2, 2019.
John Gastaldo/Reuters
With the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the Navy SEALs solidified their status as a household name. In the years since, former Navy SEALs, including some who were part of the operation in Abbottabad, have drawn on that experience in second careers as pundits, authors, and motivational speakers.
Although their fame has helped the SEALs and the Navy with recruitment considerably, it has come with a cost to the unit itself. A string of scandals — including drug abuse, assault, and allegations of war crimes — has tarnished the Navy SEALs' reputation.
"Let's be honest. As a community, we have dropped the ball several times over the last 10 years or so. Public fascination facilitated by the media has certainly played a part in our stepping into the spotlight, but we went along with it," a former Navy SEAL officer told Insider.
The books, podcasts, TV shows, and movies — including "Act of Valor," a 2012 movie that was commissioned by Naval Special Warfare Command and starred active-duty SEALs — that have come out in recent years "have tarnished our reputation of being 'Quiet Professionals,'" added the former SEAL officer, who still works in government and was not authorized to speak to the media.
"There is only one way back to the shadows where we belong, and that is by keeping our mouths shut," which goes for Naval Special Warfare Command too, the former officer said. "You can recruit without compromising your reputation. There should be and there is a middle ground."
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
20. What the U.S. Military Needs to Learn from the Ukraine War by James Stavridis
Conclusion:
A new tactical triad is emerging in the 21st century battlefield—special forces, unmanned systems, and cyber will be far more important going forward. While legacy systems from tanks to destroyers to close air support aircraft will retain utility, we need to rethink our way of war. Sadly, there is much to learn from the battlefields of Ukraine.
What the U.S. Military Needs to Learn from the Ukraine War
TIME · by James Stavridis
As the brutal fighting continues in the Ukraine War, it seems likely to fundamentally upend the way we wage war in the 21st-century. From new tactics to equipment, the Russian invasion of Ukraine may presage fundamental changes in how war is conducted. What can Western militaries learn from the war thus far?
First, the extraordinary success the Ukrainian forces (armed with western technology) are enjoying against Russia armor. The numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy trucks destroyed by the Ukrainians are almost certainly in the thousands. This is largely the result of the hand-held anti-armor weapons provided by NATO countries (NLAWS from Britain, Javelins from the U.S., etc).
But it is also indicative of a tactical approach by the Ukrainians that fuses the intelligence provided by the West; the portability of the missile and drone systems; the employment of them by small, light special forces teams; and entirely new systems like the Switchblade drones.
Most importantly, each tank and armored vehicle destroyed means more dead Russians. Russian soldiers killed in action probably number around 15,000 over five weeks, which is staggering. As a point of comparison, the U.S. lost 7,000 in twenty years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the lost armor stocks will be difficult to replace in the short term. Each Russian tank costs more than $10 million, but each missile is only a hundred thousand dollars or so. War is hell, as General Sherman said in the American Civil War, but it is also expensive.
Is it time to write the obituary for the tank on the battlefield? Will they turn out to be the battleships of the 21st century, rendered obsolete by new technologies and tactics? It is certainly time to consider reducing tank inventories (as the U.S. Marine Corps is already doing) and using the resources to move toward new systems, notably unmanned. Tanks can still be effectively employed, but must be used in a coherent combined-arms manner that includes protection of them from such “cheap kill” mechanisms.
Second, the concept of close air support is increasingly at risk as well. Alongside the concerns about the efficacy of heavy armor are about the vulnerability of helicopters. We are seeing $18 million Russian attack helicopters destroyed by a hundred thousand dollar stingers—over and over. This was a key tactic in allowing the Afghanistan mujahideen to defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Again, the economics of this, especially for a weak economy like Russia, are daunting, as well as replacing trained pilots.
And that is before new swarm drone systems come into full force. As artificial intelligence becomes a wartime reality, the ability to control large numbers of unmanned systems and operate them in synch to attack large relatively less maneuverable platforms like helicopters and troop transports. We are at the leading edge of achieving this capability, and doing so augers badly for expensive manned aircraft, especially those that operate routinely near to the ground.
The lesson here is not (yet) to fully walk away from manned aircraft providing the close support on the battlefield. But the Ukrainian war is a warning that we should be spending more on research and development that improves unmanned air systems, both in ground attack and in anti-air capacities; leverage improvements in artificial intelligence to make them operate synergistically together; and experiment with such capabilities aggressively to be able to provide close air support from higher altitudes and with unmanned, less expensive vehicles controlled directly by ground forces.
Third, another key factor on the Ukrainian battlefield has been the ability of Western intelligence systems to track Russian formations and provide real-time targeting directly to the Ukrainians. This has led not only to high levels of Russians killed in action, but also to operations killing Russian general officers. This in turn creates chaotic conditions, with numerous reports indicating a lack of coherent command and control on the battlefield, and operations being directed from Moscow.
When I was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, in strategic command of the Afghan operation, I could not have imagined taking tactical control of 150,000 troops in the field. Yet that is exactly what appears to be happing in Ukraine, with attendant failures. The lesson is that by providing real-time, highly precise targeting to forces in the field, a belligerent can help undermine one of the true centers-of-gravity in combat: a coherent command and control system anchored by capable senior leaders.
Finally, we should learn from the continuing Russian playbook of what are clearly war crimes. We need to appreciate that our opponents are going to utilize horrible tactics that are in fact war crimes: destruction of civilian infrastructure (including internet and cyber systems) with indiscriminate fires; false flag operations replete with deep fake videos; weaponizing civilian populations by creating the conditions for mass movements, taxing the logistics of the nation under attack; utilization of unprincipled mercenaries like the Wagner Group, Chechens, and Syrians; and at least threatening the use of chemical and nuclear weapons.
All of this has been called “hybrid” or “gray zone” warfare, and we’ve seen the Russians go to this list of dirty tricks in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Syria over the past several decades. We need to do a better job of preparing to face these new realities on the battlefield. Obviously, we will not use these techniques, but we need to reverse engineer and blunt them in our training and equipment choices. This means training our troops to operate in chemical and biological environments more effectively; providing more civil support to local populations to defuse the impact of refugees; sharpen our ability to collect evidence to undermine fake videos and propaganda; and hone our responses to battlefield cyber attacks to include offensive options.
A new tactical triad is emerging in the 21st century battlefield—special forces, unmanned systems, and cyber will be far more important going forward. While legacy systems from tanks to destroyers to close air support aircraft will retain utility, we need to rethink our way of war. Sadly, there is much to learn from the battlefields of Ukraine.
TIME · by James Stavridis
21. Supporting Ukraine for the Long War
Conclusion:
The provision of military equipment to Ukraine should first and foremost be driven by solving practical problems. In NATO doctrine there is a growing emphasis on the deep battle, shaping the next fight and the fight beyond, to ensure success in the close. In Ukraine, the provision of tactical training by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada to Ukrainian units has proven its worth. But the provision of lethal aid was left too late, exacerbating the problems that Ukraine faced in the close fight. Today Ukraine’s defiance has bought time and an opportunity not only to stave off further Russian gains in the Donbas, but also to shape the battle beyond it. If Ukraine’s allies act today, they may deter or at least prepare for a summer offensive. If this opportunity to shape subsequent rounds of fighting is missed, and Ukraine’s allies remain fixated on the close battle right now, then NATO risks having to provide Ukraine with more and more prestige anti-tank guided missiles and man-portable air-defense systems, running its own stockpiles low, and failing to overcome some of the wider challenges that constrain the Ukrainian military’s ability to fight optimally. It is time to regain the initiative.
Supporting Ukraine for the Long War - War on the Rocks
On the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I sat across a conference table from Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi — commander of Ukraine’s ground forces — flanked by his intelligence and planning staff. His team’s frustration was palpable. They had told their allies in the United States and United Kingdom where their vulnerabilities lay in a fight with Russia for years, while military assistance had been limited in scale. Once the invasion became imminent, military aid was held back because Western capitals did not think there was enough time to train the Ukrainian forces on how to use it.
Ukrainian ground forces have made the same requests of their allies since at least 2019: medium-range air defense, anti-tank weapons, counter-battery radar, counter-sniper systems, counter-drone systems, and basic equipment for mobilized forces. As Lt. Gen. Ruslan Komchak — deputy chair of Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Committee — explained to me days before the war, Ukraine wanted to fight a mobile defense, maneuvering to counter the enemy’s axes of advance, blunting Russian armor, striking Russian artillery from beyond line of sight, and then forcing a battle of attrition in complex terrain.
The Ukrainian plan has proven sound, but the dearth of military assistance in the lead-up to the conflict has cost them dearly. Russia attacked along multiple axes, with large, armored thrusts pushing south from Belarus, southwest from Belgorod, northwest from Rostov, and north from Crimea. When the war began, Ukraine could not safely reposition its forces beneath the enemy air threat. They only had enough anti-tank weapons to blunt one axis and chose to use these to defend Kyiv. Lacking a means to attack Russian artillery, they saw their cities turned to rubble. They succeeded in defending the capital but lost considerable ground in the south and east. If Ukraine can blunt the next offensive on the Donbas, it will need to reconstitute its forces for a protracted struggle.
Because military assistance was stepped up so late, Western capitals have prioritized weapons that were immediately usable in blunting Russia’s advance. This aid was critical in preventing Kyiv’s capture. Now that Russia’s main effort has switched to the Donbas, however, Ukraine’s immediate requirements are changing, and their international allies are pledging to meet these requirements, sending T72 tanks, protected mobility, and a steady stream of anti-tank weapons, man-portable air-defense systems, and loitering munitions. But with the risk of Kyiv’s fall having passed, Ukraine’s allies have an opportunity to regain the initiative by providing military aid that requires a longer lead-time, and thereby preparing Ukraine for the threat beyond the coming offensive.
The Ukrainians are bracing for an offensive northward from Mariupol and southward from around Kharkiv. They face a hard month of fighting. The Russian units now appreciate what they are up against and with fewer lines to supply they should be able to bring a greater concentration of air and artillery to bear. The aim will be to surround the Ukrainian troops in the Joint Forces Operating area in the Donbas. At the same time the Ukrainian forces are reasonably confident they can hold, though it will cost them. Ukrainian troops now have only one front against which they must concentrate, where they enjoy numerical parity with the Russian forces and have stationed many of their best troops. They should impose a grueling rate of attrition on their adversaries.
Irrespective of whether Ukraine holds the Donbas by the end of the month Russia will face a decision point. Ukraine has no incentive to accept a ceasefire that would amount to allowing Russia to incrementally annex its territory. But without a tangible success to announce at the Victory Day parade on May 9, the Russian government will need to decide whether it is at war or not. Moscow has committed the bulk of its available combat power to Ukraine. If it needs to rotate units out, it will need to mobilize reserves and retain its last draft of conscripts. This would likely presage a major shift in the rhetoric in Moscow and would delay a renewed Russian offensive for at least another two months as new units were equipped and prepared.
Ukrainian units by then will also be heavily depleted. The question is whether the West can move proactively to deter Russia from escalating to a summer offensive, or, failing that, ensure that Ukrainian units are equipped and prepared for the next round of fighting beyond the Donbas. That will require training on new systems and reconstitution of some Ukrainian units, as well as the replacement of key equipment. If Ukraine’s allies do not start that process now, they risk once again being caught between what Ukraine needs and what its military can absorb in time.
Contesting the Air: U.S. F-16s for Egyptian MiG-29s?
The Ukrainian Air Force has maintained a valiant resistance but has slowly been attritted and constrained by expanding Russian combat air patrols and air defenses. Unless Ukraine gets more jets, Russia will be increasingly free to raid deep inside Ukraine, striking its logistics hubs and training facilities. Replacing the Ukrainian Air Force’s MiG-29s, however, poses several challenges. Western-designed aircraft would be prohibitively slow to deliver, not only because of the pilot-training implications but also the maintenance infrastructure and training for ground crew.
A further complication is that most modern Western aircraft will have communications and other equipment fitted that is sensitive and removing it from aircraft to be sent to Ukraine will take time. This is, incidentally, one of the primary barriers to sending Ukraine the Polish MiG-29s Warsaw offered early in the conflict. These aircraft have NATO equipment upgrades (primarily communications and avionics) that would need to be removed to prevent compromise. The airframes themselves are of an older, less lethal model to begin with, and are also heavily worn.
There are alternatives, however. Egypt recently procured 46 MiG-29Ms of the latest Russian standard, along with a compliment of R-77 active radar-guided missiles which Ukraine has repeatedly requested. Egypt has also ordered Su-35s, but when these were flown against Egypt’s French-built Rafales, their inferiority became starkly apparent. In consequence, it is probable the Egyptian Air Force would welcome a one-for-one replacement of its MiG-29Ms with U.S.-made F-16s. Egypt already flies a substantial number of F-16s, and it already has the infrastructure for an expansion of its F-16 fleet. There are no concerns about U.S. capabilities being compromised with the transfer of advanced F-16s to Egypt: The U.S. government has expressed willingness to export F-16s to Turkey — in spite of Russian-made S-400s being present on Turkish soil — as well as to Taiwan.
In the first month of the war in Ukraine there was insufficient time to explore such options. Arranging such a complicated deal requires considerable diplomatic legwork, and few expected Ukraine to withstand the initial assault. Now that the conflict is protracted, however, such options are viable — indeed vital. The MiG-29M, while an effective air-defense fighter, lacks the range to contest the air over the Donbas, especially in the face of an expanding Russian air-defense presence. But it would offer protection for western Ukraine. The delivery of Switchblade-600 loitering munitions, meanwhile, should give the Ukrainian forces a tool for harassing Russian air defenses, potentially creating windows of opportunity for more aggressive air operations from all Ukrainian aircraft and aviation.
Securing the Land: Don’t Send Odds and Ends
Although the immediate need is for a continued supply of anti-tank, man-portable air-defense systems, and other air defense missiles, Ukrainian ground units will inevitably be attritted by the intensity of Russian firepower, no matter how ineptly deployed and led Russian formations are in the close fight. Ukrainian military priorities are likely to change as they shift into a maneuver battle to destroy Russian forces and capture key terrain, rather than conducting a positional urban defense to defeat Russia’s initial, failed coup de main. Three requirements stand out: air defenses, protected mobility, and artillery ammunition.
Although Ukraine possesses air-defense systems, these will struggle to provide mobile support to ground forces if they cannot be cued onto target by supporting radar. Russia has had success in knocking out many of the wide-area search, fire control, and target acquisition radar supporting Ukrainian anti-aircraft batteries. Ukrainian surface-to-air missiles continue to pose a serious pop-up threat to intruding Russian aircraft but will be less effective in providing mobile defense to Ukrainian forces nearer the Russian border. This is exacerbated by the fact that some of the support vehicles for Ukrainian air-defense systems are chronically short of spare parts and cannot therefore be used in their mobile role.
Ukraine has been clear that it needs to transition away from Soviet legacy air defenses for several years. The request from Kyiv since at least 2019 has been for the U.S.- and Norwegian-produced National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, a medium-range air defense. While less well known than the Patriot, this system is widely deployed and is the air-defense system that provides coverage for the White House and other high-value assets in Washington, D.C. This would be the most capable and appropriate system for NATO to share. NATO members in Europe are themselves short of air defenses and donating systems would therefore be difficult, but the production line remains open. Although Ukrainian crews would need to be trained on the system, this could be done outside Ukraine.
Providing Ukraine with tactical mobile air-defense systems such as the National would allow Ukraine to maneuver near the Russian border and retake towns while raiding Russian supply lines as it successfully did in 2014 and 2015. The Ukrainian forces would need to remain mobile to avoid being heavily attritted by Russian artillery firing from across the border in Russia itself. Ukrainian mobility would also need to be protected, since moving at speed necessarily exposes vehicles to ambush.
There is a considerable risk that NATO countries will pull whatever worn-out armored vehicles they have in storage and begin to ship them off to Ukraine. This would be less than helpful. The prospect of Ukraine receiving a myriad of vehicles with completely different spare requirements, characteristics, and levels of wear would be a logistical catastrophe. It would overwhelm the already-stressed logistical capability of the Ukrainian armed forces. Moreover, many of the vehicles in this category are no longer in production, and so the availability of spare parts would be limited. Training to use these systems would consequently be inefficient. Instead, NATO allies should standardize around as few types as possible of armored vehicles (for which a production line is still open) and focus on providing quantity. The exact type of vehicle chosen is less important than the consistency and parts availability. Finally, Ukrainian land forces need artillery. In the first instance they will need Grad and 152mm howitzer ammunition, which NATO can draw from older Soviet stocks.
Supplying Ukraine with a significant volume of new armored vehicle types and some specialist weapons systems is much more complicated than simply delivering equipment. Since training must happen outside of Ukraine, it would most likely need a “train the trainer” approach. On the Ukrainian side, concealing the routes by which equipment was being delivered— and where Ukrainian units were reconstituting and being issued equipment — will be essential as well as difficult. The precise details of how this might be done are better not discussed in public.
Nevertheless, it is worth stating that while there are many difficulties involved, Ukraine’s allies also need to be relaxed about not knowing all the details as to how the Ukrainians will manage the process in-country. The Ukrainian military has demonstrated its competence at planning and its ability to execute those plans. International partners would do well to consult, but they should stop second-guessing what Ukraine can and cannot do as regards organization within its borders.
Denying the Sea with Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles
Russia has functionally blockaded the port of Odessa while firing large volumes of cruise missiles from its ships to strike targets across southern and western Ukraine. The ongoing threat from the maritime flank not only pins down Ukrainian forces but could become a serious problem if Russia succeeds in seizing the Donbas and then shifts its main effort toward Odessa, rather than heading northward to Kyiv. Putting the Russian Navy at risk should be a priority.
The best means of doing this is the provision of anti-ship cruise missiles. The United Kingdom has already signalled its intention of doing this, although the system it intends to provide has not yet been officially disclosed. Weapon systems like the Harpoon would require careful discussion with the Ukrainians as regards the kill chain and launch platform. The risk of the Ukrainians launching without track-quality data on a target is that the missile could strike non-Russian targets in the Black Sea. For this reason, NATO partners may decide that shorter-range systems are a better option. Irrespective of whether Harpoon missiles are provided specifically, a comparable system offering a medium-range sub-sonic capability would be ideal for disrupting Russian naval operations. While too short-ranged to disrupt Russian resupply of Syria or the wider Black Sea, it would hold Russian ships at risk off the coast and greatly complicate any blockade of Odessa.
The provision of military equipment to Ukraine should first and foremost be driven by solving practical problems. In NATO doctrine there is a growing emphasis on the deep battle, shaping the next fight and the fight beyond, to ensure success in the close. In Ukraine, the provision of tactical training by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada to Ukrainian units has proven its worth. But the provision of lethal aid was left too late, exacerbating the problems that Ukraine faced in the close fight. Today Ukraine’s defiance has bought time and an opportunity not only to stave off further Russian gains in the Donbas, but also to shape the battle beyond it. If Ukraine’s allies act today, they may deter or at least prepare for a summer offensive. If this opportunity to shape subsequent rounds of fighting is missed, and Ukraine’s allies remain fixated on the close battle right now, then NATO risks having to provide Ukraine with more and more prestige anti-tank guided missiles and man-portable air-defense systems, running its own stockpiles low, and failing to overcome some of the wider challenges that constrain the Ukrainian military’s ability to fight optimally. It is time to regain the initiative.
Dr. Jack Watling is a research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute.
22. The Clarion Call of Failure in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
The 2020 Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy is a good marker for institutionalizing a complementary low-intensity mindset. The annex recognizes that adversaries of the United States will seek to challenge it in the gray zone with hybrid warfare techniques below the threshold of war. Through alliances, diplomacy, aid, development, and cultural cooperation, supported by efficient hard power, the United States Army can compete with and defeat low-intensity threats. However, that efficient hard power must be mentally ready to fight in irregular and low-intensity conflicts. If the Army is only thinking about and preparing for large-scale, force-on-force operations, then our adversaries will take advantage of the cumbersome, rigid, and predictable nature of conventional formations.
The Clarion Call of Failure in Afghanistan - Modern War Institute
The strategic failure in Afghanistan is a clarion call for the United States Army to challenge its industrial age mental model of landpower. The loss demonstrates the ineffectiveness and lack of utility that large-scale conventional landpower has in low-intensity conflict. While the US Army may desire to leave low-intensity conflict behind, the United States’ state and nonstate adversaries will not stop using the very strategy that has rendered conventional landpower hegemony, as David Kilcullen puts it, irrelevant.
The US Army’s modernization and future vision of landpower is Multi-Domain Operations, conducted as a part of a joint force in the information age. Essentially, the vision focuses on a return to large-scale combat operations nested within great power competition. The fatal flaw to this is the assumption that the adversaries of the United States will fight in a manner suited to the United States’ strengths. They will not. Instead, adversaries will continue to employ asymmetric actions to deny decisive battle by rendering task-organized battle systems, such as carrier strike groups and armored brigade combat teams, inconsequential. They will then fight a deep battle in the gray zone below the threshold of war and exhaust the United States. Napoleon lost in Moscow not because he was decisively beaten, but because the Russians extended the struggle and denied him the opportunity to win. Napoleon’s exhausted forces eventually collapsed under the weight of winter, unable to survive in the barren Russian land while being harassed by the tsar’s forces.
The US Army must be careful not to selectively choose past history that fits its comfortable mental model—what Russell Weigley described in The American Way of War. More importantly, the Army must confront the hard history of its past failures for answers to the future—the United States’ adversaries are surely learning from these failures. The industrial age is over and ways of war optimized for it outdated. The Army must seek ways to repurpose its conventional landpower capacity to succeed in contemporary conflict, which will include substantial irregular warfare and low-intensity conflict.
Emerging as a conventional global power following World War II, the United States had significant success, notably during the Cold War. However, with the strategic failures of the Army in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, an opposite trend is obvious. Conventional landpower overmatch does not translate into success in low-intensity conflict. The 1991 Persian Gulf War, which seemingly washed away the US Army’s failure in Vietnam, was an anomaly, achieved by applying conventional power against an adversary in a way that, as John Nagl has observed, no one will ever let us do to them again.
More recently in Syria, success against ISIS was largely achieved when ISIS transitioned to a war of movement and exposed itself to American airpower. Yet despite this conventional success, the enduring defeat of ISIS remains at risk. The group has transitioned back to being a clandestine insurgency, perpetuating its struggle through low-intensity conflict and a strategy that extends the conflict and avoids American conventional power. The recent ISIS breakout attempt and subsequent battle at a prison controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces in Hasakah, Syria underlines this point.
This strategy is not a mystery. Carl von Clausewitz knew that many roads lead to success. When one party to a war is unable to destroy or annihilate its opponent, it will instead seek a strategy designed to use time to physically and morally exhaust its opponent. This is a theory most classically put into action by Mao Tse-tung, who used guerrilla warfare to perpetually extend the revolutionary conflict over time. By avoiding the opposing side’s strength, a belligerent survives and weakens its target through a protracted conflict. Military operational failure or success is inconsequential if the conflict lasts long enough to achieve the true ultimate goal of war, political success. This is precisely what Ho Chi Minh, Salafi-jihadists in Iraq, and the Taliban have all done to the US Army with significant success. Again, as Clausewitz knew, battles do not really mean anything because war is merely a continuation of politics by other means. Or, as T.E. Lawrence described the Arab Revolt, “Final victory seemed certain, if the war lasted long enough for us to work it out.”
Contemporary adversaries of the United States, including state actors such as China, Iran, and Russia, as well as nonstate actors such as Salafi-jihadists, transregional violent extremist organizations, and domestic terrorists all recognize this truth. In 1991, Martin van Creveld wrote that “the most powerful modern armed forces are largely irrelevant to modern war.” He recognized that unmatched conventional hegemony would drive adversaries to avoid decisive engagement and seek asymmetric strategies through low-intensity conflict. The United States’ Global War on Terror, the wars throughout the Middle East, and the Afghanistan War provide solid argument that Van Creveld was correct.
More recently, military practitioners and theorists have described a condition where state and nonstate adversaries of the West have solved the riddle of conventional warfare hegemony. Rupert Smith identifies that the paradigm has shifted and the classic utility of force no longer exists. David Kilcullen’s thesis is that the West’s adversaries have expanded the concept of war beyond the narrow boundaries of our traditional approach. By avoiding and denying engagement that suits a traditional conventional mindset and by engaging in complementary but uncoordinated disruptive activity, the West’s adversaries—Russia, China, Iran, and transregional terrorist organizations—are exhausting the West. All the adversaries of the United States need is time and they can deliver on a prolonged strategy to defeat the United States through a thousand cuts.
The US Army must challenge its own mental model that justifies and prioritizes a return to large-scale combat operations over irregular warfare operations such as counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. The Army’s development of corps headquarters and the modernization of long-range fires, combat vehicles, vertical lift, networked information systems, air defense, and more lethal soldiers will not solve the problem of low-intensity conflict. These modernizations thematically resemble General William DePuy’s 1970s “Big Five”: the Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Patriot air defense system, and the Apache and Blackhawk helicopters. Both the 1970s modernization program and its successor today center on updates to traditional conventional maneuver systems. But more critically than the Army’s choice of systems to upgrade are the underlying ideas that validate the modernization requirement. Today, that principal idea is that the US Army can converge its multi-domain conventional landpower capabilities to decisively defeat its adversaries. Historian Henry Gole has noted that in the 1970s, DePuy acted to guide the Army out of “wallowing in self-pity about Vietnam” by refocusing on its legacy strength. This was and still is conventional industrial warfare that brings to bear America’s way of war and the application of great wealth and resources in pursuit of an annihilation strategy. It is a maneuver-centric approach, with large maneuver formations seeking destruction of enemy formations.
It is logical that the US Army is now once again looking to put the bitter losses and struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq behind it by refocusing on large-scale combat operations through the modernization of legacy conventional systems and by getting back to basics. It is a desire to update systems and return the Army to a position of unmatched high-tech dominance. Just as DePuy’s reforms ultimately resulted in the unprecedented success of the 1991 Gulf War, the US Army now seeks to leave the low-intensity post-9/11 wars behind and gain conventional overmatch for tomorrow’s battlefield.
Unfortunately, the strategic loss in Afghanistan is a symptom of a larger problem, Smith describes it is as one where conventional power can produce local military tactical wins but fails to deliver broader strategic victory. DePuy’s Big Five seemingly made the US Army the premier global land power, but it is a force that has been routinely defeated despite its strengths and pedigree.
This does not mean that the US Army should abandon its conventional landpower capability or not modernize these systems. The United States’ conventional landpower hegemony has provided unmatched deterrence and protection from adversaries’ conventional capabilities. It has set the very conditions that have given rise to low-intensity conflict, an arguably more favorable way to fight than large-scale combat due to the reduced scale of destruction and casualties. The US Army should also be wary of overcorrecting through the dissolution of conventional capability and an overinvestment in irregular warfare capability.
Instead, the Army must seek to balance being prepared for the possibility of conventional large-scale combat while also respecting the lessons of the strategic failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Low-intensity conflict will be a fixture of modern war between states and nonstate actors for the foreseeable future. The Army must recognize this fact and prepare for it. It must find ways to repurpose certain conventional landpower capabilities for soft power and irregular warfare purposes. This means in some cases offloading unnecessary, redundant, or obsolete systems to reinvest in new capabilities. In other cases, this means playing the odds that a traditional capability is unlikely to be used and can be repurposed for a less traditional task. Most importantly this is a mindset shift from units focusing on traditional rote tasks toward more agility and flexibility.
The Army must create capabilities that it can employ now in this competition continuum. It must have forces that can campaign in the gray zone to counter proxy and cyber threats, which are able to deter economic and political coercion. From the outside these scalable units could look like conventional formations while also having the capability to be agile, rapidly deployable, and efficiently sustainable. They should be capable of the execution of a combination of lethal and nonlethal activities. While they may have a basic background in a conventional warfighting function, more likely they will execute tasks and missions of a more unorthodox nature. They should be trained and educated to recognize cultural and political implications. Proficient in tactics and enabled with advanced technology, these units should be prepared to operate among partner units in permissive, uncertain, or hostile environments. They must anticipate and control information and psychological effects by toggling between minimal signature / low visibility and maximal signature / high visibility, as necessary. Most fundamentally, hybrid formations must understand the environment and be agile by developing and providing multiple options within the context of the mission.
These ideas and described capabilities are rooted in joint and Army special operations forces characteristics and imperatives. It is a flexible, agile, and moldable mindset that is suited to the contemporary operational environment. The advantage of Army ground-based units is that they can be whatever they are needed to be in the moment. This is only possible, though, if they are not mentally locked into a traditional conventional warfare mindset. The Security Force Assistance Command and Army Special Operations Command are good models for the mindset. Other good examples are the use of Army mechanized infantry units throughout northeastern Syria or the US Marine Corps’s Force Design 2030 concept. A complementary benefit of conventional Army formations operating with an irregular mindset is that special operations units will be free to evolve even further into unorthodox and creative methods.
The 2020 Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy is a good marker for institutionalizing a complementary low-intensity mindset. The annex recognizes that adversaries of the United States will seek to challenge it in the gray zone with hybrid warfare techniques below the threshold of war. Through alliances, diplomacy, aid, development, and cultural cooperation, supported by efficient hard power, the United States Army can compete with and defeat low-intensity threats. However, that efficient hard power must be mentally ready to fight in irregular and low-intensity conflicts. If the Army is only thinking about and preparing for large-scale, force-on-force operations, then our adversaries will take advantage of the cumbersome, rigid, and predictable nature of conventional formations.
The characteristics of agility and flexibility will further benefit Army units operating in an evolving joint competition continuum. Modern conventional war may not look how conventional forces expect it to look. For example, John Antal describes modern disrupters, including transparency, tempo, and autonomy, that are distorting how units engage each other. If Army units are too rigid and unable to adapt quickly enough, they risk being defeated before they recognize that they are in an engagement. The 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the persistent drone threats in Iraq and Syria all demonstrate this type of evolution. By obfuscating action, adversaries are able hybridize irregular and conventional operations. The 2018 Middle Euphrates River Valley Battle between Syrian pro-regime forces, supported by the Russian Wagner Group, and US and coalition forces demonstrates the fluidity of the modern battlefield. In this case US forces, both special operations and conventional forces, enabling Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIS, had to rapidly transition to a conventional engagement against state actors that included conventional and irregular forces.
The principles of Mission Command can help all forces, conventional and irregular, respond to contemporary problems with agility and flexibility. If commanders and units trust each other, effectively communicate, and have shared understanding of their purpose and goals, they will foster agility and flexibility. This will increase their potential to operate with disciplined initiative when confusing, nebulous, and rapidly changing conditions manifest.
These ideas do not advocate a blurring of the lines between conventional and special operations forces. Instead, it is a call for flexibility. Just as special operations forces must be ready to take part in conventional war, conventional forces must be mentally prepared to take part in irregular war. Army special operations forces will continue to play their unique role throughout the full joint competition continuum. US Army Special Operations Command’s ability to specially select, train, equip, and prepare to execute sensitive missions ensures that it will remain a critical Army capability.
While the US Army is donning heritage uniforms that are a relic of the glory of a World War II industrial victory, US adversaries are setting conditions for continuous competitive success. The Army must foster a mindset that avoids these adversaries’ advantages and frustrates their strategies. It is imperative that the Army hear the clarion call of strategic failure in Afghanistan. If the service is to be a learning organization, it must recognize that the loss in Afghanistan and the trend of losses since Vietnam demonstrate the ineffectiveness and lack of utility of large-scale conventional landpower in low-intensity conflict. The US Army may wish to never again engage in low-intensity conflict, but that is not reality. It is a strategy that US adversaries, both state and nonstate, will continue to use as long as it is effective. The Army must learn from its failures and develop capabilities that are just as successful in low-intensity war as extant capabilities are in high-intensity war. The risk of not winning across the entire spectrum of conflict is a gradual exhaustion and an eventual political defeat.
Lieutenant Colonel Ned Marsh is a US Army Special Forces officer currently attending the US Army War College. He has previously served in joint and Army special operations units throughout the Middle East, European, and Pacific regions. He holds graduate degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School and the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel, US Army
23. A Chinese Invasion of Taiwan: What Response Would Americans Support?
A Chinese Invasion of Taiwan: What Response Would Americans Support?
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened the possibility that Chinese President Xi Jinping might take a similar action toward Taiwan. Xi has made no secret of his ambition to annex the island, and may be emboldened to act sooner rather than later absent a strong international response to Putin’s aggression.
Recent polling from TIPP provides insights into Americans’ views on a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which are remarkably consistent across the political spectrum in our supposedly-polarized nation. Not surprisingly, most Americans are not interested in getting into a war in Asia; in no group surveyed does support for direct military support for Taiwan top 20%. But there is even less appetite to do nothing, as in no group surveyed does allowing China to take Taiwan top 10%.
The majority of respondents favor economic sanctions – or a combination of military support and economic sanctions – as the appropriate response to an attack on Taiwan. America’s unparalleled economic strength appears to be the tool of choice, and might be the one that gives Xi the most pause if he understands just how damaging it can be.
What has happened to Russia in the weeks following the invasion of Ukraine is a case in point. Following the U.S. sanctions on the Central Bank of Russia, there was an unprecedented private sector exodus from the country as companies from McDonalds to Shell pulled out as the ruble cratered.
President Biden said when the sanctions were first levied that it would to take a month to see if they had real bite. Unfortunately, a month is now up and the results are at best mixed. While Russia’s energy production has declined and a potential debt default looms, it is still finding buyers for oil and gas, and the ruble has rebounded.
If Washington truly wants to force a change in Moscow’s belligerent behavior, more robust actions will be needed in short order—first and foremost the sweeping energy-sector sanctions that President Biden has been hesitant to implement. Facing sharply spiking gas prices at home, he is clearly concerned that these sanctions could drive prices higher, even though they are probably the strongest tool in his economic arsenal.
The current stalemate absent these measures is unfortunate, first and foremost for the suffering people of Ukraine. But it also sends a counterproductive message to Xi that the Biden administration is not willing to vigorously deploy America’s economic might to protect a threatened ally because of domestic political concerns, thereby weakening the deterrent effect their threat may have.
Decoupling the world’s two largest economies seemed unthinkable before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent shunning of Russia, but now those difficult discussions have begun. The widely-discussed SWIFT sanctions to cut China off from the international banking system would only be the beginning of it, and while China claims it can sustain itself through Yuan-based transactions there is little evidence that the rest of the world is ready to reject the dollar.
That is not to say that the United States would not share in the economic pain from such a separation, but interestingly the TIPP polling indicates substantial majorities of Americans understand this price and are willing to bear it to defend Taiwan. Once again, there is little deviation from this position across the political spectrum, with 68% (Republicans) to 75% (Democrats) responding favorably.
Americans appear to understand the seriousness of the threat from China, and are willing to contemplate strong action to counter it and are willing to pay the price. As I have noted in previous analysis of TIPP polling on Afghanistan, President Biden appears to have misread the desire of the American people to conclude the war in Afghanistan as a mandate to withdraw as quickly as possible and do so at any cost. Given the clear bipartisan support for a strong response to Chinese aggression revealed by the TIPP polling, he should not make the same mistake on Taiwan. A reluctance to engage militarily is not an indication of general apathy.
Victoria Coates is a Distinguished Fellow in Strategic Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. In the Trump administration, she served as Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy.
24. What Ukraine Needs Now
I know there are a lot of people burning the midnight oil to try to fix this.
I missed this video. It is another example of the master class in Ukrainian strategic influence.
Excerpt:
On March 20, the government of Ukraine released a video offering a preview of what could await on the other side of this terrible, needless war. “There will be new houses. There will be new cities. There will be new dreams. There will be a new story.” The images accompanying the video were strikingly non-Soviet: glimpses of quaint 19th-century city squares and ultramodern new construction, green parks and golden churches. Putin’s war has slashed the long emotional and cultural connection between Ukraine and Russia. It may also have decisively propelled Ukraine forward from its Soviet past to its European future—if the country and its allies can think big enough, soon enough.
What Ukraine Needs Now
Even at this maximum moment of global sympathy, international assistance to Ukraine is falling far short of its needs.
By David Frum
The tally of Russia’s material destruction in Ukraine reached $63 billion on March 24. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that “at least 4431 residential buildings, 92 factories/warehouses, 378 institutions of secondary and higher education, 138 healthcare institutions, 12 airports, 7 thermal power plants/hydroelectric power plants have been damaged, destroyed or seized in Ukraine” by Russian forces.
This figure—now almost three weeks out of date—is likely a serious underestimate of the damage done to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. Whatever the true figure is, it is a climbing target. Russia smashes homes in Ukraine every day. As economic activity ceases and combat costs mount, the war has plunged the Ukrainian government’s budget catastrophically deep into deficit, perhaps $7 billion a month, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the figure.
Even now, at this maximum moment of global sympathy, international assistance to Ukraine is falling far short of its needs. The Biden administration seems determined to dribble aid in increments—most recently it announced $500 million more—even as the war costs hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
Ukraine needs both large, immediate infusions of cash aid to help with social and military costs now, and a promise of early and full reconstruction in partnership with Western allies.
Emergencies are the hardest time to do long-term planning. Yet during an emergency is when such planning may be most needed. Ukraine and its Western allies need to start thinking about both the country’s immediate economic survival and its future economic reconstruction. The project’s ultimate cost may be uncertain (although perhaps not; more below on that). But this is the moment for the world to commit to the measures needed to cover that cost.
Ukraine’s allies can begin by immediately imposing a special excise tax on Russian oil and gas exports. Those exports are not yet subject to Western sanctions and may never be. Fossil-fuel prices have rocketed: Europeans bought a record $755 million worth of natural gas just on March 2 from Russia. Russian oil-and-gas earnings for 2022 are on track to exceed $320 billion, more than one-third higher than in 2021. Since the start of fighting in late February, the European Union has paid Russia 35 times more for energy than it has given Ukraine in aid, the EU’s top foreign-policy official said in a speech to the European Parliament on April 6.
Tax Russian oil and gas now. Tax it, and pay the money to Ukraine to offset the costs of war, to support social services, and to begin reconstruction. At first, the tax will fall mainly on European buyers. But new supply is coming to Europe: from the United States as liquefied natural gas, from Algeria via the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline, from Norway through increased production, and from farther afield: Qatar and Azerbaijan. As the new supplies become available, Russia will be pushed to absorb more of the burden of the tax itself, or else lose market share to untaxed competitors. Green substitution can also help. New, renewable sources of energy for Europe won’t come online this spring. But if Russia digs in for a long war of attrition in eastern Ukraine, those sources will change the supply-demand outlook, and redirect Russian energy revenues to the Ukrainian treasury.
An excise tax on Russian energy exports could be left in place even after the war ends. Alternatively, as part of a peace settlement, the tax could be lifted—and other sanctions ended—in return for Russia transferring an equity stake in its gas fields to Ukrainian ownership. With BP and other Western players exiting the Russian market, the Russian state and its supporters will gain a windfall, acquiring at discount prices the assets jettisoned by foreign investors. That windfall could be redistributed to Ukraine to compensate for the damage done by Russia’s aggression, by assigning a Ukrainian sovereign wealth fund a certain percentage share in Russian energy producers or Russian oil and gas fields.
Ukraine could also be compensated out of Russia’s blocked assets at Western central banks. Hundreds of billions of Russian dollar and euro holdings have been frozen by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. Outright confiscation would raise legal difficulties. But a payment by Russia to Ukraine could be negotiated as part of the settlement to unfreeze the remainder of the assets when the war ends. Ukrainian families that lost loved ones to Russian aggression and atrocity could also receive payment from the frozen Russian funds.
Nobody should over-rely on the potential of reparations from Russia. Russia will likely be a poor enough place itself after the war, and the war may end as a frozen conflict, without a political or financial settlement. Ukraine’s Western allies will have to step up.
That step-up, however, may prove not a burdensome gift to charity but a mutually beneficial investment. A useful comparison might be Italy’s huge contribution to European growth in the late 1950s. Before the ’50s, Italy had long lagged behind France and Germany. Between 1958 and 1963, Italy’s industrial output peaked at an annual rate of more than 10 percent. Italians sold more than they ever had to their neighbors, and could afford therefore to buy more from them, widening and prolonging the postwar boom across all of Western Europe.
If reconstruction plans are readied now—if financing mechanisms are instituted in this period of strong political will—then Ukrainians in exile will gain confidence to return to their homeland after the war. Ukraine could lead the way on green housing and new transit systems. The economic stimulus would be felt across Europe. A strong, prosperous postwar Ukraine would serve as more proof of the power and appeal of democracy, European integration, and open trade.
Institutional reforms will be needed in Ukraine to ensure that reparations are used wisely, and protect them from internal corruption and predation. The Swedish economist Anders Aslund told me he believes that Ukraine could overcome the deficiencies of its judicial system by opening new trade courts, staffed by foreign judges who earn international salaries but apply Ukrainian law. The promise of a truly transformative postwar economic package could induce Ukraine to accept truly transformative political change.
Rebuilding Ukraine is likely to be the biggest European project since the absorption of East Germany by the West in the 1990s. The Kyiv School of Economics’ $63 billion figure is based on a tally of the value of what has been destroyed. But when a Russian missile demolishes a Soviet-era apartment block, what matters for the future is not the value of that block. What matters is the cost of rehousing the same number of people in homes that meet modern standards. If an ancient coal-fired power plant is bombed, what matters for the future is not the value of the old plant, but the cost of bringing an equivalent amount of green energy online from new facilities.
Natalie Jaresko, the former finance minister, offered this rule of thumb for thinking about the damage. The destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria totaled perhaps $90 billion, or even more. Puerto Rico has a population about one-14th that of Ukraine, concentrated in dramatically smaller territory. And hurricanes are easier to recover from than wars: Hurricanes may knock down buildings, but they do not leave land mines behind.
Pre-Maria Puerto Rico was an island predominantly of single-family housing. An insurer or the government could write a homeowner a check, then leave the owner to rebuild on his or her own. Replacing Ukraine’s multifamily-housing stock will require a lot more coordination, especially because many Ukrainians will live in different parts of their country after the war is over.
The ravaged city of Mariupol, for example, earned its living from Europe’s largest steelworks, a huge Soviet-era complex that employed thousands of people directly and many more indirectly. The docks and port facilities that transported the steel were also important employers. The steel mill has been wrecked, leaving behind many environmental hazards. Before the war, Mariupol was home to about 450,000 people. How many of them will want to return to a polluted city without jobs only 60 or so kilometers from the Russian border? Meanwhile, Kyiv will need not only thousands of replacement homes but thousands more new ones, as will the city of Lviv, in the west, where so many Ukrainians have sought refuge from Russian violence.
The internal displacement to Lviv anticipates another huge postwar challenge for Ukraine: reorienting its economy from Russia-facing to Europe-facing. The former Soviet Union used a different rail gauge from the European standard: 1,520 millimeters wide on the Soviet side of the line, compared with 1,435 millimeters to the west. That difference helped defeat Hitler in 1941, because German railcars could not run on Soviet tracks to supply the Wehrmacht. But Soviet rail gauges raise a barrier to trade between Europe and post-Soviet Ukraine. Very possibly, the country’s entire rail network will have to be changed to the narrower European gauges in order to reorient Ukraine’s trade toward the EU’s major ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, and Bremen. Highways and bridges damaged by the war will also have to be replaced—and the road network likewise expanded and reoriented.
At the beginning of the war, Ukraine severed its electrical-grid connections to Russia and switched over to the European Union grid. Connections to the European Union grid will have to be improved and modernized to ensure robust and resilient energy for homes, factories, and farms. Ukraine generates about half its power from 15 still-functioning Soviet-era nuclear reactors. Too much of the remainder comes from coal. Ukraine has abundant opportunities to generate wind and solar power, but during the period of reconstruction, it may need to import much more electricity from EU partners than it did before the war. Russian bombing has smashed up residential and industrial sewage systems, spilling hazards and toxins. Coal mines have been flooded, threatening to pollute neighboring communities with runoff. For postwar Ukraine, environmental cleanup will not be a bonus or an accessory of growth; it will be a precondition.
On March 20, the government of Ukraine released a video offering a preview of what could await on the other side of this terrible, needless war. “There will be new houses. There will be new cities. There will be new dreams. There will be a new story.” The images accompanying the video were strikingly non-Soviet: glimpses of quaint 19th-century city squares and ultramodern new construction, green parks and golden churches. Putin’s war has slashed the long emotional and cultural connection between Ukraine and Russia. It may also have decisively propelled Ukraine forward from its Soviet past to its European future—if the country and its allies can think big enough, soon enough.
25. FDD | To be effective, US policy on PRC must be actioned early and often
FDD | To be effective, US policy on PRC must be actioned early and often
‘Great Powers are expected to live up to commitments to international rules and norms even if those rules work against that country’s interests—credibility is more important. Second, to be effective, Policy must be constantly repeated.’
fdd.org · by Cleo Paskal Non-Resident Senior Fellow · April 9, 2022
April 8th was the 10th anniversary of the start of the Scarborough Shoal standoff between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. A decade later, and in spite of an international court ruling against Beijing, the People’s Liberation Army has expanded, deepened and hardened its hold over the area, including turning several islands into full-fledged military bases.
In this edition of Indo-Pacific: Behind the Headlines, we speak with David R. Stilwell, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) from June 2019 to early 2021. He served in the Air Force for 35 years, rising to the rank of Brigadier General and acted as the Asia advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He also flew fighter jets and was Director of the China Strategic Focus Group at US Indo-Pacific Command from 2017 to 2019. He served across the Indo-Pacific, including as Defense Attaché in Beijing, and speaks Korean, Mandarin and some Japanese.
Q: In 2015, Party Secretary Xi Jinping stood next to President Obama in the Rose Garden and made a usually pointed public commitment that he had no intention of militarizing the artificial islands he’d just built in the South China Sea. But last month INDOPACOM commander ADM Aqualino said they were fully militarized. What happened?
A: Xi Jinping’s statement in 2015 got a lot of attention, in part because it’s rare that a Chinese leader would make such an unambiguous public declaration and also because of the PRC’s illegal activities at Scarborough Shoals three years prior. You’ll recall that in 2012, PRC government ships forcibly ejected Filipino fishermen from Scarborough and have occupied it since. Scarborough is 124 miles from the Philippines—inside Manila’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)—and 469 miles from China.
After that, between 2012-2015, Beijing destroyed incredible amounts of pristine coral reefs to create seven artificial islands on disputed features, which as ADM Aqualino noted, have become military bases. The parallels between PRC actions in the South China Sea and Russia’s in Ukraine are hard to miss. Rather than resolving disputes through dialogue with other claimants Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, Beijing resorted to force.
Q: Are Beijing’s claims legitimate?
A: That’s a complicated question, but there are ways to determine the legitimacy of competing claims without resorting to might-makes-right behavior. China is a very vocal signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), as is the Philippines. UNCLOS has an arbitration mechanism called the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to which all signatories agreed they would submit in case of disputes. In 2015, the Philippines brought their case to the ITLOS, suing the PRC over its actions at Scarborough and elsewhere, and won.
The crux of the case deals with the concept of Exclusive Economic Zones—maritime space extending out to 200 nautical miles from sovereign territory—in which all fish and mineral resources belong to that country. Beijing does not recognize others’ EEZ’s in the South China Sea (although it demands that others respect its EEZs everywhere else); instead it claims all maritime space inside its ill-defined “9-dash Line” covering roughly 80% of the South China Sea.
In 2016, the ITLOS decided in favor of Manila, ruling that China’s maritime claims were illegal, that some of its territorial claims were illegal as well, and that Beijing was required to pay restitution to Manila for illegal actions at Scarborough and elsewhere. Beijing has to date ignored this outcome, despite UNCLOS membership.
Q: The Philippines is a US ally. What has the US done to support Manila through all of this?
A: Until just under two years ago, US policy was that we “take no position on the validity of individual claims” while insisting that disputes be resolved peacefully. Then, in July 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an updated South China Sea maritime policy that aligns the US with the 2016 ITLOS Award, denying China’s 9-dash Line claims. Given that the international body responsible for setting maritime standards had concluded that regional states’ EEZs should be respected, changing US policy to reflect just made sense.
Feedback from the change was positive, and Beijing’s response was muted. As an UNCLOS signatory, what could they possibly say? What’s interesting is Beijing’s language on the Arctic Ocean is almost exactly the same as our position on the South China Sea (and other disputed maritime space). But Beijing’s insistence on access to the Arctic puts it at odds with Moscow, which also maintains excessive Arctic Ocean claims.
Two lessons emerge. First, Great Powers are expected to live up to commitments to international rules and norms even if those rules work against that country’s interests—credibility is more important. Second, to be effective, Policy must be constantly repeated.
Q: If the US has made official written policy commitments, why do we have to constantly repeat them?
A: Unlike Strategy (i.e. the National Security Strategy), Policy doesn’t have the same formality, detail or permanence. It could be because Policy is typically political speech, broad and ambiguous language to maximize flexibility. When I was an apprentice diplomat at the US Embassy in Beijing (Defense Attaché), it was disappointing to see how bilateral meetings were characterized by the same tedious, time-wasting recitation of the same points we heard at the last meeting.
The PRC would lay out its boilerplate Three Obstacles complaints, and we’d come back with examples of the PRC’s repeated failure to live up to its commitments, like abiding by UNCLOS or PLA interceptors maintaining safe distance from our aircraft operating in international airspace.
It’s a funny thing about policy, if you announce it once and then go silent, the conclusion is that commitment to the policy is waning. Others will be incentivized to mount a challenge with the intent of obviating it. The 2012 Syrian Red Line policy statement is a negative example—the policy was announced, but US responses to Syrian challenges were unconvincing, which told Damascus that they could use chemical weapons with low risk.
Secretary Pompeo’s July 2020 policy announcement supporting UNCLOS and denying Beijing’s excessive maritime claims is a positive example. Continued verbal support of that policy change from the Biden administration reinforces the US commitment to the new policy and reassures ASEAN claimants. And it has had an effect; Beijing has abandoned policy statements claiming all maritime space inside the 9-Dash Line and now talks in terms of territorial claims—the four island groups of Pratas Islands, Paracel Islands, Spratly Islands, and the Macclesfield Bank (and surrounding waters). This appears to be Beijing’s new policy position, which is also ambiguous, maximizing flexibility.
Finally, more than words, US actions are the best demonstration of continued support to Policy—striking a Syrian airbase that used chemical weapons on Syrian people with 57 Tomahawk missiles in May 2017 is a good example. Closer to home, ADM Aqualino continues to support past commitments to “fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows”. In this case, that would be in the international air and maritime space of the South China Sea as defined by UNCLOS.
Cleo Paskal is The Sunday Guardian Special Correspondent as well as Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Follow her on Twitter @CleoPaskal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Cleo Paskal Non-Resident Senior Fellow · April 9, 2022
26. The Ukraine Temptation – Biden Should Resist Calls to Fight a New Cold War
What about the revisionist and rogue powers and authoritarian regimes who are fighting a new Cold War. Let's face it: strategic competition is a form or a cold war. We are fighting an ideological war and that is a cold war.
Excerpts:
Among the priorities of the twenty-first-century United States should not be relations with Iran. Nevertheless, the country may soon vault to the top of the president’s agenda. Negotiators are currently trying to resurrect the agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. If those talks break down, the Biden administration will have to decide whether to support a military strike on Iran, even though it will likely regard the country as a negligible concern and a distraction from Ukraine. But even Ukraine is a distraction from what the administration had hoped to focus on: competition with China, not to mention rescuing American democracy, mitigating a pandemic, and preserving a habitable planet. Such cacophony is the predictable result of the quest for global military primacy—not control over world events but the forfeiture of self-control. The problem will get ever worse as the unipolar moment continues to recede.
A new cold war promises clarity of purpose. In reality, it would impose enormous costs and generate unnecessary risks. It would not, moreover, make other priorities go away; it would more likely exacerbate the United States’ domestic travails and stifle urgent international cooperation. After 9/11, the United States allowed itself to become consumed by fears of the enemy. After Ukraine, the Biden administration should let nothing keep it from advancing the best interests of Americans.
The Ukraine Temptation
Biden Should Resist Calls to Fight a New Cold War
April 12, 2022
For three decades, U.S. foreign policy has run on inertia and called it strategy. The Cold War had ended, but the United States nonetheless retained its Cold War alliances. The Soviet Union had disappeared, but the absence of a major threat produced much the same prescription as the presence of a major threat had: just as the U.S. military had defended “the free world,” now it would become the guardian of the whole world. When problems appeared, successive administrations generally took them as reasons to expand U.S. deployments. Even if its bid for primacy had created or exacerbated those problems, Washington had the solution: more and better primacy.
Now the war in Ukraine is tempting policymakers to repeat that mistake in an exceedingly consequential way. Just when President Joe Biden had been trying to prioritize security in Asia and prosperity for the American middle class, advocates of U.S. primacy are seizing this emotionally charged moment to insist that post–Cold War path dependency prevail. Rather than pivot to Asia, they argue, the United States must now build up its military presence in Europe to contain an assertive Russia, even as it strengthens its Indo-Pacific defenses to contain a rising China. They admit their proposal would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more in defense spending and put U.S. forces on the front lines of two potential great-power wars, but they think the price is worth it.
The Biden administration should decline this invitation to wage a risky global cold war. Although the invasion of Ukraine has revealed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to take risks in the pursuit of aggression, it has also exposed the weakness of the Russian military and economy. If anything, the war has strengthened the case for strategic discipline, by offering a chance to encourage Europe to balance against Russia while the United States concentrates on security in Asia and renewal at home. Such a division of labor is fair and sustainable. It would put the United States in the best position to limit the fallout from the war in Ukraine and achieve long-term peace and stability in Europe and beyond. Primacy’s lure is strong in Washington, but a more restrained approach is better.
DÉJÀ VU
Since Russia’s invasion began, advocates of U.S. primacy have contended that the war demands not only an immediate response from the United States but also an enduring grand-strategic shift. Riding a wave of anti-Russian sentiment, they want the Biden administration to cast aside the new, Asia-centric posture that it had been expected to roll out. “We cannot pretend any longer that a national security focus primarily on China will protect our political, economic and security interests,” wrote former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. “As we have seen in Ukraine, a reckless, risk-taking dictator in Russia (or elsewhere) can be every bit as much a challenge to our interests and our security.” To keep the war from expanding, the Biden administration has boosted the number of U.S. troops in Europe to around 100,000—a level not seen in decades.
But a bid to restore global military primacy is no more merited today than it was before the invasion. Putin’s gruesome attack has made the Russian threat visceral, but it has not actually increased the threat or produced other compelling evidence for taking on new commitments or missions. Gates appears to confuse a humanitarian calamity with a threat to the United States. As the Biden administration has maintained, vital U.S. security interests are not at stake in Ukraine, and so the United States will not intervene directly against Russian forces. Especially unclear is why Putin or just any “reckless, risk-taking dictator” should be presumed to challenge U.S. interests on a similar magnitude as China, the world’s number two economic and military power. Thinking that way could lead U.S. officials to give up on formulating strategy on the basis of discernable national interests. The United States would find itself policing the world, no matter the stakes.
If Russia were to overrun the heartland of Europe, the United States’ security and prosperity would become endangered, since much of the wealthy and populous region would come under Moscow’s control. In the late 1940s, the United States waged the Cold War in part to prevent the Soviet Union from using its formidable resources to conquer noncommunist Europe. In a March article in Foreign Affairs, the scholars Michael Beckley and Hal Brands implicitly resurrected this strategic objective by invoking “the policies that won the Cold War” as a model for what to do today: contain Russia and China simultaneously through U.S. military buildups in both Europe and Asia. By their estimate, this course of action would require boosting defense spending over the next decade from 3.2 percent of GDP to five percent of GDP, making for a 56 percent increase.
But it is difficult to discern how Russia could drive far into Europe, even if it tried. Before the invasion, the EU’s economy was roughly five times as large as Russia’s, by the conservative metric of purchasing power parity, and wartime sanctions are set to widen the gap. Taken together, the European members of NATO already outspend Russia on defense, and Europe’s geopolitical awakening will only push them to spend more. And the lackluster performance of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine does not augur well for their prospects against NATO in the near term.
For three decades, U.S. foreign policy has run on inertia and called it strategy.
Rather than explain how Russia could possibly come to dominate Europe, then, Beckley and Brands adopt an expansive conception of the United States’ interests and responsibilities that would have made George Kennan, the architect of Cold War containment, blush. They would seemingly have the United States go to war to stop any act of “autocratic aggression” in eastern Europe or East Asia, and perhaps wherever else “the international order” might appear to be imperiled. Indeed, as inspiration for their approach, they draw on NSC-68, the strategic document of 1950 that called for limitless anticommunist crusades and exorbitant military spending. As the historian John Lewis Gaddis has put it, NSC-68 “found in the simple presence of a Soviet threat sufficient cause to deem the interest threatened vital.” In other words, NSC-68 had the United States assume vast costs and risks without reference to the country’s safety and well-being; it severed the link between U.S. policy and U.S. interests. It should not be a template for our time.
The call for a cold war against China and Russia would have Americans take on enormous burdens not because specific U.S. interests require it but because U.S. primacy does. No longer able to maintain global military dominance at the current level of exertion, the United States is now supposed to plow ever-greater resources into the endeavor. Perhaps the country could get away with strategic excesses in the 1950s, when it accounted for some 27 percent of world economic output, nearly double the combined Soviet and Chinese share of 14 percent. In 2020, by contrast, the United States accounted for 16 percent of global GDP. China and Russia together came to 22 percent. China alone topped the United States. It is doubtful that sheer will can overcome the chasm between the United States’ material superiority during the Cold War and its shortfall today.
Coming out of World War II, the American public understood the implications of undertaking obligations to defend other countries. By contrast, most Americans alive today, having never seen a great-power war or paid tangible costs for smaller wars, are not used to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices. Their well-founded suspicion of far-flung military interventions creates uncertainty about how the United States would truly act if one of its dozens of defense commitments came due. It also raises doubts about whether high defense spending could be sustained indefinitely.
Rather than lock a new cold war into place, Biden should remember what produced the United States’ greatest successes during the original affair: a willingness to adjust to changing circumstances and weigh creative options without clinging to outmoded habits. The Marshall Plan, for example, broke with precedent by extending government funds to rebuild European countries that might have turned communist. Decades later, U.S. policymakers saw an opportunity to stabilize superpower relations and achieved détente, devising mutually beneficial arms control measures and stabilizing Europe through the Helsinki Accords. These achievements deserve to be emulated—and that requires eschewing misplaced nostalgia.
A EUROPE STRONG AND FREE
The war in Ukraine has made strategic discipline not only more necessary but also more achievable. By turning Europe into a more unified and determined geopolitical actor, the war has generated international dynamics that are conducive to U.S. restraint. Biden should reject a cold war strategy of dividing the world and keeping one half dependent on the United States. He should not allow Putin’s aggression to define the United States’ concept of itself and its role in the world. Instead, he should seek to make the world resilient—more capable of effective and collective action and less reliant on U.S. military protection.
The first step is to support Ukraine while avoiding escalation into a direct clash between U.S. and Russian forces. Having galvanized domestic and international action, the Biden administration should avoid the rhetorical inflation of its aims and stick to a clear goal: not to defend Ukraine but rather to help Ukraine defend itself and end the war. Accordingly, the administration should push for a peace settlement with as much vigor as it has displayed in imposing costs on Russia.
A negotiated agreement will almost certainly require lifting at least some of the harshest sanctions on Russia, including the freeze of the Russian central bank’s assets. The administration should proactively communicate an offer of sanctions relief to Moscow, which might not otherwise believe that such relief is possible. In conjunction with a pledge by Ukraine to give up on trying to join NATO, Biden should also be prepared to state publicly that the United States opposes further consideration of Ukraine’s membership prospects, which were never high to begin with. After the war, the United States should continue to send weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself. It would not be necessary or wise to pledge to go to war on Ukraine’s behalf, a commitment that would diminish American security and expand the U.S. military role in Europe.
While avoiding the worst outcomes in Ukraine, Biden should take advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put the European security order on the path to self-sufficiency. With immense economic and demographic superiority, Europe is more than capable of developing the military power to balance Russia. Now, it seems increasingly willing to do so. But if Washington does not get out of its own way, change will not happen.
Biden should reject a cold war strategy of dividing the world and keeping one half dependent on the United States.
Biden should back European strategic autonomy and make a six-year plan, to cover the rest of his term and the next one, to transition European defense to European leadership. The administration should press European countries to provide new manpower in the eastern countries of NATO and replace the additional U.S. troops sent there since January. And it should help European capitals coordinate their next steps: improving their forces’ readiness and sustainability, developing capabilities for high-end operations, and harmonizing EU defense capabilities with those of a European-led, U.S.-supported NATO.
Limiting the United States’ burdens in Europe would enhance its strategy in Asia. Biden would spare himself and his successors from facing the devil’s choice that advocates of primacy would force on generations to come: weaken the United States’ Indo-Pacific defenses in the event of a European war with Russia, or prepare to fight two great-power wars by raising defense spending so high as to court a political backlash. U.S. policymakers must steer clear of these unacceptable options. Nor need they resign themselves to a strategic competition with China so intense and encompassing as to resemble the early Cold War.
Military restraint is desirable on strategic grounds, but it is also essential to freeing U.S. statecraft to pursue what matters most. The priorities that Biden identified when he came into office—delivering prosperity for ordinary Americans and tackling climate change and pandemics—remain just as important today, and the war has made them even harder to address. Russia’s war and Western sanctions risk triggering a global recession or contributing to a period of stagflation. A downward economic spiral could even accompany a downward security spiral; countries could divide into economic blocs for fear that geopolitical contingencies may one day suddenly force them to join one grouping or another.
The United States should act to arrest deglobalization, which would depress growth and innovation and inhibit climate cooperation. Rather than succumb to a cold war framework, it should remain economically engaged with China and respect the sovereign choices of countries in the developing world to abstain from sanctions on Russia and otherwise opt for nonalignment. As surging prices compound the effects of the pandemic, the United States should rally its European and Asian partners to provide funds and technology to build renewable energy capacity in developing countries. Climate change is perhaps the biggest threat to the American people. If it remains a sideshow in national security policy by the end of Biden’s tenure, then his foreign policy will have failed, no matter how well he handles the war in Ukraine.
THE PRICE OF PRIMACY
Among the priorities of the twenty-first-century United States should not be relations with Iran. Nevertheless, the country may soon vault to the top of the president’s agenda. Negotiators are currently trying to resurrect the agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. If those talks break down, the Biden administration will have to decide whether to support a military strike on Iran, even though it will likely regard the country as a negligible concern and a distraction from Ukraine. But even Ukraine is a distraction from what the administration had hoped to focus on: competition with China, not to mention rescuing American democracy, mitigating a pandemic, and preserving a habitable planet. Such cacophony is the predictable result of the quest for global military primacy—not control over world events but the forfeiture of self-control. The problem will get ever worse as the unipolar moment continues to recede.
A new cold war promises clarity of purpose. In reality, it would impose enormous costs and generate unnecessary risks. It would not, moreover, make other priorities go away; it would more likely exacerbate the United States’ domestic travails and stifle urgent international cooperation. After 9/11, the United States allowed itself to become consumed by fears of the enemy. After Ukraine, the Biden administration should let nothing keep it from advancing the best interests of Americans.
27. FDD | Putin’s war perverts a personal geography
FDD | Putin’s war perverts a personal geography
fdd.org · by James Brooke Visiting Fellow · April 9, 2022
Bucha? That was the leafy Kyiv suburb where we spent a Saturday afternoon, eating ice cream cones and exploring a city park defined by neatly clipped hedges, classical sculptures and fathers teaching their sons to fish.
Mariupol? That was the pulsing steel-making city where I covered an international development conference. Bankers, company presidents and European ambassadors lined up to announce investments totaling more than $1 billion.
Chernihiv? That was the quiet regional capital where my wife joined a Ukrainian choir while my son and I explored a fine arts museum, a park and an 11th-century church.
Kramatorsk? That was a hockey match between the local team Bilyi Bars (White Leopards) against the Kyiv Sokils (Falcons). Leaving the rink, my Canadian sportswriter friend Lee Reaney and I joined some hockey players for a beery dinner at the Ria Lounge Bar.
This was my Ukraine, a cultured, family friendly country where I lived for six years until moving back to Lenox last fall. Based in Kyiv, my wife Pen Soy, our son George and I explored this little known European nation, an expanse larger than France.
Painful scenes, familiar places
After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war of choice on Ukraine, every city I visited in Ukraine has been bombed. For me, reading the news is to see a friendly, familiar geography turn perverse.
From Kyiv, the now iconic photo of the bandaged young woman nursing her baby in a government hospital rang a bell with me. Last August, our George was interned in the same hospital — Okhmadyt National Children’s Hospital. We spent five days with him in the old wing. Scrutinizing news photos, I see the woman with the bandage around her head got a room in the new wing.
Bucha now is internationally notorious as the bedroom community where Russian soldiers bound the hands of prisoners behind their backs, shot them dead and then left their bodies on the streets as terror warnings to residents.
Mariupol now competes for the title of Ukraine’s Stalingrad. This once bustling port city now is a dusty landscape of bombed-out apartment buildings, an apocalyptic moonscape where 100,000 people cower in basements. Overhead, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting to defend every block and every street.
Chernihiv emerged this week from a monthlong Russian siege. In what may be the biggest damage to this ancient city since the 1239 sacking by Batu Khan’s Golden Horde, Russian artillery shelling and air bombing hit churches, museums, hospitals and apartment buildings. The mayor says 70 percent of civilian infrastructure is damaged or destroyed. At times, 100 civilians were buried every day. At a nearby village, used as a staging ground for Russian soldiers, 300 civilians were kept in a cellar for one month. Last week, most emerged alive after liberation.
Yesterday morning, two Russian missiles hit Kramatorsk train station, killing at least 50 and wounding nearly 100, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the government-controlled portion of Donetsk region. Platforms were packed because two days earlier the governor of neighboring Luhansk warned civilians that a Russian offensive was coming. “The cities of the Luhansk region are in ruins,” he said. “Thousands of residents have not yet left. Get out of the way!”
What once was …
Only two years ago — before COVID, before the war — Ukraine was a fast-growing destination for European Union residents looking for new horizons for city break vacations. Wizz Air and Ryanair opened up direct flights from 30 EU cities to Kyiv. Other flights took vacationers straight from the EU to Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv. On arrival, Uber taxis took visitors from newly modernized airports to international chain hotels or Airbnb apartments.
Attractions included low prices — dinner for two, with wine, for $25 — and low crime. Today, a candlelight dinner for two in a basement bomb shelter may be romantic for some, but it certainly is not safe.
After HBO’s “Chernobyl” miniseries aired in spring 2019, 125,000 tourists flocked that year to the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. On the two-hour drive north from Kyiv, tour guides reviewed safety rules and showed off their radiation dosimeters.
Last month, thousands of Russian soldiers streamed through Chernobyl’s carefully monitored Exclusion Zone. They spared the new $2.3 billion sarcophagus built over the radioactive remains of reactor Number 4. But Russian army vehicle convoys churned through the “Red Forest,” a strictly off-limits, four-square-mile area considered one of the most contaminated places on earth. Last week, it was reported that 100 Russian soldiers were hospitalized in Belarus after digging trenches in the Red Forest. Of the evacuated soldiers, 26 were in intensive care and one died of radiation poisoning.
Heading east from Kyiv, IT investors often went to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and “the Boston of Ukraine.” Nicknamed “Smart City,” Kharkiv had 34 universities, 300,000 students and 25,000 IT workers. We went one fall weekend to visit friends and to explore the city’s newly renovated parks. The roller coaster, cable car and sculpture collections were far superior to what Kyiv parks offered. That Saturday afternoon, thousands of people thronged Kharkiv’s Shevchenko Park.
Today, Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, estimates that 15 percent of housing — 1,292 residential buildings — have been destroyed. Russian rockets and artillery shells have destroyed 16 hospitals, 76 schools and 239 administrative buildings. Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, calls the military siege “the Stalingrad of the 21st century.” Adjacent to Shevchenko Park, Kharkiv Zoo says it may be forced to destroy animals.
… and where we are now
The siege of Kharkiv may be lifting as Russian troops shift south. One goal is to attack from behind Ukrainian troops who, for the last eight years, have been facing the other direction trading shots with the separatist forces. Another goal is to take over Mariupol, Ukraine’s main port on the Sea of Azov.
When I visited Mariupol three years ago, battle lines were static. After years of paralysis, investment was reviving. Metinvest, Ukraine’s integrated steel company, was planning $1 billion worth of investments to meet EU standards for “green steel.” Eurocape, a French renewable energy company, had gotten U.S. Ex-Im Bank loans to buy General Electric Co. wind turbines.
Mariupol’s population had increased to almost 500,000 people, swollen by refugees from the portions of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Russia since 2014. To cope with the new population, France was loaning money to rebuild Mariupol’s drinking water system. The EBRD and its sister bank, the European Investment Bank were investing millions of euros to build a modern trolley bus and tramway system. With EU aid, the seaport was being modernized to handle more grain for export. Today, Mariupol looks like a European city after an epic World War II battle. In the words of one woman who escaped the siege, southeastern Ukraine largest city is now a “cemetery.”
Vladimir Putin claims he is “liberating” Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. But his bombs are causing the most damage and the most victims in Eastern cities that are majority Russian-speaking. In Kharkiv, where 94 percent of the city population are native Russian speakers, bombs have fallen around Gagarin Planetarium, Gorky Park and Pushkin Street. Elsewhere in the East, the portion of Russian speakers ranges from 80 percent in Chernihiv to 98 percent in Mariupol. If Russia’s President wants a Ukraine without the Ukrainians, that is called genocide.
Lenox native James Brooke is a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has traveled to about 100 countries, reporting for The New York Times, Bloomberg and Voice of America. He will give a talk today at Trinity Church in Lenox titled “Ukraine — Will David Beat Goliath?” FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by James Brooke Visiting Fellow · April 9, 2022
28. FDD | Uyghur Tribunal Emerges as a Model for Addressing War Crimes in Ukraine
FDD | Uyghur Tribunal Emerges as a Model for Addressing War Crimes in Ukraine
It is naïve to expect that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice can deter President Putin from committing further atrocities.
fdd.org · by Ivana Stradner Advisor · April 10, 2022
The retreat of Russian forces around Kiev has disclosed atrocities committed in Ukrainian towns such as Bucha. These crimes demand to be documented and the evidence brought to light.
It is, however, naïve to expect that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice can deter President Putin from committing further atrocities. These courts are vulnerable to delays and distortions from authoritarian countries that leave their rulings toothless.
Instead, there is a need for Western countries to sponsor an international tribunal, styled after the Uyghur Tribunal established in Britain, to document and publicize these war crimes. Such a tribunal would not seek to enforce its rulings but instead to influence public opinion.
The ICC has already launched an investigation into possible war crimes in response to the atrocities committed in Ukraine. The court will look at allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide as far back as 2013. The ICC’s investigations, though, are notoriously slow and ineffective.
This year the ICC asked for the arrest of three individuals they say committed war crimes in the Russo-Georgian war, a full 14 years after the crimes were committed. Yet Russia has no intention of allowing these three low-ranking officials to be prosecuted, and the ICC and ICJ have no way to enforce their rulings.
This intransigence makes laughable calls by the former chief prosecutor of the UN’s tribunal for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Mr. Putin. If the ICC is not able to bring three unimportant officials to justice, how are they supposed to hale before the Hague the man in control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal?
In March, the ICJ issued a ruling in Ukraine’s case against the Russian Federation under the genocide convention. The ICJ ruled that Russia must immediately suspend military operations in Ukraine. This ruling failed to prevent Russia from committing further war crimes.
The Uyghur Tribunal that was set up to investigate China’s human rights abuses in 2020 could serve as a model for an analogous court in Ukraine. The Tribunal effectively assembled international legal experts to analyze the large body of evidence of China’s war crimes in Xinjiang.
The tribunal’s effectiveness is owing in part to its independence — it is not beholden to larger institutional structures. Rather, it simply assembles experts and allows them to make their judgements. This independence allowed it to become the first high-profile tribunal to overtly challenge China’s manipulation of international institutions to further malicious actions.
Forming such a Tribunal for the Russia-Ukraine conflict would have several advantages over the kind of work that the ICC and ICJ can do. It could work much more quickly than existing institutions. Because the Tribunal would not be accountable to bodies like the UN, it could avoid the crippling bureaucratic red tape and authoritarian subterfuge from which the ICC and ICJ currently suffer.
Such a Tribunal would go toward raising awareness of these war crimes and debunking disinformation. The information space during a time of war is crying out for an authoritative voice to parse a complex conflict in a way that is understandable for citizens.
Russia’s defense ministry already recognizes the value of influencing real-time information as it has stated that footage of bodies in Bucha was “fake” or staged by Ukraine for the Western media. The Russian foreign affairs ministry peddled this news all over social media without concerted pushback. The Tribunal can be that voice.
We must remain clear-eyed about the capabilities of a people’s Tribunal for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Such a body would make no effort to bring the guilty parties to justice, recognizing that as a fool’s errand. The Tribunal could, though, become a leading voice in ensuring that people the world over never forget the depravity of the acts committed in Ukraine, and who executed them.
Ivana Stradner is an advisor to the Barish Center for Media Integrity at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington DC. Follow Ivana on Twitter @ivanastradner. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Ivana Stradner Advisor · April 10, 2022
29. FDD | The U.S. Should Sanction Gaza’s Popular Resistance Committees
FDD | The U.S. Should Sanction Gaza’s Popular Resistance Committees
Even though the PRC has American blood on its hands, as well as that of Israelis, the group has somehow escaped U.S. sanctions.
fdd.org · by Joe Truzman Research Analyst at FDD's Long War Journal · April 9, 2022
Even though the PRC has American blood on its hands, as well as that of Israelis, the group has somehow escaped U.S. sanctions. The Biden administration should correct this oversight by designating the PRC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a status that would restrict the group’s ability to raise and move money, procure weapons, and spread propaganda.
The PRC, an offshoot of Fatah, was founded in 2000 amidst the wave of attacks that became known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada. In 2003, the group claimed responsibility for a 200-pound bomb that detonated beside a convoy carrying a U.S. diplomat, injuring him and killing three security guards, all Americans. The next year, PRC gunmen ambushed a car driven by a pregnant Israeli woman, Tali Huetel, and her four daughters. The assailants shot them all at point-blank range.
The PRC has also targeted Palestinian rivals. In 2005, its gunmen shot and killed the former head of the Palestinian security services, Moussa Arafat, a cousin of former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. The PRC later cited the target’s corruption as justification for the killing.
The State Department was aware of the growing threat from the PRC between 2001 and 2009 yet the George W. Bush administration failed to enact sanctions. In its annual terrorism report for 2005, the department noted the PRC was responsible for a “significant amount of attacks” originating from southern Gaza, including a truck bombing it carried out in conjunction with two U.S.-designated FTOs.
Designating the PRC as an FTO would block the group’s access to most banks around the world and allow federal law enforcement to seize its financial assets, including cryptocurrency wallets. In August 2020, the Justice Department announced its largest-ever seizure of terrorist-affiliated cryptocurrency accounts, including 150 belonging to Hamas, which had previously asserted that its cryptocurrency donations were “untraceable.”
Hindering the PRC’s access to funds might curtail its rocket attacks against the Israeli population. In 2008, the group announced it had fired rockets at Israelis living in the Negev in response to a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The PRC later claimed to have killed civilians during the 2014 Gaza-Israel war by launching rockets at Israeli cities. In 2019 and 2021, the group used rockets to target civilians living in Tel Aviv and its environs.
After the conflict in Gaza last May, the PRC gave the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen news channel access to one of its manufacturing facilities. A spokesperson dressed in military fatigues demonstrated how the group produced mortars and rockets, including how it positioned projectiles to launch near what appeared to be civilian infrastructure.
Designating the PRC as a terrorist organization could limit its access to web-hosting services and social media platforms. The PRC uses two websites as well as several Telegram channels and Facebook pages to spread propaganda, including videos of attacks from the conflict last May. The organization also used these media to promote videos and statements made by the “Joint Operations Room,” a coordinating body comprising the PRC and numerous Palestinian factions, many of them under U.S. terror sanctions.
Finally, an FTO designation could help the U.S. government partner with social media sites to eliminate the PRC’s access to their platforms, replicating the U.S. government’s previous work against ISIS, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and many other terror groups.
Of course, a U.S. designation won’t completely cut off the group from its funding sources. The PRC receives support from Iran and its terrorist proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has consistently provided the PRC with weapons and the know-how to manufacture rockets. Last November, a PRC spokesman credited Tehran for every “missile, shell or tool of the Resistance” delivered to the group. He also thanked Hezbollah for having “spared no effort in developing our capabilities and arming us.” This kind of activity will only increase if the Biden administration removes the IRGC from the FTO list as part of the revised nuclear deal it is currently negotiating with Tehran.
It’s long past time to label the PRC as the terror group that it is. Doing so could save lives, both American and Israeli.
Joe Truzman is a research analyst at the Long War Journal, a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute. Follow him on Twitter @JoeTruzman. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Joe Truzman Research Analyst at FDD's Long War Journal · April 9, 2022
30. The Right’s Speech-Code Moment
Again, I do not send this as a partisan critique. From a national security perspective it is our values that give us strength and influence in the world. This is one of the best discussions of free speech and the 1st Amendment I have read in a long time.
Conclusion:
Yet censorship is inconsistent with American pluralism. Speech codes and book bans undermine one of the core purposes of American education. We send our kids to school not just to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to learn how to be citizens in a liberal democracy, and a core value of that democracy is a commitment to free speech—for me and for thee.
The Right’s Speech-Code Moment
The American right has lost the plot on free speech.
The American right has lost the plot on free speech. The passage of Florida’s House Bill 1557, which bans “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation and gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade and in a manner that isn’t “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in all grades, K–12, is merely the latest in a string of what the free-speech-advocacy organization PEN America has called “education gag orders” that have been proposed by Republicans and passed by red-state legislatures from coast to coast.
As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing the tactics that it once opposed.
To understand the transformation of Republican legal priorities, one need not turn back the clock very far. For more than 20 years, the dominant conservative mantra in education could be summed up in two words: free speech. The reason for the emphasis on free speech was crystal clear—college campuses had enacted speech codes at a breathtaking rate.
In the effort to make campuses more welcoming to historically marginalized communities, colleges promulgated speech regulations that were designed to eliminate hate speech and other communications that members of university communities deemed offensive.
Although the impulse behind these codes was virtuous, their legal application was profoundly problematic. University speech codes tended to possess three salient characteristics. First, they were aimed directly at the suppression of words and ideas. Second, they were usually broad and vague, leaving teachers and students with little guidance as to the law’s true meaning. And third, they typically relied on the subjective feelings of community members for enforcement.
To give you a concrete example, here are parts of a speech code I successfully challenged in federal court in 2003: “The expression of one’s beliefs should be communicated in a manner that does not provoke, harass, intimidate, or harm another” and “no person shall participate in acts of intolerance that demonstrate malicious intentions toward others.”
For students of the First Amendment, the problems with this language were obvious. What is an “act of intolerance”? How does one define provocative speech? The speech code did not say. A robust marketplace of ideas simply cannot exist if my free-speech rights end the instant another person feels offended by my words.
A speech code doesn’t have to be illegal to be problematic. Private universities have broad authority to regulate speech (the First Amendment protects citizens only from government censorship, not from private regulation). But speech codes are antithetical to the mission of American education, a mission that the Supreme Court has described as preparing students “for active and effective participation in the pluralistic, often contentious society in which they will soon be adult members.”
When I was president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonpartisan civil-liberties organization, we launched a project that evaluated the speech policies at hundreds of colleges and universities. We found that more than 70 percent had one or more policies on the books that violated clearly established First Amendment jurisprudence, thus earning what we called a “red light” rating.
To address the crisis, FIRE and other groups launched a joint speech-code-litigation project. We deployed teams of lawyers across the country to challenge unlawful policies. We never lost on the merits. Every policy the courts considered, they struck down, regardless of whether the judges were Republican or Democratic appointees.
Around the same time, conservative activists attempted to pass legislation that would open up campuses to free expression. The combination of litigation and legislation proved remarkably successful. The percentage of campuses with red-light speech codes has dropped for 13 consecutive years, and in 2021 it reached an all-time low of 21.3 percent.
As campus-free-speech litigators were winning case after case, the effort to protect corporate expression from government regulation was enjoying a similar run of success. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects corporate political speech. In Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, the Court recognized the religious free-exercise rights of an immense chain of arts-and-crafts stores. And in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Court held that the state had discriminated against a small bakery when it sanctioned the bakery for refusing to make a custom cake for a gay-marriage celebration.
Conservative efforts to protect free speech extended to public employees as well, including public-school teachers. My last two significant cases before I became a full-time journalist were successful lawsuits on behalf of public-university professors who had faced reprisal and retaliation for their protected speech.
In one case, a professor was denied a promotion because of his politics. In the other, a professor was forced out of his job after he questioned the scientific research of his colleagues and blew the whistle on unlawful appointments to a state environmental board.
Even now, conservative legal organizations are representing university professors and public-school teachers in cases challenging public-college or public-school rules mandating that teachers use a student’s preferred pronouns. Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will determine whether a public-school football coach can pray on the field after games.
But here’s the reality of the First Amendment: No viable constitutional doctrine declares “Free speech for me and not for thee.” Every single free-speech win for a conservative corporation or individual is also a win for progressive liberty. Each and every First Amendment case mentioned above expanded the zone of American freedom.
That was the problem. It turns out that all too many Republicans want to maximize their own freedom and minimize their opponents’. Why? For many of the same reasons advanced by the architects of campus speech codes: Some ideas are allegedly too dangerous to be shared.
And that brings us back to the education gag orders. According to the PEN America database, more than 100 pending state bills would limit or constrain free speech in public education. The bulk of these bills attempt to regulate speech regarding race. Framed as “anti–critical race theory” bills, they typically purport to ban the instruction or inclusion of certain “divisive concepts” in public-school classrooms, in college classrooms, and sometimes in public employment or government contracting.
The language of the bills varies, and they often target concepts that are alien to CRT, but they typically share the goal of suppressing ideas that Republicans dislike. Make no mistake, some of those ideas are truly bad. Some of the statutory language is specifically aimed at speech so vile (for example, the idea that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex”) that, if uttered in certain contexts, it could constitute a civil-rights violation. But other prohibitions are far more troublesome even if you agree with the law’s underlying sentiment.
Let’s take my home state of Tennessee’s anti-CRT law, for example. It declares that a public school cannot “include or promote” a number of “concepts,” including the concept that “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex.” Many forms of affirmative action arguably meet that definition.
Let’s presume that a strong majority of Tennesseans disagree with race-based affirmative action. I disagree with race-based affirmative action. Yet I also understand that there are credible, good-faith arguments in support of the policy, and I also recognize that my position is directly adverse to Supreme Court rulings that, for example, permit public universities to consider race as one part of a “holistic” admissions process.
I don’t want a teacher to worry that she has to be exceedingly careful about how she includes arguments for affirmative action in a class while giving free rein to arguments against it.
The Tennessee law also prohibits including or promoting concepts “ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of the individual’s race or sex.” Again, let’s presume that a strong majority of Tennesseans agree and find the contrary argument immoral.
So should teachers strike the following from course materials? “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.” Is that “CRT”?
No, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? No state statute should make teachers think twice before including King quotes in a course. In fact, the King quote illustrates that what legislators ignorantly call “CRT” are often the exact arguments that have dominated American race discourse for generations.
I could continue, going through state after state, pulling similar language from dozens of bills and statutes.
Florida’s H.B. 1557 suffers from each of the classic flaws of a speech code. On its face, it’s aimed at speech and ideas regarding “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Key terms such as instruction and age appropriate are left undefined, which leaves teachers uncertain about the law’s scope. And it explicitly grants a parent the right to sue a school district if his or her “concern” is “not resolved by the school district.”
To consider the potential breadth of the law, imagine that a young student asks a teacher why his or her classmate has two mothers or two fathers. If the teacher responds with a factual, value-neutral response, is he opening his school district to litigation? After all, answering classroom questions, even when not directly related to the curriculum, fits within the plain meaning of the term classroom instruction.
No court has yet ruled on whether the law is unconstitutional. Although federal courts are protective of the free-speech rights of college professors, they’ve taken a much dimmer view of the rights of public-school teachers. States enjoy broad (though not unlimited) authority over public-school curricula. But the fact that a restrictive law might be constitutional does not render it just or wise.
Equality Florida, an LGBTQ-rights organization, and a coalition of students, parents, and teachers have filed suit against Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education, arguing that the law is so broad and vague that it violates the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because teachers don’t have fair warning of the law’s true scope.
Educational gag orders represent only part of the right-wing censorship wave. Yesterday, PEN America issued a report detailing “1,586 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,145 unique book titles.” The group’s count includes “removals of books from school libraries, prohibitions in classrooms, or both, as well as books banned from circulation during investigations resulting from challenges from parents, educators, administrators, board members, or responses to laws passed by legislatures.”
And if we leave the world of education, red-state legislatures are now passing laws regulating corporate speech. Both Texas and Florida have passed sweeping statutes designed to regulate how social-media companies moderate user content. Both laws have been blocked in court.
Compounding the free-speech challenge, the online right directs immense vitriol at those conservatives who dissent from the culture of censorship. Most notably, social media filled with claims that anyone who disagreed with the scope and wording of H.B. 1557—even if they agreed that young children should not receive instruction on sexuality—was a “groomer.” This tweet, from DeSantis’s spokesperson, is representative:
If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.
— Christina Pushaw (@ChristinaPushaw) March 4, 2022
Grooming, however, is a word with a meaning, specifically referring to using “manipulative behaviors” to gain access to victims. While activists are trolling online—knowing full well that they’re abusing the term—they’re also connecting with the language of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which is based on the claim that gangs of pedophiles have infiltrated the highest reaches of American government. Accusations of pedophilia or grooming can be deadly serious, and they’re directly related to violence and threats of violence across the nation.
To decry the right-wing wave of censorship is not to declare that “anything goes,” especially when it comes to the education of young children. A school district can and should use caution—and solicit parental input—when introducing sex education into the classroom. In fact, as the Miami Herald reported, instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity “is not currently a part of the curriculum in the state’s kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.” And that’s entirely appropriate.
But prescribing textbooks and lesson plans (which public-school districts have always done) is different from imposing broad, vague bans on the undefined “instruction” of concepts and ideas. As the book bans illustrate, the harsh political reality is already vindicating civil-libertarian concerns.
In my own school district, a group called Moms for Liberty filed a formal complaint under the state’s anti-CRT law challenging the inclusion of Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story and Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington in the young-elementary curriculum. It also objected to the famous Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With, which depicts Bridges guarded by law enforcement as she courageously desegregates New Orleans’s schools.
Those books and that painting aren’t CRT. They depict history, but that history is offensive to some local parents, and in the state’s expansive anti-CRT law, they perceived a legal hook for their complaint.
The right is now in the process of unlearning liberty. After decades of litigation and legislation, it largely gained what it wanted: a much more free marketplace of ideas. But it is difficult for a commitment to liberty to survive partisan animosity. If you hate or fear your opponents enough, it is hard to resist the siren song of using raw state power to silence their voices.
Yet censorship is inconsistent with American pluralism. Speech codes and book bans undermine one of the core purposes of American education. We send our kids to school not just to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to learn how to be citizens in a liberal democracy, and a core value of that democracy is a commitment to free speech—for me and for thee.
31. Russia Used ‘Mobile Crematoriums’ to Dispose of Mariupol Dead, Mayor Says
Russia Used ‘Mobile Crematoriums’ to Dispose of Mariupol Dead, Mayor Says
Zelensky says he believes that ‘tens of thousands’ of people have been killed in the port city.
President Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv April 11, 2022. Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
07:57:59 am
The scope of Russia’s devastating modern-day sack of Mariupol has come into renewed and frightful focus as President Zelensky said he believed that “tens of thousands” of people have been killed in the port city and that the Russians used “mobile crematoriums” to dispose of some of the dead.
The president’s assertions yesterday cast an even darker light on some of Russia’s tactics in its war on Ukraine, and are likely to spark international outrage that will make it difficult for Vladimir Putin to deflect the charge that forces under his command are waging a campaign of genocide in Ukraine.
Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boychenko, told the Associated Press yesterday that the death toll in his city may surpass 20,000, which would be in line with Mr. Zelensky’s shock assessment. Underscoring the slide toward depravity after several weeks of relentless attacks by land, sea, and air, Mr. Boychenko claimed that “mobile crematoriums have arrived in the form of trucks: You open it, and there is a pipe inside and these bodies are burned.”
The mayor told the AP he based his description of the alleged methodical burning of bodies by Russian forces in the city on the assertions of several sources, but did not offer further details.
“The Russians completely destroyed Mariupol and burned it to ashes,” Mr. Zelensky said while speaking to South Korean lawmakers via videolink. “At least tens of thousands of Mariupol citizens must have been killed.”
Mr. Boychenko’s telling of the tragedy unfolding in the city was more graphic: He said civilian corpses are “carpeted through the streets.”
He said Russian forces have taken many bodies to a shopping center where there are storage facilities and refrigerators. It is at that site, it would appear should the allegations prove truthful, that the Russians have been burning the bodies.
Mr. Boychenko also accused Russian forces of having blocked weeks of attempted humanitarian convoys into the city in part to conceal the carnage.
There are also multiple unconfirmed reports of the use of chemical agents on civilians in Mariupol. Speaking to Sky News, Britain's armed forces minister, James Heappey, warned that if these accounts were true, Britain and its allies would respond to any deployment by Russia of chemical weapons.
“Let’s be clear, if they are used at all then President Putin should know that all possible options are on the table in terms of how the West might respond,” Mr. Heappey told Sky News’s Deborah Haynes.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, told Liga, a Ukrainian news website, that “you need to understand that the risk of chemical weapons being used does exist, and it is quite high.”
Via Telegram, Ukraine’s Azov Regiment said “the victims of the poisonous substance spreading of unknown origin in the city of Mariupol are in a relatively satisfactory condition.” The post said civilian contact with the “was minimal … the military were a little bit closer. However, it is impossible to investigate the scene of crime due to enemy fire.”
Before the war Mariupol was a city synonymous with industry and cultural diversity. The calamity of its destruction, from the ugly big picture to the awful small details, will emerge as one of the chief horrors of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked warmongering in Ukraine.
The discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians after Russian forces retreated from cities and towns around the capital, Kyiv, already has prompted widespread condemnation and accusations that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.
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32. Russia ‘using weapons smuggled by Iran from Iraq against Ukraine’
Russia ‘using weapons smuggled by Iran from Iraq against Ukraine’
Iraqi militias and others say undercover networks being used to supply materiel such as RPGs and anti-tank missiles
Russia is receiving munitions and military hardware sourced from Iraq for its war effort in Ukraine with the help of Iranian weapons smuggling networks, according to members of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and regional intelligence services with knowledge of the process.
An Iranian-made Bavar 373 missile system, similar to the Russian S-300, has also been donated to Moscow by the authorities in Tehran, who also returned an S-300, according to a source who helped organise the transport.
Using the weapons-trafficking underworld would signal a dramatic shift in Russian strategy, as Moscow is forced to lean on Iran, its military ally in Syria, following new sanctions triggered by the invasion of Ukraine.
The developments also have huge implications for the direction and volume of trade in the international weapons trafficking business.
Iraq has hosted US and western troops since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the US has trained and supplied various Iraqi army and special forces units to defend the Baghdad government against insurgencies. After two decades of war, the country is awash with weaponry.
Known for their efficiency in dismantling Islamic State’s “caliphate” – and for their brutal treatment of Sunni civilians – these groups have become powerful actors in Iraq’s security establishment.
RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and anti-tank missiles in the possession of Hashd al-Shaabi, the most powerful Shia militia umbrella, were transported to Iran through the Salamja border crossing on 26 March, where they were received by the Iranian military and taken on to Russia by sea, said a commander of the militia branch that controls the crossing.
Ḥashd al-Shaabi also dismantled and sent in pieces two Brazilian-designed Astros II rocket launcher systems, known in Iraq as the licence-built version Sajil-60, to Iran on 1 April, according to a source within the organisation.
“We don’t care where the heavy weapons go [because we don’t need them at the moment],” one Hashd al-Shaabi source said. “Whatever is anti-US makes us happy.”
Three cargo ships capable of carrying such loads – two Russian flagged and one Iranian flagged – crossed the Caspian Sea from Iran’s port of Bandar Anzali to Astrakhan, a Russian city on the Volga delta, within the timeframes outlined.
“What the Russians need in Ukraine right now is missiles. These require skill to transport as they’re fragile and explosive, but if you are committed to doing it, it’s possible,” said Yörük Işık, an Istanbul-based maritime affairs expert. “It’s also not the kind of activity that would be picked up by satellite imagery as they can be transported in large boxes and regular shipping containers.”
Mohaned Hage Ali, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said: “That kind of sophisticated weaponry [rocket launcher systems] would make a big difference on the ground in Ukraine. Ḥashd al-Shaabi controls much of the border region with Iran, which would make this transaction easier.
“Other countries such as China are having to be very careful about giving weapons to Russia now, given the new sanctions situation. And Iran, as part of that axis, wants to make sure Russia doesn’t lose ground in this conflict.
“If the Putin regime is destabilised that has huge implications for Iran, particularly in Syria, where Damascus is dependent on Russian air support and Russia coordinates to avoid direct conflict between them and Israel.”
Extensive economic sanctions imposed on Moscow by western nations since the 24 February invasion have included bans on dual-use goods – items with a civilian and a military purpose – such as spare parts for vehicles and certain types of electronics and optical devices, as well as items with obvious military uses.
Russian manufacturers have reportedly been hit hard by the new restrictions, with Ukraine saying that the country’s main armoured vehicle plant, as well as a tractor factory, have run out of parts for making and repairing tanks.
Revised western estimates are that 29 of Russia’s original battalion tactical groups are now “combat non-ineffective” from an invading force that is estimated at 125 battalions, or about 75% of Russia’s total army, in the six-week-old “special military operation”.
The significant losses have yielded few gains: Moscow for now appears to have abandoned its initial attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, instead drawing down and repositioning its ground forces for a renewed assault on the Donbas region, in the south-east of the country.
Airstrikes and artillery assaults are expected to continue on the cities of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv as well as the besieged port of Mariupol.
Georgian special services received instructions from the country’s political leadership not to interfere with smuggling channels from “east Asia” designed to circumvent new western sanctions, Kyiv’s intelligence directorate said in a statement.
Georgian officials said the Ukrainian claims were baseless. Relations between the two post-Soviet nations have sharply deteriorated since the conflict broke out over the pro-Russian government in Tbilisi’s refusal to impose economic sanctions on Moscow.
Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a Chinese anti-aircraft system in a secretive operation over the weekend, the Associated Press reported, amid western concerns of an arms buildup in the Balkans at the same time as the war in Ukraine which could threaten the fragile peace in the region.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
