Quotes of the Day:
"Who is the brave man — he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination."
- Geraldine Brooks
"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."
- Lao Tzu
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
- Alice Walker
1. West warns of 'dangerous moment' as Russia holds drills in Belarus
2. How a Trump deal got a boost from a China-based financier
3. Noble Fusion combines Marine, Navy and Japanese forces for island campaign exercise
4. Everything wrong with the Russian military’s ‘special tactical exercise’ propaganda video
5. Sun Tzu’s Trap: The Illusion of Perpetual Competition
6. Demilitarize civilian cyber defense, and you’ll gain deterrence
7. US plays Quad card during Beijing OlympicsUS plays Quad card during Beijing Olympics
8. Army wants to eliminate hands in pockets by warming fingers, toesArmy wants to eliminate hands in pockets by warming fingers, toes
9. The Intelligence Game is Changing. Are We Ready?
10. Insuring Against Military-Civil Fusion Risks
11. Russia threatens Ukraine with its troops, so Ben & Jerry's blames the U.S. - Perspective needed.
12. America Can’t Fight Authoritarianism on the Cheap
13. For Humanity’s Sake, Keep Red Crosses on Medevac Helicopters
14. Opinion | Another university learns the hard way about Chinese censorship on campus
15. Bloomberg named as new head of Defense Innovation Board
16. Another helicopter went down on a US special-ops raid. Here's how elite aviators prepare for that worst-case scenario.
17. Manslaughter charges against MARSOC corpsman dropped by military judge
18. Breaking the Internet: China-US Competition Over Technology Standards
19. US Strategists on the Advantages and Limitations of Sea Power
1. West warns of 'dangerous moment' as Russia holds drills in Belarus
I imagine we are monitoring Russian social media. Soldiers' communications with families and friends may provide insights into when ENDEX may be and if they will be returning acbk to bases in Russia or will be extending their stay in Belarus.
West warns of 'dangerous moment' as Russia holds drills in Belarus
- Summary
- British foreign secretary meets Lavrov
- Russia stages military drills in Belarus
- Ukraine also holds war games
- Four-way talks set to take place in Berlin
BRUSSELS/MOSCOW, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday the West could face the "most dangerous moment" in its standoff with Moscow in the next few days, as Russia held military exercises in Belarus and the Black Sea following its troop buildup near Ukraine.
Tensions remained high, with Ukraine also staging war games, but leaders on all sides signalled they hoped diplomacy could still prevail in what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Europe's biggest security crisis for decades.
In a new round of diplomacy, Britain's foreign minister held talks in Russia, Johnson visited NATO headquarters in Brussels and officials from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France were due to meet in Berlin to discuss fighting between government forces and pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
Russia, which has more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine's borders, denies Western accusations that it may be planning to invade its former Soviet neighbour though it says it could take unspecified "military-technical" action unless demands are met.
"I honestly don't think a decision has yet been taken (by Moscow on an attack). But that doesn't mean that it is impossible that something absolutely disastrous could happen very soon indeed," Johnson told a news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels.
"This is probably the most dangerous moment, I would say, in the course of the next few days, in what is the biggest security crisis that Europe has faced for decades, and we've got to get it right. And I think that the combination of sanctions and military resolve, plus diplomacy is what is in order."
Stoltenberg also said it was a dangerous moment for European security, adding: "The number of Russian forces is going up. The warning time for a possible attack is going down."
In a new point of friction, Ukraine criticised Russian naval exercises that it said made navigation in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov "virtually impossible".
Visiting Moscow, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of tough Western sanctions if Ukraine was attacked.
Lavrov said Moscow was in favour of diplomacy to resolve the crisis but that he could not understand British concerns over the drills in Belarus and denied Russia was coercing anyone.
He said the West was using Ukraine against Moscow and also accused Kyiv of attempting to rewrite agreements intended to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
"I'm honestly disappointed that what we have is a conversation between a dumb and a deaf person. It's as if we listen but we don't hear," Lavrov said.
SHUTTLE DIPLOMACY
Truss' talks in Moscow follow shuttle diplomacy from French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited Moscow and Kyiv earlier this week. In contrast to U.S. and British leaders, Macron has played down the likelihood of a Russian invasion soon.
Russia has used the tensions to seek security concessions from the West that would include a promise to never admit Ukraine to NATO and halt the military alliance's expansion.
The EU said on Thursday it had delivered a single letter in response to Russia's proposals to member states on European security on behalf of the 27 foreign ministers of the bloc.
NATO and the United States have already portrayed Russia's main demands as non-starters.
Stoltenberg said last week that Russia was expected to have 30,000 troops in Belarus as well as Spetsnaz special operations forces, SU-35 fighter jets, S-400 air defence systems and nuclear-capable Iskander missiles.
After the initial phase of the joint drills was announced last month, Russia held a briefing for military attachés that lasted eight minutes and gave notice of an exercise that was already under way, a senior U.S. state department official said.
"That's highly inconsistent with agreements for transparency for large military exercises in Europe. That's bad news," the official said.
Ukraine launched its own war games on Thursday which, like Russia's joint drills with Minsk, will run until Feb. 20.
The Ukrainian forces, whose numbers have not been disclosed, are set to use Bayraktar drones and anti-tank Javelin and NLAW missiles provided by foreign partners. Kyiv was due to receive a further shipment of U.S. military aid later on Thursday.
Despite the tension over the war games, the Kremlin's point man on Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, was set to meet officials from Ukraine, Germany and France in Berlin for the latest talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the talks would be important and that he hoped they could get a Trilateral Contact Group on the conflict in east Ukraine functioning again. The group includes Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a security watchdog.
Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, William James in London, John Irish in Paris and Mark Trevelyan in London; editing by Andrew Osborn and Timothy Heritage
2. How a Trump deal got a boost from a China-based financier
Not a partisan critique. This illustrates Chinese intent to try to influence any social media platform.
How a Trump deal got a boost from a China-based financier
- Summary
- Companies
- ARC offered $2 million in capital to get the SPAC off the ground
- ARC recruited executive who put Digital World together
Feb 10 (Reuters) - A China-based financier, once reprimanded by U.S. regulators and barred from taking his company public, played a bigger role than is publicly known in the shell company that agreed to merge with former President Donald Trump’s new social media venture, Reuters has learned.
Little has been disclosed about the involvement of the financier, Abraham Cinta, and the Shanghai-based investment bank he leads, ARC Group Ltd, in the shell company’s regulatory filings. ARC is listed as “financial advisor” to Digital World Acquisition Corp, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that signed a deal in October to merge with Trump’s new media platform. No details are provided in the filings other than that ARC could help the SPAC with contacts in government and the business world, as well as access to a “quality deal pipeline.”
Now, new information - text messages, a financial document outlining proposed terms of the shell company, an agreement between ARC and one of Digital World’s creators, and interviews with five sources familiar with the situation - shows that Cinta and ARC did not just advise Digital World. They also offered money to create Digital World and recruited an executive to help put the company together.
ARC offered to provide at least $2 million to three businessmen to form Digital World, the SPAC that went on to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, and Cinta had a say in how the SPAC’s management team would be compensated, according to the financial document and text messages between Cinta and others involved.
A person familiar with the matter said ARC eventually made an investment in the SPAC that became Digital World. Reuters could not confirm whether the investment was for $2 million, as ARC originally discussed. The initial investors in the management entity, or sponsor, of Digital World put in a total of $11.8 million, disclosures show.
The Washington Post and Bloomberg News previously reported that ARC has a stake in the sponsor of Digital World. The fact that ARC offered money to get the SPAC off the ground is reported here for the first time.
Cinta and spokespeople for ARC and Digital World did not respond to requests for comment.
Reuters could not establish whether Trump had any role in creating or shaping Digital World or how much Trump knew about Digital World’s backers when his company signed the deal with the SPAC. Trump Media & Technology Group spokespeople and a Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
ARC’s deep role in the deal is atypical for a financial advisor, which is the term used to describe ARC in Digital World’s regulatory filings. An advisor usually counsels a SPAC on how to put a deal together, but doesn’t ordinarily seed the SPAC with capital or get involved in determining its senior ranks. There are no U.S. rules against such arrangements and no requirements for disclosing them, however, according to two capital markets lawyers and two finance professors interviewed by Reuters.
The details about ARC’s role shed new light on the financial firm behind the former president’s lucrative Digital World deal. ARC has carved out a specialty in funneling overseas money into Wall Street’s boom in SPACs. SPACs are listed shell companies that raise cash to acquire and take public a private company, allowing targets to sidestep the stricter regulatory checks of an initial public offering. The gold rush has been fueled by many mom-and-pop investors placing risky bets that often turned sour.
Digital World’s activities are coming under regulatory scrutiny. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority have made inquiries to Digital World about the circumstances around the deal, according to a regulatory filing. The SEC is looking into Digital World’s policies and procedures relating to trading, as well as the “identities of certain investors” in the SPAC and where the money came from. FINRA has asked for details about "surrounding events," including a review of trading that preceded the announcement of the SPAC’s merger with Trump’s company, Digital World has disclosed.
The SEC and FINRA have not taken any action, and the agencies declined to comment on their inquiries.
Many questions remain unanswered about the deal, including the origin of the bulk of the $11.8 million in funds used to set up Digital World. That stake would now be worth $705 million, according to Reuters calculations based on regulatory filings.
The $2 million that ARC proposed ponying up was to come through a Singapore-based fund that Cinta’s firm managed, according to the financial document with the proposed terms seen by Reuters.
Besides the money ARC would invest with its Singapore fund, two investors from Israel, blockchain entrepreneurs Stas Oskin and Sebastian Stupurac, would put in an additional $350,000, according to the document, whose digital signature lists Cinta as its creator.
Stupurac confirmed his participation in a text message to Reuters and said he recalled a different investment figure. He declined to disclose what his investment was and said that “all information should be public at some point”. He added he agreed “to sponsor the idea” because he believed in the SPAC’s management team, but did not get involved in its unfolding and did not follow subsequent events. He declined to provide more details.
Oskin did not respond to requests for comment.
As part of the deal, ARC would have veto power over any deal the blank-check firm pursued, the document shows. Reuters could not establish the identity of the investors in the ARC Singapore fund that offered to invest in Digital World, or whether ARC secured veto power.
Securities regulations do not require Digital World to disclose the investors behind its sponsor. Digital World lists the sponsor in regulatory filings as a Delaware-listed company called ARC Global Investments II. The filings don’t say whether that entity is affiliated with China-based ARC. The papers list Digital World chief executive Patrick Orlando as the “managing member” of ARC Global Investments II.
Orlando did not respond to requests for comment.
Digital World’s merger with Trump Media has been immensely lucrative for shareholders thus far. Trump has yet to launch his social media product, and industry analysts have questioned whether it can take on established platforms such as Facebook.
Investors have snapped up shares in Digital World nonetheless, making it the best-performing SPAC of all time. Trump’s company, worth $875 million when the deal was inked in October, is now valued at up to $10.6 billion.
Other U.S. SPACs that ARC has worked on have underperformed peers. The average share price of 18 ARC-affiliated SPACs, excluding Digital World, stands at $9.45, below their $10 initial public offering price and the SPAC industry average of $9.88.
“THE DEAL HAS CHANGED”
Cinta’s early forays into public markets struggled. A former official at Mexico’s Ministry of Welfare, Cinta and several ARC colleagues were reprimanded by the SEC in 2017 for misrepresenting businesses they tried to take public and making false statements about their affiliation with them. In a rare move, the SEC stopped them from taking those companies public at the time.
Cinta and the SEC didn’t respond to requests for comment for a Reuters report on the matter last October.
The financiers soon repositioned themselves as investment bankers in China and turned to SPACs as a new way to take companies public, a review of their deals shows.
In creating SPACs to list in the United States, ARC often looks for American executives to become managers, and raises money from investors in China and other foreign countries to provide the initial capital needed to launch them, according to regulatory filings and five people familiar with the matter.
In a 2020 marketing presentation that has since been removed from its website, ARC stated it “was able to craft a Wuhan-based SPAC sponsored by a family office, structured by ARC in Singapore, to allow our client to enjoy the flexibility and benefits of the U.S. financial markets.”
The SPAC, Yunhong International, led by Orlando and backed financially by Chinese businessman Yubao Li, liquidated last year, citing its “inability to consummate an initial business,” according to regulatory filings.
Li did not respond to requests for comment.
ARC became involved in Digital World when a Singapore-based ARC executive introduced Cinta to Daniel Santos, a blockchain consultant and entrepreneur in the city-state in 2020, a source familiar with the matter said.
Santos signed a deal with ARC in September 2020 to connect ARC with executives who can form SPACs, according to a copy of the agreement seen by Reuters. In a hypothetical example of a $50 million SPAC, Santos would get up to $97,500 in fees plus 20% of the shares in the SPAC that ARC would receive, the agreement states.
Santos was discussing launching a SPAC with two executives in the U.S. video gaming industry, Lee Jacobson and Brian Fargo, according to the document, text messages and people familiar with the matter. Jacobson and Fargo sought capital - $556,090, according to a regulatory filing – to launch the SPAC.
It was eventually decided that Jacobson, the head of a San Diego-based gaming company called Robot Cache, would be CEO of Digital World, while Santos and Fargo would be board directors, according to the document and a regulatory filing. In return, the three executives would get thousands of shares in the SPAC, the text messages and the financial document show.
Jacobson and Fargo didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In July 2021, Cinta told Santos that Santos would no longer be part of Digital World. “The deal has changed… new owner, new board and management, but I’ll make sure we get shares for you,” Cinta told Santos in one of the messages seen by Reuters.
Jacobson informed Santos that Jacobson’s role had changed from Digital World CEO to board director. Orlando, a Miami businessman whom ARC had worked with on another SPAC, succeeded Jacobson as CEO of Digital World.
“Somebody else runs it now. We shall see how it all shakes out as I am still on the board,” Jacobson said in one of the text messages. Santos never received any Digital World shares or compensation for putting the SPAC together, one of the sources said.
Orlando did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not learn what led to the changes in the management team and what role ARC played in them.
Additional reporting by Krystal Hu in New York, Chris Prentice in Washington D.C. and Anirban Sen in Bangalore; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Edward Tobin
3. Noble Fusion combines Marine, Navy and Japanese forces for island campaign exercise
I wish they could at least invite ROK Marine observers and liaison personnel to this exercise to show trilateral cooperation. But it is probably too late.
Noble Fusion combines Marine, Navy and Japanese forces for island campaign exercise
Members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit stand security with an anti-aircraft missile as a Navy P-8 Poseidon is refueled during the Noble Fusion exercise at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, Feb. 6, 2022. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
ABOARD THE USS MIGUEL KEITH, East China Sea — Two Navy MH-60S Seahawks buzzed this expeditionary mobile base on Saturday afternoon as it steamed alongside the USS Green Bay and USS Ashland off Okinawa’s coast.
One of the helicopters paused over the Miguel Keith’s flight deck as a dozen members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit fast-roped down. Within several minutes they had scaled and entered the ship’s towering pilothouse, guns pointed at crewmembers in red vests and Russian-style fur hats.
“Show me your hands,” a Marine shouted at the mock enemy.
The raiding party of Marines and Navy SEALs was among the 15,000 U.S. sailors and Marines and another 1,000 members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces who took part in Noble Fusion 2022 between Thursday and Monday.
The wide-ranging exercise combined concepts reminiscent of the Marines’ Pacific island-hopping campaigns of World War II, with a 21st century warfighting doctrine that prioritizes fast-moving forces and scattered island bases.
It was the largest exercise of its kind since two amphibious ready groups and two Marine expeditionary units combined in the Indo-Pacific region in 2018, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Sherrie Flippin, a spokeswoman for Task Force 76, told Stars and Stripes.
A landing craft air cushion from the USS Green Bay comes ashore with an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, at Kin Blue Beach, Okinawa, Feb. 6, 2022. The drill was part of the Noble Fusion exercise. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
A member of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit serves as security aboard the USS Miguel Keith during visit, board, search and seizure training, part of the Noble Fusion exercise, in the East China Sea, Feb. 5, 2022. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
Members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit enter the pilothouse of the USS Miguel Keith during visit, board, search and seizure training, part of the Noble Fusion exercise, in the East China Sea, Feb. 5, 2022. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
Noble Fusion included a wide array of maritime strength: the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and Carrier Strike Group 3, the 31st and 11th Marine Expeditionary Units, and Expeditionary Strike Group 7 and Amphibious Squadron 1, which joined while en route to the United States from the Middle East.
The Okinawa-based 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Combined Task Force 76, also known as Expeditionary Strike Group 7, led Noble Fusion, Flippin said. The exercise area encompassed a wide swath of the “first island chain” that stretches from the Luzon Strait to the Miyako Strait, including Okinawa and the East China Sea.
Their training included air-to-ground strikes by aircraft, air-to-air refueling, raids at sea and on shore, along with expeditionary advanced base operations, a relatively new Marine fighting doctrine that calls for forward bases dispersed across small islands.
The exercise wasn’t aimed at any particular potential adversary, like China, Expeditionary Strike Group 7 commander Rear Adm. Chris Engdahl said from the Miguel Keith during a break in the action.
Instead, Noble Fusion was meant to demonstrate the ability to mass forces and move quickly as well as strengthen partnerships, he said.
“It’s a message to our allies; it’s a message to the other nations that are in the Indo-Pacific,” Engdahl said. “This is a force that can support you and maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit fast-rope onto the USS Miguel Keith during visit, board, search and seizure training, part of the Noble Fusion exercise, in the East China Sea, Feb. 5, 2022. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
Navy firefighters aboard the amphibious assault ship USS America watch aircraft launch during the Noble Fusion exercise near Okinawa, Feb. 5, 2022. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
China may view such a large-scale exercise as provocation but is not likely to retaliate while the Winter Olympics are underway through Feb. 20, Masayuki Tadokoro, a professor of international relations at Keio University, told Stars and Stripes by phone Wednesday.
“The Biden administration has been pressuring China,” he said. “If such a large-scale training took place in Okinawa, China would likely think the training is a preparation for Taiwan contingency.”
The 3rd MEB commander, Brig. Gen. Kyle Ellison, said exercises like Noble Fusion help his Marines hone their skills.
“I look at it as an opportunity to practice a capability set,” he said. “That would be important to us in any conflict in any part of the world.”
Stars and Stripes reporter Mari Higa contributed to this report.
Mari Higa
Matthew M. Burke
Matthew M. Burke has been reporting from Okinawa for Stars and Stripes since 2014. The Massachusetts native and UMass Amherst alumnus previously covered Sasebo Naval Base and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, for the newspaper. His work has also appeared in the Boston Globe, Cape Cod Times and other publications.
4. Everything wrong with the Russian military’s ‘special tactical exercise’ propaganda video
Everything wrong with the Russian military’s ‘special tactical exercise’ propaganda video
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Apparently not. Early on Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense posted a video, and an associated press release, to their official social media that featured a clip of alleged Russian “special forces” troops training in Georgia, apparently practicing Military Operations in Urban Terrain, known more commonly as “MOUT.”
— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) February 8, 2022
The video drew first the attention, then the amusement, of U.S. service members and veterans on the internet, myself included, for obvious reasons. I’m no expert in MOUT, and I’ve never gone to a specialized school for it, but I know what the Marine Corps teaches every non-infantry Marine and was able to spot several issues with the tactics of the Russians in the video. When you couple that with the fact that nearly every other American service member past or present with internet access had something to say about it too, that means this must be some pretty terrible stuff. Here’s the bulk of what caught both my eye and those of fellow service members and veterans online:
Moving slowly through a choke point!
Trying to fit a number of people through a narrow hole is a great way to ensure that they come in one by one, only to get cut down, one by one. In fact, it’s American machine gun doctrine to place machine guns with a good line of sight on choke points like bridges, canyons, and city streets. In this clip, Russian troops are using a small gate in a flimsy fence, moving through slowly, and then proceeding to stand in the open while hip-firing their rifles. Even without taking into account the fact that a well-trained machine gun crew would immediately start sending rounds through the non-bulletproof corrugated metal the moment they realized there were troops on the other side, simply running through a gate without first checking to see if there are enemies prepared to ambush is something that doesn’t stand up to common sense scrutiny.
Hip firing!
Anyone who has any trigger time on a shoulder-fired weapon system has probably discovered that you should probably use the sights on the weapon to ensure your round goes on target. It’s in the name, “shoulder-fired.” Somehow that wasn’t explained to the soldiers in the clip, because the majority of the troops in this video are firing, often while moving, as if they’re extras in the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic “Commando.” You can’t deliver effective fire when you can’t even aim your weapon.
Bunching up!
“Five men is a juicy opportunity, one man is a waste of ammo!” said Sgt. 1st Class Horvath in the 1998 World War II classic “Saving Private Ryan.” It doesn’t mean that your enemy won’t shoot at one soldier, but it does mean that when they do they won’t wipe out an entire squad in a few short bursts, and will likely prioritize larger groups as targets first. Bunching up in the open, freezing, and firing is a guaranteed way to ensure that your enemy focuses their attention, and their fire, on your position.
Masking fires!
“Masking fires” is when you run into the line of fire of the person who is covering your advance, giving them the choice of shooting you in your back or lifting their fire. It’s something that nearly every soldier and every Marine learns in their initial entry training. Beyond that, it’s common sense to not run out in front of a firing machine gun, but that seems to have escaped the Russian troops in the video. On two separate occasions, the folks in this video run in front of a firing PKM machine gun, which fires a powerful 7.62x54R cartridge capable of incredible damage to the human body, even through the gaps in the Russian body armor. Had they been firing live rounds rather than blanks, they would have smoked several of their teammates.
Throwing a grenade into an elevated opening!
Don’t do this. This is just asking for a grenade to miss the opening, fall back onto your head, and kill or maim you. On top of that, throwing it and just standing out in the open staring at where you threw it is the equivalent of wearing a “shoot me” sign.
Firing 1-2 round bursts out of a belt-fed machine gun!
I’m tired, grandpa.
All in all, the Russian tactics look so bad that I refuse to believe that this video is not some sort of bizarre, elaborate psyop trick to make NATO think they’re far worse than they are. I’ve seen privates in MCT maneuver more effectively than this, and the tactics in this video make the infamous 10th Mountain CQB video from last year look like perfectly polished and rehearsed DEVGRU hype reels. So much for those push-ups.
With that being said, here are some choice reactions to the video from military members on Twitter:
I'm looking at the building over his shoulder and imagining I'm a PKM gunner who's just won the lottery.
— Spaghetti Kozak Media (@SpaghettiKozak) February 8, 2022
So many Russian conscripts are going to get smoked by Ukrainian futball moms who have a week of semi-professional small unit ambush training.
— In the Depth of Space (@thedepthofspace) February 8, 2022
Either I was lied to, and it's safe to stop standing up with no cover and concealment…or there's a gap in their training.
— rangecard (@rangecard) February 8, 2022
You’ll still get the dipshits saying “Russia’s military doing this while the Navy crashes jets cuz they’re woke”
— Jim (@Jim03104708) February 8, 2022
I'm up.
He sees me.
He sees me.
I'm giving ineffective fire.
He still sees me.
I'm d-
KIA, cargo 200
— Spaghetti Kozak Media (@SpaghettiKozak) February 8, 2022
this looks like if the US Army formed a direct action unit comprised solely of former fuelers and water purification specialists pulled off of inactive reserve status
— dante demarzo (@djdemarzo) February 8, 2022
Is this supposed to engender fear in the West?
We are instead, laughing at their, well… Everything
— TheGingerDad (@TheGingerDad2) February 8, 2022
1) I couldn't figure out the target(s) of the swing random firing. 2) Couldn't figure out how they weren't shooting ea other in the back. 3) Then: AH! Enemy enters the chat, somewhat.
4) Smoke bomb! We have all the goods! Hai-Yah! 5) A kill! of sorts… 6) F+ cuz NO TANKS
— VaccinatedIrishIceSP ND CHIEFS (@IrishIceSP) February 8, 2022
If only one of them slid across the hood of a car then it would truly be perfection.
— dB Kooper (@rezzyredhonky) February 8, 2022
If they were smart, they'd release jokes like this as a PSYOP so that their enemy underestimates them in the upcoming fight. But they're not smart. They actually put this out there like they were proud of it.
— Shitlord6 (@ShitlordActual) February 8, 2022
— zerodarknerdy (@zerodarknerdy2) February 8, 2022
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5. Sun Tzu’s Trap: The Illusion of Perpetual Competition
A two war construct is hugely expensive. Could we afford it? I seem to remember participating in the QDR and illustrative planning scenarios in the 1990s to look at the two MRC and two LRC construct (major regional contingencies, and lesser regional contingencies). At other times these were called MTW - major theater war.). But back then we did not really look at irregular warfare in any significant form.
Excerpts:
The Pentagon should return to its two-wars force construct that recognizes simultaneous or even coordinated land grabs as a potential reality. The Department of Defense abandoned the construct in its 2018 strategy, a move that has already been called into question by the congressionally appointed Commission on the National Defense Strategy. Also critical is the development of a “whole spectrum deterrence” policy, like the one proposed by Dr. Frank Hoffman, capable of achieving unconventional, conventional, and strategic deterrence effects. This would discourage the United States from “responding to an invasion rather than preventing it,” as Representative Seth Moulton characterized US policy toward Ukraine recently.
Trimming the largesse of opulent defense programs such as the F-35 and freeing up funds to improve joint force and multinational irregular activities are also important to shaping more favorable theaters. The services should indeed look to incorporate more irregular lessons into their professional military education but do so within the context of how conventional forces have been, are being, and could be used to consolidate the gains of irregular activities as Mao described. America’s competitors are undoubtedly exploiting the competitive space to blunt Western influence, but this should not be mistaken for an unwillingness to place their forces at risk in pursuit of their interests—or even a lack of will within their populations to fight. If irregular means fail to get the job done, or perhaps if they succeed in setting the right conditions, autocracies could resort to brute force even if it stokes anger in the West.
Sun Tzu’s wisdom on clean victories might reflect certain policies emanating from Moscow and Beijing, but it is of little comfort to the people of Taiwan, Lithuania, or Ukraine when the fight is on their doorstep. Putin and Xi are enterprising autocrats with large armies at their disposal and long-standing strategic objectives within their grasps. In the serious world they occupy, the gun is always an option.
Sun Tzu’s Trap: The Illusion of Perpetual Competition - Modern War Institute
Thucydides’s Trap, coined by Graham Allison, frames the current relationship between the United States and China, using the history of competing powers in Ancient Greece as its model. A rising Athens challenged the dominant Sparta, ultimately resulting in the Peloponnesian War. Sun Tzu, however, laid traps of a different kind. His cunning maxim on winning without fighting has become somewhat of an intellectual catchall for Western analysts rooted in three assumptions: 1) The West’s opponents lack the political will to risk war. 2) The Western world has the political will to wage war if not directly attacked, thus deterring aggression. 3) The utility of force—or as Mao Tse-Tung put it, the gun—is fading. Each of these conclusions warrants further scrutiny, as they will shape the contours of the Biden administration’s forthcoming integrated deterrence strategy.
A Different Kind of Trap
A fatal flaw in Sun Tzu’s trap is that it is axiomatic. Suggesting that powerful states prefer to achieve their strategic objectives without sacrificing thousands of their citizens and crippling their economies should not be a revelation—nor is it culturally singular. Kings who could subdue their opponents through statecraft alone would do so, such as King Philip II of Macedon, who mastered political warfare in the fourth century BCE. If they could not, they built armies and navies capable of deterring aggression, provoking concessions from stronger opponents, or fighting. Russia and China have exercised all these functions recently.
Over the last few months, Putin used his massive troop buildup on Ukraine’s border to secure talks with NATO leaders and President Joe Biden. In China, the People’s Liberation Army is expanding its conventional and nuclear capabilities at a “breathtaking” pace and aggressively probing the airspace and littorals of Japan and Taiwan. Elbridge Colby, lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, cautions against presuming that the only purpose of such activity is to avoid war. This is especially true if the main deterrents preventing Russia and China from using force are supposed interests that the Western world has foisted upon them.
Who Wants a Hot War?
The first theoretical tool deployed in support of Sun Tzu’s quote is the assertion that autocrats rely on irregular means because it is not in their interest to see a cold war escalate into a hot one. Yet war is equally not in the interest of democracies. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, both world wars had progressed without direct threat to the United States. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt had clear political mandates to avoid war—to win without fighting—yet circumstances demanded they alter these policies. Similarly, President George W. Bush placed little emphasis on the Middle East when he took office in 2001. The interests of America’s opponents have historically not conformed to US policy. Justified or not, NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe since the 1990s and the informal Quad alliance in the Indo-Pacific have placed Moscow and Beijing on alert. Their responses to such developments should be seen more as a means of escalation than a strategy of geopolitical stalemate.
Saying nothing of its older wars, China was heavily involved in World War II, for instance. The precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of Strategic Services, trained Chinese irregulars to fight the Japanese Imperial Army. By 1950, Mao’s forces were fighting United Nations troops in Korea. While the United States was not then the hegemon it is now, it had just played a central role in toppling European fascism and demonstrated its willingness to deploy nuclear weapons against civilian populations not far from Beijing. In many ways, US strategic deterrence was at its most credible apex. Mao’s political calculus to enter Korea was therefore profound. After that war, Mao’s terrifying Cultural Revolution commenced, which reduced the government’s capacity to extend its power externally. Still, the infighting was fierce, and those who survived Mao’s era were hardened by it, such as Chairman Xi Jinping.
Optimistic managers are useful. Optimistic strategies get people killed. War has always been costly, but history is filled with ambitious leaders who knew the costs and chose war anyway. The question is less about whether autocracies want to fight, and more about what the free world is willing to fight for. In many aspects, this remains unclear.
Red Lines and Gray Areas
The second component of Sun Tzu’s trap presumes that certain actions would trigger a military response by the West, which deters aggression and maintains the status quo of competition. In actuality, strategic ambiguity toward the defense of Taiwan and a decade of murky US resolve in foreign affairs has made this conclusion less certain. Precedence for this uncertainty was set in Syria and Crimea, and circumstances surrounding America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan did not help.
In 2012, President Barrack Obama warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that use of chemical weapons would constitute a red line and trigger a significant military response. Assad crossed that line in 2013 and a few dozen Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles targeted one of his airbases as punishment. The Syrian government allegedly continued waging chemical warfare on its population every year between 2016 and 2019, proving that the red line drawn by the United States had little deterrence effect even on a smaller state like Syria.
A year after Assad first crossed that line, Putin annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, which remains under Russian occupation to this day. In each instance, America’s opponent calculated the US political situation carefully. Similar calculations are likely taking place in Moscow and Beijing now. Washington’s stance on the defense of Taiwan and Ukraine changes between administrations and within them, but no clear public policy exists for the military defense of either in the event of an invasion. In both cases, Sun Tzu applies more to US strategic thought than that of its competitors.
If states are acting more like irregular forces and irregular forces are acting more like states, as David Kilcullen and Sean McFate have argued, the delineation between regular and irregular is blurring. Yet the common thread that connects them is the application of degrees of force in pursuit of political objectives. Secretary of State George P. Shultz stated in a 1986 lecture that “negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.” Particularly for authoritarians, the gun is always on the table.
Where Power Comes From
The final component of Tzu’s trap is the belief that brute force has lost its utility in the digital age. Mao Tse-Tung, father of the People’s Republic of China, famously said that all power comes from the barrel of a gun, and Xi Jinping is an ardent Maoist. He quotes Mao frequently and subscribes to his Marxist-Leninist view of the world. Absent from Xi’s speeches are references to Sun Tzu and winning without fighting. Present in his speeches are nods to the inevitability of China-Taiwan “reunification” and the Communist Party leading the world through military supremacy. Yet Sun Tzu’s below-the-threshold framework still supports much of the Western world’s analysis of Eastern strategic thought.
Mao has something to say about this, too. In Guerrilla Warfare (Yu Chi Chan) Mao cautions against the tendency to “exaggerate the functions of guerrillas and minimize that of regular armies.” He was unambiguous about the relationship between resistance forces and conventional power, defining guerrilla activities as a supporting function of the orthodox force that deals the decisive blow.
As one of the wealthiest nations, the United States places immense value on economic power, but Beijing is closing that gap, reducing American leverage. Some studies have shown that defense spending can be an insufficient metric for gauging military power, considering the average US servicemember takes home sixteen times the paycheck of a People’s Liberation Army soldier. There is a long history of economic inequality reflecting poorly on military outcomes. Ancient Macedonia possessed a fraction of the Persian Empire’s wealth when Alexander invaded King Darius’s lands in 334 BCE. Yet Alexander’s relentless campaign, paired with his willingness to assume a remarkable degree of risk, robbed Persia of its riches, and unseated its great king despite superior Persian numbers.
Other factors are at play as well. Short-term military solutions to strategic goals could become more attractive if Russia’s dwindling economy or China’s plummeting birth rates propose unacceptable challenges to either nation’s long game. Make no mistake, if China or Russia—or both—make their move in 2022, there will be fighting because resistance forces in both Taiwan and Ukraine intend to impose those conditions on their invaders. If the United States defines winning as preventing autocracies from achieving their stated objectives of pushing back NATO and absorbing Taiwan, it needs a comprehensive strategy that exploits the deterrence spectrum while also recognizing its limitations.
Gun Control
Using Sun Tzu as evidence that Beijing’s leaders seek to avoid war should include two addendums. First, that China might seek to avoid war with the United States—as does the United States with China—but not necessarily with Taiwan or even Japan. Xi could use a combination of conventional and irregular means to chip away at his neighbors like Putin did and is doing with Ukraine, thereby forcing the West to scramble. The second caveat is that even if Russia and China avoid war now, that may not be the case in the near future. Putin’s actions have established a new framework of military escalation regardless of how he chooses to proceed. United States strategy and force design must account for the possibility that those actions have inspired others.
The Pentagon should return to its two-wars force construct that recognizes simultaneous or even coordinated land grabs as a potential reality. The Department of Defense abandoned the construct in its 2018 strategy, a move that has already been called into question by the congressionally appointed Commission on the National Defense Strategy. Also critical is the development of a “whole spectrum deterrence” policy, like the one proposed by Dr. Frank Hoffman, capable of achieving unconventional, conventional, and strategic deterrence effects. This would discourage the United States from “responding to an invasion rather than preventing it,” as Representative Seth Moulton characterized US policy toward Ukraine recently.
Trimming the largesse of opulent defense programs such as the F-35 and freeing up funds to improve joint force and multinational irregular activities are also important to shaping more favorable theaters. The services should indeed look to incorporate more irregular lessons into their professional military education but do so within the context of how conventional forces have been, are being, and could be used to consolidate the gains of irregular activities as Mao described. America’s competitors are undoubtedly exploiting the competitive space to blunt Western influence, but this should not be mistaken for an unwillingness to place their forces at risk in pursuit of their interests—or even a lack of will within their populations to fight. If irregular means fail to get the job done, or perhaps if they succeed in setting the right conditions, autocracies could resort to brute force even if it stokes anger in the West.
Sun Tzu’s wisdom on clean victories might reflect certain policies emanating from Moscow and Beijing, but it is of little comfort to the people of Taiwan, Lithuania, or Ukraine when the fight is on their doorstep. Putin and Xi are enterprising autocrats with large armies at their disposal and long-standing strategic objectives within their grasps. In the serious world they occupy, the gun is always an option.
Michael P. Ferguson is a US Army officer with operational experience throughout Europe, Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He has written for The Hill, Strategic Studies Quarterly, PRISM, Joint Force Quarterly, the Strategy Bridge, Military Review, War Room, Small Wars Journal, and the Washington Examiner, among others. He is coauthor of a forthcoming book from Routledge on the life and legacy of Alexander the Great.
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.
6. Demilitarize civilian cyber defense, and you’ll gain deterrence
Conclusion:
Establishing a civilian federal asset response is necessary. The civilian response will replace the military cyber asset response, which returns to the military’s primary mission: defense. The move will safeguard military cyber capabilities and increase uncertainty for the adversary. Uncertainty translates to deterrence, leading to fewer significant cyber incidents. We can no longer surrender the initiative and be constantly reactive; it is a failed national strategy.
Demilitarize civilian cyber defense, and you’ll gain deterrence
U.S. Defense Department cyber units are incrementally becoming a part of the response to ransomware and system intrusions orchestrated from foreign soil. But diverting the military capabilities to augment national civilian cyber defense gaps is an unsustainable and strategically counterproductive policy.
The U.S. concept of cyber deterrence has failed repeatedly, which is especially visible in the blatant and aggressive SolarWinds hack where the assumed Russian intelligence services, as commonly attributed in the public discourse, established a presence in our digital bloodstream. According to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, cyber deterrence is established by imposing high costs to exploit our systems. As seen from the Kremlin, the cost must be nothing because blatantly there is no deterrence; otherwise, the Russian intelligence services should have restrained from hacking into the Department of Homeland Security.
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A tip from a private actor allowed the NSA and Cyber Command to end adversary access to networks.
Presidential Policy Directive 41, titled “United States Cyber Incident Coordination,” from 2016 establishes the DHS-led federal response to a significant cyber incident. There are three thrusts: asset response, threat response and intelligence support. Assets are operative cyber units assisting impacted entities to recover; threat response seeks to hold the perpetrators accountable; and intelligence support provides cyberthreat awareness.
The operative response — the assets — is dependent on defense resources. The majority of the operative cyber units reside within the Department of Defense, including the National Security Agency, as the cyber units of the FBI and the Secret Service are limited.
In reality, our national civilian cyber defense relies heavily on defense assets. So what started with someone in an office deciding to click on an email with ransomware, locking up the computer assets of the individual’s employer, has suddenly escalated to a national defense mission.
The core of cyber operations is a set of tactics, techniques and procedures, which creates capabilities to achieve objectives in or through cyberspace. Successful offensive cyberspace operations are dependent on surprise — the exploitation of a vulnerability that was unknown or unanticipated — leading to the desired objective.
The political scientist Kenneth N. Waltz stated that nuclear arms’ geopolitical power resides not in what you do but instead what you can do with these arms. Few nuclear deterrence analogies work in cyber, but Waltz’s does: As long as a potential adversary can not assess what the cyber forces can achieve in offensive cyber, uncertainties will restrain the potential adversary. Over time, the adversary’s restrained posture consolidates to an equilibrium: cyber deterrence contingent on secrecy. Cyber deterrence evaporates when a potential adversary understands, through reverse engineering or observation, our tactics, techniques and procedure.
By constantly flexing the military’s cyber muscles to defend the homeland from inbound criminal cyber activity, the public demand for a broad federal response to illegal cyber activity is satisfied. Still, over time, bit by bit, the potential adversary will understand our military’s offensive cyber operations’ tactics, techniques and procedures. Even worse, the adversary will understand what we can not do and then seek to operate in the cyber vacuum where we have no reach. Our blind spots become apparent.
Offensive cyber capabilities are supported by the operators’ ability to retain and acquire ever-evolving skills. The more time the military cyber force spends tracing criminal gangs and bitcoins or defending targeted civilian entities, the less time the cyber operators have to train for and support military operations to, hopefully, be able to deliver a strategic surprise to an adversary. Defending point-of-sales terminals from ransomware does not upkeep the competence to protect weapon systems from hostile cyberattacks.
Even if the Department of Defense diverts thousands of cyber personnel, it can not uphold a national cyber defense. U.S. gross domestic product is reaching $25 trillion; it is a target surface that requires more comprehensive solutions.
First and foremost, the shared burden to uphold the national cyber defense falls primarily on private businesses, states and local government, federal law enforcement, and DHS.
Second, even if DHS has many roles as a cyberthreat information clearinghouse and the lead agency at incidents, the department lacks a sizable operative component.
Third, establishing a DHS operative cyber unit is limited net cost due to higher military asset costs. When not engaged, the civilian unit can disseminate and train businesses as well as state and local governments to be a part of the national cyber defense.
Establishing a civilian federal asset response is necessary. The civilian response will replace the military cyber asset response, which returns to the military’s primary mission: defense. The move will safeguard military cyber capabilities and increase uncertainty for the adversary. Uncertainty translates to deterrence, leading to fewer significant cyber incidents. We can no longer surrender the initiative and be constantly reactive; it is a failed national strategy.
Jan Kallberg is a research scientist at the U.S. Army Cyber Institute. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Army Cyber Institute, the U.S. Army or the U.S. Defense Department.
7. US plays Quad card during Beijing OlympicsUS plays Quad card during Beijing Olympics
A view from India.
Excerpts:
Indeed, what really brought down the Berlin Wall wasn’t missiles or tanks, but engagement – the strategy known as Ostpolitik. But then, German foreign policy is the way it is because that is the way Germans want it.
That is the cardinal difference between Germans and Indians. In India, public opinion roots for militarism with active encouragement from the establishment. Curiously, the Indian opposition too constantly taunts the government for not being aggressive enough toward China, a superpower manifold stronger than India.
It is not that the opposition politicians are illiterate, but they parrot what their constituents think – even if they themselves understand what’s at stake. To be sure, Jaishankar’s a priori assumption too is well founded: that his decision to attend the Quad ministerial is bound to go down well in the Indian bazaar, although he must be intelligent enough to know that it may weaken the nascent process at the border talks.
Sadly, India comes out a loser in all this.
US plays Quad card during Beijing Olympics
Quad ministerial meeting provocatively scheduled during the Games is an ill-timed and poorly conceived American sideshow
The decision by Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to huddle together with his Quad colleagues in the middle of the Beijing Winter Olympics may have unpleasant consequences. China sees the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue as a US-led clique working to “contain” it.
An action-reaction syndrome has once again developed. Beijing’s apparent retaliation by picking the Galwan hero Qi Fabao as the Olympic torchbearer was not the end of the story. New Delhi swiftly crossed over to the US-led group boycotting the Beijing Olympics. Some protesters in Delhi also set the Chinese national flag on fire.
Even a moron would know China regards the staging of the Winter Olympics as a cherished moment. President Xi Jinping’s toast at the welcoming banquet of the Games last Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing exuded immense national pride when he said, “China has just entered the Year of the Tiger according to the lunar calendar. Tiger is a symbol of strength, courage and fearlessness.”
That is precisely why the US, including President Joe Biden himself, smears the Beijing Olympics. Americans are bad losers. They feel impotent as China marches ahead inexorably while the US is declining irreversibly. Panic and hatred are setting in mixed with intense envy and helplessness. But what has India got to do with it?
India did well not to join the US-led boycott of the Games initially. But it has since “tweaked” its principled stance as Washington mooted the idea of scheduling a Quad ministerial in the Asia-Pacific region for February 9. Apparently, it occurred to no one in Delhi to ask Washington: “Why February 9? Why not after February 20?”
Plainly put, the upcoming Quad ministerial (now set for this Friday in Melbourne) is a contrived American sideshow to thumb the nose at Beijing in the middle of the Olympics.
This cheeky move by Washington is linked to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s regional tour to Australia, Fiji and Hawaii “for a series of bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral engagements to advance our priorities in the Indo-Pacific.” Obviously, it was hatched long before the Galwan hero appeared in the news cycle.
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) regiment commander Qi Fabao who was involved in the June 15, 2020 clash with India in Galwan Valley was chosen by the Chinese government to carry the Winter Olympic torch. Photo: Screengrab
The US State Department last Friday gave the customary briefing in Washington on the Quad ministerial venture “in this era of intense competition, changing strategic landscapes … [for] strengthening the security environment in the region to push back against aggression and coercion.…” (By the way, the briefing was timed exactly for February 4, the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.)
Interestingly, Assistant Secretary Daniel Kritenbrink, who gave the briefing, took umbrage at the China-Russia joint statement issued in Beijing earlier in the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit. Kritenbrink, who is in charge of the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, in fact, came armed with a tirade against both China and Russia. He said:
“The [Xi-Putin] meeting should have provided China the opportunity to encourage Russia to pursue diplomacy and de-escalation in Ukraine. That is what the world expects from responsible powers.
“If Russia further invades Ukraine and China looks the other way, it suggests that China is willing to tolerate or tacitly support Russia’s efforts to coerce Ukraine even when they embarrass Beijing, harm European security, and risk global peace and economic stability.
“We have, unfortunately, seen this before. This marks the second time that Russia has escalated aggression towards a sovereign country during a Beijing Olympics. The last time was Russia’s invasion of Georgia during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
“The United States has had almost 200 diplomatic engagements with allies and partners since Russia created this crisis. We are focused on working with allies and partners, including in the Indo-Pacific, to respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine.”
Now, this is the other thing about the Quad. It is no longer about containing China alone; Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy is poised to advance its “dual containment” of China and Russia. The Indian leaders traveling in the Quad bandwagon ought to know that they are also being drawn unwittingly into the United States’ dual containment of China and Russia.
Russia has been explicit in its criticism of the Quad as a factor of instability and regional discord in the Asia-Pacific region. Jaishankar cannot close his eyes and pretend he’s cherry-picking. The big-power rivalries are getting very serious, as anyone who reads newspapers can tell.
At any rate, the appalling thing is that India has now gotten aboard the US bandwagon, armed with a Galwan-hero alibi. And this is coming at a time when the tensions on the India-China border have shown signs of easing and there’s hope of a better climate becoming available for further talks between New Delhi and Beijing.
Isn’t this history repeating – US butting into India-China discourses in self-interest and India refusing to reject such attempts, in turn triggering negative vibes that of course become grist to the mill of the clutch of operatives who all along wanted to fasten India in the American stable?
In these troubled times, the rationality and maturity with which Germany is handling its difficult relationship with Russia offers some fresh ideas. Indeed, Germany has a far more painful and complex relationship with Russia than India can ever imagine with any of its neighbors.
Yet German Minister of Defense Christine Lambrecht has opposed any attempt to draw a link between between Nord Stream 2 and Germany’s differences with Moscow over Ukraine.
A worker moves a pipe at the construction site of the so-called Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Lubmin, northeastern Germany. Photo: AFP / Tobia Schwarz
Equally, Berlin rejects calls for German arms deliveries to Ukraine and reportedly also blocked the export of German weapons by third countries such as Estonia. As Marcel Dirsus, a German think-tanker at the Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel, wrote last week, Germany has “moved beyond power politics, the national interest and militarism.”
It is borne out of a “historically informed sense of security.” Dirsus writes: “Whether true or false, the idea that dialogue is more effective than deterrence is deeply embedded in German political culture.… Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has largely found itself in a position to trade freely with anyone and everyone without being constrained by rigorous considerations of politics or security.”
Indeed, what really brought down the Berlin Wall wasn’t missiles or tanks, but engagement – the strategy known as Ostpolitik. But then, German foreign policy is the way it is because that is the way Germans want it.
That is the cardinal difference between Germans and Indians. In India, public opinion roots for militarism with active encouragement from the establishment. Curiously, the Indian opposition too constantly taunts the government for not being aggressive enough toward China, a superpower manifold stronger than India.
It is not that the opposition politicians are illiterate, but they parrot what their constituents think – even if they themselves understand what’s at stake. To be sure, Jaishankar’s a priori assumption too is well founded: that his decision to attend the Quad ministerial is bound to go down well in the Indian bazaar, although he must be intelligent enough to know that it may weaken the nascent process at the border talks.
Sadly, India comes out a loser in all this.
M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.
8. Army wants to eliminate hands in pockets by warming fingers, toesArmy wants to eliminate hands in pockets by warming fingers, toes
Some things just make you chuckle. But we put our hands in our pockets even when it is warm out.
Seriously, if they get this worked out it could have positive effects far beyond the military. Imagine what this could do for all those who work outside in cold weather. It will be another example of the military contributing to the greater good and how military equipment can have application far beyond the military.
Army wants to eliminate hands in pockets by warming fingers, toes
The Army hates it when soldiers have their hands their pockets. Sometimes, however, your fingers simply get cold.
Gloves might seem like a simple solution. But for a soldier, it’s not always feasible to wear them in combat. Mittens can eliminate dexterity anywhere between 50 and 80 percent. So the Army found a way to heat soldier’s forearms, generate better circulation and keep those digits moving: a forearm heater.
Now, the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine is setting its sights on soldiers’ little piggies.
The forearm heating device, called the Personal Heating Dexterity Device, is battery-powered and essentially works by heating up the arm, which warms the blood that flows into the fingers. This device will serve as the basis for research into how that same technology can prevent frostbite in toes.
“Our previous research has shown that warming the forearm increases hand and finger temperatures significantly,” Castellani said in a release. “The result is that Soldiers can have improved hand dexterity.”
Extending that to the lower extremities is next on the docket for the scientists at USARIEM.
“Cold weather operations can significantly decrease a Soldier’s foot and toe temperatures, impacting their gait, reducing their mobility, making them less lethal and putting them at risk for peripheral cold injuries,” Dr. John Castellani, a research physiologist with USARIEM, told Military Times. “Our team is developing a foot warming device over the next 3-5 years to solve this issue.”
Soldiers’ feet are particularly at risk in cold-weather regions as they come into direct contact with snowy or icy conditions with only the protection of boots and socks.
“In response to cold temperatures or heat loss, peripheral blood vessels constrict to divert blood away from our arms and legs and toward internal vital organs,” Maj. Brian Shiowaza, Occupational and Environmental Medicine Command surgeon at the U.S. Joint Munitions Command, said in a release. “The result is an increased risk of frostnip and frostbite. Frostbite causes ice crystal formation within the cells of the exposed extremities or skin that may be irreversible.”
The forearm device, which is in its prototype phase, is slated for field testing this month with Alaska National Guard troops during Arctic Eagle 2022. From there, it will move onto advanced development, and eventually make its way onto the battlefield, scientists noted.
Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.
Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Military Times. She previously served as the Digital Editor of Military Times and the Army Times Editor. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose, and Defense News.
9. The Intelligence Game is Changing. Are We Ready?
Excerpt:
As retirees of the Clandestine Service at the CIA, we worked for decades in the shadows around the world, at ease in that space where we quietly served. Recently, we found ourselves in an uncomfortable public space, compelled to be vocal on social media regarding data and the need for the U.S. government to embrace commercially sourced intelligence, CSINT, as a foundational and critical component of national security.
The Intelligence Game is Changing. Are We Ready?
Cynthia Saddy is a former senior executive with the Central Intelligence Agency, where she held numerous leadership positions including the Directorate of Operation’s Chief Technology Officer (Acting and Deputy), Senior Advisor to In-Q-Tel, Chief of Staff to the Director of Operations, and as a two time Division Chief of Operations responsible for leading large-scale HUMINT and technical programs across multiple geographic regions.
EunJoo “EJ” Alam is a retired senior national security executive with over 30 years of government service. She has led clandestine operations, tradecraft, counterintelligence, information security, and intelligence collection efforts for the CIA. Her senior assignments include three time field commander in the former Soviet Union, East Asia, and South Asia; Chief of Operations for Iran Mission Center, Deputy Chief China Department in East Asia Pacific Mission Center, and Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Operations.
Kelli Holden retired as a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) executive with over 28 years of experience in intelligence operations. Concluding her career as Counterintelligence Chief of Operations for CIA, she served in numerous field command and Washington-based leadership positions driving complex HUMINT and technical programs across geographic regions, including high threat and high counterintelligence environments.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — As retirees of the Clandestine Service at the CIA, we worked for decades in the shadows around the world, at ease in that space where we quietly served. Recently, we found ourselves in an uncomfortable public space, compelled to be vocal on social media regarding data and the need for the U.S. government to embrace commercially sourced intelligence, CSINT, as a foundational and critical component of national security.
Data is ubiquitous, dynamic, and has the potential to inform analysis and decision-making on issues ranging from climate change to terrorism to critical national infrastructure, and everything in between. CSINT is a complement to HUMINT (human intelligence) and other national technical means of collection, not a substitute. CSINT plus these other collection tools is the equation for success in gaining strategic advantage.
CSINT is not OSINT (open source intelligence). Whereas OSINT is a reference to any information that can be legally gathered from free, public sources, CSINT is data that is produced by people throughout the world and is collected and sold by a variety of firms to others to make informed decisions. Examples of CSINT include; pharmaceutical sales in the era of Covid, vehicle telematics data, geospatial insights, weather trends, and website cookies that inform retailer strategies for targeting consumers for advertisements based on their internet browsing history.
And yes, we see the irony of HUMINT-ers extolling the virtues of CSINT – a new INT.
We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution. And data – that data that we, as citizens, generate on a daily basis – is the commodity of value. We would liken it to the value of oil and oil’s role in the third industrial revolution, but oil is a finite resource and data is not. In fact, commercial data is growing at an exponential rate through our daily personal and professional interactions. Many businesses leverage this data to improve their bottom lines and grow their businesses. Likewise, some governments are exploiting commercially sourced data to achieve their objectives as well.
Take the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for example. Open source articles document the investments the PRC continues to make to build data centers and develop their artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models to allow them to more quickly derive value from data. The PRC government put into place laws that require Chinese companies, even when operating outside of China, to funnel data they collect by virtue of doing business, back to Chinese data centers. A new law in the PRC also requires foreign firms doing business in China to turn over their data to the PRC government. The PRC is concurrently locking down data from its citizens as a defensive measure.
The PRC has a data strategy to attempt to win supremacy in the fourth industrial revolution. The key components to their strategy are a wide variety of commercially sourced data, AI/ML models and computing power that speed the time from data to value/insights. The quality of the AI/ML models and the speed of compute power are critical components of this daisy chain, but the data is arguably the most critical.
This paradigm does not cease to exist at the gates of intelligence agencies. We believe that commercially sourced data is a cornerstone to the future of intelligence. CSINT is the radical innovation that will launch intelligence services and businesses alike ahead of their adversaries, leapfrogging in essence, the status quo to establish a new order. Classified data sets and information that is clandestinely acquired, remain extremely valuable and cannot be replaced. CSINT does not seek to replace classified data; it seeks to enhance and complement it.
The paradigm of valuing classified data above all else is archaic and must be modernized in order to adapt to the data-driven world. If the US government continues to value classified data at the expense of embracing commercially sourced data, we run the risk of the United States losing ground to its adversaries.
And that begs the question, what is the USG’s Data Strategy? While that is not readily clear, what is clear is that there is a big role for CSINT to play.
There is no rules-based order on the playing field of the fourth industrial revolution when it comes to data. In our techno-democracy, there is a lot of concern around privacy – and appropriately so. This complicates the development of a national data strategy akin to the PRC model. While many grapple with how to optimize commercially sourced data and balance privacy concerns, we would propose that the United States and likeminded techno-democracies impose our values in defining how data will be utilized in the future.
If we cede the playing field to our adversaries to define the rules, rest assured they will not meet our democratic values. We must lean into this difficult conversation, find common cause with our likeminded techno-democratic partners, and create a framework that balances creating value from commercially sourced data on one hand and privacy concerns on the other.
It is time for the U.S. to embrace commercially sourced data, modernize our laws to allow for the effective storing and computing of data, and invest in AI and ML tools and models to derive value at scale and at speed of mission. It is time for the U.S. to embrace CSINT.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
10. Insuring Against Military-Civil Fusion Risks (China)
Excerpts:
Identification of exposure to the Chinese military-civil fusion system and risks of proliferation, illicit trade, and military conflict should, in turn, be priced into insurance rates. More broadly, insurers can also turn to practices in anti-money laundering programs deployed by financial institutions to expand mitigation checks, like vetting for AIS location data manipulation, from best practices in assessing Iranian and DPRK exposure. If global insurers can successfully partner with other intermediaries throughout the shipping industry, they can set a precedent for other sectors as the globalized, fragmented, commercial ecosystem lurches its way toward playing defense against China’s military-civil fusion strategy.
Beijing’s military modernization effort and approach to power projection benefit from the country's economic power and integration into global supply chains. Today, global private sector actors risk unwittingly underwriting Chinese military logistics and proliferation efforts – and shouldering the accompanying risks. Government action and diplomatic coordination can help the private sector recognize and respond to this threat, including with sticks like sanctions or seizures that create real incentives for risk mitigation. However, the private sector also needs to take the initiative. Private sector actors that facilitate trade and serve as counterparties to potential bad actors must proactively take up the mantle of defense. Doing so serves the global interest. It also serves their bottom line.
Insuring Against Military-Civil Fusion Risks
February 10, 2022
As tensions across the Taiwan Strait escalate, so too does attention to China's playbook for fighting at sea. Like much of Beijing's military strategy, that playbook fuses military and commercial. This risks undermining the long-standing dominance of the U.S. Navy. It also -- drawing as it does on China's shipping dominance -- asymmetrically implicates commercial players, globally, that might find themselves in the crosshairs of a conflict scenario and the regulatory sniping that seeks to prevent one. Commercial shipping has a role in China's operational approach, and commercial actors, including insurers, need to update as tensions rise.
In May 2018, for example, the People’s Liberation Army Daily [MUD1] dedicated 700 words to celebrating a commercial shipping line having successfully transported PLA assets 1,000 nautical miles from Chinese ports in the north of the country to ports in the south. The press coverage described the mission as a collaboration between the military and commercial Chinese shipping companies: “The Air Force and the Central Theater Air Force’s transportation departments actively coordinated with the military representative office and shipping companies to accomplish the large-scale delivery of this mission, with a large amount of heavy equipment, and complicated transfer links.”
China, of course, dominates the global shipping sector. China does so across the entire industry chain, from fleet ownership to shipping container production to overseas port investment, management, and data and IT services. Internationally, China messages its approach to the shipping industry as a commercial project and its champion players as commercial entities. However, the shipping sector is a core pillar of China’s approach to power projection – and military-relevant players figure prominently throughout China’s commercial shipping ecosystem. Take, for example, COSCO Shipping, a State-owned giant and one of the largest shipping fleets in the world, which in 2020 established a research hub in Qingdao’s Military-Civil Fusion Innovation Demonstration Zone[MUD2] .
On the one hand, China's fusion of military and civilian in the shipping industry underscores the international community's difficulty in responding to China's global offensive: This is an international industry oriented toward the private sector, and that depends on China. The private sector is ill-equipped to counter military threats, let alone those of military actors masquerading as commercial counterparts and emanating from the industry’s dominant market. On the other hand, the shipping industry also offers a ripe example of how existing tools and actors can craft an original response to military-civil fusion: how the private sector can be activated – based on its existing tendencies and instruments – to defend against the risks posed by China’s weaponization of cooperation.
Of course, it is not unusual for capital-intensive sectors, like shipping to feature state backing and overlap with the research and procurement activities of national defense communities. But the degree of military presence within China's industry and the degree to which it – like other elements of China’s commercial ecosystem – is intended to project power on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party is distinct. This creates unique risks across the commercial shipping sector. Beijing may, for example, use commercial shipping entities as conduits for weapons proliferation, illicit trade, and power projection that could escalate into kinetic conflict. Moreover, as democratic governments’ concerns over China’s military-civil fusion strategy rise, international financiers, insurers, freight forwarders, and customs agents risk finding themselves in the crossfire of a global regulatory battle, exposed to opaque sanctions and export controls regulations that they are ill-equipped to navigate.
At present, these international players – financiers, insurers, freight forwarders, and customs agents – disproportionately shoulder the risk created by China’s military-civil fusion strategy in the shipping industry. And these players may not yet be focused on mitigating the risk. That threatens the assumptions of transparency and the rule of law that undergird the international trading system. It also grants Beijing’s dominant players outsize influence and leverage.
Insurance and reinsurance enterprises are well aware of the risk of exposure to sanctioned finance and trade actors associated with threat vectors like North Korea and Iran. And legal and regulatory requirements have prompted shipping lines and relevant insurers to develop mitigation measures. However, with slight redirection, maritime insurance ecosystems might offer a unique means to address the negative consequences of China's military-civil fusion strategy.
Maritime insurance and reinsurance companies’ largest customers are likely to have direct and indirect ties to the Chinese military industry and concomitant sanctions, proliferation, and military conflict risks. These companies’ best practices for exposure to traditional sanctions threats like North Korea and Iran should be updated for the China case – especially as international recognition and sanctioning of China’s military sector expands. Indicators of association with China’s military-civil fusion ecosystem should be factored into contract clauses that structure and share risk between the complex web of counterparties that make global commerce work. And while Chinese military and even commercial ecosystems can be opaque, these indicators are not: They can be sourced from the definition of Chinese military-civil fusion contributor as presented in Section 1260H of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.
Identification of exposure to the Chinese military-civil fusion system and risks of proliferation, illicit trade, and military conflict should, in turn, be priced into insurance rates. More broadly, insurers can also turn to practices in anti-money laundering programs deployed by financial institutions to expand mitigation checks, like vetting for AIS location data manipulation, from best practices in assessing Iranian and DPRK exposure. If global insurers can successfully partner with other intermediaries throughout the shipping industry, they can set a precedent for other sectors as the globalized, fragmented, commercial ecosystem lurches its way toward playing defense against China’s military-civil fusion strategy.
Beijing’s military modernization effort and approach to power projection benefit from the country's economic power and integration into global supply chains. Today, global private sector actors risk unwittingly underwriting Chinese military logistics and proliferation efforts – and shouldering the accompanying risks. Government action and diplomatic coordination can help the private sector recognize and respond to this threat, including with sticks like sanctions or seizures that create real incentives for risk mitigation. However, the private sector also needs to take the initiative. Private sector actors that facilitate trade and serve as counterparties to potential bad actors must proactively take up the mantle of defense. Doing so serves the global interest. It also serves their bottom line.
Nathan Picarsic and Emily de La Bruyere are co-founders of Horizon Advisory and Senior Fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
11. Russia threatens Ukraine with its troops, so Ben & Jerry's blames the U.S. - Perspective needed.
The great strategic thinkers, Ben & Jerry.
Russia threatens Ukraine with its troops, so Ben & Jerry's blames the U.S. - Perspective needed.
We should strive to discourage another Russian invasion of Ukraine. But whether that happens is not a decision driven by Biden but by Putin.
NBC News · by Sébastien Roblin, military writer · February 10, 2022
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. ⁰⁰We call on President Biden to de-escalate tensions and work for peace rather than prepare for war. ⁰⁰Sending thousands more US troops to Europe in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine only fans the flame of war.
— Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) February 4, 2022
Perhaps I should say something sneering here about ice cream makers commenting on politics, but experts, not to mention politicians, don’t always get things right. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, longtime champions of left-wing causes, both presciently and bravely opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, widely acknowledged as disastrous today.
But that also doesn’t mean they’re always right. Indeed, their comments on Ukraine — particularly that “sending thousands more US troops to Europe in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine only fans the flame of war” — reflect a common flaw in progressive thinking. It’s an approach to international affairs that arrives at the same conclusion no matter the differing circumstances: Every war is like Iraq, and the true culprit behind every conflict across the globe is American imperialism.
Some countries in tough neighborhoods do indeed have reason to seek peace but simultaneously prepare for war: You don’t want to be left helpless if it turns out your adversary is an untrustworthy bully.
That worldview is how one can look at Russia assembling over 100,000 troops around Ukraine and issuing ominous yet vague warnings on what it will do if its demands aren’t met and then conclude that, yet again, the threat to world peace worth tweeting about is the 3,000 extra American troops sent to defend two nearby countries that are treaty allies of the U.S. It creates a Cassandra effect where anyone warning of bad developments abroad is dismissed as a warmonger — and the only bad things that matter are those caused by the United States.
If one must be categorical, certainly it’s preferable to always oppose war than to always support it. And Ben & Jerry’s platitude that “you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war” does underscore a true challenge in international relations known as the security dilemma: When Country A fears aggression from Country B, it invests in military capabilities. That leads Country B to fear Country A and enhance its own military in response — thereby seemingly confirming Country A’s fears, and thus leading to an endless cycle of escalating tensions and defense spending. This principle clearly is in play, for instance, with the U.S.-Russia arms race.
But the security dilemma is not the only dynamic that can foster aggression; so can vulnerability. When aggressive leaders believe they can readily seize what they want using force for little or no cost, they are apt to prey on militarily weaker states.
Thus, some countries in tough neighborhoods do indeed have reason to seek peace but simultaneously prepare for war: You don’t want to be left helpless if it turns out your adversary is an untrustworthy bully. And that’s why mutual, legally binding arms-control treaties are preferable to unilateral disarmament and trust in the good intentions of foreign autocrats (or an intemperate U.S. president).
Back in 1938 under the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously tried to bargain for peace by treating Czechoslovakia’s sovereignty as something to be traded to Hitler, just as Putin would like the U.S. today to consign Ukraine to a “Russian sphere of influence.”
Chamberlain’s bargain failed anyway — some world leaders, it turns out, truly do have aggressive designs and are not merely misunderstood! We should thank the heavens that London prepared for possible war after the Munich treaty and was thus able to stave off Nazi invasion in 1940.
Today, Ukraine’s vulnerability to Russian power is why it’s at risk of being invaded. And that is why Ukraine wants to gain the security of a NATO alliance, which Moscow is hellbent on preventing. Yes, one can argue Putin lashes out at Ukraine due to his own fear of the United States, but that doesn’t justify domination of Ukraine any more than 9/11 justified invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.
Two months ago, President Joe Biden willingly sacrificed the leverage of an ambiguous stance on intervention in Ukraine by clarifying that he did not intend to send U.S. troops to defend it. This was a tough call: quite possibly consigning Ukraine to the wolves so as to tamp down the risk of war with Russia and undue anxiety of that possibility for Americans.
So when Biden did decide to deploy troops to allies in NATO at the end of January — the move Cohen and Greenfield were so quick to criticize — it was a relatively small, light force that could not possibly take on Russia’s large mechanized army in Ukraine.
The U.S. troops are being sent to reassure allies bordering Ukraine, Russia and Belarus that the U.S. won’t be asleep at the wheel in the event that a major war breaks out on their borders. Poland and the Baltic States have spent the majority of the last century under Moscow’s domination, and the possibility of seeing an independent Ukraine dismembered right on their border brings back more than a little historical trauma.
Is there a possibility of conflict with Russia as a result of the move? Yes. But would there be a possibility of conflict if Washington showed it wouldn’t react at all to the massing of a powerful army near its allies? Also yes.
Washington is pursuing multiple approaches to lowering the likelihood of a Russian attack. One is to increase the perceived potential cost of a conflict by threatening sweeping economic sanctions and dispatching short-range defensive weapons to Kyiv. Sellouts to the arms industry, one inevitably hears, and indeed there is cause to think such transfers are more symbolic than effective. But wouldn’t the right thing have been to give weapons to Poland before Hitler’s invasion?
Moreover, Washington has also engaged with Russia diplomatically. Leaked documents revealed the Biden administration has proposed renewing arms-control measures on offensive missiles and improving transparency and communications with Russia. It has also sought to pre-empt measures by Moscow to create a fabricated casus belli to “sell” an invasion of Ukraine by exposing them.
Unfortunately, Russia’s negotiating positions do not give analysts the impression it wants diplomacy to work because the Kremlin is making extreme demands its diplomats surely know will never be accepted, such as forbidding NATO from ever adding other countries to the alliance or even from sending soldiers to defend NATO member states in Eastern Europe.
We should strive to discourage another Russian invasion of Ukraine. But whether that happens is not a decision driven by Biden but by Putin, who has been deliberately massing forces around Ukraine’s border for months.
It’s healthy for every society to have voices like those of Cohen and Greenfield who are critical of overreliance on military power. But reflexively focusing blame on Washington’s token deployments rather than the world leader preparing for an unprovoked invasion of a fledgling democracy of 43 million reveals a narcissism in anti-war activism that sees every conflict as being all about America. There is a danger here of another Iraq War — but this time the risk is that Putin, not George W. Bush, will needlessly invade another country.
NBC News · by Sébastien Roblin, military writer · February 10, 2022
12. America Can’t Fight Authoritarianism on the Cheap
Excerpts:
American policymakers ought to decide whether they want America to be a regional power or a global power. If being a regional power is the objective, then America must choose a destiny as either an Atlantic power or a Pacific power and forsake the other hemisphere. Such a strategy is likely doomed to fail because of geography, history, economics, globalization, and America’s immigrant heritage which demands tending to all corners of the world.
The other option is to invest again in being a global power.
The good news is that the United States has the economic capacity to reclaim its place as the uncontested, dominant military power. Current defense spending is 3.8 percent of GDP, lower than any point of the Cold War, when America faced only one adversary. As recently as 1980, in President Jimmy Carter’s last year in office, the United States spent 6.5 percent of GDP on defense. And under Obama the figure reached 5.5 percent.
The bad news is that, while the United States wants to be a global power, it seems to lack the political will to invest in this objective, in which case the American defense of Ukraine, the Biden administration’s bolstering of NATO, and the bipartisan urge to confront China are all just hollow pretensions.
America Can’t Fight Authoritarianism on the Cheap
Last week, the Biden administration announced the deployment of 3,000 American troops to NATO’s eastern flank. This move, while completely reasonable and even commendable given the threat of imminent war in Eastern Europe, raises larger questions about how the United States plans to defend all of its interests and allies around the world on the cheap. One of the reasons President Biden has sought a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, and has been hesitant to respond to Russia’s destabilizing unpredictability, is that the United States doesn’t have the resources to confront both Russia and China at the same time. Yet, that’s exactly what it has to do.
Since the United States decided not to try to isolate itself after World War II, it has done well by doing good. The current international system, which has seen the greatest period of peace and prosperity in history, has benefited the world, but America most of all. Preserving this international order is the primary American interest. Yet, very few American policymakers are willing to invest adequately in preserving peace, leaving the U.S. military unequipped for its primary mission.
Russia, China, and Iran are all locally superior forces to the United States in terms of the number of troops, military vehicles, and weapons—and too often in terms of equipment quality and readiness, too. Russia and China are building more nuclear weapons, and Iran races closer to joining the nuclear club. Yet the United States wishes to ignore this reality. America’s adversaries are mastering the art of irregular warfare, while the United States is developing neither offensive nor defensive capabilities. Meanwhile, to quote President Biden, the threat of terrorism is “metastasizing.”
Podcast · February 09 2022
From Pat Buchanan’s culture war to Sarah Palin wearing her resentment on her sleeve, Trump’s…
The problem has been growing for years. In the 2010s, Congress abdicated its responsibility to fund the military adequately. Because of virtue-signaling about the deficit, the military lost a trillion dollars in funding over a span of ten years. Government shutdowns, budget uncertainties, and outright cuts—remember the years of “sequestration”?—weakened the force, reduced readiness, and delayed the delivery of important weapons. Worse, congressional Republicans are now dragging the military into the culture war, making recruitment more difficult.
Of course, Congress wasn’t alone in its fiscal irresponsibility. Three successive administrations—Bush, Obama, and Trump—contributed to the problem with tax cuts not sufficiently offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. The retirement of the Baby Boom generation, which is squeezing Medicare and Social Security, and the Biden administration’s money-grows-on-trees fiscal policy are putting enormous strain on the budget.
Meanwhile, expectations we have of the military remain unchanged.
Just how far is the U.S. military from being able to meet all of its goals? In 2018, a bipartisan congressional commission, co-chaired by former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman and former Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead, found that even the Trump administration’s modest National Defense Strategy was too ambitious given the United States’ capabilities. (Among the members of the commission were Kathleen Hicks, now the deputy secretary of defense, and Michael McCord, now the comptroller of the Department of Defense.)
The commission found that “by 2017, all of the military services were at or near post-World War II lows in terms of end-strength, and all were confronting severe readiness crises and enormous deferred modernization costs.” In the mid-2010s, the Army and the Navy were at their weakest overall strength since before World War II, and the Air Force was the smallest in terms of planes and personnel it had ever been. These shortfalls, the report warned, could lead to a “decisive” military defeat by Russia in the Baltics or China over Taiwan—or both.
To make up the military gap, the commissioners recommended a gradual reorganization of the Department of Defense to make it more effective; growing the Navy by expanding its fleet of submarines and long-range aircraft and by enhancing its sealift capabilities; increasing the Air Force’s roster of stealthy, long-range fighters and bombers, tankers, and cargo planes, and “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms” to “project power across the Pacific,” and other similar reforms. In short: The military needs to keep up with America’s peers and our policymakers’ demands.
It was not a change of human nature that has preserved the postwar peace; it was a change of U.S. policy. Now the enemies of peace are remilitarizing. And the United States has little influence over their decisions. But we have a lot of influence over ours, and we have decided to let our military become a rusting hulk. It is irresponsible to ask the military to keep doing the impossible. So America must make a choice.
Apart from wingnuts and ghouls on the far-left and far-right, most of both parties in America—or at least in Congress—appear ready to support the Ukrainians against Russian aggression. No doubt, as the Biden administration competes with Republicans over hawkishness toward China, the majority of both parties would support Taiwan against a threatened Chinese invasion as well. But they must realize that they can’t realistically do both at the same time—there simply aren’t the resources available.
American policymakers ought to decide whether they want America to be a regional power or a global power. If being a regional power is the objective, then America must choose a destiny as either an Atlantic power or a Pacific power and forsake the other hemisphere. Such a strategy is likely doomed to fail because of geography, history, economics, globalization, and America’s immigrant heritage which demands tending to all corners of the world.
The other option is to invest again in being a global power.
The good news is that the United States has the economic capacity to reclaim its place as the uncontested, dominant military power. Current defense spending is 3.8 percent of GDP, lower than any point of the Cold War, when America faced only one adversary. As recently as 1980, in President Jimmy Carter’s last year in office, the United States spent 6.5 percent of GDP on defense. And under Obama the figure reached 5.5 percent.
The bad news is that, while the United States wants to be a global power, it seems to lack the political will to invest in this objective, in which case the American defense of Ukraine, the Biden administration’s bolstering of NATO, and the bipartisan urge to confront China are all just hollow pretensions.
Shay Khatiri is a policy associate at the Renew Democracy Initiative, where he works on strengthening freedom at home and advancing its reach abroad. He studied Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He’s an immigrant from Iran and writes the Substack newsletter The Russia-Iran File.
13. For Humanity’s Sake, Keep Red Crosses on Medevac Helicopters
Some of the greatest Americans work among the medical professionals of the Army, Navy, and Air Force (with navy corpsmen supporting the Marines).
Excerpts:
U.S. Army medevac crews currently seek medical and command approval before flying a mission. Crews could seek clearance and routing from the Red Cross in the same manner. The U.S. Army could even detail a senior medevac pilot to act as a liaison to the International Committee of the Red Cross and coordinate evacuation routing and clearance as troops submit medevac requests.
The goal of this system would be to allow medevac flights to function without risking hostile fire. But would it be reliable? Rubenstein discusses how Russia repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria, even hospitals identified on a U.N. no-strike list. Similarly, a belligerent could abuse a coordinated routing system by attacking ambulances mid-transport. Were this to happen, however, not only would the attacker be guilty of a war crime, but the United States could simply return to using dedicated ambulances without international coordination and rely on customary international law. If the opponent continues targeting ambulances, the United States could do away with dedicated ambulances and evacuate casualties in some other way.
Rubenstein provides a clear-eyed recent history of violence against health care. Though the topic is pessimistic, he remains optimistic about the value of humanitarian efforts. For proponents of military necessity, Rubenstein articulates why humanity matters and how combatants suffer when it fails. For the aspiring humanitarian, he shows what it takes to make humanitarianism work. When weighing military necessity and humanity, Rubenstein puts his thumb on the scale for humanity. To maintain patient evacuation in future conflicts, the U.S. Army should follow his lead.
For Humanity’s Sake, Keep Red Crosses on Medevac Helicopters - War on the Rocks
Embracing humanity isn’t controversial — until it comes up against military necessity. The industrial warfare of the 19th century intensified the long-standing tension between humanitarian and military imperatives. The complexity of 21st-century warfare threatens to increase it to the breaking point.
As a U.S. Army medevac pilot, I read Leonard Rubenstein’s Perilous Medicine with considerable interest and sympathy. Rubenstein traces the journey of humanitarian principles from the Geneva conferences of the 1860s to their present pride of place in international law. He also demonstrates that, during the last quarter century, military necessity was often invoked to dismiss these principles and justify atrocities.
Perilous Medicine offers a depressing account of the depths of human violence. But it also sheds light on contemporary debates about health care in modern conflict. In recent years, some voices within the military have called for removing the red crosses from the sides of U.S. Army medical evacuation (medevac) aircraft in order to arm them, or even for abandoning the practice of having dedicated medevac aircraft altogether. By demonstrating the value of medevac and humanitarian law, Rubenstein reveals how dangerous these steps would be.
A History of Humanity
Which is more important: ending a war as soon as possible or fighting a war without dehumanizing the enemy? Perilous Medicine traces the history of this debate and makes the case for the latter.
Francis Lieber first codified the principle of military necessity. Lieber was a Prussian-American soldier and intellectual who, even after getting shot and left for dead fighting Napoleon, continued to believe war was a glorious national effort. Lieber connected jus ad bellum (the justification to fight) and jus in bello (fighting justly) through consequentialist ethics. He felt that bringing a just war to a swift end justified almost any act.
At roughly the same time, Swiss businessman Henry Dunant articulated the principle of humanity as an alternative to military necessity. Dunant witnessed the 1859 Battle of Solferino while on a business trip in Italy. After the battle, he saw thousands of wounded soldiers left unattended to suffer and die. This experience led him to found the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded. This committee soon transformed into the still functioning International Committee of the Red Cross. In 1863, the committee assembled a conference in Geneva to study military medical services. In 1864, the First Geneva Convention codified the conference’s recommendations. Dunant received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to international humanitarianism.
The First Geneva Convention persists in an updated form today, having grown into the interconnected web of conventions and protocols that make up international humanitarian law. This body of law protects non-combatants and restricts combatants in armed conflicts. The underlying agreements only bind signatory states and groups. But this does not mean combatants can free themselves from humanitarian expectations by refusing to sign. Instead, customary international law holds every state and group to a generally accepted standard.
The Benefits of the Red Cross
What does this all mean for medevac aircraft? The two bodies of law disagree. Humanitarian law limits medical aircraft to predetermined routes, times, and altitudes. Customary law imposes a general duty to respect and protect any medical transport which does not commit actions harmful to the enemy. Indeed, combatants cannot take medical vehicles as war booty even if medical crew members act in self-defense.
However, neither body of international law criminalizes inadvertent damage to ambulances during active fighting. As a result, medevac aircraft sometimes come under fire and sustain damage. Military commanders usually address this threat by assigning armed escorts to accompany medevac aircraft. The logic is that overwhelming firepower from the air can create a lull in the fighting on the ground and allow medevac aircraft to evacuate the casualties. Advances in A.I. offer improvements in ambulance placement and armed escort coordination. Still, unarmed and unescorted ambulances remain the most vulnerable vehicles in any military fleet.
This vulnerability led concerned citizens to call for replacing the red crosses on U.S. medevac aircraft with machine guns. They argued that arming medevac aircraft will improve their ability to reach casualties in ongoing firefights and compensate for the loss of legal protection.
This would be a mistake. Adding machine guns would only provide a marginal improvement in firepower while reducing the resources needed to carry out effective evacuations. Worse, removing medevac’s red crosses would be a complete abdication of moral authority and destroy any chance of leveraging international law’s protections in a great-power war.
First, if a situation is so dangerous that a medevac cannot land, it will require more than helicopter-mounted medium machine guns. Instead, it calls for a full gunship escort. Gunship crews train for offensive operations, and their existing armament provides overwhelming firepower compared to a pair of medium machine guns.
More importantly, armed medevac aircraft would be less effective medevac aircraft. Door guns and door gunners consume three crucial resources: helping hands, weight, and space. Medevac units cross-train their crew chiefs to assist paramedics in flight. Making crew chiefs into door gunners would remove this extra set of hands. You can’t apply pressure to a gunshot wound if you’re manning a machine gun. Plus, while the Black Hawk has twice the lift capacity of its predecessor, the Huey, two machine guns, ammo, and a third crew member would reduce the weight available for medical equipment and patients. And on top of all this, the machine guns and their gunners take up precious space.
Additionally, many Black Hawk patient handling systems are incompatible with door gunner seats. Patient handling systems include sets of litter pans, hooks, shelves, and other storage areas. They enable en-route care by securing patients and equipment inside a helicopter cabin. In the Black Hawk’s HH-60 variant, the system accommodates up to six patients. Even without added armament, many medevac aircraft already fly without patient handling systems to conserve weight. In this case, the usual seating arrangements place the crew in one row, leaving room for four litter patients on the cabin floor. Flying with door gunners and a paramedic would occupy two rows of seats and reduce patient capacity by one litter. These capability reductions might not matter in routine evacuations, but mass casualty events are a different story. The U.S. Army thinks that great-power war will have casualty rates above 50 percent. This possibility calls for dedicating every available person, pound, and inch to evacuating casualties.
Last July, an article in Aviation Digest, the professional journal of the Army aviation branch, took aim at the combat medevac mission itself. It argued that the requirement to set aside aircraft for medevac duty constrains military commanders. This position assumes that this constraint hinders military effectiveness and costs lives by prolonging conflicts. In the author’s view, the U.S. Army should give its commanders maximum flexibility by removing dedicated medevac aircraft and officers from combat formations.
Abandoning medevac formations would be an even bigger mistake than simply arming them. Setting medevac aside does not hinder commanders. It enables them. Commanders do not have to ask how they will evacuate injured soldiers from the battlefield. Instead, a trusted agent fills this need. This frees commanders to focus on the thing only they can do: decide how to wage war.
Commanders need to provide the best leadership they can in great-power war. Information overload and operational tempo threaten to overwhelm many leaders. Eliminating medevac would turn evacuating injured soldiers into one of many competing priorities. It is inhumane to force commanders in this environment to decide between an evacuation mission and combat operations. Even worse, the threat environment in a great-power war may halt evacuation by multi-use aircraft. Air defenses could prevent multi-use aircraft from reaching casualties or, worse, destroy these aircraft completely.
A Better Way to Manage Medical Evacuation
Rubenstein provides a case study from the Levant that suggests a way to bypass air defenses and evacuate patients during a great-power war. In the early 2000s, the Israel Defense Forces, International Committee of the Red Cross, and Palestine Red Crescent Society developed a dispatch system to allow ambulances to reach casualties during fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces: a life-or-death game of phone tag. It began with an evacuation request from the West Bank. The Palestine Red Crescent would receive the request and notify the International Red Cross. The Red Cross would forward the request to the Israel Defense Forces’ civil-military coordination unit. The civil-military unit would then contact the military commander on the ground, who would decide whether to clear the ambulance. The commander’s decision wound back up the phone chain to the Red Crescent.
The system’s initial implementation did not function well. In 2002, an Israeli sniper shot Iain Hook, a U.N. aid worker, and he died waiting for a Red Crescent ambulance. This and other failures led to calls for reform from Israeli, Palestinian, and international stakeholders. As a result, by 2004 the process had improved. Though the system eventually broke down as Israel’s attention shifted from the West Bank to Gaza, it nonetheless offered a short-lived example of Geneva Convention-compliant medical evacuation routing. The International Committee of the Red Cross could reprise this role by coordinating evacuation during a great-power war.
U.S. Army medevac crews currently seek medical and command approval before flying a mission. Crews could seek clearance and routing from the Red Cross in the same manner. The U.S. Army could even detail a senior medevac pilot to act as a liaison to the International Committee of the Red Cross and coordinate evacuation routing and clearance as troops submit medevac requests.
The goal of this system would be to allow medevac flights to function without risking hostile fire. But would it be reliable? Rubenstein discusses how Russia repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria, even hospitals identified on a U.N. no-strike list. Similarly, a belligerent could abuse a coordinated routing system by attacking ambulances mid-transport. Were this to happen, however, not only would the attacker be guilty of a war crime, but the United States could simply return to using dedicated ambulances without international coordination and rely on customary international law. If the opponent continues targeting ambulances, the United States could do away with dedicated ambulances and evacuate casualties in some other way.
Rubenstein provides a clear-eyed recent history of violence against health care. Though the topic is pessimistic, he remains optimistic about the value of humanitarian efforts. For proponents of military necessity, Rubenstein articulates why humanity matters and how combatants suffer when it fails. For the aspiring humanitarian, he shows what it takes to make humanitarianism work. When weighing military necessity and humanity, Rubenstein puts his thumb on the scale for humanity. To maintain patient evacuation in future conflicts, the U.S. Army should follow his lead.
Capt. Robert Callahan is a medical recruiting company commander for the U.S. Army. He is a medevac pilot with operational experience in Central America and Afghanistan.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
14. Opinion | Another university learns the hard way about Chinese censorship on campus
Opinion | Another university learns the hard way about Chinese censorship on campus
This week, a major university in D.C. found itself in the position of censoring criticism of the Chinese government by removing art posters highlighting Beijing’s human rights abuses during the first week of the Winter Olympics. It’s not the first time China’s long arm of influence reached onto U.S. campuses — and it won’t be the last.
On Monday, George Washington University President Mark Wrighton was compelled to issue a public statement to all members of the university community admitting he had been wrong to remove posters displayed on campus that protested the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Hong Kongers as well as Beijing’s handling of the covid-19 pandemic. In so doing, he had initially followed the lead of Chinese student organizations who complained about the posters.
1. In response to CSSA, GeorgeWashington Uni @GWtweets president @PresWrightonGW claims he is “personally offended” by my art criticising China’s rights abuse like Uyghur genocide & oppression in Tibet & HongKong.
— 巴丢草 Badiucao (@badiucao) February 7, 2022
On Feb. 3, the GWU Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), a student group, circulated a letter calling the posters racist, alleging they “insulted China,” were “trampling on the Olympic spirit,” and constituted an attack on all Chinese and Asian students. The CSSA called on the university leadership to find those who had posted them and “punish them severely!” Later, the GWU Chinese Cultural Association, another student group, complained publicly and in writing to Wrighton that the posters were “inciting racial hatred and ethnic conflicts.”
Neither group noted that the posters were designed by a famous Chinese artist and dissident living in Australia named Badiucao. Badiucao, who is routinely attacked by Chinese state propaganda outlets, defended his work on Twitter and called the attacks “a classic smear campaign to cancel criticism against [the] CCP.”
Initially and privately, Wrighton sided with the student groups. In an email, Wrighton wrote that he, too, was “personally offended” by the posters and promised to find those responsible. After the email leaked, a wave of criticism poured in as GOP lawmakers, free speech groups and other student organizations called on Wrighton to recognize that he was defending censorship, not punishing racism.
In his Monday mea culpa, Wrighton said his comments calling the posters offensive and his orders to remove them were “mistakes.” He said he was educated by the university’s scholars and now understands that the posters are critiques of China’s government, not attacks against the Chinese people.
“Upon full understanding, I do not view these posters as racist; they are political statements,” he wrote. “I want to be very clear: I support freedom of speech — even when it offends people — and creative art is a valued way to communicate on important societal issues.”
Chinese students who support Beijing’s policies may in fact be offended, but as Wrighton (belatedly) acknowledged, that doesn’t give them the right to censor other students, Chinese or otherwise. And although rising violence against Asians and Asian Americans is real and troubling, as Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian wrote in Axios Monday, “Chinese international student groups sometimes use the language of social justice to silence criticism of the Chinese government’s human rights record.”
The university’s leadership was clearly caught completely off guard, even though there has been extensive reporting in recent years documenting how the Chinese government’s diplomatic outposts often work directly with CSSA chapters and other Chinese student groups on campuses to spy on Chinese students, to enforce censorship and to target critics such as the Dalai Lama or Hong Kong democracy student activist Nathan Law. These incidents have been covered on campuses in the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
“Given the extent to which these problematic intrusions already have come into view, there’s a persistent lack of preparation among universities and the knowledge sector more broadly to ensure that essential standards of academic freedom are upheld,” Christopher Walker, vice president at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), told me.
Universities in free and open societies must set up clear standards and processes for building resilience to what NED call’s China’s “sharp power” tactics, Walker said. That work has to be done before, not after, the pressure comes from the Chinese Communist Party, its proxies or other authoritarian forces.
The Athenai Institute, a Catholic University of America-founded student organization fighting against the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on U.S. campuses, is pushing for GWU to follow Catholic’s example and to scour its endowments and investments for any entities connected to the Uyghur atrocities in China — and then divest from them. The unstated reason that more colleges don’t confront this issue head-on is because they fear retaliation that will hurt their bottom line.
For his part, Badiucao is not satisfied with Wrighton’s belated realization that his art is protesting racism, not perpetuating it. He wants GWU to put the posters back up and to protect the students who hung them from harassment by the CSSA. He also wants Wrighton to apologize to him directly and invite him to speak to GWU students publicly about these human rights issues, including those who were offended.
“Beijing cannot silence or cancel me. … And I think they cannot fool most of the intellectual community either,” he told me. “This incident can be the beginning of a meaningful conversation instead of the end of it.”
15. Bloomberg named as new head of Defense Innovation Board
Bloomberg named as new head of Defense Innovation Board - Breaking Defense
Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and presidential candidate, will lead the panel of tech and business experts tasked with advising Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Mike Bloomberg has been named the new chair of the Defense Innovation Board. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON: Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, presidential candidate and co-founder of the Bloomberg media empire, is the new head of the Defense Innovation Board.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby announced Bloomberg’s appointment to the position during a Wednesday press briefing, characterizing him as a “an entrepreneur and a leader” who will “bring a wealth of experience in technology innovation, business and government” to the board.
“His leadership will be critical to ensuring the department has access to the best and brightest minds in science technology innovation, through the team of diverse experts that he will lead and as chair of that board,” Kirby said.
Established in 2016, the Defense Innovation Board exists to provide expert recommendations to Pentagon leaders — but not develop or implement policies — on topics such as AI, software, data and digital modernization. As its chairman, Bloomberg will lead a board of business executives, technologists and thought leaders from outside the traditional defense space.
Bloomberg, 79, is a somewhat surprising addition to a group that has previously included celebrity astrophysist Neil deGrasse Tyson and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Bloomberg is best known as the mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013 and has run under both the Democratic and Republican tickets throughout his lifetime. He is the co-founder and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., a media and financial analytics company, and has a net worth of $70 billion, according to Forbes.
Most recently in 2020, Bloomberg ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in a self-funded campaign. However, he gained little traction in a crowded field, and his campaign was plagued by media reports that recalled prior lawsuits by women who accused Bloomberg of sexual harassment throughout his career, as detailed by The Washington Post and other outlets — notable, as he has been selected for this role at a time when senior defense leaders have stressed the need for improvement on how they handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment. (Bloomberg has denied the allegations.)
Last January, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin halted all Pentagon advisory board activity so that the department could review their effectiveness — and, unofficially, to remove a number of controversial additions to boards made in the final days of the outgoing Trump administration. The Defense Department is expected to announce the resumption of the boards, as well as their new leadership, later today, Kirby said.
Bloomberg will replace Mark Sirangelo, a former Sierra Nevada Corp. executive who took over as chairman of the board in 2020.
16. Another helicopter went down on a US special-ops raid. Here's how elite aviators prepare for that worst-case scenario.
Another helicopter went down on a US special-ops raid. Here's how elite aviators prepare for that worst-case scenario.
A man stands next to the wreckage of a US helicopter after a nighttime raid by US special-operations forces against the leader of ISIS in Syria's Idlib province, February 3, 2022.
RAMI AL SAYED/AFP via Getty Images
- An MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter went down during a special-operations raid in Syria this month.
- The helicopter malfunctioned and had to be destroyed because it couldn't fly back after the raid.
- Malfunctions, crashes, and other mishaps are always a risk on such missions, and US aviators prepare for those possibilities.
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Last week, Delta Force conducted a counterterrorism operation in northwestern Syria that killed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of ISIS.
The hours-long raid killed 13 people, including six children and four women. There were no American casualties, but that almost wasn't the case.
During the operation, an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flown by the elite pilots of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, nicknamed the "Night Stalkers," had to land after suffering a malfunction. US forces then destroyed the chopper with an airstrike to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
For the Night Stalkers, the risk of a crash is omnipresent during these kinds of operations, but they are prepared for that possibility.
Black Hawk Down
A Syrian man looks over a US helicopter destroyed after a nighttime raid by US special-operation forces against the leader of ISIS in Syria's Idlib province, February 4, 2022
RAMI AL SAYED/AFP via Getty Images
Night Stalkers are always ready should something go wrong with their helicopters, but their response depends on the severity of the problem, according to Greg Coker, a retired chief warrant officer 4 and legendary Night Stalker pilot.
"If you get a caution/warning light, the pilot will conduct actions in accordance with the emergency procedure for that helo. If serious, the pilot will notify higher [command] and land if necessary. It may be 'let's fly it and watch it,'" Coker said. "If an engine fails then the pilot would transmit a Mayday call over the radio. Combat search and rescue would be launched, usually a 160th asset."
Other helicopters taking part in the operation would land to pick up the downed helicopter's crew and passengers so they could continue the mission, Coker told Insider.
"The pilot in command will evaluate the helo emergency and make a decision to land or go to the target. We push our machines to the limit to complete the mission. The mission is always the priority," Coker added.
The operational environment also dictates how the Night Stalkers will react. If the emergency occurs in a permissive environment, the helicopter will be left behind to be picked up by the forces conducting combat search and rescue.
If it takes place over a semi- or non-permissive environment, then the helicopter will be destroyed either with explosives or an airstrike, as was the case in Syria last week.
A wrecked MH-60 helicopter that was blown up by US forces after it malfunction during a raid in Syria, February 4, 2022.
Anas Alkharboutli/picture alliance via Getty Images
Should a helicopter go down, its pilots and crew chiefs are ready to fight. In the past, Night Stalkers were lightly armed, carrying handguns and light machine guns, such as the MP-5. Now they carry the same weapons as their counterparts on the ground, and they know how to use them.
"All Night Stalkers are highly trained in weapons and tactics if found on the ground. They are all proficient shooters and considered an asset by the ground force and not a liability. [That was] one of the lessons learned after Mogadishu," Coker said, referring to the 1993 mission in Somalia in which two Night Stalker helicopters were shot down and their crews wounded or killed.
"Obviously you cannot train the actual event, but we do a considerable amount of planning and mission prep, thinking through such contingencies and how we would respond," a retired Delta Force operator who participated in hundreds of helicopter assault operations told Insider.
"Although it doesn't happen often, it does happen more than you might think. Helicopter mishaps are common downrange. When the adrenaline is rushing as you touch down close or on the X in the middle of the night with dust all over the place from the helicopter rotors, it's easy to miss that small berm or the extra foot of wall," which can damage or even bring down the aircraft, the retired special operator added.
Notable crashes
Children walk on the rotor of a wrecked US Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu, October 14, 1993.
Scott Peterson/Liaison
There have been three notable MH-60 Black Hawk crashes involving the special mission units of the Joint Special Operations Command, joint component of US Special Operations Command.
The first took place in the jungles of Panama during a training event in 1990. An MH-60 Black Hawk carrying 11 Delta Force operators crashed into the foliage, severely wounding all aboard.
The second, and most well-known, happened in Mogadishu in 1993 during what's known as during the Battle of Black Sea.
Two MH-60 Black Hawks taking part in a raid were shot down by Somali militia, starting a day-long battle in the streets of the Somali capital that left 18 Delta Force operators, Rangers, Night Stalkers, and regular troops dead.
Part of a damaged helicopter at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 2, 2011.
REUTERS/Stringer
The third crash took place during the US Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. A specially modified stealth MH-60 Black Hawk struck one of the compound and crashed into the courtyard.
No one aboard was seriously hurt, but the helicopter had to be destroyed at the scene. The tail rotor survived the demolition and images of it were seen by the whole world the next morning.
"Helicopters are delicate beasts, and we are very fortunate to have the Night Stalkers. These guys are literally the best helicopter pilots in the world, and I would trust them with my life. It says something about their skills that despite the dangers we very rarely have any casualties," the retired Delta commando said.
"Our helicopters are the best maintained aircraft in the world. Serious maintenance issues rarely occur, but when they do the best air crews in the world will figure it out and continue mission," Coker added. "You can replace helicopters, but you can't replace Night Stalkers."
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.
17. Manslaughter charges against MARSOC corpsman dropped by military judge
And how will we get justice for the victim? WHo will be held accountable?
And then there is this:
Shaw’s comments extend past this case, Vokey said, and threaten the career progression of any Marine attorney serving as defense counsel on high-profile cases that Marine leaders want to see prosecuted.
Manslaughter charges against MARSOC corpsman dropped by military judge
Judge Hayes C. Larsen found that there was “unlawful command influence” that irreparably tainted the case against Chief Petty Officer Eric Gilmet.
That finding, the judge wrote in his Wednesday ruling, meant that Gilmet could not get a fair trial and required the charges of voluntary manslaughter, negligent homicide and other charges related to the Jan. 1, 2019, death of Army Green Beret veteran and contractor Rick Anthony Rodriguez be dismissed.
Three men were charged after a brief physical altercation between them and Rodriguez, which ended with the contractor being knocked unconscious outside an off-base bar. The two Raiders and corpsman took Rodriguez back to their on-base housing to monitor him. He died a short time later.
The unlawful command influence that resulted in the dismissal stems from “threatening” comments made by one of the Marine Corps’ top lawyers, Col. Christopher B. Shaw, at a meeting of Marine defense attorneys at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in mid-November 2021.
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The manslaughter trials for three defendants have been delayed following alleged "threatening" comments made by a Marine colonel.
In the meeting, Capt. Matthew Thomas, then-military counsel for Gilmet, asked Shaw, who was serving as a deputy director of the Judge Advocate Division of the Marine Corps, what protections defense counsel had when defending clients in high-profile or politicized cases.
“I know your name and I know what cases you’re on and you are not protected,” Shaw told Thomas, according to at least four sworn affidavits contained within court documents obtained by Marine Corps Times “You are shielded but not protected.”
The deputy director does not officially select Marine attorneys for assignments and career progression, input from that office is considered by the job field’s monitor, according to Marine attorney statements made in court filings obtained by Marine Corps Times.
An anonymous complaint filed after that meeting triggered an investigation by the inspector general of the Marine Corps. The investigation ultimately found that while Shaw may have made the statements, they did not warrant dismissing charges and, while “unprofessional,” they “did not constitute a violation” that caused harm equivalent to unlawful command influence, said investigator Col. Peter D. Houtz, a judge on the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals.
But the judge saw it differently.
When asked about Shaw at the end of January, Maj. James Stenger, Marine Corps spokesman, told Marine Corps Times in an email that out of respect for the legal process, a current investigation and Shaw’s privacy rights, the Corps would not comment on the case nor provide Shaw for an interview.
Gilmet’s two co-defendants, MARSOC Gunnery Sgts. Daniel Draher and Joshua Negron, face the same charges. Their attorneys also have filed motions to dismiss, based on the same unlawful command influence allegations.
The cases of Gilmet and the two Raiders, Draher and Negron, are being tried separately.
The judge in Draher/Negron case ruled in January that motions to dismiss based on the unlawful command influence could proceed. That case has a hearing set for Thursday on nearly identical arguments to dismiss that case.
Gilmet’s civilian attorney, Colby Vokey, told Marine Corps Times on Wednesday that the government can appeal the judge’s decision but cannot “recharge” his client because the judge, Larsen, dismissed the charges “with prejudice.”
Marine Corps Headquarters staff deferred comments to U.S. Special Operations Command representatives.
Maj. Hector J. Infante, the spokesman for MARSOC, told Marine Corps Times in an email late Wednesday that the command, “cannot comment on ongoing litigation.”
In his experience, Vokey said, the appellate courts tend to give deference to the trial judge, and appeals overturning those rulings are rare.
The ruling in this case is likely to have an effect on the related cases for Negron and Draher, he said.
Vokey, who retired as a Marine lieutenant colonel after having served as a military attorney for most of his career, called the judge’s decision and legal reason a “strong ruling.”
As recently as this week, Vokey was in the process of finding replacement military attorneys for his client and could not find a single, available Marine attorney who did not see Shaw’s comments as also creating a conflict for them, he said.
Shaw’s comments extend past this case, Vokey said, and threaten the career progression of any Marine attorney serving as defense counsel on high-profile cases that Marine leaders want to see prosecuted.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with a response from U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command.
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.
18. Breaking the Internet: China-US Competition Over Technology Standards
Excerpts:
But despite South Korea being home to tech giant Samsung – the world’s largest supplier of smartphones – and Japan being the world’s third largest economy, both nations have surprisingly modest representation in the international standard-setting sphere. Compared to China’s 31.5 percent, South Korea has proposed just 8.4 percent of 5G-related cell-phone standards. Japan has contributed just 0.39 percent. As their supercharged tech industries begin to cede market dominance to new Chinese and otherwise foreign players, Japan and South Korea are also losing out in the standardization game. This is a prime opportunity for these economies to reassert their positions.
Additionally, Seoul, Tokyo, and similar middle powers have a rare chance to straddle the China-U.S. divide without risking their own relationships with either side. Ideology aside, South Korea and Japan can fly under the banner of meritocracy, in the name of ensuring fair, competitive standards and reclaiming a deserving share of the decision-making power. For the size of their influence in the global technology sector alone, Seoul and Tokyo would be well justified in wanting a greater seat at the standardization table.
With the exponential growth of technology, standardization will become an ever more important arena, not just for China-U.S. cyber competition, but also for defining the digital landscape of the future. If the goal is to develop high-quality standards that are interoperable across the globe, then the strategic approaches of both Washington and Beijing are misinformed. In recognition of these challenges, one potential answer instead lies in high-tech middle powers like Seoul and Tokyo, who now have the opportunity to shift tech standard setting in a safer direction.
Breaking the Internet: China-US Competition Over Technology Standards
High-tech middle powers like Japan and South Korea will be crucial to avoiding a “splinternet.”
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The increasingly adversarial nature of the China-U.S. relationship is rapidly bringing forth the potential for a “splinternet” – a grim bifurcation of the cyber world. The meritocratic processes of tech standard creation, as well as the interoperability of such standards, are all coming under threat from strategic efforts to further ulterior, national agendas.
Technical standards, born out of necessity in a globalizing world, have become critical to the ordinary functions of society. The principal aims and benefits of these standards are global interoperability, compatibility, and connectivity, underpinning all international trade. In essence, standards set the “rules of the game” that all players must abide by. It is these invisible standards that enable the use of technology across borders and systems; standards are what allows an American phone to connect to Wi-Fi the same as it would in Japan. When such standards fail to become universalized, they cause inefficiencies; an everyday example is the incongruence of power socket designs across countries. The advent of 5G, artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and other frontier technologies brings an urgent and historic weight to tech standard development.
Traditionally, standards have been left in the hands of private sector experts and technocrats, who focused on establishing the highest quality standards through meritocratic processes. Lately, however, standard setting has become central to China’s strategic goals of becoming a “cyber great power” by 2049 – a term first coined by Xi Jinping in 2014. In 2018, the Standards Administration of China (SAC) initiated “China Standards 2035,” formalizing and centralizing China’s strategy to have native standards become the global norm.
China’s strategy has been two-pronged, including de jure and de facto tracks. The de jure, or formal, standard setting happens on the global scale at Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), such as the U.N.-backed International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Though these bureaucratic institutions work slowly, influence at this level could potentially ripple through the entire ecosystem of international technology trade. To this end Beijing has placed Chinese nationals into senior leadership positions, encouraged Chinese tech companies to submit high volumes of proposals, and spurred Chinese companies to vote as a national bloc – as opposed to judging a proposal on merits alone. This strategy is made apparent in China’s 2017 Standardization Law: “the State encourages participation in international standardization events. Commendation and reward shall be given to those who made remarkable contribution to standardizing work.” Chinese tech giant Huawei is now the leading proposer of 5G standards, presenting more than double the proposals of the United States’ Qualcomm. Houlin Zhao, a Chinese national, is the head of the ITU and an advocate for both Huawei and the Belt and Road Initiative.
Concurrently, Beijing has more quickly influenced standard setting through a de facto approach. It does this by creating standards on the ground through exporting technology and infrastructure projects, skirting SDOs and international regulation. As China exports its technology, Chinese standards seamlessly become embedded into the technological matrix of the recipient country, often furthered by standard harmonization requirements and memoranda of understanding (MOUs). Moreover, once a market builds a digital network using Chinese technology, they are more likely to continue using Chinese tech in the future; technology from other countries would likely use non-Chinese, and hence incompatible, standards. In late 2021, the Chinese city of Nanning hosted the second China-ASEAN International Standardization Forum, where Chinese and ASEAN leaders stressed standard connectivity in the region as well as in the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
For its part, Washington’s withdrawal from international fora in recent years and its increasingly adversarial stance toward Beijing have also edged tech standards closer to fracture. For standards to be effective, it is vital that everyone is involved; exclusion or withdrawal of any one party undermines the entire process. In 2019, the United States sanctioned Huawei, which made any interaction with Huawei near impossible for U.S. companies. The move, however, proved counterproductive. Confusion around the technicalities of the ruling meant that U.S. companies could no longer participate in standard setting discussions where Huawei was present. This meant the absence of U.S. representation in key standardization decisions for over a year until the Department of Commerce corrected this mistake. At the same time, U.S. sanctions prohibiting China’s use of American semiconductor technology forced Beijing to turn inwards and supercharged their focus on domestic innovation. In both cases – when the U.S. excluded itself and China – a policy of unnuanced exclusion had unfortunate implications in the standardization game, where universal inclusion and connectivity rewards all.
As geopolitical challenges threaten to divide future standards, one solution is to get more players – ideally high-tech middle powers – involved. Offering alternative infrastructure projects and engaging in multilateral cooperation could mitigate the risk of unilateral standard exporting by any one nation. A greater showing of technocratic experts from digitally advanced countries like South Korea and Japan could potentially nudge SDOs away from recent geopolitical influences and back to their traditionally meritocratic roots. Simply having more voices at the table would also likely balance and moderate the conversation away from adversarial two-sidedness. Technology powerhouses South Korea and Japan, as well as certain European countries, are ideally poised for this role.
But despite South Korea being home to tech giant Samsung – the world’s largest supplier of smartphones – and Japan being the world’s third largest economy, both nations have surprisingly modest representation in the international standard-setting sphere. Compared to China’s 31.5 percent, South Korea has proposed just 8.4 percent of 5G-related cell-phone standards. Japan has contributed just 0.39 percent. As their supercharged tech industries begin to cede market dominance to new Chinese and otherwise foreign players, Japan and South Korea are also losing out in the standardization game. This is a prime opportunity for these economies to reassert their positions.
Additionally, Seoul, Tokyo, and similar middle powers have a rare chance to straddle the China-U.S. divide without risking their own relationships with either side. Ideology aside, South Korea and Japan can fly under the banner of meritocracy, in the name of ensuring fair, competitive standards and reclaiming a deserving share of the decision-making power. For the size of their influence in the global technology sector alone, Seoul and Tokyo would be well justified in wanting a greater seat at the standardization table.
With the exponential growth of technology, standardization will become an ever more important arena, not just for China-U.S. cyber competition, but also for defining the digital landscape of the future. If the goal is to develop high-quality standards that are interoperable across the globe, then the strategic approaches of both Washington and Beijing are misinformed. In recognition of these challenges, one potential answer instead lies in high-tech middle powers like Seoul and Tokyo, who now have the opportunity to shift tech standard setting in a safer direction.
19. US Strategists on the Advantages and Limitations of Sea Power
US Strategists on the Advantages and Limitations of Sea Power
Most of U.S. assets and allies in the Asia-Pacific are maritime-based. History suggests that won’t be enough to overcome China’s continental advantage.
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As the specter of war hovers over the South China Sea, two U.S. strategists have written articles in respected military journals examining the strengths and limits of a maritime strategy vis-a-vis China. The Biden administration would be wise to ponder both pieces as it grapples with increased tensions over the status of Taiwan and the longer-term Cold War with China.
In the February 2022 issue of Proceedings, the journal of the U.S. Naval Institute, Thomas Mahnken, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense (including a stint in the department’s Office of Net Assessment), proposes a maritime strategy to deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a war in the South China Sea. His article is entitled “A Maritime Strategy to Deal with China.” In the Autumn 2021 issue of the Naval War College Review, Professor Jakub Grygiel, a former senior adviser to the State Department’s Policy Planning office and co-author of “The Unquiet Frontier” (which I reviewed in the Asian Review of Books) authored an essay entitled “The Limits of Sea Power.”
Mahnken bases his proposed maritime strategy on the geographical barrier known as the “first island chain,” which consists of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and peninsular Southeast Asia. The United States, he writes, should treat the first island chain as the Fulda Gap of the Asia-Pacific region (referring to the intra-German border between NATO and the Warsaw Pact). The United States and its regional allies must defend this maritime terrain with “land-based, expeditionary, naval, and air forces” supported by cyber and space assets, Mahnken argues.
He urges U.S. policymakers to deploy “inside forces” on the first island chain and sea-based “outside forces” to both support the inside forces and to “threaten China from multiple axes.” He believes that a sufficiently armed and geographically situated maritime strategy will cause China to rethink its strategy for politically or militarily annexing Taiwan, and failing that, will enable the United States and its allies to achieve victory in the event of war.
Grygiel’s article on “The Limits of Sea Power” includes historical examples of both the strategic advantages and limitations of maritime power in wars and international relations, from ancient Athens to Venice to the Crusades, and more recently to Great Britain’s rise, the First and Second World Wars, and the Cold War. Grygiel invokes Themistocles, Pericles, John Adams, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett, Halford Mackinder, Nicholas Spykman, and other strategic thinkers to support his contentions. Grygiel contends that China’s challenge to the U.S.-led world order is both maritime and continental, which exposes some of the limits of sea power that the United States needs to consider in developing strategies to win what some have called this second Cold War.
Grygiel notes that the “strategic advantage of the seas ebbs and flows in history. Land communications are not perennially inferior and sea-lanes are not inexorably ascendant in strategic value.” And, as he notes, it is not easy for a maritime power to translate its supremacy at sea into “political influence on land.” This is why the great power struggles throughout history were rarely straight land power vs. sea power conflicts. Instead, land powers and sea powers alike looked for allies that could enable them to wage war effectively across both elements of power. Great Britain, for example, for centuries supported continental coalitions to offset the greatest continental land powers. In the same way, since 1945, the United States has formed alliances with continental powers on the Eurasian landmass to maintain the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia.
Great continental land powers, like Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s Germany, in their bids for world empire sought sea power allies and control over coastal regions. Grygiel notes Napoleon’s statement that he would “conquer the sea through the power of land.” As the French Emperor reportedly said, “Make us masters of the [English] Channel and we will be masters of the world” – thus, his alliance with Spain and his erection of the Continental System. Hitler, meanwhile, conquered coastal France and allied with Italy to wage maritime warfare in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Both great powers faltered when they failed to consolidate effective political control of Eurasia thanks to Russian land power supported by the sea powers of Great Britain and the United States.
This geopolitical reality is why Mackinder’s concept of the World Island in “Democratic Ideals and Reality” was and is so important. Mackinder’s World Island combines effective political control of the Eurasian-African landmass with geopolitical insularity, enabling a power or alliances of powers based in Eurasia to be supreme both on land and at sea.
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Mackinder has often been misinterpreted as a proponent of land power, when he actually recognized that great sea powers require sufficient land bases, while great land powers can use their resources to outflank sea powers. That was the meaning behind his famous question: “What if the Great Continent, the whole World-Island or a large part of it, were at some future time to become a single and united base of sea-power? Would not the other insular bases be outbuilt as regards ships and outmanned as regards seamen? Their fleets would no doubt fight with all the heroism begotten of their histories, but the end would be fated.”
Grygiel argues that sea powers have three options to influence continental geopolitics to avoid succumbing to Mackinder’s nightmare: First, establishing a presence in the land powers’ coastal regions (usually in coordination with allies); second, imposing pressure (economic, military, and political) on the enemy’s land borders; and third, exercising control over inland seas. During most of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the United States used the first option by forming alliances with continental powers that enabled the stationing of large numbers of U.S. forces in Eurasia’s coastal regions. Arguably, in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, Washington combined the first and second options by adding economic, political, and military pressure to the border areas of the Soviet empire.
“The grip of sea powers over the continents is precarious, even when they dominate the oceans,” Grygiel warns. Their continental alliances can weaken or wane, thereby reducing the sea power’s continental presence. And continental powers can become less vulnerable to disruption at sea. These two variables, he believes, are crucial in the current conflict with China.
The United States has a relatively small continental presence in East Asia on the Korean Peninsula, but it also has a significant offshore presence in Japan and a lesser presence in Guam, the Philippines, and Australia. It has a close security relationship with Singapore and is seeking additional military bases on islands in the Indian Ocean as India-U.S. cooperation expands in the face of China’s rise. And the United States is improving relations with its old foe Vietnam, whose leaders also fear China’s ambitions. But these are mostly sea power or maritime assets.
China is today vulnerable to sea power disruption along the maritime highway that stretches from the East and South China Sea to Eastern Africa and the Mediterranean Sea, by which its economy is supplied and fueled. But Grygiel notes that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is partly continental and seeks to open or improve land routes across the Eurasian landmass. He writes, “[I]f Beijing firms up its control over land routes linking China with the rest of Eurasia, creating a continental core, American naval forces floating in the Pacific Ocean will have considerably less effect on its decisions and behavior.”
In defeating the challenges of Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s Germany, the sea powers of Britain and the United States needed Russia as an ally and co-belligerent. Today, the “great geopolitical question for the United States,” Grygiel writes, “is whether Russia will be more aligned with China – establishing a continental entente – rather than maintaining a lengthy land frontier of friction.” Unfortunately, and due in no small part to the policies of the Biden administration, Grygiel’s question has been answered at least for now: China and Russia have formed a strategic partnership that threatens to upend the U.S.-led world order. This development exposes “the limits of sea power.”
Grygiel presumably would add a land power component to Mahnken’s maritime strategy to effectively contain or defeat China. Such a strategy would include a strengthened alliance with India and efforts to drive a wedge between China and Russia, as President Richard Nixon did in the early 1970s. The important takeaway from these two important articles is that U.S. strategy toward China, especially in the immediate future, will lean heavily on the maritime power side, but in the long term Washington neglects the land power component at its peril.
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.
