Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:

"America may not be interested in irregular, unconventional, and political warfare but IW/UW/PW are being practiced around the world by those who are interested in them."
(With no apologies to Trotsky)

"Congress in the 2017 NDAA: Irregular Warfare is conducted “in support of predetermined United States policy and military objectives conducted by, with, and through regular forces, irregular forces, groups, and individuals participating in competition between state and non-state actors short of traditional armed conflict.”

"In the future, we should anticipate seeing more hybrid wars where conventional warfare, irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, and information warfare all blend together, creating a very complex and challenging situation to the combatants; therefore it will require military forces to posses hybrid capabilities, which might help deal with hybrid threats."
- Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

1. Opinion | Space Force General: China and Russia attacking U.S. space assets ‘every day’
2. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s Adviser, a Figure of Fascination and Schadenfreude
3. Nine female medics seized in Myanmar army raid now held in prison
4. The Pentagon’s China Report: Reading Between the Lines
5. Pentagon's innovation steering group mapping existing efforts
6. Inside the ‘Misinformation’ Wars
7. Leaked crash video of British F-35B shows jet dropping off carrier ramp
8. Dozens of Former Afghan Security Forces Dead or Missing Under Taliban, Report Says
9. West Point unveils specialty football uniforms for showdown with archrival Navy
10. Former Air Force Weapons Chief Tapped to Become the Pentagon’s Lead Arms Buyer
11. Israel has 'free rein' to deal with Iran's precision weapons, not its nuclear program
12. New 360 degree review to start with just 200 Marines
13. FDD | Japan, India, Quad can play big role in Micronesia: Dr Hayakawa
14. Austin orders National Guard to get vaccinated or face loss of pay
15. The Honor of a Nation - A Case for Stoicism in Foreign Policy
16. The NDAA Likely Won’t Become Law Until 2022. That’s ‘Not The End of the World’
17. The Most Powerful Data Broker in the World Is Winning the War Against the U.S.
18. U.S. delegation met with Afghan Taliban representatives in Qatar
19. How Disinformation Corrodes Democracy
20. America Is Not Withdrawing from the Middle East
21. The Global Posture Review: Strategic Vapor Lock
22. A Slavish Devotion to Forward Presence Has Nearly Broken the U.S. Navy




1. Opinion | Space Force General: China and Russia attacking U.S. space assets ‘every day’


Opinion | Space Force General: China and Russia attacking U.S. space assets ‘every day’
The Washington Post · by Josh RoginColumnist Today at 6:00 a.m. EST · November 30, 2021
When Russia blows up a satellite in space with a missile (as it did this month), or when China tests a new hypersonic missile (as it did last month), the ongoing arms race in space leaps into the news. But in between these “Sputnik”-like moments, outside the public’s view, the United States and its adversaries are battling in space every day.
While Washington officials and experts warn of the risks of an arms race in space, the United States’ adversaries are constantly conducting operations against U.S. satellites that skirt the line between intelligence operations and acts of war. The pace of conflict is intensifying, according to a top Space Force general, who told me that China could overtake the United States to become the number one power in space by the end of the decade.
“The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” Gen. David Thompson, the Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations, told me in an interview on the sidelines of the recent Halifax International Security Forum. “We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”
Right now, Space Force is dealing with what Thompson calls “reversible attacks” on U.S. government satellites (meaning attacks that don’t permanently damage the satellites) “every single day.” Both China and Russia are regularly attacking U.S. satellites with non-kinetic means, including lasers, radio frequency jammers and cyber attacks, he said.
Thompson repeatedly declined to comment on whether China or Russia has attacked a U.S. military satellite in a way that did permanent or significant damage, telling me that would be classified if it had happened. The Chinese military is quickly deploying ground-based systems for doing battle in space, such as lasers that can damage nosy U.S. intelligence community satellites, which could be considered an act of war.
“The Chinese are actually well ahead [of Russia],” Thompson said. “They're fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.”
Both the Russians and the Chinese are working on satellites that can attack other satellites, he said. For some time now there have been reports that China was developing a satellite that could claw another satellite or grab one with a robotic arm or a grappling hook. The Chinese government has several reasons to want to disable U.S. satellites, which have been useful in revealing concentration camps built to intern Uyghur Muslims and new Chinese nuclear missile silo fields.
In 2019, Russia deployed a small satellite into an orbit so close to a U.S. “national security satellite” that the U.S. government didn’t know whether it was attacking or not, Thompson said. Then, the Russian satellite backed away and conducted a weapons test. It released a small target and then shot it with a projectile.
“It maneuvered close, it maneuvered dangerously, it maneuvered threateningly so that they were coming close enough that there was a concern of collision,” he said. “So clearly, the Russians were sending us a message.”
China is building its own version of satellite-based global positioning systems, said Thompson. That’s in addition to the “couple of hundred” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites China has now deployed to watch over any part of the globe. China is also putting satellites into space at twice the rate of the United States, meaning that if nothing changes on our end, China will surpass the United States in capability in space in a few years, he estimated.
“We are still the best in the world, clearly in terms of capability. They're catching up quickly,” he said. “We should be concerned by the end of this decade if we don't adapt.”
While China is quickly weaponizing spaceits government points fingers at United States, claiming that Washington is the diplomatic stumbling black. There are reports that the Biden administration is reaching out to Beijing to establish new negotiations for a nuclear arms control, as well as international norms for cyberspace and space, but U.S. officials say that China won’t meaningfully engage.
The U.S. military is trying to speed up the procurement and deployment of space assets by creating structures like the Space Rapid Capabilities Office and the Space Development Agency, he said. Thompson’s idea is to deploy a large number of relatively low-cost satellites in constellations that increase the resiliency of U.S. space assets if they come under attack.
Conventional thinking about how to deter an enemy from attacking on the ground, by sea or in the air doesn’t really apply to space. New doctrines and norms for space need to be established, mostly by diplomats. That work will take years. Meanwhile, the arms race in space is heating up, and the United States risks losing it if it doesn’t recognize this reality.
The Washington Post · by Josh RoginColumnist Today at 6:00 a.m. EST · November 30, 2021


2. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s Adviser, a Figure of Fascination and Schadenfreude
Excerpts:
He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of Minneapolis, one of five high-achieving siblings. His mother was a teacher and a librarian, and his father worked on the business side of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Mr. Sullivan attended Yale, Oxford (on a Rhodes scholarship) and Yale Law School, and was a clerk for Justice Breyer. He became one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest advisers when she was secretary of state, stayed on in the Obama administration as national security adviser to Mr. Biden when he was the vice president, and rejoined Mrs. Clinton as the senior policy adviser on her 2016 campaign for president.
Mr. Sullivan told colleagues that he felt a burden of the responsibility for Mrs. Clinton’s loss to Mr. Trump, but he was not surprised by the result. He had grown alarmed that the mood in the country was dark and anxious, and that voters seemed more receptive to Mr. Trump’s “America First” message than the Clinton campaign had appreciated.
“How do we solve for this basic and growing division in our society that gets to issues like dignity and alienation and identity?” Mr. Sullivan asked in a talk to Yale Law School students in 2017, as reported by The Washington Post. “How do we even ask the question without becoming the disconnected, condescending elite that we are talking about?”
In a strange turn of events, some critics of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy say it includes certain hallmarks of the Trump administration. Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Afghanistan withdrawal was “America-first unilateralism in practice” and that Mr. Biden “did so in a Trumpian way, consulting minimally with others and leaving NATO allies to scramble.”
White House officials bristle at comparisons to the Trump administration. They say that while previous presidents have gotten the United States into long and disastrous conflicts (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), Mr. Biden pulled the country out of one, no matter how turbulent the process. It is an assertive foreign policy, they acknowledge, but they say it comes with a softer touch and humbler words.
When allies raised concerns, the administration’s answer was not “go jump in a lake,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters in Brussels last month. He made clear that he was drawing a contrast with “how other previous American administrations might have responded.”
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s Adviser, a Figure of Fascination and Schadenfreude
The New York Times · by Mark Leibovich · November 30, 2021
Washington has long been captivated by fallen star narratives, which has made President Biden’s national security adviser a figure of fascination, somewhere between sympathy and schadenfreude.
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Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, has told colleagues that he is determined not to have his tenure defined by the bloodshed in Afghanistan.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

By
Nov. 30, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, married Margaret Goodlander, now counsel to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, in a 2015 wedding that seems set in a distant Democratic utopia. Mr. Biden would soon retire as a popular vice president, Donald J. Trump was considered a sideshow, and Hillary Clinton was the president in waiting.
Guests at the Yale campus that weekend included a former president (Bill Clinton), a former secretary of state (Mrs. Clinton), a future secretary of state (Antony J. Blinken) and a Supreme Court justice (Stephen G. Breyer). The many former bosses on hand had pegged the golden-boy groom as an ideal national security adviser in the coming Clinton White House — which, at 40, would have made him the youngest person to hold the job.
That prediction proved largely true, if erroneous in its electoral assumption about 2016 and premature by an interlude long enough for the White House to turn over twice, China to strengthen, a pandemic to rage and the difficulties of the job to grow considerably.
So it was on Aug. 26 that Mr. Sullivan, presiding over a briefing on Afghanistan in the White House Situation Room, saw Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, turn ashen after being handed a sheet of paper.
The general — connected via video from Kabul, where the evacuation of civilians was underway — told the room that four American service members at the airport had been killed in an apparent bombing, three were near death, and dozens more were injured. There were gasps around the table as Mr. Biden winced and stared straight ahead for a few long seconds.
“The worst that can happen has happened,” the president finally said, according to participants in the meeting.
It fell to Mr. Sullivan, who ran this daily confab and was seated at the president’s immediate left, to power through his hourlong agenda. The death toll eventually rose to 13 U.S. service members.
Washington has long been captivated by fallen star narratives. This has made Mr. Sullivan a figure of fascination in recent months, something between sympathy and schadenfreude. His daily mission of managing a sprawling national security apparatus through simultaneous crises and headaches — growing tensions with China, healing a rift with France over a nuclear submarine deal, cyberattacks — has made Mr. Sullivan the face of a foreign policy team that has endured criticism from many directions, most pointedly over Afghanistan.
“A stunning disaster from beginning to end,” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, called the withdrawal in an interview, extending his critique to include the Biden administration’s foreign policy record in general. “And if I were the president right now, I would think seriously about changing quite a few people around me.”
Mr. Sullivan in Scotland this month. Mr. Biden’s trip to Europe, which the national security adviser was heavily involved in planning, allowed the White House to bank some solid accomplishments.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr. Romney did not single out Mr. Sullivan, though many have, including Brett Bruen, the director of global engagement in the Obama White House, who wrote an opinion article in USA Today calling for him to be fired.
Supporters of Mr. Sullivan see two structural complications to his role. For starters, he is in a position of enormous responsibility but circumscribed authority. Condoleezza Rice, a national security adviser and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, described the job in her memoir as “rarefied staff.” Mr. Sullivan is also a product of Washington’s insular foreign policy establishment, a cohort whose traditional support for muscular U.S. foreign policy interventions has fallen out of favor across the political spectrum in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, tweeted after Mr. Biden named his team last November.
The question is whether Mr. Sullivan, 45, lauded as a “once-in-a-generation intellect” by Mr. Biden and “a potential future president” by Mrs. Clinton, can recover from a messy year of foreign policy predicaments.
Mr. Sullivan has told colleagues that he is determined not to have his tenure defined by the bloodshed in Afghanistan. The crisis has receded somewhat since August, allowing him to focus on trade policy, energy prices and an international supply chain that has helped fuel the spike in inflation.
Mr. Biden’s recent trip to Europe, which Mr. Sullivan was heavily involved in planning, allowed the White House to bank some solid accomplishments, including a global deal to set minimum corporate tax rates and a climate agreement to reduce methane emissions. White House officials were relieved after the international uproar over the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Mr. Sullivan operated on an average of two hours of sleep a night for the duration of the three-week crisis in Afghanistan in August. He would mull over each long day during late-night walks home from the White House — his Secret Service detail trailed him — and often continue his meditations at home on a rowing machine. He declined to be interviewed for this article.
“There was no point that I sent an email to Jake at 2 or 3 in the morning during those weeks where he didn’t respond immediately,” said Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
She pointed out that Mr. Sullivan did not have the luxury of focusing on one powder keg at a time. “While to the rest of the world there was one searing crisis unfolding in Afghanistan,” Ms. Power said, “Jake was at the same time responsible for spearheading U.S. policy on everything from cyberattacks and an earthquake in Haiti to terrorist threats.”
Members of the military carried a coffin at Dover Air Force Base, Del., in August during the dignified transfer of 13 service members who were killed in an attack in Afghanistan.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
The most common defense of Mr. Sullivan over Afghanistan was that Mr. Biden was determined to get out, and fast, and it is the national security adviser’s role to carry out the president’s wishes. By most accounts, Mr. Sullivan supported the pullout, and, according to multiple officials asked many questions about its haste, particularly the abrupt closing in July of the Bagram Air Base.
The unruly and tragic withdrawal prompted much rebuke, not least from allies who complained that they had not been consulted. Mr. Sullivan has pushed back hard on this, insisting that allies were kept informed at every step and suggesting that they were upset with Mr. Biden’s conclusion. “I think the real issue is that many allies disagreed with the result of the decision,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters in Brussels in June.
Ultimately, though, the situation in Afghanistan reflected the reality of a job that often involves more damage control than decision-making. “The national security adviser is a classic high-responsibility position with limited actual power,” said John Gans, a foreign policy historian and the author of “White House Warriors,” about the history of the National Security Council.
Brent Scowcroft, who was a national security adviser to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush, would marvel at the variety of issues that fell under the national security umbrella. Mr. Scowcroft, who died last year, held the job decades before national security advisers had to worry much about things like climate change, ransomware attacks or Twitter.
“I’ve told this to Henry Kissinger,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview. “In a world of social media and billions of cellphones, he could never have snuck off to China.”
Colleagues characterize Mr. Sullivan as ambitious and intense, but not in the obnoxious manner of a Washington type. “The highest compliment that I can pay a person is that they’re a good human being,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in an interview. “I believe that Jake is a good human being.”
A lean former marathon runner, Mr. Sullivan wears sagging gray suits that (he insists) once fit him. Friends describe him as polite, curious and Midwestern in temperament, with strong allegiance to his native Minnesota.
“Reject cynicism,” he said in a commencement address at the University of Minnesota School of Public Affairs in 2013. “Reject certitude. And don’t be a jerk. Be a good guy.”
Mr. Sullivan has been known to dabble in eclectic hobbies, such as competitive speed walking. He once played on a curling team in St. Paul.
He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of Minneapolis, one of five high-achieving siblings. His mother was a teacher and a librarian, and his father worked on the business side of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Mr. Sullivan attended Yale, Oxford (on a Rhodes scholarship) and Yale Law School, and was a clerk for Justice Breyer. He became one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest advisers when she was secretary of state, stayed on in the Obama administration as national security adviser to Mr. Biden when he was the vice president, and rejoined Mrs. Clinton as the senior policy adviser on her 2016 campaign for president.
Mr. Sullivan told colleagues that he felt a burden of the responsibility for Mrs. Clinton’s loss to Mr. Trump, but he was not surprised by the result. He had grown alarmed that the mood in the country was dark and anxious, and that voters seemed more receptive to Mr. Trump’s “America First” message than the Clinton campaign had appreciated.
“How do we solve for this basic and growing division in our society that gets to issues like dignity and alienation and identity?” Mr. Sullivan asked in a talk to Yale Law School students in 2017, as reported by The Washington Post. “How do we even ask the question without becoming the disconnected, condescending elite that we are talking about?”
In a strange turn of events, some critics of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy say it includes certain hallmarks of the Trump administration. Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Afghanistan withdrawal was “America-first unilateralism in practice” and that Mr. Biden “did so in a Trumpian way, consulting minimally with others and leaving NATO allies to scramble.”
White House officials bristle at comparisons to the Trump administration. They say that while previous presidents have gotten the United States into long and disastrous conflicts (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), Mr. Biden pulled the country out of one, no matter how turbulent the process. It is an assertive foreign policy, they acknowledge, but they say it comes with a softer touch and humbler words.
When allies raised concerns, the administration’s answer was not “go jump in a lake,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters in Brussels last month. He made clear that he was drawing a contrast with “how other previous American administrations might have responded.”
The New York Times · by Mark Leibovich · November 30, 2021

3. Nine female medics seized in Myanmar army raid now held in prison
What is going to be done with Burma?

Nine female medics seized in Myanmar army raid now held in prison
At least 3 may have suffered beatings and torture in detention.
2021.11.29


Nine medics detained following a Myanmar military raid on a People's Defense Force camp in Sagaing region's Kalay township are shown in undated photos.
 Citizen Journalist
Nine female medics detained by Myanmar soldiers during a raid this month have been sent to prison after a week of questioning, with several suffering brutal treatment at the hands of their interrogators, RFA has learned.
The nine women, most of them university students and all between the ages of 17 and 21, had joined a People’s Defense Force (PDF) battalion set up to resist military rule, and are now being held at Kalay Prison in western Myanmar’s Sagaing region, sources said.
Six of the women were seized in a raid in Kalay township on Nov. 16 and were taken to the prison on Nov. 24. The three others who were detained later and held for further questioning arrived at the prison on Sunday, a spokesman for Kalay PDF Battalion No. 3 said in a statement.
In an earlier report, PDF spokesman identified those being held in Kalay as Zam Zo Zaam, Man Lam Dim, Niang Dong Clin, Mai Sawn Dawngyi, Lal Tlanhuii, Lallmuankimi, Daisy Vanlalrawni and Lalpianfeli.
At least one of the detained medics was hospitalized following torture and beatings under questioning, and the women have not been allowed yet to visit with family members, the PDF said.
Speaking to RFA last week, one PDF fighter said his group had tried to rescue the young women following their arrest in the raid last week on their camp in Sagaing.
“We tried as hard as we could to rescue them after the confrontation, but we had to retreat because of the difference in our weapons. The military has better weapons than we do,” he said.
Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun — deputy information minister for Myanmar’s ruling State Administration Council — declined when contacted last week to comment on the case of the detained medics, and requests for comment on allegations that three of those held were hospitalized after being tortured in custody have received no reply.
A spokeswoman for the Kalay PDF Medical Corps, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said that the military junta that overthrew civilian rule in Myanmar earlier this year should take full responsibility for the torture of those held in detention.
“They are torturing women and members of the medical corps. We strongly condemn the psychological and physical abuse of women,” she said. “The [ruling] military council is fully responsible for these violations of human rights.”
More than 30 clashes between Myanmar’s military and People’s Defense Force fighters have taken place in the Kalay area since the Feb. 1 military coup that ousted the democratically elected civilian government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, according to local PDF sources.
More than 65 people have since been killed in government attacks in Kalay, with more than 360 others arrested and more than 100 government soldiers killed in the fighting, the militia group said.
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Richard Finney.

4. The Pentagon’s China Report: Reading Between the Lines


Excerpts:
The Pentagon’s China Report also follows in the footsteps of an annual Pentagon assessment in the 1980s, “Soviet Military Power.” In a cover letter for the 1988 narrative, Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci warned: “Since 1981, virtually every component of Soviet military power has been expanded and modernized. Soviet military power and the threat it represents are not, then, abstract notions.” The notions may not have been abstract, but they proved ephemeral.
Within three years, the USSR had dissolved because of internal failings.
This is not to suggest that China will similarly disappear. It is instead to warn against relying only on a narrow analysis of the security situation when determining policy. The Cold War was won on the strength of alliances, free markets, and democratic values, not only by military spending. An effective policy response to China’s military buildup should consider all aspects of the situation, not just the potential numbers of nuclear weapons or ships, and employ all instruments of policy, not just the military.

The Pentagon’s China Report: Reading Between the Lines
An effective policy response to China’s military buildup should consider all aspects of the situation, not just the potential numbers of nuclear weapons or ships, and employ all instruments of policy, not just the military. 
The National Interest · by John Isaacs · November 28, 2021
In early November, the Defense Department released its long-awaited report on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” With its lengthy list of Chinese military and security advances in recent years, the report, mandated by Congress, could be read as presaging the emergence of a dangerous military competition that could threaten catastrophic war, but history tells us that’s not how this report should be read.
While it is correct that China’s efforts to increase its military strength pose significant challenges, reading them only in terms of a Cold War-like confrontation ignores important aspects of the issue and could inadvertently increase the danger. A look at some top headlines reveals a problem: The New York Times publicized, “China Could Have 1,000 Nuclear Warheads by 2030, Pentagon Says.” The Washington Post featured, “China accelerates nuclear weapons expansion, seeks 1,000 warheads or more, Pentagon says.” Fox News added, “China’s nuclear stockpile growing at ‘accelerating pace,’ will have 1,000 warheads by 2030: Pentagon.”
However, the Pentagon’s new 173-page report obscured important elements of the picture behind the headlines. For example, most of the media analyses of the report focused on the prediction that China could have as many as 1,000 nuclear warheads by the end of the decade, compared to the number of warheads, estimated between 200 and 350, that they have right now.
The report also neglected to mention the United States’ current stockpile of 3,800 nuclear weapons and a total inventory, including retired warheads awaiting dismantlement, of 5,500 nuclear weapons. Thus, even under the most pessimistic scenario in which the Chinese move ahead with their nuclear weapons program, the United States will have a more than a three-to-one advantage over China’s nuclear forces in numbers and an even more significant edge in terms of technology.

Moreover, while Beijing may have the capacity to build up its nuclear weapons stockpile, it remains unclear that Chinese leaders have made the political decision to move forward with the very expensive maximal expansion of their nuclear weapons complex.
Another partial truth: the report states that China “has numerically the largest navy in the world with an overall battle force of approximately 355 ships and submarines.”
That number may be true if you count tugboats and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the same tally. Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon points out that, “The United States has much larger and more sophisticated ships than China.” China’s navy is built primarily for its territorial waters, while the United States has a worldwide naval presence and capabilities. O’Hanlon suggested that looking at the count from another angle, the U.S. Navy has at least a two-to-one advantage in tonnage over China and at least a ten-to-one lead in carrier-based airpower over China, assuming China can successfully operate aircraft from its ships at all.
The report also examined China’s economic growth, which has been remarkable in recent decades and turned the country into an economic powerhouse. But the report’s writers could not resist overstating China’s economic progress: “Beijing continued its efforts to advance its overall development including steadying its economic growth.”
More clear-eyed analysis of China’s economy tells a different story. Two scholars at the conservative American Enterprise Institute writing in Foreign Policy called China “a declining power” and wrote, ”The Chinese economy has been losing steam for more than a decade: The country’s official growth rate declined from 14 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2019, and rigorous studies suggest the true growth rate is now closer to 2 percent.” If China is indeed steadying, it is doing so at a low ebb.
The Foreign Policy article noted that China’s aggressive policies in Asia and elsewhere and human rights abuses have produced a negative reaction in many countries:
Countries worried about Chinese competition have slapped thousands of new trade barriers on its goods since 2008. More than a dozen countries have dropped out of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative while the United States wages a global campaign against key Chinese tech companies—notably, Huawei—and rich democracies across multiple continents throw up barriers to Beijing’s digital influence.
Rising concerns about Beijing’s monopolistic practices and abuse of international norms have undermined the markets it depends on to fuel continued growth and paint a gloomy picture for the future.
The Past is Prologue
It is the Pentagon’s job to be wary of potential threats and consider the worst-case scenarios for potential threats, but that does not mean that we should accept its warnings as the last word. We can, and should, learn from experience.
William Hartung of the Center for International Policy compares the current debate to the late 1950s when Democratic politicians and military officials railed against a supposed U.S. “missile gap” with Russia. The outgoing Eisenhower administration and the new President John F. Kennedy used the controversy to launch the United States on a massive intercontinental ballistic missile construction program.
The Pentagon’s China Report also follows in the footsteps of an annual Pentagon assessment in the 1980s, “Soviet Military Power.” In a cover letter for the 1988 narrative, Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci warned: “Since 1981, virtually every component of Soviet military power has been expanded and modernized. Soviet military power and the threat it represents are not, then, abstract notions.” The notions may not have been abstract, but they proved ephemeral.
Within three years, the USSR had dissolved because of internal failings.
This is not to suggest that China will similarly disappear. It is instead to warn against relying only on a narrow analysis of the security situation when determining policy. The Cold War was won on the strength of alliances, free markets, and democratic values, not only by military spending. An effective policy response to China’s military buildup should consider all aspects of the situation, not just the potential numbers of nuclear weapons or ships, and employ all instruments of policy, not just the military.
John Isaacs is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, where he has worked on nuclear and national security issues since 1978.
Image: Reuters.
The National Interest · by John Isaacs · November 28, 2021
5. Pentagon's innovation steering group mapping existing efforts
Excerpts:
“Each of the services is clearly working on their own services capability gap so there’s a missing piece in terms of when we fight in a conflict,” Shyu said. “We don’t fight within a single service, we fight jointly.”
Shyu’s team has been working with combatant commands and services to identify experimentation ideas that they want to conduct. The research and engineering staff recently gave the COCOMS and services five weeks to submit white papers for joint experimentation ideas and received 203 responses, which was “far more than we expected,” Shyu said.
Her team presented a list of 32 top projects they wanted to fund to top department officials, including the vice chairman of the joint chiefs, though Shyu didn’t provide specific examples. She added that her team would like to continue to engage the services and combatant commands for experimentation ideas twice per year, with the potential to expand to industry.
“What we would like to do is open it up to industry to see if they have products that [are] TRL five to seven maturity level, to bring it to see if they can fulfill either the capability gap or even a portion of that capability gap,” Shyu said.
Pentagon's innovation steering group mapping existing efforts - Breaking Defense
"Each of the services is clearly working on their own services capability gap so there's a missing piece in terms of when we fight in a conflict," Shyu said. "We don't fight within a single service, we fight jointly."
breakingdefense.com · by Andrew Eversden · November 30, 2021
A soldier handles a commercially-developed drone acquired via the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). The Pentagon’s top technology official is mapping out all the innovation organizations across the department. (DIU photo)
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s new innovation steering group has taken its first steps toward transitioning innovative technology from prototyping to programs of record, starting with the basics of identifying the number of innovation organizations across the military.
Speaking Tuesday at the Association of Old Crows conference, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu outlined ongoing efforts by the steering group to improve the department’s ability to transition innovative technologies into programs of record. The steering group was created earlier this year by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.
“It’s the principal form for us to drive systemic strategy, policy, programmatic, cultural and budgetary changes,” Shyu said.
The group has created a “map” of innovation organizations across the department, she said. That has allowed her to get a better understanding of the goals of the “over 20” organizations on the list, in addition to their missions, budget and types of products procured.
The steering group is planning to create a database that will centrally house information about what these organizations have bought into the Pentagon, which Shyu hopes will provide insight for other entities with similar problems across the military.
“I want to be able to share this into a database. I want to be able to do analysis and be able to do analytics and … extract information from it,” Shyu said.
The group is also reviewing the infrastructure at the department’s large collection of research labs and testing sites across the country to assess what capabilities they have and what they lack. It’s asking questions about the types of investments the labs and test facilities are and aren’t making, and what the implications of those decisions are.
“That is the path that we’re on, trying to get information collected so we have a holistic view across the DoD, across the entire lab infrastructure test enterprise,” Shyu said.
Joint Experimentation
Earlier this year, the Defense Department created the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve to fund joint experimentation projects with an eye toward enabling Joint All-Domain Command and Control, the Pentagon’s effort to connect sensors and shooters on the future battlefield. The RDER fund “encourages prototyping and experimentation to solve joint capability gaps,” Shyu said.
Shyu said that officials have worked closely with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to understand joint capability gaps that RDER funds could help solve. Areas identified included all-domain command and control, contested logistics and long-range fires. Shyu said department officials went back to the services and asked what promising technologies they had between technology readiness levels five and seven, essentially the middle of prototype testing.
“Each of the services is clearly working on their own services capability gap so there’s a missing piece in terms of when we fight in a conflict,” Shyu said. “We don’t fight within a single service, we fight jointly.”
Shyu’s team has been working with combatant commands and services to identify experimentation ideas that they want to conduct. The research and engineering staff recently gave the COCOMS and services five weeks to submit white papers for joint experimentation ideas and received 203 responses, which was “far more than we expected,” Shyu said.
Her team presented a list of 32 top projects they wanted to fund to top department officials, including the vice chairman of the joint chiefs, though Shyu didn’t provide specific examples. She added that her team would like to continue to engage the services and combatant commands for experimentation ideas twice per year, with the potential to expand to industry.
“What we would like to do is open it up to industry to see if they have products that [are] TRL five to seven maturity level, to bring it to see if they can fulfill either the capability gap or even a portion of that capability gap,” Shyu said.
breakingdefense.com · by Andrew Eversden · November 30, 2021

6.  Inside the ‘Misinformation’ Wars
A new language for truth?

A few thoughts on truth:

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often, we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - - John F. Kennedy

"Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity. The evil all arose from the fact that he had increased his needs rather than limited them; . . . As long as fresh needs continued to be created, so new frustrations would come into being. When had the decline begun? The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution - not a social or political revolution - only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth."
- Simone de Beauvoir

"Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth."
- Simone de Beauvoir

"As soon as it has come to the point that the crowd is to judge what is truth, it will not be long before decisions are made with fists."
- Soren Kierkegaard

"I am sure if you get away from telling the truth, then there is no place where you stop." 
- Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, May 1947
Inside the ‘Misinformation’ Wars
The New York Times · by Ben Smith · November 28, 2021
the media equation
Journalists and academics are developing a new language for truth. The results are not always clearer.
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Twitter blocked links to the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before reversing itself. The story had been pushed by aides and allies of then-President Donald J. Trump.
By
Nov. 28, 2021
On Friday afternoons this fall, top American news executives have dialed into a series of off-the-record Zoom meetings led by Harvard academics whose goal is to “help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation.”
Those are hot topics in the news industry right now, and so the program at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy drew an impressive roster of executives at CNN, NBC News, The Associated Press, Axios and other major U.S. outlets.
A couple of them, though, told me they were puzzled by the reading package for the first session.
It consisted of a Harvard case study, which a participant shared with me, examining the coverage of Hunter Biden’s lost laptop in the final days of the 2020 campaign. The story had been pushed by aides and allies of then-President Donald J. Trump who tried to persuade journalists that the hard drive’s contents would reveal the corruption of the father.
The news media’s handling of that narrative provides “an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns,” according to the Shorenstein Center summary.
The Hunter Biden laptop saga sure is instructive about something. As you may recall, panicked Trump allies frantically dumped its contents onto the internet and into reporters’ inboxes, a trove that apparently included embarrassing images and emails purportedly from the candidate’s son showing that he had tried to trade on the family name. The big social media platforms, primed for a repeat of the WikiLeaks 2016 election shenanigans, reacted forcefully: Twitter blocked links to a New York Post story that tied Joe Biden to the emails without strong evidence (though Twitter quickly reversed that decision) and Facebook limited the spread of the Post story under its own “misinformation” policy.
But as it now appears, the story about the laptop was an old-fashioned, politically motivated dirty tricks campaign, and describing it with the word “misinformation” doesn’t add much to our understanding of what happened. While some of the emails purportedly on the laptop have since been called genuine by at least one recipient, the younger Mr. Biden has said he doesn’t know if the laptop in question was his. And the “media manipulation campaign” was a threadbare, 11th-hour effort to produce a late-campaign scandal, an attempt at an October Surprise that has been part of nearly every presidential campaign I’ve covered.
The Wall Street Journal, as I reported at the time, looked hard at the story. Unable to prove that Joe Biden had tried, as vice president, to change U.S. policy to enrich a family member, The Journal refused to tell it the way the Trump aides wanted, leaving that spin to the right-wing tabloids. What remained was a murky situation that is hard to call “misinformation,” even if some journalists and academics like the clarity of that label. The Journal’s role was, in fact, a pretty standard journalistic exercise, a blend of fact-finding and the sort of news judgment that has fallen a bit out of favor as journalists have found themselves chasing social media.
While some academics use the term carefully, “misinformation” in the case of the lost laptop was more or less synonymous with “material passed along by Trump aides.” And in that context, the phrase “media manipulation” refers to any attempt to shape news coverage by people whose politics you dislike. (Emily Dreyfuss, a fellow at the Technology and Social Change Project at the Shorenstein Center, told me that “media manipulation,” despite its sinister ring, is “not necessarily nefarious.”)
The focus on who’s saying something, and how they’re spreading their claims, can pretty quickly lead Silicon Valley engineers to slap the “misinformation” label on something that is, in plainer English, true.
Shorenstein’s research director, Joan Donovan, who is leading the program and raised its funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, said that the Hunter Biden case study was “designed to cause conversation — it’s not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader.”
Ms. Donovan, a force on Twitter and a longtime student of the shadiest corners of the internet, said she defines “misinformation” as “false information that’s being spread.” She strongly objected to my suggestion that the term lacks a precise meaning.
She added that, appearances aside, she doesn’t believe the word is merely a left-wing label for things that Democrats don’t like. Instead, she traces the modern practice of “disinformation” (that is, deliberate misinformation) to the anti-corporate activists the Yes Men, famous for hoaxed corporate announcements and other stunts, and the “culture jamming” of Adbusters. But their tools, she wrote, have been adopted by “foreign operatives, partisan pundits, white supremacists, violent misogynists, grifters and scammers.”
Joan Donovan, the research director at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, is a longtime student of the shadiest corners of the internet.Credit...Cody O'Loughlin for The New York Times
Ms. Donovan is among the scholars who have tried to unravel the knotty information tangle of contemporary politics. She’s currently a compulsive consumer of Steve Bannon’s influential podcast, “War Room.” Like many of the journalists and academics who study our chaotic media environment, she has zeroed in on the way that trolls and pranksters developed tactics for angering and tricking people online over the first half of the last decade, and how those people brought their tactics to the right-wing reactionary politics in the decade’s second half.
To the people paying close attention, this new world was riveting and dangerous — and it was maddening that outsiders couldn’t see what was happening. For these information scholars, widespread media manipulation seemed like the main event of recent years, the main driver of millions of people’s beliefs, and the main reason Mr. Trump and people like him won elections all over the world. But this perspective, while sometimes revelatory, may leave little space for other causes of political action, or for other types of political lies, like the U.S. government’s long deception on its progress in the war in Afghanistan.
What had been a niche preoccupation has now been adopted by people who have spent somewhat less time on 4chan than Ms. Donovan. The broadcaster Katie Couric recently led the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder. I moderated a panel at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum with a different, somewhat dental, label for the same set of issues, “truth decay.” (The RAND Corporation seems to have coined that one, though T Bone Burnett did release an album by that name in 1980.) There, an Australian senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, said she thought the biggest culprit in misleading her fellow citizens about climate change had been Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp — hardly a new issue, or one that needs a new name. The New York Post’s insistence that the emails prove President Biden’s corruption, and not just his son’s influence peddling, are part of the same partisan genre.
This hints at a weakness of the new focus on misinformation: It’s a technocratic solution to a problem that’s as much about politics as technology. The new social media-fueled right-wing populists lie a lot, and stretch the truth more. But as American reporters quizzing Donald Trump’s fans on camera discovered, his audience was often in on the joke. And many of the most offensive things he said weren’t necessarily lies — they were just deeply ugly to half the country, including most of the people running news organizations and universities.
It’s more comfortable to reckon with an information crisis — if there’s anything we’re good at, it’s information — than a political one. If only responsible journalists and technologists could explain how misguided Mr. Trump’s statements were, surely the citizenry would come around. But these well-meaning communications experts never quite understood that the people who liked him knew what was going on, laughed about it and voted for him despite, or perhaps even because of, the times he went “too far.”
Harper’s Magazine recently published a broadside against “Big Disinfo,” contending that the think tanks raising money to focus on the topic were offering a simple solution to a political crisis that defies easy explanation and exaggerating the power of Facebook in a way that, ultimately, served Facebook most of all. The author, Joseph Bernstein, argued that the journalists and academics who specialize in exposing instances of disinformation seem to believe they have a particular claim on truth. “However well-intentioned these professionals are, they don’t have special access to the fabric of reality,” he wrote.
In fact, I’ve found many of the people worrying about our information diets are reassuringly modest about how far the new field of misinformation studies is going to take us. Ms. Donovan calls it “a new field of data journalism,” but said she agreed that “this part of the field needs to get better at figuring out what’s true or false.” The Aspen report acknowledged “that in a free society there are no ‘arbiters of truth.’” They’re putting healthy new pressure on tech platforms to be transparent in how claims — true and false — spread.
The editor in chief of The Texas Tribune, Sewell Chan, one of the Harvard course’s participants, said he didn’t think the program had a political slant, adding that it “helped me understand the new forms of mischief making and lie peddling that have emerged.”
“That said, like the term ‘fake news,’ misinformation is a loaded and somewhat subjective term,” he said. “I’m more comfortable with precise descriptions.”
I also feel the push and pull of the information ecosystem in my own journalism, as well as the temptation to evaluate a claim by its formal qualities — who is saying it and why — rather than its substance. Last April, for instance, I tweeted about what I saw as the sneaky way that anti-China Republicans around Donald Trump were pushing the idea that Covid-19 had leaked from a lab. There were informational red flags galore. But media criticism (and I’m sorry you’ve gotten this far into a media column to read this) is skin-deep. Below the partisan shouting match was a more interesting scientific shouting match (which also made liberal use of the word “misinformation”). And the state of that story now is that scientists’ understanding of the origins of Covid-19 is evolving and hotly debated, and we’re not going to be able to resolve it on Twitter.
The story of tech platforms helping to spread falsehoods is still incredibly important, as is the work of identifying stealthy social media campaigns from Washington to, as my colleague Davey Alba recently reported, Nairobi. And the Covid-19 pandemic also gave everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to my colleagues at The New York Times a new sense of urgency about, for instance, communicating the seriousness of the pandemic and the safety of vaccines in a media landscape littered with false reports.
But politics isn’t a science. We don’t need to mystify the old-fashioned practice of news judgment with a new terminology. There’s a danger in adopting jargony new frameworks we haven’t really thought through. The job of reporters isn’t, ultimately, to put neat labels on the news. It’s to report out what’s actually happening, as messy and unsatisfying as that can be.
The New York Times · by Ben Smith · November 28, 2021

7.  Leaked crash video of British F-35B shows jet dropping off carrier ramp

Wow. The US is not the only country with leaks.


Leaked crash video of British F-35B shows jet dropping off carrier ramp
Defense News · by Andrew Chuter · November 30, 2021
LONDON – The crash into the sea of a British F-35B combat jet on Nov. 17 was caught on video and has been subsequently leaked on Twitter.
The video shows the jet attempting to take off from the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in the eastern Mediterranean.
The short-take-off-and-vertical-landing version of the F-35 fails to generate sufficient lift or thrust and the pilot ejects as the aircraft falls over the front of the warship.
The ejection and a parachute floating down can be seen in the video posted by the Twitter account @sebh1981.
The pilot from the Royal Air Force 617 Squadron , known as the Dambusters, was safely rescued by helicopter.
The Ministry of Defence has yet to authenticate the footage.
An MoD spokesman acknowledged the existence of the video but didn’t comment further on the leak.
“We are aware of a video circulating online. It is too soon to comment on the potential causes of this incident. The recovery efforts are ongoing and the Defence Accident Investigation Branch will report back their preliminary findings in due course,” he said.
Some media outlets here reported the 16 seconds long video appeared to have been taken from one of the warship’s surveillance cameras.
Doug Barrie, the senior air analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London, said the footage could be consistent with rumors circulating last week that a rain cover had been left on the aircraft prior to takeoff.
“The video shows the aircraft does not have sufficient acceleration and didn’t get the thrust expected. The pilot wasn’t near takeoff speed as he approached the ramp,” he told Defense News.
“It seems to fit the speculation regarding the rain cover allegedly causing the problem, but we don’t actually know that yet,” said Barrie.
Efforts are being made to recover the jet from the sea.
Britain’s F-35B force is jointly operated by pilots from the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.
HMS Queen Elizabeth is on its maiden operational deployment and has been leading a carrier strike group which included U.S. Marine F-35Bs and a US Navy warship on a trip to the Far East.
The ship is on its way back to the U.K.


8. Dozens of Former Afghan Security Forces Dead or Missing Under Taliban, Report Says
And I fear it will only get worse.

Dozens of Former Afghan Security Forces Dead or Missing Under Taliban, Report Says
The New York Times · by Sharif Hassan · November 30, 2021
More than 100 former members of the military and police have been killed or forcibly disappeared by the Taliban since the group came into power, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch.
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The Taliban patrolling Jalalabad last month.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
By
Nov. 30, 2021Updated 3:07 p.m. ET
More than 100 former members of the Afghan security forces in four provinces have been killed by the Taliban or disappeared at their hands in the first two and a half months of the militants’ rule, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
The deaths are part of a string of assassinations and summary executions, largely considered revenge killings, that have been happening across Afghanistan since the fall of Ashraf Ghani’s government in August.
The attacks underscore the dangers that Taliban critics, activists and members of the former government’s security forces face despite the Taliban announcement when they seized power of a general amnesty for former government workers and military officials.
In a report released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch detailed the killing or forced disappearance of 47 members of the former government’s security forces who had either surrendered to the Taliban or were detained by them between Aug. 15 and Oct. 31 in four of the countries 34 provinces: Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar and Kunduz.
The group’s research indicates that the Taliban are responsible for the deaths or disappearances of at least another 53 former security force members in the same provinces.
“The Taliban leadership’s promised amnesty has not stopped local commanders from summarily executing or disappearing former Afghan security force members,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director of the Human Rights Watch. “The burden is on the Taliban to prevent further killings, hold those responsible to account and compensate the victims’ families.”
Ms. Gossman said that the killings had evolved into a more “deliberate” effort to crush dissidents and those who may pose a threat to the new government and that the Taliban leaders were “condoning” the atrocities.
The Taliban have a long history of targeting security forces and officials of the former government, as well as activists, journalists and elders. Particularly in the 18 months leading up to the takeover, the Taliban carried out an assassination campaign against journalists, government and military workers and civil society leaders, though they rarely took responsibility for the deaths.
Ghazni was among four Afghan provinces where Human Rights Watch found evidence of retaliatory killings.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
But the recent summary executions and assassinations have raised new fears because they occurred even in the face of reassurances from senior Taliban leaders that the new government would not seek retribution against members of the former government and military.
Score settling and blood feuds have marked Afghanistan’s last four decades of conflict, often playing out at the local and familial level.
A Taliban spokesman told The New York Times that some fighters might have taken the law into their own hands to settle old scores, but that the killings and disappearances were not Taliban policy. The spokesman, Inamullah Samangani, said the government was “seriously investigating” such incidents to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
“We are fully committed to the amnesty that we have announced,” Mr. Samangani said in a phone interview. “We don’t have a security system yet in place, and some people are taking advantage of this vacuum, misusing the name of Islamic Emirate and carrying out such killings.”
He said: “Revenge killings aren’t in the interest of our government. They are harmful to Islamic Emirate’s reputation at this critical time.”
The killings raise concerns that Taliban leaders may have little control over lower-rank commanders and foot soldiers, who are believed to be behind most of the forced disappearances and executions.
Among the Afghans whose deaths were documented by Human Rights Watch was a man named Dadullah, who had worked only for a few months as a police officer in Kandahar city, then quit his job and moved to the town of Spin Boldak near the Pakistan border before the Taliban takeover.
Last month, Dadullah returned to Kandahar city. Two men believed to be Taliban members picked him up on Oct. 23, and his body was sent home in an ambulance later that evening.
“We took the body to the governor’s house, but the Taliban would not tell us anything and did not allow us to meet the governor,” a neighbor told Human Rights Watch.
Since seizing power, government leaders have instructed members of the former security forces to register with local officials and surrender their weapons in exchange for a letter guaranteeing their safety.
But some victims’ families say the Taliban have used these screening to detain and kill former officials, the report said. Former civil servants in top government posts, such as judges, who did not realize they were required to obtain an amnesty letter have been beaten and detained for not doing so, according to the report.
A Taiban checkpoint in Kandahar last month.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
The report also says the Taliban have carried out searches to find some former security force members, and have threatened and abused their families to try to get them to disclose their hide-outs.
Many of the victims were arrested when the Taliban’s elite special forces, known as red units, raided their homes in the middle of the night under the pretext of seizing weapons, according to the report. These units led the Taliban’s most successful operations against coalition and former government forces in recent years.
In September, the killings prompted the Taliban’s acting defense minister, Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoub, to issue an admonition to his commanders.
“Islamic Emirate has announced a general amnesty to all the soldiers and bad people who stood against us, and martyred us and caused suffering to the people,” he told the Taliban fighters in a voice message distributed by the government. “Once they are pardoned, no mujahid has the right to break the amnesty commitment or take revenge.”
But that seems to have had little effect on the Taliban fighters.
In a recent killing confirmed by The Times, Bahauddin Kunduzi, a former intelligence officer, was found dead on Tuesday, two weeks after he went missing in Kunduz city, a hub in Afghanistan’s north.
Mr. Kunduzi had handed over his weapon and equipment and had received a letter guaranteeing his safety, according to his family. The Taliban even allowed him to continue working at the intelligence agency.
Then one evening, a group of Talibs arrived at the grocery store Mr. Kunduzi had just opened to generate some income since the new government was unable to pay his monthly salary, his relatives said.
“They beat him up in the store, then took him,” one family member said, his voice disappearing into sobs behind the phone. “They strangled him, then dumped his body into a ditch.”
A Taliban fighter at Friday Prayer at a mosque in Kabul.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
The New York Times · by Sharif Hassan · November 30, 2021

9. West Point unveils specialty football uniforms for showdown with archrival Navy
What strikes me about this uniform is how much SF related stuff that is on it - from the Regimental crest on the helmet to crossed arrows (on the shirt collar and the cleats) to the Legion's motto - "Strength and Honor" and of course De Oppresso Liber as the name tape. It seems that most other organizations that are honored get a unit patch and maybe some unique colors on the uniforms but I can't recall seeing this many unique accoutrements displayed on the uniform.  So this really seems like a great honor for our Regiment.

I hope the Special Warfare Museum at Fort Bragg requests a uniform for display after the game. This honor should be preserved for posterity.

West Point unveils specialty football uniforms for showdown with archrival Navy
Stars and Stripes · by Bill Wagner · November 30, 2021
West Point unveiled the special uniforms Army will wear during the 2021 Army-Navy Game, which will be held December 11, 2021. (U.S. Army football)

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Tribune News Service) — Army West Point football players will honor the special forces soldiers who helped liberate Afghanistan from Al-Qaeda with the “United We Stand” uniforms they wear for the Dec. 11 showdown with archrival Navy.
The Black Knights will don Nike-designed specialty uniforms honoring the Army Special Forces Command, which have have participated in every United States military conflict since the Korean War. Repeatedly since their inception, the soldiers of the various Army special forces have lived up to their motto of De Oppressor Liber or “To Free the Oppressed.”
That motto is stitched on the right chest area of the uniforms, which specifically recognize the Operational Detachment Alphas from the 5th Special Forces Group. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ODA soldiers were deployed from Fort Campbell in Kentucky to Afghanistan as part of Task Force Dagger.
Upon arrival in Afghanistan, the ODA detachment rendezvoused with Central Intelligence Agency officers who had infiltrated the country and would coordinate support. Key to success would be partnering with the indigenous anti- Taliban forces, particularly the Northern Alliance and Pashtun tribes in the south.
Resistance fighters from those native armies fought the Taliban in combination with U.S. air power and special operations forces on the ground. Operational Detachment Alpha had four units (534, 555, 574 and 595) involved with Task Force Dagger.
After a rocky start, U.S. forces successfully partnered with the Northern Alliance to coordinate B-52 air strikes with horse-mounted charges to create one of the most iconic chapters in American military history. In the rough terrain of Afghanistan, special forces soldiers, some of whom did not know how to ride, found themselves on horseback alongside their Afghan partners.
After three weeks of fighting, the combined U.S. and Afghan forces were able to seize Kandahar and the Taliban surrendered.
The personnel of Task Force Dagger answered the nation’s call at a time of great uncertainty. Special forces soldiers from Operational Detachment Alpha deployed into an incredibly complex situation even as the fires still burned at Ground Zero.
They represented the tip of America’s spear aimed at the heart of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
___

Stars and Stripes · by Bill Wagner · November 30, 2021

10. Former Air Force Weapons Chief Tapped to Become the Pentagon’s Lead Arms Buyer
Not just military-related tech but "technologies the military craves."
Former Air Force Weapons Chief Tapped to Become the Pentagon’s Lead Arms Buyer
Bill LaPlante has spent the past six years working on military-related tech.
defenseone.com · by Marcus Weisgerber
Bill LaPlante, who left the Pentagon in 2015, has spent the past six years working on technologies the military craves. President Biden said Tuesday that he would nominate the former Air Force weapons chief to become the Pentagon’s top arms buyer. Politico first reported his nomination.
Autonomy, machine learning, and other software, to name a few such areas, have been front and center in LaPlante’s post-Pentagon roles overseeing key technology at Mitre and Draper Labs, two non-profit research-and-development organizations that support the Defense Department.
If confirmed by the Senate, LaPlante would get the chance to institutionalize many of those efforts inside the Pentagon. But he also faces a number of immediate challenges, including a supply-chain crisis that has increased costs and delayed weapons projects.
“LaPlante is well known to the Senate Armed Services Committee and should have no trouble with the confirmation process,” Arnold Punaro, chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association, said in an emailed statement.
Still, 22 other Biden picks for Pentagon jobs are currently hung up in the Senate, Capital Alpha Partners’ Byron Callan, wrote in a note to investors. The White House has yet to identify nominees for 13 other Pentagon positions. And many of the acquisition billets within the office LaPlante would oversee are filled with acting officials.
If confirmed, LaPlante would join two of his former Obama administration acquisition colleagues, current Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary for research and engineering.
Callan, the Capital Alpha Partners analyst, said “addressing DoD software acquisition culture/practices” will be among LaPlante’s top biggest tasks. Other priorities should include “making better use of the acquisition tools Congress has provided DoD to accelerate program development and procurement, and to encourage new entrants, and...improving DoD sustainment practices and policies,” Callan wrote.
LaPlante would also be expected to help shape the Pentagon’s position on defense industry consolidation and to determine the fate of a popular pandemic policy of paying contractors more money up front to create more liquidity within the supply chain, Callan wrote.
“He has a great background and understanding of the industry, which also has a high and deep respect for him,” said Hawk Carlisle, president and CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association. LaPlante serves on NDIA’s board.
In an October 2020 LaPlante credited a handful of acquisition policy changes—including “rapid middle-tier prototyping and acquisition pathways; rapid capability offices in the Army, Air Force, and Space Force; expanded other transaction authority; rapid experiments; and pitch days where small businesses propose ideas and DOD cuts a check on the spot” — with speeding innovation.
“These are needed tools that provide buyers flexibility and alternative approaches, while freeing innovators from one-size-fits-all application of DoD’s sometimes-byzantine processes,” LaPlante wrote in a Defense One commentary co-authored with Jamie Morin, an executive at the non-profit Aerospace Corporation and former Obama administration Pentagon official.
During his time as the Air Force’s top weapons buyer, LaPlante oversaw a team that chose Northrop Grumman to build a new stealth bomber, something the military had not done in more than three decades.
After leaving the Pentagon in late 2015, LaPlante went to work for the MITRE Corp., where he oversaw more than 4,000 scientists and engineers supporting the Defense Department. There, LaPlante focused on making the non-profit’s federally funded research and development centers respond faster to Pentagon and intelligence community emerging needs. He oversaw efforts involving the new nuclear command-and-control systems, automation, artificial intelligence, cyber security, protecting satellites in space, and making the security clearance process faster.
LaPlante is also on the board of Lift, a Detroit-based, public-private partnership between the Defense Department, industry, and academia, working on the development and deployment of advanced manufacturing technologies. He was also a member of the Defense Science Board, where he co-chaired the Task Force on Gaming, Exercising, Modeling, and Simulation.
In July, LaPlante was part of a group that met with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, headquarters of Draper Labs. LaPlante touted the non-profit’s work to secure the microchips used inside the military’s weapons and other research-and-development initiatives.
“I truly believe this is part of serving our nation that does give us an advantage around the world,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who attended that July meeting. “I believe in what we do here.”
defenseone.com · by Marcus Weisgerber
11. Israel has 'free rein' to deal with Iran's precision weapons, not its nuclear program


Israel has 'free rein' to deal with Iran's precision weapons, not its nuclear program
Even the Russians and Syrians support Israeli action against Iran in Syria. However, the Biden administration is tying Israel's hands when it comes to Iran's nuclear program.
 By  Jacob Nagel  Published on  11-30-2021 11:07 Last modified: 11-30-2021 14:25

Defense Minister Benny Gantz recently revealed details from an incident in 2018, in which an Iranian drone was shot down upon entering Israeli airspace after being launched from the T4 airbase in Syria. The drone's mission was to deliver explosives to terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria. The interception of the drone, which is also a type of precision weapon, marked another chapter in the war against Iran's efforts to smuggle weapons, through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to other terrorist groups as well.
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According to foreign media reports, the number of Israeli attacks has increased significantly recently, and not a week goes by without reports of one or more strikes in Syria. Most of the attacks are aimed at Iranian infrastructure and forces in Syria, and target efforts to transfer precision components to Lebanon.
This is the "campaign between the wars" launched by Israel several years ago to enforce its "red lines" in Syria and damage Iran's nuclear program. Israel has made it clear it won't allow Iranian forces and proxy militias to operate and establish a foothold in Syria, and won't allow Syria to be used as a transit hub for game-changing weapons earmarked for Hezbollah. Precision weapons are not just rockets, but also unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles, and multirotor drones.
Israel initially adhered to a policy of ambiguity, but changed its mode of thinking, and since 2019 government and military officials have revealed that thousands of Iranian targets have been destroyed in recent years. The message was devised for a specific audience: Iran, Russia, and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Since 2009, Iran has been focused on developing precision weapons under orders from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the understanding that such weapons are "game-changers." Accordingly, the IDF chief of staff determines that these weapons and their components are the second-greatest threat to Israel, after Iran's nuclear program. Israel understands that the plans are intertwined, as part of a long-term Iranian plan, and that both must be stopped.
The interesting twist recently is that while the alleged Israeli attacks are ongoing, the Russians and Syrians are not complaining. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have invested tremendous energy in convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia's interest is to remove Iran from Syria. Israel stressed that as long as the threat persists and Iran violates Israel's red lines, the attacks will continue, there won't be stability in Syria, and Russia's investment in the country will be in jeopardy. Russia finally understands and accepts this narrative. Whether Putin takes active steps to remove Iran from Syria is another question, but he is permitting Israel to act freely.
Assad, for his part, who likely wouldn't be in power without Russian and Iranian intervention in his country's civil war, recently joined the Russians in tacitly coming to terms with the Israeli airstrikes. The Iranians have begun overstepping their bounds, and Assad realizes that they are exploiting Syria and violating its sovereignty. He understands that without dislodging them from Syria, he also won't be re-welcomed into the family of Arab nations. Iran's precision-weapon program also poses a threat to Lebanon, which is on the verge of economic and social collapse. If weapons keep being smuggled to Hezbollah, and particularly if precision weapons keep being manufactured and converted in factories on Lebanese soil, Israel will have no choice but to attack in Lebanon. This could escalate into all-out war, which would put the final nail in the coffin of the beleaguered country.
All this is happening amid the backdrop of renewed nuclear talks between Iran and world powers in Vienna. Israel wants a good, comprehensive deal that terminates its ability to acquire a nuclear bomb, forever. US President Joe Biden and his special Iran envoy Robert Malley have adopted an approach that is very much conflicting. The precision weapons are not part of the negotiations – and it's uncertain this is a bad thing at this stage – in order to focus on the nuclear program. The precision weapons issue should be addressed parallel and separate to the nuclear issue, while the campaign between the wars should be intensified.
The American desire for a "less for less" deal has led to a "more for less" framework. The removal of American sanctions, even if partial, will allow Iran to rehabilitate its economy and continue supporting terror, as it does with its precision weapons operations, and at the same time would send a message across the globe that doing business with Iran is again worthwhile. Ergo it is "more for less," because Iran would have to give up "far less."
The Iranian doctrine is predicated on four pillars: The US has the ability to attack – but Biden is weak and won't do it; Israel understands the US is weak and won't attack alone, because it can't alone; Iran believes its economy can withstand the pressures at their current level; and finally, the Iranian leadership senses there is no credible threat against the regime, the lives of its officials or their personal assets.
As long as these four pillars stand, the Iranians think they can come to Vienna with maximalist, absurd demands, and at the same time do as they please in Syria and elsewhere in the region. They are only willing to discuss sanctions relief, American assurances that any future administration will abide by an agreement, even if that demand contradicts American law, and the cessation of the International Atomic Energy Agency's open investigations. The Iranians have not agreed to discuss what they will give in return, in terms of their nuclear program, violations, or regional behavior.
Washington understands Israel's position regarding the precision weapons, hence the White House is quietly ignoring the campaign between the wars, but it insists on returning to negotiations with a poorly conceived approach. Israel has "free rein" to deal with the precision weapons, but not the nuclear program, not even through its considerable cyber capabilities – which of course is unacceptable from Israel's perspective. The actions against the precision weapon threat will continue under Washington's approval and virtually open support of the Russians and Syrians; and the Israeli actions against the Iranian nuclear program could lead to a conflict.
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel is a former national security adviser to the prime minister and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

12.  New 360 degree review to start with just 200 Marines

I think 360 degree evaluations are important in this modern era.

New 360 degree review to start with just 200 Marines
marinecorpstimes.com · by Philip Athey · November 27, 2021
To help remove toxic leaders, the Marine Corps is testing out a 360 degree review in an attempt to give Marines honest feedback from superiors, peers and juniors.
It is hoped Marine who are reviewed will receive more honest feedback on strengths and flaws than is allowed within the current fitness report system.
“Fitness reports, however, provide critically important but limited insights into a Marine’s strengths and weaknesses,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger wrote in the Corps’ Talent Management 2030 document, released in early November. “At present, the FITREP captures only the positive views of two supervisors who, in some cases, are not co-located with the Marine reported on or only had limited observation of them.”
The 360 reviews will also be used by promotion and leadership boards to ensure that the Corps is not promoting leaders who create toxic work environments for those they lead while looking like they do a good job to superiors.
In 2022 the Corps will launch a pilot program focusing on about 200 field grade officers and senior enlisted Marines, Lt. Col. Jim Armstrong, who work with Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told reporters on Monday.
RELATED

"Treat people like human beings," for one.
It will primarily be used as a professional development tool, Armstrong said, allowing leaders to see what subordinates and peers actually think about their abilities and weaknesses.
“Our initiative is focused on providing the individual Marine with additional insight on hidden strengths and unidentified weaknesses and then to provide them coaching as they learn to address that,” Armstrong told reporters on Monday.
“The critical factor, again, is the development of that leader in order to make sure that we’re maximizing the talents and skills of those individuals that we’ve recruited into our service,” he added.
Once Marines receive the review, the Corps will offer coaching to hopefully improve upon weaknesses.
“Our expectation is that our Marines will see their participation in these reviews as a valuable developmental tool assisting our Marine Leaders to identify their hidden strengths and unidentified weaknesses with real, honest feedback and coaching to further develop and advance the capabilities of our Force,” Armstrong added.
The Corps plans on using the pilot program to narrow down the exact questions that should be asked during the review, Armstrong said.
“If the results of this pilot affirm that expectation, then we would look to expand availability to Marines of additional ranks and leadership roles,” Armstrong said in a Tuesday email.
Toxic leaders
Though the tool primarily will be used to help Marine leaders improve, it will also work to weed out toxic leaders.
It’s “proven means for identifying traits of toxic leadership and can help reduce the incidence of toxic leaders advancing to senior levels within the service,” Berger said in the talent management document.
The Corps is looking to weed out toxic leaders as part of its efforts to increase retention within the force.
As it prepares for a potential fight against a near-peer opponent, the Marine Corps hopes to increase the maturity, physical ability and training of the force.
The new strategy sees Marines fighting in small highly dispersed units, which puts more responsibility on more junior Marines than any previous fight.
“The machine gunner who is also corpsman, a medic, also has to be able to talk to MQ-9 UAVs and bring in ordnance and understand the satellite connection that is required to do that,” Berger told reporters in early November.
In order to handle that extra responsibility, the Marine Corps is increasing the level of training each Marine receives and is overhauling its human performance system by adopting techniques seen in modern college athletic departments.
With the increased investment in training and human performance the Corps hopes to keep more Marines longer.
Historically the Corps only retains 25% of first-term Marines. Though the Corps has not said what the new retention goal will be, the number is certainly increasing.
In addition, the Corps has changed its tattoo policy in the hopes of increasing retention.
Ultimately Berger hopes the Corps adopts a cultural change in how it sees manpower management.


13. FDD | Japan, India, Quad can play big role in Micronesia: Dr Hayakawa


FDD | Japan, India, Quad can play big role in Micronesia: Dr Hayakawa
Japan and US have had a relationship with the Micronesian region for over 100 years. Australia has also been providing patrol boats for the past nearly 30 years. India has just begun. It will be important to build a relationship first.’
fdd.org · by Cleo Paskal Non-Resident Senior Fellow · November 28, 2021
Alexandria, US: There is a lot going on in the Pacific Islands at the moment, including the unrest in the Solomon Islands and the fragmentation of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
The PIF issue is important. The PIF used to be the main political grouping for the Pacific islands, but recently five countries from the Micronesian geographic region announced their intention to leave the group because they concluded that their concerns were being ignored and their voices muted by larger members, including Australia and New Zealand. Together, the five countries—Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Kiribati and Nauru—cover an area larger than the continental US and India combined.
Apart from the five countries, the Micronesia region also includes some highly strategic locations, including the American territory of Guam, site of major military installations. As a result of dissatisfaction with the PIF, and wanting to make their concerns heard internationally without passing through the distortion of intermediaries, there is growing interest among Micronesian leaders to consolidate and work together more as a group.
Since the end of World War II, the main major power in the region has been the United States. There are American citizens on American soil in Guam and the Marianas, and three of the independent countries (Palau, RMI and FSM) have Compacts of Free Association (COFAs) with the US, giving Washington control and responsibility over their defense.
However, the COFAs are up for renewal in the next couple of years and, in spite of bipartisan support for a quick and fair resolution in the US Congress, the US administration is moving very slowly, including sending what are perceived as low-level negotiators to the meetings.
Other regional powers are concerned, including Micronesia’s neighbor Japan. To get a better understanding of how the situation is viewed, in this edition of “Indo-Pacific: Behind the Headlines” we speak with deeply experienced academic and practitioner Dr Rieko Hayakawa, one of the founders of Japan’s Indo-Pacific Study Group, who has spent decades working in, and with, the region.
Q: How long have there been interactions between Japan and the people and islands of Micronesia?
A: More than a million samurai suddenly lost their jobs after US Commodore Perry’s cannonball diplomacy. In 1890, some samurai-turned-merchants began to sail to the islands of Micronesia and trade began. In 1914, under the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan entered World War I and occupied German-held Micronesia. After the Versailles Conference, Japan was granted a mandate for these islands, and in 1922 began a civilian government. By 1935, about 50,000 Japanese, the same number as the islanders, had settled in Micronesia, mainly from Okinawa. Okinawan fishermen began a pelagic fishing industry that continues today and has grown to export to the Japanese market. Many of the islanders married Japanese and still use their Japanese names, such as the late President Nakamura of Palau.
Currently, there are Japanese embassies in each country in the Micronesian region, which were established by Japanese Prime Minister Mori at the request of Palauan President Nakamura. Japan’s support is extensive, but more permanent assistance is needed.
Q: Can you describe the idea for a Japan-Palau Friendship treaty?
A: The Indo-Pacific Study Group of Japan has submitted a draft “Japan-Palau Friendship Treaty” to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Parliament Union for PICs, in order to solve the persistent financial difficulties of the small island nation of Palau. This would be a permanent support aimed at strengthening the current system with the US. It would be an obligation for Japan to support Palau and a right for Palau. A similar agreement exists between New Zealand and Samoa.
It is not a matter of charity, but the stability of Palau and the Western Pacific region, located in the second island chain, is important to the national interests of Japan and other countries. This might be an interesting model in the rest of the region. And could possibly involve the Quad in some aspects.
Q: What has the relationship between the US and Micronesia been like since the end of World War II?
A: It is widely known that for about 15 years after the war, until the John F. Kennedy administration came into power [Kennedy fought in the Pacific during World War II and his life was saved by two Solomon Islanders], the Micronesian region was “benign neglected”—but even US scholars are not sure that this is an appropriate description. The US not only neglected the region, but also conducted nuclear tests under a strict security regime. It was a report by a UN field inspection committee that revealed the terrible condition of US trusteeship. The Kennedy administration then launched a massive budgetary effort and Peace Corps deployment to redeem the Trusteeship.
The US military has always had an interest in Micronesia, which it calls a “strategic area”. In the 1970s, independence negotiations between the countries in the region and the United States continued. In the 1980s, the United States signed Compacts of Free Association (COFAs) with three countries in Micronesia, Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. They are known as the Freely Associated States (FAS).
The COFA agreements with the FAS have hundreds of pages, unlike the few pages that New Zealand has with the Cook Islands and Niue. The COFAs aimed at ensuring US security, not the security of the people of Micronesia.
Some Micronesia high officials said, “Micronesia are not satisfied with the US level of involvement as well as terms. US calls it aid, but it’s not aid, it’s a partnership.”
And with the end of the Cold War, the United States suddenly disappeared from the region, just as they did in Afghanistan. When I started working on the Pacific island countries in 1991, there were many projects left that the US had lost interest in. One of them, PEACESAT, used a satellite provided free of charge by the US government, and operated by the University of Hawaii, for education and welfare, covering the entire PICs. The University of the South Pacific also used the same satellite, USPNet, to connect its 12-member island countries. In the 1990s, international communications were still limited and expensive. I was able to make USPNet an ODA project for the first Pacific Island Leaders Summit hosted by the Japanese government in 1997.
Q: Can you please give us a bit of background to the relationship between the countries of the Micronesian region and the Pacific Islands Forum—and the role played by Australia and New Zealand?
A: The Pacific Islands Forum (originally known as the South Pacific Forum) is a regional organization established in 1971 with Fiji taking the initiative and the former British colonies as core members. Australia and New Zealand have been full members of the Forum since its establishment. As a result, there is a strong British colonial culture in the organization.
On the other hand, the current Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau, which are located north of the Equator and were colonies of Germany and Japan, as well as under US administration, were late to join the PIF.
Palau was concerned about the strong influence of Australia and New Zealand in the Forum, and during its chairmanship in 1999, then-President Nakamura removed the “South” from the organization’s name. I happened to be in Palau and was told by President Nakamura that Helen Clark and John Howard were stubborn and fought strongly against this change.
When the Micronesia Presidential Summit (MPS) began in 2001, reform of the PIF was on the agenda. The establishment of a new organization composed entirely of Pacific island countries, excluding Australia and New Zealand, was also being considered. In other words, the current move by the Micronesian countries to leave the PIF has been in the works for 20 years.
Q: What is going on with the COFAs? What needs to be done?
A: In my 30 years of experience, I have rarely met a US government official who had knowledge and passion for this region. One of them told me at a cocktail party that the US government, especially Congress, wanted to return the FAS states to Japan. It was half in jest, half in earnest. After Secretary Clinton’s island-hopping tour with Kurt Campbell, the US paid a bit more attention to the region, but not much changed.
Another item on the MPS agenda was the COFA negotiations with the US government. The Micronesian countries wanted to work together to save time and money from having to hire expensive lobbyists and lawyers in Washington DC. China, on the other hand, has made it clear that it is prepared to offer enormous aid without the effort. It told Palau’s President Whipps, “the sky is the limit”.
Just as the Indian government, through the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), provided $1.5 million to improve community health centers in Palau, the Quad should support the Micronesian region.
The US Congress, like Ed Case from Hawaii, has done a great job for the FAS. He should be proud of the many US citizens who have dedicated their lives to Micronesia. For example, Fr. Francis Hezel, who founded the Micronesia Seminar, which provides educational support for 60 years, the gem of the region.
There needs to be a high-level effort to quickly resolve the COFAs, something that will also be good for the US and the aspirations of the Micronesian region—with its varied and unique relationships to the US—to come together as a group should be respected, honored and facilitated.
Q: Palau has set up a Palau National Security Coordinator (PNSC) position. Can you please explain why, what the challenges are, and if this might be a good idea for other Pacific Island Countries?
A: The PNSC is responsible for developing the national security strategy, serving as the President’s primary security advisor, and as the primary point of contact with foreign military officials and all security information.
The PNSC was established by presidential executive order in March 2021 and is currently operating with a limited staff. This security capability is very important, but it requires the support of the United States, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan.
This NSC capability is also important for other PICs, but it is meaningless without financial and human support from trusted countries. In particular, security issues are changing rapidly, and human resources support for small island nations is essential.
Palau, like any other island nation, is a paradise for tourists, but it is also a paradise for all kinds of transnational crime. In the past few years, nearly 1,000 Chinese mafia members have entered Palau and stayed illegally to conduct online casinos, including cybercrime. A major mafia boss made a contract with former President Remengesau of Palau to obtain a casino license and for leasing the island of Angaur for the casino resort.
In addition, due to Palau’s strategic location and the aggressive approach from China, the same former President Remengesau wrote a letter to former US Secretary of Defense Esper requesting the presence of US military in August 2020.
Q: Is there a role for the Quad in Micronesia? If so, where does India fit in?
A: Japan and the United States have had a relationship with the Micronesian region for over 100 years. Australia has also been providing patrol boats for the past nearly 30 years. India has just begun, for example, the UNOPS project in Palau mentioned earlier. It will be important to build a relationship first.
Currently, Japan, US, and Australia have deployed advisors on the ground and are conducting joint maritime surveillance. In September 2021, three JMSDF ships entered Palau for the first time after WWII to conduct joint exercises with the Palau Maritime Law Enforcement. Next year, joint exercises with the US are expected. The Western Pacific is vast and security is under the jurisdiction of the United States. How about the Indian Navy joining in here?
The Micronesian countries have no universities, only colleges. A scholarship to an Indian university in the same English-speaking region would be a great opportunity for them. Especially medical scholarships to India. India has very good health systems and the best doctors. Or even setting up a medical school in the region.
All the Pacific countries have large youth populations, and they have problems with unemployment, drugs, violence, and suicide. They need opportunities.
If I could add one last thing, I am convinced that India’s ICT capacity has supported the IT development in Pacific Island countries. The backbone submarine cables are being laid with the cooperation of Japan, the US and Australia, but Micronesia need various technical and institutional support to prepare for cyber security.
Cleo Paskal is Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Special Correspondent for The Sunday Guardian. Follow her on Twitter @CleoPaskal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Cleo Paskal Non-Resident Senior Fellow · November 28, 2021

14. Austin orders National Guard to get vaccinated or face loss of pay


Austin orders National Guard to get vaccinated or face loss of pay
According to a memo sent Tuesday, Guard members must be vaccinated in order to participate in training or face loss of pay and being marked absent.
NBC News · by Courtney Kube
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered that all members of the National Guard and Reserve must receive Covid vaccines or face loss of pay and being marked absent without cause from drills and training, according to a copy of a memo obtained by NBC News.
On Aug. 24, Austin made the Covid vaccine mandatory for all service members and directing the secretaries of the military services to issue their own implementation guidance and timelines. The mandate extended to all service members on active duty or in the Ready Reserve, including the National Guard.
On Nov. 2, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma wrote a letter to Austin, asking him to rescind the vaccine mandate for members of the Oklahoma National Guard. Days later, Stitt appointed a new adjutant general of the Oklahoma National Guard who said he would not enforce the vaccine mandate.
On Monday, Austin responded to Stitt, denying his request to rescind the mandate for the Oklahoma National Guard. What remained unclear, however, was how the Pentagon planned to enforce the mandate for members of the National Guard while they are on state duty. Most of the time, including when they are training, members are on state duty and answer to their governor.

Nov. 5, 202118:22
The memo issued by Austin on Tuesday lays out three ways the Pentagon can enforce the mandate across the nation, even while members of the Guard are on state duty.
According to the memo, which was sent to the service secretaries, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of Pentagon personnel, and the highest-ranking officer in the National Guard, known as the chief of the National Guard bureau, members must be fully vaccinated in order to participate in drills and training.
If they do not participate, they will get no credit for the time served and will not receive excuses for their absences, which will impact the days they accumulate towards retirement. They will also not receive pay when training or activated on state duty if they are not vaccinated. Members of the National Guard are paid with federal money.
Austin ordered the secretaries of the military branches and the Pentagon’s personnel chief to issue similar guidance to apply to the Guard and Reserve members of their respective branches. The policies and implementation guidance must be published no later than Dec, 6, 2021.
More than 400,000 Americans serve in the National Guard. The Oklahoma National Guard has about 8,000 members.
NBC News · by Courtney Kube

15.  The Honor of a Nation - A Case for Stoicism in Foreign Policy

Excerpt:

The reputation of a nation is made up of the collective actions of its leaders and its people. Does it uphold the principles set out above, how does it treat its allies and partners, does it keep its word? If it does not uphold these principles it will never be a great nation, if it does not treat its allies and partners with respect it will soon be without any and if it doesn’t keep its word it will have no standing as a leader in the international community.
The Honor of a Nation
Medium · by Donald J. Robertson · November 30, 2021
A Case for Stoicism in Foreign Policy

by Michael “Mick” Patrick Mulroy, Adam Piercey, and Donald J. Robertson

Photo by David Beale on Unsplash
George Washington was influenced by Stoicism. He was so fond of the Stoic philosopher and Roman statesman, Cato the Younger, that he actually arranged for a play about him to be performed for his soldiers before the battle of Valley Forge. Perhaps the most famous line in that play was:
Better to die ten thousand thousand deaths,
Than wound my honor. — Jospeh Addison, Cato, a Tragedy
A founding father, the first General, and first the President of the United States understood the importance of honor.
The Stoics derived four virtues from the teachings of Socrates as the fundamental principles of their philosophy. These were wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. They believed that people who exhibited all of these principles were honorable.
These four main aspects of virtue or excellence (arete in Greek) each held a specific value for the different activities that a Stoic would carry out in their day-to-day lives.
  • Wisdom was not just knowledge but also the opposition of folly or thoughtlessness, and included the pursuit of reason.
  • Justice meant lawfulness and integrity but also included acts of public service and opposition to injustice or wrongdoing.
  • Courage (or fortitude) was meant to represent brave-heartedness and endurance, but also the opposition of cowardice.
  • Moderation stood for the opposition of excess, and the pursuit of orderliness.
A Stoic would hope to embody all of these traits in their day-to-day activities as they strove to pursue a life of good, and right. As Stoicism became more widespread, the actions of its followers grew in influence, including in the political sphere. As each person’s actions cause effects in those around them, they begin to see the impact of those actions on a greater and greater scale.
The reputation of a nation is made up of the collective actions of its leaders and its people. Does it uphold the principles set out above, how does it treat its allies and partners, does it keep its word? If it does not uphold these principles it will never be a great nation, if it does not treat its allies and partners with respect it will soon be without any and if it doesn’t keep its word it will have no standing as a leader in the international community.

Photo by Andre Klimke on Unsplash
Afghanistan and Promises Made
The attacks in New York and Virginia on September 11, 2001, by the terrorist group Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, mobilized international support for the United States. The Star-Spangled Banner played in capitals around the world and NATO united behind the U.S. where it matters the most, going to war.
This led to the invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban who had allowed Al Qaeda to operate there. The invasion included the Northern Alliance, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, and Germany. These other countries were not attacked. Yes, this threat if left unchecked could become a serious problem for them, but they went to war because they had made a promise to do so. They kept their word and they did so for twenty years.
The “graveyards of empires” is a quote many have heard about Afghanistan.
They then started to build an Afghan military, their intelligence service, their police force. Afghan’s had seen superpowers come and go throughout history. From Alexander the Great to the British, the Soviet Union, and now the United States. The “graveyards of empires” is a quote many have heard about Afghanistan. Afghans have heard it as well. It was difficult to get them to trust us, but they did.
Would the U.S. and its allies be there for the long haul? Would America, once its troop left the country, honor the promise that if we were to leave and they met the standards we laid out, they would have the opportunity to come to the United States? Standards that include fighting along with our forces, risking their lives to fight those that would oppress their people, and for the human rights of all. Thousands took that chance.
Courage and Justice is Honor
Acts of courage alone are not inherently honorable, they must instead take into account two things: the reason for the action, and the intended effect of the outcome. As Marcus Aurelius wrote:
Let it make no difference to you whether you are cold or warm if you are doing your duty. And whether you are drowsy or satisfied with sleep. And whether ill-spoken of or praised. And whether dying or doing something else. For it is one of the acts of life, this act by which we die. It is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in hand. — Meditations, 6.2
To do what is right is what matters, and whether or not you are praised or pummeled is irrelevant.
In any organization with strict ethical and honor codes, a prevailing culture of the men and women serving in that organization will be focused upon protecting and providing refuge or assistance to those in need. As Tamler Sommers, a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, put it in a recent interview with Ryan Holiday:
Honour cultures tend to attach great value to acts of courage that benefit the group. — Tamler Sommers
The culture of these organizations to oppose wrongdoing and injustice shows virtue, and it is the duty of that organization’s members to carry out those actions.
Aiding and protecting those in need is certainly an important part of honor cultures, but there is also a secondary practice within those cultures as well; to honor and uphold the agreements formed by those organizations. Sometimes, agreements can be positive and provide added value, or be beneficial to both sides. Other times, agreements can be challenging, one-sided, or even costly. However, the presence of an agreement, pact, or partnership means that those participating parties must act to uphold the terms of that agreement. To do something with integrity, especially in the pursuit of public service and to uphold those agreements made before, is honorable, and must be pursued as best as possible. To break from an agreement would mean to bring dishonor on an organization, and that dishonor can have rippling effects into the future.
The standard set by Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius led the Roman Empire for 19 years, until his death in 180 CE. Throughout that time, Marcus would face serious challenges in the empire including plague, uprisings, and war but he would do so with honor and integrity. Upon taking the throne, Marcus inherited an empire whose borders surrounded much of Europe, bringing with them the dangers of warring tribes and enemies on several fronts. During his reign, Marcus’ experiences spoke much to the honor and reputation that an organization can gain or lose through its actions.
At many points in the wars between Rome and the tribes of northern Europe, Marcus would found himself dealing with tribal leaders with whom Rome had existing agreements. Marcus did not tolerate allies who broke treaties and failed to keep their word. For example, when several Germanic tribes proposed an armistice with Rome, during the First Marcomannic War, Marcus did not trust them, viewing the armistice as a ruse — something that would only have remained in place while it was convenient for the enemy. Marcus was proven right to be skeptical as the tribes kept aiding one another in raids against Roman provinces. When the time came to dole out the rewards from the wars or seek new agreements, you can bet that Marcus had trepidation towards those with poor reputations.
At other points, Marcus would be faced with the difficult position of having to decide whether to push for a peace treaty or pursue Rome’s enemies and continue fighting at the cost of more troops and resources. When fighting the a Sarmatian tribe called the Iazyges, Marcus faced this dilemma and needed to decide whether to grant peaceful terms or continue to fight. Ultimately, Marcus chose to continue fighting and by the war’s end, these enemies returned an incredible number of Roman captives back to Rome. If Marcus had just agreed to peace and walked away, over a hundred thousand captured Roman subjects would have been abandoned, left as slaves of the enemy. We can infer from this outcome that Marcus chose to fight on in hopes that he could rescue those Romans, and not leave them behind even though peace would have been much easier.
As emperor of Rome, Marcus also had to face sedition from one of his prized commanders, as a betrayal occurred when Avidius Cassius was declared emperor by his troops in Egypt and sought to take the Roman throne for himself. At that moment Marcus had a choice: crush the rebellion, or choose a more peaceful alternative. Instead of launching into outright war with Cassius, Marcus chose instead to offer a pardon to Cassius and his troops if they would lay down their arms. Cassius’ own officers turned against him and sent Cassius’ head to Marcus as an offer of penance. Marcus would honor his word and not punish the rebels for their actions. As emperor, it would only have taken Marcus one order to commit the entire army of rebels to death but he chose instead to act with restraint and clemency. Many times in history this restraint has been noted by historians and contemporaries as a true sign of Marcus’ character.
Veterans Step Up and Step In
The U.S. decision to leave Afghanistan without leaving a residual force was against the advice of the military chain of command. Many veterans disagreed with that decision, but many did agree. Where there was almost unanimous agreement among veterans was the need to keep the promise made by their government to those Afghans who fought alongside U.S. troops. The chaotic withdrawal, the seeming lack of a plan, and the very real possibility that many would be left behind motivated many veterans to take action. They volunteered to do what they could and help those whom the U.S., not honoring its promise, was leaving behind.
These volunteer veterans formed groups with like-minded civilians and they soon were moving Afghan partners around Taliban checkpoints onto the airport. Even when the final U.S. presence left, these groups did not stop, they moved to try to get people out by other means. They felt compelled to honor a promise made by their country. To them it wasn’t a political calculation, it was an oath.
The honor of a nation has to actually come from the nation, though, and its representatives. History will record it and our allies will remember it, as will our adversaries.
Medium · by Donald J. Robertson · November 30, 2021


16. The NDAA Likely Won’t Become Law Until 2022. That’s ‘Not The End of the World’

As REM sings "it's the end of the world as we know it."

Excerpts:
This long timeline makes it increasingly likely that the bill won’t become law until 2022.
“The likelihood of the NDAA being pushed into January is getting higher and higher, which is not the end of the world,” said Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
It wouldn’t be the first time. The fiscal 2011 bill became law on January 7, 2011; the fiscal 2008 bill became law on January 28, 2008; and the fiscal 2006 bill became law on January 6, 2006. The bill for fiscal year 1996 wasn’t signed into law until February 10, 1996. Most recently, the fiscal 2021 bill became law on January 1, when Congress overrode President Donald Trump’s veto.
The bill also isn’t critical to how the department functions. Other parts of the government routinely do their jobs without an authorization bill. The State Department, for example, has not had an authorization bill for nearly 20 years.
“DoD can operate just fine without an authorization bill,” Harrison said.

The NDAA Likely Won’t Become Law Until 2022. That’s ‘Not The End of the World’
The Pentagon does not need the must-pass bill to operate, experts say.
defenseone.com · by Jacqueline Feldscher
It’s looking more and more likely that the annual defense policy bill will not become law in 2021.
Congress frequently has an end-of-calendar-year push to pass the bill, which authorizes the Defense Department activities for the fiscal year that began in October, requests reports or briefings from the Pentagon, and sets new policy on things such as military justice reform or who should register for the draft. But experts say there’s lots of precedent for the legislation passing in the new year and few consequences to doing so.
A Senate motion to end debate on the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act failed on Monday by a vote of 41-51; it needed 60 ayes to set up a vote for final passage. All Republicans who voted rejected the procedural step forward. They were joined by five liberal lawmakers: Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also voted against the motion when it became clear it would fail—a procedural move that will allow him to bring it up for a vote again.
Some Republicans said they were rejecting the process set by Schumer, not the bill itself, and complained that they did not have enough time to debate the bill and have an open amendment process.
“We’re not delaying national security,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday night. “This is the opposite. We are demanding that we show, through open and robust debate, that our men and women in uniform are our priority.”
But Schumer pushed back, saying that the process has been “fair and reasonable” and that committee leaders agreed to hold votes in the full Senate on 19 bipartisan amendments.
“That’s more than the total number of amendments to the NDAA that received votes under the Republican majority and under Leader [Mitch] McConnell when we debated this bill in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Not more than each year, more than all of them put together,” Schumer said Tuesday.
While analysts called the failed cloture vote “disappointing,” they are optimistic Congress will still pass a bill. Congressional staff will need to continue negotiations to agree on which and how many amendments will be considered. After that, the Senate will have to pass the bill, representatives from the House and Senate will need to reconcile the two different versions of the bill, then the final bill will need to pass each chamber again before it can become law.
This long timeline makes it increasingly likely that the bill won’t become law until 2022.
“The likelihood of the NDAA being pushed into January is getting higher and higher, which is not the end of the world,” said Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
It wouldn’t be the first time. The fiscal 2011 bill became law on January 7, 2011; the fiscal 2008 bill became law on January 28, 2008; and the fiscal 2006 bill became law on January 6, 2006. The bill for fiscal year 1996 wasn’t signed into law until February 10, 1996. Most recently, the fiscal 2021 bill became law on January 1, when Congress overrode President Donald Trump’s veto.
The bill also isn’t critical to how the department functions. Other parts of the government routinely do their jobs without an authorization bill. The State Department, for example, has not had an authorization bill for nearly 20 years.
“DoD can operate just fine without an authorization bill,” Harrison said.
Not passing a bill, however, could undermine Congress’ oversight power, according to Bradley Bowman, a director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“The State Department doesn’t take questions [from lawmakers] as seriously because there’s no bill where you can impose consequences. It shifts the balance of power,” Bowman said. “It makes appropriators even more powerful.”
Even though the bill is viewed as a must-pass piece of legislation that Congress has approved every year for the past six decades, there are few consequences when it is delayed until the new year. The bill authorizes Defense Department programs and gives Congress a chance to set priorities, but does not actually disburse any money. The appropriations bill is what funds the department, and blurred lines between authorization and funding bills means that appropriations legislation sometimes also order reports or set policy too.
Bowman acknowledged that the appropriations bill is more important when it comes to buying equipment to prepare troops to fight. But even that is in danger, since the government is funded by a continuing resolution that will expire on Friday.
“If I had to pick one right now...I’d say ‘pass a defense appropriations bill so we don’t have a long-term CR’,” he said. “That would be my first request, because when you fund a program, that’s treated with or without the NDAA as an authorization.
defenseone.com · by Jacqueline Feldscher

17. The Most Powerful Data Broker in the World Is Winning the War Against the U.S.

Excerpts:
A smarter approach would begin domestically, with actual (and robust) implementation of the Biden administration’s June executive order. This would entail blocking or unwinding arrangements by which large volumes of sensitive U.S. data flow to China, whether through medical records, cellphone apps or other channels — all of which are basically unregulated right now.
Democratic allies must also work together to promote data sharing among themselves while limiting flows to China. A blueprint was introduced by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. This idea, called Data Free Flow With Trust, ought to become allied policy.
For upward of a generation, Beijing has been coldly effective in designing a strategy of global data mercantilism: data hoarding for me, data relinquishing for thee.
If Washington and its allies don’t organize a strong response, Mr. Xi will succeed in commanding the heights of future global power.
The Most Powerful Data Broker in the World Is Winning the War Against the U.S.
The New York Times · by David Feith · November 30, 2021
Guest Essay
China Is Winning the Big Data War
Nov. 30, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

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By Matt Pottinger and
Mr. Pottinger served in the Trump administration as the senior Asia adviser in the National Security Council and later as deputy national security adviser. Mr. Feith served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
President Joe Biden came away from his summit with China’s President Xi Jinping on Nov. 15 committed to prosecuting what he called “simple, straightforward competition” with China. Yet Beijing is already beating the United States and its allies in one crucial domain: data.
Data is the oil of the 21st century, the indispensable resource that will fuel artificial-intelligence algorithms, economic strength and national power. The wellspring of this data is all of us: our health records and genetic sequences, our online habits, the supply chain flows of our businesses, the terabytes of imagery guzzled by phones, drones and autonomous cars.
The competition for global influence in the 21st century will require protecting and harnessing this data to achieve commercial, technological and military advantages. So far, China is winning, and the West is barely even engaged.
Through a latticework of recent laws and regulations, Mr. Xi has been hard at work making the Chinese Communist Party the world’s most powerful data broker. How does Beijing do that? By walling Chinese data off from the world, exerting new extraterritorial power over global data flows and putting foreign companies operating in China in a legal bind — all while absorbing other countries’ data by means licit and illicit.
Mr. Xi knows that even locking down only Chinese data, representing the patterns and behavior of some 1.4 billion people, would hobble Beijing’s rivals in the quest for global economic superiority.
The Biden administration has spoken about the importance of data in our competition with China. But no visible strategy has emerged. That threatens Americans’ privacy, economic competitiveness, national security and future global standing. This will be a major test of America’s China policy in 2022.
Washington’s blind spot to the centrality of big data in Beijing’s ambitions and to the ways our own data are being exploited in service of those ambitions is perplexing at a time when American politicians are growing more concerned about the collection and potential exploitation of big data by U.S. tech giants.
It is further perplexing because Americans in bipartisan fashion also are wising up to the ways that Beijing exploits and weaponizes other U.S. resources, like our capital markets.
That’s evident in how Washington is finally — if fitfully — beginning to address the self-destructive flow of U.S. dollars into China’s military and global surveillance apparatus. While these sorts of measures still need to be scaled up dramatically, at least policymakers now have some tools to curb Beijing’s easy access to U.S. capital.
Not so when it comes to data, where Beijing believes that it has a free hand and that the West is too distracted or feckless to respond meaningfully. Mr. Xi is thinking and acting big, and has been since his first days in power.
In 2013, shortly after assuming the presidency in Beijing, Mr. Xi declared: “The vast ocean of data, just like oil resources during industrialization, contains immense productive power and opportunities. Whoever controls big data technologies will control the resources for development and have the upper hand.”
Since then, Beijing has been building the framework to ensure that mass accumulations of data serve the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic interests.
A series of laws implemented in 2017 asserted the party’s power to gain access to private data on Chinese networks, whether in China or associated with Chinese firms such as Huawei overseas.
Now Beijing has quietly enacted a new set of laws — first the Data Security Law in September, followed in November by the Personal Information Protection Law — that go even further by demanding not just access to private data but also effective control over it.
This has a huge impact on foreign firms operating in China. Not only must their Chinese data stay in China and be accessible by the state, but Beijing now demands control over whether they can send it to their own headquarters; to a corporate lab in, say, California; or to a foreign government that has made a law enforcement or regulatory request.
Beijing’s new laws may make it criminal to comply with foreign sanctions against China that involve data — like shutting off banking or cloud services to a Chinese entity linked to human rights atrocities. In these cases, foreign firms can comply with U.S. law, or they can comply with Chinese law, but not both.
The impact of these laws is clear. Tesla, Apple and others have opted to build dedicated Chinese data centers — sometimes in partnership with Chinese state entities, lest they lose access to the large Chinese consumer market. Goldman Sachs faced pressure against sending memos to its U.S. headquarters.
Beijing’s recent actions complement its longstanding efforts to buy, steal and otherwise acquire data from foreign sources worldwide. Beijing hacks multinational corporate databases. It runs “talent recruitment” programs at foreign universities and firms. It buys foreign companies, such as an Italian maker of military drones. It funds its own data-driven start-ups in open foreign markets like Silicon Valley.
The approach is nakedly nonreciprocal. It relies on access to foreign data while denying foreigners access to Chinese data — and appears to assume that foreign governments won’t respond. The United States, after all, has no comprehensive federal approach to data governance, while the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation is focused mostly on consumer privacy.
Will American and allied policymakers develop approaches to limit strategic data flows to China? For now, the Biden administration’s answer is: maybe.
“Our strategic competitors see big data as a strategic asset,” the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said this summer, “and we have to see it the same way.”
This is clear and compelling language. But data did not appear to be high on Mr. Biden’s agenda with Mr. Xi, judging from official readouts of the summit.
And to date, U.S. policy remedies are idle and insufficient.
In June, the administration issued an executive order embracing a new regulatory process to restrict cross-border data flows on national security grounds. But the new process hasn’t yet been put to use — not against Chinese drones, Chinese access to U.S. data centers and biotech labs, or other potential targets.
In the meantime, U.S. diplomats’ and trade negotiators’ engagement on data issues is dominated by bitter fights with European regulators over privacy rules for American tech giants. The far greater threat from Beijing goes largely unaddressed.
The good news is that if democratic nations get their act together, they may be in a better position than Beijing, which complicates its own progress through apparent paranoia.
In recent months, Mr. Xi has cracked down on private Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, forcing them to relinquish their data troves to state-controlled third parties. This crackdown, which helped erase more than $1 trillion in market value, will make these companies less innovative now that they no longer control their data.
But banking on Chinese authoritarian overreach to preserve America’s edge is no strategy.
A smarter approach would begin domestically, with actual (and robust) implementation of the Biden administration’s June executive order. This would entail blocking or unwinding arrangements by which large volumes of sensitive U.S. data flow to China, whether through medical records, cellphone apps or other channels — all of which are basically unregulated right now.
Democratic allies must also work together to promote data sharing among themselves while limiting flows to China. A blueprint was introduced by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. This idea, called Data Free Flow With Trust, ought to become allied policy.
For upward of a generation, Beijing has been coldly effective in designing a strategy of global data mercantilism: data hoarding for me, data relinquishing for thee.
If Washington and its allies don’t organize a strong response, Mr. Xi will succeed in commanding the heights of future global power.
Matt Pottinger, a former U.S. deputy national security adviser, is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. David Feith, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs until early 2021, is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
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The New York Times · by David Feith · November 30, 2021


18.  U.S. delegation met with Afghan Taliban representatives in Qatar

U.S. delegation met with Afghan Taliban representatives in Qatar -State Department
Reuters · by Reuters
Head of the Taliban delegation Abdul Salam Hanafi and other members of the delegation take part in international talks on Afghanistan in Moscow, Russia, October 20, 2021. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool via REUTERS
WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. delegation led by the special representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, held talks with senior Afghan Taliban representatives in Qatar on Monday and Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said.
The two sides discussed the international community’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and the U.S. delegation pledged to continue to support U.N. efforts to address the situation, the State Department said in a statement on Tuesday.
The U.S. officials "expressed deep concern regarding allegations of human rights abuses and urged the Taliban to protect the rights of all Afghans, uphold and enforce its policy of general amnesty and take additional steps to form an inclusive and representative government," the State Department said.
The U.S. officials urged the Taliban to implement a commitment on providing countrywide access to education at all levels for women and girls.
"The Taliban expressed openness to engaging with the international community on full access to education and welcomed efforts to verify and monitor progress to enroll women and girls in school at all levels," the State Department said.
It said the U.S. delegation included representatives from the intelligence community, the Treasury Department and the U.S. international aid agency USAID, while "technocratic professionals" also took part on the Afghan side.
Reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Kanishka Singh; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sam Holmes
Reuters · by Reuters


19. How Disinformation Corrodes Democracy

Excerpts:
Addressing foreign disinformation could also set in motion efforts to tackle the altogether more complex and entrenched problem of domestic disinformation, which often bumps up against the need to protect free expression, providing authoritarian governments cover to curb inconvenient speech in their own countries. Here, Biden could encourage the wider international adoption of the Pledge for Election Integrity spearheaded by the pro-democracy nonprofit Alliance of Democracies in 2019. Signatories promise to “not fabricate, use or spread falsified, fabricated, doxed, or stolen data or materials for disinformation or propaganda purposes; avoid the dissemination of doctored media that impersonate other candidates, including deep-fake videos;” practice good cyber-hygiene (ensuring that candidates, campaigns, and data about supporters are all safe from hacking operations); not use astroturfing to attack opponents; and maintain transparency in campaign funding.
Democracies should form a bloc united against the use of disinformation by foreign powers.
Biden is the only American politician to have signed the pledge—over 350 others signed in 2019, including politicians participating in elections for the European Parliament and in contests in Canada, Georgia, and Germany. The Biden administration should consider adding a clause to the agreement that would ask signatories to commit to not willfully undermining trust in the democratic process for political gain. After all, politically motivated disinformation about electoral fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election eventually inspired similar claims in the 2021 German parliamentary elections; the far-right party Alternative for Germany claimed that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud, a refrain that U.S. Republicans had popularized earlier. Although the claims did not gain broad purchase, the German example shows that politicians in established Western democracies are not below spreading disinformation for political gain. The Biden administration should treat as a matter of urgency the need to get attendees at the democracy summit to make a pledge to eliminate the scourge of domestic disinformation. This understanding would help set in place a standard that would allow international election observers to assess the use of domestic disinformation in elections at all levels, social media companies to make decisions regarding content moderation without being accused of political bias, and voters to confidently evaluate candidates.
How Disinformation Corrodes Democracy
Biden’s Summit Must Confront the Scourge of False Narratives
November 30, 2021
Foreign Affairs · by Nina Jankowicz · November 30, 2021
President Joe Biden will convene the inaugural Summit for Democracy in early December. His administration intends the gathering to signal the end of the era of democratic backsliding and creeping authoritarianism ushered in by its predecessor and to insist to the world that the United States—with its steadfast moral convictions and values and its exemplary status as a “city upon a hill” after which other countries can model themselves—is back.
The summit was one of Biden’s earliest and most concrete foreign policy proposals. He spoke about it when campaigning for the presidency. It represents an opportunity to build and reinvigorate critical coalitions and alliances that the Trump administration allowed to deteriorate. The meeting need not be purely symbolic; it can lead to cooperation around fighting the corrupting influence of foreign flows of money and to the creation of economic groups meant to counterbalance authoritarian adversaries, such as China and Russia. To be successful, the summit should generate meaningful commitments from those in attendance. But the most urgent issue on the agenda—the one needing the most dedicated international action—should be the foreign and domestic use of disinformation, or false or misleading information spread with malign intent. Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, after Russia used a hack-and-leak operation paired with an online influence campaign to try to swing the vote for Donald Trump, the phenomenon of disinformation has grown only wider, encompassing not just foreign online influence campaigns but those trafficked and amplified by elected U.S. officials. Disinformation is not just a partisan issue; it strikes at the connective tissue of democracy and should headline a summit meant to bolster democracies in perilous times.
MAKING TRUTH UNKNOWABLE
For years, authoritarian regimes, such as those in China and Russia, have used disinformation to strengthen their sway at home by, for example, releasing false stories through state-run media outlets and employing armies of online social media users and bots to give their policies the appearance of grassroots support. These malign actors have gradually started to use these tactics abroad, attempting to sway electoral contests and conflicts in Estonia, Georgia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and beyond. In its ability to manipulate and distort the narratives around elections, disinformation poses a tremendous threat to twenty-first-century democracies. More worryingly, politicians in both nascent and established democracies, including Hungary, Poland, and the United States, are using online, social media–enabled disinformation to target the most susceptible voters. Ultimately, as the journalist Peter Pomerantsev observed in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, disinformation seeks to make the truth unknowable and undermine public trust in the possibility of an established set of facts. With nothing certain, voters cannot have confidence in elections, the functioning of government, or the importance of their role in the democratic process. Democracy flounders without peaceful, rules-based participation in elections. The United States woke up to this reality when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, but the country has yet to address the use of disinformation with sufficient urgency within its borders or elsewhere. The summit is a chance to change that failing.
The United States has yet to address the use of disinformation with sufficient urgency.
The little that is publicly known about the summit’s agenda and guest list has inspired skepticism. The invitees include many traditional democratic allies and countries actively combating disinformation, such as France. The French government created a robust strategy to counter election interference in the wake of Russian interference in the U.S. election in 2016. During France’s 2017 presidential election, when the Kremlin unsuccessfully targeted the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, who would go on to win the presidency, it deployed new measures, including assigning independent, apolitical bodies to oversee election campaigning and monitor the integrity of the voting process. Yet France will attend the summit alongside several countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and India, that the nongovernmental organization Freedom House has labeled “partly free” or even “not free.” Many of these governments have actively used domestic disinformation campaigns against their own people. Addressing the inclusion of such countries on the summit’s guest list, the Biden administration insisted that an “inclusive, big tent approach” will help “galvanize democratic renewal worldwide.” But the summit will do little to achieve that goal if it does not address the systematic use of lies to influence elections, trick voters into compliance with disinformation campaigns, or indeed provoke them into a dangerous rage.

Recent reporting suggests that the administration may be considering introducing an initiative at the summit dubbed the “Alliance for the Future of the Internet” that would offer an alternative to the “vision of the Internet as a tool of State control promoted by authoritarian powers such as China and Russia,” according to a document obtained by Politico. This would represent a break from the optimistic, techno-utopian vision of the online world that prevailed in the 1990s and the first decade of this century and that failed to predict the ways the Internet could be used to divide and dupe people and incite violence. The idea behind the alliance would be to find agreement on important issues and principles, such as data privacy, shared cybersecurity standards, and platform interoperability (which, among other positives, would allow users to move their data easily between social media platforms should they choose to leave one). But without a more serious discussion about the ills of disinformation—which the document refers to under the bland rubric of “information integrity,” belying what a polarizing issue and bellwether for antidemocratic behavior disinformation has become—none of these principles are worth much. Disinformation must be recognized not as a niche issue but as the urgent problem that it is, one that fuels violent extremism, public health crises, discrimination, and democratic backsliding. Platform interoperability, better cybersecurity, and increased data privacy protections will get democratic activists only so far when their own governments are drawing from the authoritarian playbook to use online surveillance, microtargeting, and false messaging against their own citizens.
This has been the case in Brazil, Georgia, the Philippines, and Poland, where the ruling parties—and in some cases, government entities themselves—have used fake accounts to give the false impression that they enjoy substantial grassroots online support (a practice known as “astroturfing”), spread false or misleading stories disguised as news, and intimidate journalists, opposition activists, members of marginalized communities, and political figures by stoking online mobs against them. Some of these techniques are also common in the United States; during the 2020 election, opponents of then vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris spread unsubstantiated sexualized disinformation about her, including that she “slept her way to the top” and that she was secretly a man, among other grotesque allegations. A study I led at the Wilson Center found over 262,000 instances of gendered or sexualized falsehoods and abuse against Harris in the two months preceding the presidential election. To maintain the credibility of the United States and of the summit—and to attempt to address the increased use of disinformation around the world—the president must confront the issue honestly and head-on.
A BULWARK AGAINST DISINFORMATION
The summit can mark a good first step in wider efforts against disinformation. Democracies should form a bloc united against the use of disinformation by foreign powers. Such a bloc could be molded in the image of the solidarity achieved in the wake of the Kremlin’s poisoning of the former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom in 2018; for this explicit and gross violation of British sovereignty, British allies around the world coordinated the expulsion of hundreds of Russian diplomats from their countries. These countries also worked together to respond to the corresponding disinformation campaign the Kremlin launched to deny that it had poisoned Skripal with a military-grade nerve agent; the United Kingdom distributed fact sheets to allies and foreign policy and media influencers to use in their communications. This was the first such campaign to respond to foreign interference in a synchronized multilateral fashion. If Biden laid the foundation for a new counterinterference coalition at the summit, the next time countries such as China, Iran, or Russia attempted to influence an election or political event through spreading disinformation, the international democratic community could respond in harmony with diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, and other actions, increasing the cost to malign actors who seek to disrupt democracy. Governments in such places as Taiwan and Ukraine, which have long been bullied by prolific producers of disinformation, would welcome such a pledge.
Addressing foreign disinformation could also set in motion efforts to tackle the altogether more complex and entrenched problem of domestic disinformation, which often bumps up against the need to protect free expression, providing authoritarian governments cover to curb inconvenient speech in their own countries. Here, Biden could encourage the wider international adoption of the Pledge for Election Integrity spearheaded by the pro-democracy nonprofit Alliance of Democracies in 2019. Signatories promise to “not fabricate, use or spread falsified, fabricated, doxed, or stolen data or materials for disinformation or propaganda purposes; avoid the dissemination of doctored media that impersonate other candidates, including deep-fake videos;” practice good cyber-hygiene (ensuring that candidates, campaigns, and data about supporters are all safe from hacking operations); not use astroturfing to attack opponents; and maintain transparency in campaign funding.
Democracies should form a bloc united against the use of disinformation by foreign powers.
Biden is the only American politician to have signed the pledge—over 350 others signed in 2019, including politicians participating in elections for the European Parliament and in contests in Canada, Georgia, and Germany. The Biden administration should consider adding a clause to the agreement that would ask signatories to commit to not willfully undermining trust in the democratic process for political gain. After all, politically motivated disinformation about electoral fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election eventually inspired similar claims in the 2021 German parliamentary elections; the far-right party Alternative for Germany claimed that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud, a refrain that U.S. Republicans had popularized earlier. Although the claims did not gain broad purchase, the German example shows that politicians in established Western democracies are not below spreading disinformation for political gain. The Biden administration should treat as a matter of urgency the need to get attendees at the democracy summit to make a pledge to eliminate the scourge of domestic disinformation. This understanding would help set in place a standard that would allow international election observers to assess the use of domestic disinformation in elections at all levels, social media companies to make decisions regarding content moderation without being accused of political bias, and voters to confidently evaluate candidates.
Such a standard—which plainly names and describes disinformation as the democratic ill that it is—is necessary to proactively protect democracy against future harmful technological innovations. Technological advances often leave public policy behind; developing a common understanding of what constitutes disinformation, no matter the platform on which it appears, is paramount if democracies are to meet tomorrow’s challenges. In a world heading toward ever-greater technological and digital leaps, autocratic governments with nominally democratic institutions and processes, such as those in Brazil and the Philippines, cannot be allowed to benefit from the comfort of a “big democratic tent” while employing the same tactics pioneered by China and Russia on their own people. Disinformation ultimately erodes the faith of citizens in government and encourages them to doubt the possibility of truth in public life. Democracy will suffer hugely when citizens no longer trust or even want to participate in the democratic process.

Biden seems to understand this fateful prospect. During his inaugural address, delivered just weeks after the deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, he told the nation: “There is truth and there are lies—lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and a responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders, leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation, to defend the truth and defeat the lies.” As Biden himself acknowledges, the summit is a critical chance not only to make up for five years of U.S. inaction in tackling disinformation but to aspire toward a firm new tone for politics in the digital age, reaffirming that a commitment to truth must form the bedrock of democracies.

Foreign Affairs · by Nina Jankowicz · November 30, 2021


20. America Is Not Withdrawing from the Middle East

Can anyone give CENTCOM an appetite suppressant? 

While the idea to "dial down military activities (but I would not say commitments because those commitments should support our national security interests)) and increase economic and diplomatic activities seems desirable, do we every really accomplish the tradeoff of less military and more diplomacy and economic investment?

Excerpts:
A better way forward would be to use the opportunity of regional rebalancing to dial down military commitments and increase economic and development assistance. The United States needs to refocus its attention and resources on the challenges affecting the day-to-day lives of people. Building resilience to climate change in a region already struggling with poor infrastructure and expanding opportunities for youth are the types of issues that should top the agenda when U.S. officials visit the Middle East. American support in these areas should build on work that is already underway but is insufficiently resourced and showcased.
In this moment of strategic flux, the United States has an opportunity to do things differently—to develop and implement a strategy for development and equity. Instead of outsize military investments, it could invest in solutions to the socioeconomic and governance challenges preventing a better life for the region’s citizens. The United States, along with its wealthy allies, could help partners that want to transform the region from a set of problems to a set of possibilities. Either way, the United States and the Middle East are not going to part ways—but Washington should seize the chance to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

America Is Not Withdrawing from the Middle East
Foreign Affairs · by Dalia Dassa Kaye · December 1, 2021
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has made no secret of its desire to extricate the United States from the Middle East. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview before taking office, said that he envisioned a Biden presidency would do “less not more” in the region. A senior U.S. official likewise told me that the Obama administration didn’t follow through on its so-called pivot to Asia, but “this time we are.”
The United States’ “strategic competition” with China currently dominates American foreign policy discussion, representing bipartisan consensus in an otherwise divided Washington. But for all the talk about withdrawing from the Middle East and genuine regional anxiety about U.S. abandonment in the aftermath of Afghanistan, the reality on the ground suggests otherwise: Washington still maintains a sprawling network of military bases and has proved willing to embrace even its most unsavory partners in the name of bolstering regional security. What’s more, regional dynamics are likely to lead to further instability and violence—fueling a demand for a continued American presence.
To be sure, the United States is no longer the only global player in the Middle East. Chinese economic and technology investments and Russia’s military influence have grown over the past decade. In that sense, the American moment is over. And yet, much as Americans may like to be done with the Middle East, the Middle East is not done with the United States. American withdrawal is not only a myth, it is preventing an important debate in Washington about how the United States can adjust its policies to improve the lives of the region’s citizens and contribute to a more just political order in the Middle East.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
For all the fears in Arab capitals of declining American commitment to the Middle East, U.S. military engagement shows more continuity than commonly acknowledged. Despite a promise to review a $23 billion arms sale to the United Arab Emirates with a greater emphasis on human rights, the Biden administration decided to move ahead with the sale. Biden’s “recalibration” of relations with Saudi Arabia has also not led to major policy change: Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, received high-level meetings with top U.S. officials during a visit to Washington in July, despite the release of a U.S. intelligence report assessing the crown prince approved the operation to capture and kill the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also met directly with the crown prince in Riyadh in September 2021. The administration subsequently pushed forward a new $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
This does not look like an administration turning its back on traditional U.S. partners or “putting human rights at the center” of its foreign policy. This pattern extends beyond the United States’ wealthy partners in the Gulf: although the Biden team chose to temporarily withhold $130 million in military aid to Egypt, its decision fell short of human rights organizations’ expectations that the administration would uphold congressional legislation conditioning $300 million in military aid on concrete progress on rule of law and reform measures. With $1.3 billion granted annually through the U.S. Foreign Military Financing program, Egypt remains among the top three recipients of American military aid globally, despite President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s crackdown on political opposition and civil society.

The Biden administration did signal a realignment of its military posture by announcing a reduction of its antimissile systems in the region as it refocused on the challenge posed by Russia and China. The removal of these systems from Saudi Arabia in September, even as the Houthis continued to launch missile attacks on Saudi territory from Yemen, reinforced Riyadh’s sense of abandonment by the United States. The Department of Defense is also currently engaged in a major global force posture review, which will likely impact the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East as the United States prioritizes threats in the Indo-Pacific. But it remains doubtful that a radical reduction of tens of thousands of U.S. troops is on the horizon—or that Washington is prepared to ignore the perceived security needs of its major regional partners.
BASE OF SUPPORT
The strategic case for reducing the American presence in the Middle East is straightforward. In addition to the need to shift resources to Asia given changing geostrategic conditions, the United States’ reliance on oil from the Middle East has decreased significantly. There has also been increased scrutiny on whether large bases are effective for counterterrorism missions and whether these bases may provoke further attacks from Iran rather than deter them. Some analysts argue the United States should bring all troops home, while others argue for a more dispersed regional posture utilizing smaller bases. This would make the United States less reliant on large operating bases such as Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar or Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, which may become more vulnerable to Iranian attacks as Tehran’s missile and drone strike capabilities advance.
These arguments are compelling. But political considerations, bureaucratic inertia, the United States’ continued vulnerability to global oil market shocks, and the economic interests of the U.S. defense industry make a swift reversal unlikely—regardless of the strategic logic. The United States’ Gulf partners want American forces to stay, viewing the bases as a sign of Washington’s political commitment to their security. And after Qatar and other Gulf states played such an important role in the airlift of Afghans following the American withdrawal from the country, is the Biden administration likely to close down Al Udeid? A drawdown may be possible, but complete closure is a stretch.

The Middle East is not done with the United States.
Continued bipartisan focus on Iran will also work in favor of a considerable American military presence. Joint maritime security exercises, which are conducted with an eye toward containing Iran, now include the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. It is also unclear whether the large U.S. bases are as exposed to Iranian attacks as some fear: Qatar and Kuwait, countries that host thousands of U.S. personnel, maintain friendlier relations with Tehran and may not be as vulnerable to Iranian attacks on U.S. forces within their countries. The benefits of reducing the American presence in the region therefore may be outweighed by the political costs of alienating Gulf partners.
The rotation of missile defense systems and aircraft carriers out of the Middle East is one sign of the reduced U.S. presence in the region and will likely become more frequent as resources shift to Asia. Regional partners won’t like that, but they will learn to live with it. But shutting down massive military infrastructure is another matter entirely.
THE SHADOW WAR WITH IRAN
Iran sees the continued U.S. military presence in the region as both a threat to its interests and a convenient target. As Tehran seeks to bolster its deterrence, it may prefer to strike at small numbers of American forces in conflict zones rather than the large U.S. bases in the Gulf. U.S. and Israeli officials blamed Iran for launching a drone attack on the al-Tanf American base in Syria in October, possibly as retaliation for Israeli airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. presence in Iraq has also dwindled to just several thousand troops, which remain exposed to attacks by Iran-backed militias.

The hostility between the United States and Iran is now so deeply rooted within both countries’ establishments—particularly as hard-liners have consolidated control in Tehran—that attempts to reset the relationship are unlikely in the coming years. The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and adopt a “maximum pressure” policy designed to isolate Iran diplomatically and economically made Iran more belligerent, not less. Following the United States’ assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, the two countries engaged in direct military conflict for the first time since the 1980s. Even if American policymakers manage to avoid a full-scale war with Iran and contain its nuclear ambitions, they will still likely find themselves in a low-grade conflict for regional influence with Tehran.
Though Iran initially maintained its compliance with the nuclear accord following the American withdrawal, it has significantly expanded its program over the last year. It has increased its enrichment of uranium well beyond the constraints of the agreement, moving it closer to weapons-grade levels. Research and development of advanced centrifuges is progressing. Iran’s breakout time, or the time needed to produce enough enriched material to build a nuclear weapon, has shortened to months as opposed to a year under the constraints of the nuclear agreement. Nuclear inspectors are no longer gaining the access required by the agreement. All of these steps have introduced another source of tension in Iran’s relationships with the United States and the international community.
It is also no longer clear whether the Iranians are as eager to revive the deal as they once were. Iranian officials were in no hurry to return to talks in Vienna to restore the deal after the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president in June 2021. They have finally agreed to return to negotiations in late November 2021, but it is not clear that the Biden administration will have the political bandwidth to deliver on the sanctions relief necessary to restore the agreement or that Iran will agree to the required nuclear rollbacks. And it is nearly certain that Israel, toward which the Biden administration has been solicitous, will not support concessions to Iran.

The United States' problem in the Middle East may be not that it is leaving but that it is staying in all the wrong ways.
U.S. officials are already in discussions with Israeli counterparts about a “Plan B” should the talks fail. This strategy would include more economic pressure and possibly military options. It is unclear how such “back to the future” policies will bring about a new nuclear deal, particularly without the type of international support that was possible before the 2015 agreement. It is difficult to imagine China signing on to renewed economic pressure against Iran, in light of rising tensions between Beijing and Washington. Indeed, China recently expressed more sympathetic positions on Iran’s nuclear enrichment rights following the United States’ and United Kingdom’s decision to sell nuclear submarines to Australia, which Beijing considers a proliferation risk. What may be more likely in the event of a failure to revive the nuclear accord is a repeat of Iran’s response to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policies: an acceleration of military strikes across the region, including on U.S. forces.
If the deal collapses, it will be even harder for the United States to reduce its presence in the Middle East and shift its focus elsewhere. The Israelis certainly would not put Iran on the back burner, nearly guaranteeing continued escalation. Jerusalem’s “shadow war” with Iran has already expanded considerably: It has moved beyond the Syrian theater, where Israel regularly strikes Iran-aligned targets, to an active maritime confrontation. It has also continued its assassination campaign targeting Iran’s top nuclear scientists and its direct attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including an explosion at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility in April 2021 just as diplomacy in Vienna began. Cyberwarfare between Israel and Iran has even extended to civilian targets.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has so far avoided a public spat with Washington over the Iran file. But although his style may differ from the confrontational approach of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his policies do not appear markedly different. Bennett has maintained Israel’s covert military campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and spoken of a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy toward Tehran. Other Israeli leaders have made public statements reasserting Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran, which is widely understood as Israel preserving its military options. Israel is not a treaty ally of the United States, but the American political commitment to Israel’s security is so deep that it would be difficult for Washington to stay on the sidelines in the event of a full-blown Iranian-Israeli conflict.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict also continues to simmer, even if the Palestinian issue is a lower priority for the region and for Washington. Policymakers may prefer improving the economic conditions of Palestinians over pressing the Israelis on core issues such as settlement expansion. The outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip in May demonstrated that the United States can work behind the scenes to contain the conflict, but it can’t ignore it. Normalization between Israel and Arab states is a welcome regional development, but it can’t replace a settlement of the parties actually at war.
BECOMING PART OF THE SOLUTION
With all these demands, the United States is not going to abandon the Middle East. In fact, it may be facing a different problem—not that it is leaving but that it is staying in all the wrong ways.

The Biden administration appears to be doubling down on military commitments to reassure its partners, who remain skeptical about the trajectory of its foreign policy. The arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are proof that Washington still prioritizes its military partnerships in the region. But these efforts, particularly when not balanced with engagement on human security and governance challenges, can fuel regional conflicts and repression. (The United States currently invests as much annually in military assistance to Egypt as it does in economic development assistance for the entire region.) This is a recipe for perpetual crisis, which will force the United States to take costly steps to contain new forms of extremism and violence.
A better way forward would be to use the opportunity of regional rebalancing to dial down military commitments and increase economic and development assistance. The United States needs to refocus its attention and resources on the challenges affecting the day-to-day lives of people. Building resilience to climate change in a region already struggling with poor infrastructure and expanding opportunities for youth are the types of issues that should top the agenda when U.S. officials visit the Middle East. American support in these areas should build on work that is already underway but is insufficiently resourced and showcased.
In this moment of strategic flux, the United States has an opportunity to do things differently—to develop and implement a strategy for development and equity. Instead of outsize military investments, it could invest in solutions to the socioeconomic and governance challenges preventing a better life for the region’s citizens. The United States, along with its wealthy allies, could help partners that want to transform the region from a set of problems to a set of possibilities. Either way, the United States and the Middle East are not going to part ways—but Washington should seize the chance to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Foreign Affairs · by Dalia Dassa Kaye · December 1, 2021



21. The Global Posture Review: Strategic Vapor Lock


The most irreverent assessment of the global force posture review.

In defense of the review it is classified so we are not seeing any of the detailed substance.

Also, much of the criticism of the GPFR is really about the strategy. What is the NSS and the NDS? (which have not been published yet). But I suppose like we used to say in the old days the TPFDD is the strategy. I guess we can say the global force posture is the strategy.

The Global Posture Review: Strategic Vapor Lock
cdrsalamander.substack.com · by CDR Salamander
The new administration told you that their team was tanned, rested, and ready and the Global Posture Review was going to set a firm new direction in line with the natsec SuperFriends bringing new eyes, new outlooks, and bold actions to address the challenge of the third decade of the 21st Century.
Well.
If you were hoping that the much vaunted “the adults are in charge” brigade would give you some hope, take a seat. If you bought the hype that we were adjusting with some urgency facing the gaping maw of The Terrible 20s, the flexing power of China, and the general disjunction of people, resources, and policy in the fractured, COVID-infused underpinnings of our national security intelligencia, well … you are not going to have a good week.
You forgot who we were dealing with. The Vogons of the Beltway are here to deliver.

With the joy and enthusiasm usually found going 15-MPH on I95 between Charleston and Savannah on a holiday weekend, Monday DoD extruded a notification that “DoD Concluded 2021 Global Posture Review.”
In the name of all that is holy, we need new elites. Let’s dive in.
Following several months of analysis and close coordination across the U.S. government, the Department of Defense released the results of the Global Posture Review (GPR) today.
”Released ?” Really … even that phrase oversells what deposited.
The conclusion of the review comes at a key inflection point following the end of operations in Afghanistan
9-months? So, what did previous generations do in 9-months? Well, from December 1941, if you went forward 9-months from Pearl Harbor Day you’d find:
Singapore fell
Battle of Java Sea
Philippines lost
Doolittle Raid
Battle of Coral Sea
Battle of Midway
Marines land at Guadalcanal
Battle of Savo Island
…and finally in September of 1942 the Australians stopped the Japanese at Port Moresby in New Guinea, underlining the Japanese high-water mark at the Battle of Midway and the beginning of the end of the Japanese Empire.
Yes, that’s right. In 9-months, we went from Pearl Harbor to forcing the Japanese to begin their years-long retreat.
That is what an infinitesimally smaller cohort of national security professionals who operated with slide rules, not supercomputers; chalk boards, not PPT; telegraphs not VTCs, were able to accomplish. What are our highly credentialed, well funded, speed of light legions of civilian and military thought-leaders able to deliver to address the challenge of this century?
In the Indo-Pacific, the review directs additional cooperation with allies and partners to advance initiatives that contribute to regional stability and deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea. These initiatives include seeking greater regional access for military partnership activities; enhancing infrastructure in Australia and the Pacific Islands; and planning rotational aircraft deployments in Australia, as announced in September. The GPR also informed Secretary Austin’s approval of the permanent stationing of a previously-rotational attack helicopter squadron and artillery division headquarters in the Republic of Korea, announced earlier this year.
Change five words and this could have been written almost a decade ago when the whole “Pacific Pivot” started.
Nothing. They’ve got nothing.
The Flaccid Horde of Northern Virginia, gorging for decades on the largess of the American taxpayers and donor money in agencies, think tanks, panels, manels, and academia have produced nothing, progressed nowhere but the next line on their resume - intellectually vapor locked and strategically their ideas as stuck in aspic.

If you are not done with this self-serving gaggle of grifting rent seekers, how much longer are you willing to wait for them to produce something of use to the nation?
We're not just talking about the suit-wearing side of the house either. The inadequacy of our uniformed leadership - pretending the national humiliation at Kabul was an orderly Noncombatant Evacuation Operation and not a negotiated retreat, obsessed with racial essentialism and white guilt as opposed to why they were a less effective than the Soviet Army a few years before that empire collapsed - wants nothing more than a better parking space and for no one to ask exactly what they do here.
From the usual CENTCOM AOR stomping grounds, to the next opening on a board of directors after retirement, they just want to chug along fat, dumb, and happy. Don't look at their shore staff manning documents. Don't fiddle with their approved career path. Don't ask about the institutional incentives and disincentives for promotion and advancement.
Oh, heavens no. We should just thank everyone for the great job everyone did the last couple of decades and to double down on the same thing. This time we will get better results. Sure of it.
This spent force is largely the cause of why we have continued to underperform for decades. The only significant action this bi-partisan civ-mil strategically static force has been able to accomplish in the decade since the Pacific Pivot was announced is to position themselves for the next career move after the next election where the Gold Crew will relieve the Blue Crew for the strategic fast-cruise that never seems to translate in to getting underway - make sure and thank them for their service while you are at it.
Bullshit.
Show something but the bi-partisan natsec consensus that performance, vision, and action should take a second seat to careerism, inertia, and not hurting feelings.
Their inability to recognize their shortcomings only brings the audacity of their self-interest in to stark relief. They are bringing to our nation the same level of national service last seen from the Ottoman Bureaucracy and the army of Chinese Imperial Eunuchs to their empires - with similar trends.
OK, perhaps I’m reading too much in to that one little paddy of an announcement? I mean, good, smart people in hard jobs doing their best. Right?
Personally in most cases yes, but in objective metrics for the mass of them? No, not really.
I’m not even going to quote from the rest of the announcement as it is clear that the drafter was just desperately trying to make a minimum word count. You’d get more from reading the ingredients label on an old Swanson’s TV dinner.
Bless his heart, Andrew Eversden over at Breaking Defense managed an almost impossible feat of scrounging up enough to fill in the Waimea Canyon sized gaps in information. A pro he is.
But rather than a large shift in resources and plans, the review, which looked at US troop locations and capabilities across the globe, ultimately concluded that no major strategic changes are needed, aside from “operational level adjustments we have already announced and a couple of other changes that are still being developed,” a senior defense official told reporters during a Monday briefing. What findings backed up those conclusions, however, is not clear, as the department declined to make a version of the review public.
If the last 9-months news on China, Ukraine, global supply chain bottlenecks, all the permutations of 2nd and 3rd order COVID effects, and the expanding power of Islamist terrorism across the bleeding edge from the Sahel to Mozambique … wait, you can, again, add the negotiated defeat at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan in to the stew - if that doesn’t move the needle for your natsec nomenklatura …
“[The Indo-Pacific] is the priority theater. China is the pacing challenge for the department,” the senior defense official said.
If anyone uses “pacing” to describe what China is doing, they are fools. They don’t know the meaning of the words they use any more than a 13-yr old boy understands the complexity of human sexuality.
“I think you’ll see a strong commitment in the forthcoming NDS [National Defense Strategy] as well that will guide further posture enhancements.”
So … wait while we prepare to prepare to get ready to address something we said we were going to prepare to prepare for back in 2012? Fine. What choice do we have? These are the same people using the same playbook.
Mara Karlin, assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, told reporters at a second, on-the-record Pentagon press briefing Monday that the department will send new fighter and bomber aircraft to Australia. She added that across the Pacific, the US military would invest in logistics facilities, fuel storage, munition storage and airfield upgrades in Guam, Australia and the Northern Mariana Islands.
That’s good I guess … right out of 2012 when it was late anyways. Bold of an idea as going to Cracker Barrel for breakfast, but good.
“There are a number of initiatives that we have currently underway that we are fleshing out real time with our allies and partners and you’ll see those manifest over the next two to three years or so,” the senior official said at the first briefing.
That means three years. Add to it the year we already lost … and we are after the 2024 elections already. The mid-20s, the beginning of the time of greatest danger … if not the center mass of it.
The official highlighted an October exercise with two US carrier strike groups and ships from the UK, Japan and other allies as an example of how the US now views the Pacific.
They have so little to say they are just saying things that are new that we have literally been doing my entire human existence.
Becca Wasser, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Breaking Defense that the GPR was “never going to produce major changes” to global posture because of the challenges with changing fixed posture, as well as the fact that the review preceded both the National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy. “What it does is provide a framework to message longer-term, gradual posture changes to allies and partners,” Wasser said. “If you want to change posture–whether that is expanding or consolidating bases, or deploying a new capability–you need access. Access is something only allies and partners can provide and changes to access usually require a lengthy consultation process.”
Again, “Pacific Pivot” is roughly a decade old. What has our natsec nomenklatura been doing? I fully understand patience and small moves ... but at this pace ... I mean ... just look at the timeline.
I’m sorry, but these great, wonderful and highly intelligent people are simply underperforming or … are working for institutions and people who will not let them perform. We need new people, new institution, new structures, new processes, all of these or a combination of these because what we have right now is not working.
The review also didn’t examine space, cyber or nuclear weapons because those capabilities are distinct from the US forces international footprint, the official said. The department has numerous other ongoing initiatives related to some of those categories, including its Nuclear Posture Review, Missile Defense Review and its broader National Defense Strategy. Karlin stressed that the review is a starting point.
I’m not sure what the natsec version of Model UN is, but this emanates the essence of that mindset. The process is the product. If you are missing the fact that cyber and space are critical parts of the "US forces international footprint" - you need better briefers or need to pay closer attention.
“There are other posture initiatives that we’re working real time with allies and partners to further strengthen that combat credible deterrent vis-a-vis Russia,” the official said, once again declining to provide specifics.
Aspic. Everything is frozen in aspic.

Are we as a nation going to let this lack of progress and action continue? Academic exercises that were repeated every semester until the crack of doom are fun and in places useful - but as the rest of the world’s serious nations improve their positions and strength - what our self-appointed best and brightest are doing is no way to run an empire.
As China's strength gains as ours treads water, in the third decade of the 21st Century we simply do not have time for such vanity and posturing. We need serious people of action - working inside a system that enables and rewards it - who can see power shifting around the world and can move our levers of power to counter it and move it towards our advantage.
No more lost decades.
cdrsalamander.substack.com · by CDR Salamander



22. A Slavish Devotion to Forward Presence Has Nearly Broken the U.S. Navy

"What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?' Madeleine Albright screamed at Colin Powell.


A Slavish Devotion to Forward Presence Has Nearly Broken the U.S. Navy
The forward presence mission is taking a toll on the fleet and the force.
By The Honorable Robert O. Work
December 2021 Proceedings Vol. 147/12/1426
usni.org · December 1, 2021
“The gods refuse the crown of victory to those who rest content after a single triumph. They give it to those who exert themselves in peacetime training, who have therefore won before any fighting begins. As the men of old said, ‘After a victory, tighten your helmet strings.’”1
—Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō
Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō said these words to the Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet that had recently annihilated the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in October 1905. In his final instructions, Admiral Tōgō exhorted his shipmates to prepare themselves for the next war, whenever it might come, against whatever adversary might challenge them.
Fast forward eight decades. In the 1980s, no one doubted that the nearly 600-ship U.S. Navy was bred and ready for war. Its mission was not easy, but it was simple. Everyone, from senior admirals to junior sailors, knew, if push came to shove, their job was to put steel on target and the Soviet Navy on the bottom. The service locked its sights on the adversary. It adopted a pugnacious wartime strategy designed to take the fight to the Soviet Navy in its home waters. It would attack the Soviet Union’s flanks in support of the main effort in central Europe.2 The Navy exercised this strategy relentlessly, demonstrating its intention and will to sail into the teeth of Soviet defenses and hound, harry, and destroy every ship, submarine, and aircraft it could find—in addition to projecting power on Soviet shores.

Samuel Huntington’s 1954 Proceedings article masterfully provided a reason for forward-deployed naval forces, but it also had unintended consequences.
Thankfully, as fate and an ably conceived and executed grand strategy would have it, the Navy never faced a test of arms against the Soviet Navy. But the victory it helped win proved even more decisive than Tsushima. It led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the mighty Soviet Navy returned to port and rusted away to a shadow of its former self.
The only downside to this happy turn of events was the U.S. Navy found itself without an adversary against which to set its sights and train to defeat. This is a bad place for it to be. Without an opponent to measure itself against, the Navy suffered “physical and moral degeneration.”3
The (Supposed) Cure: A New Strategic Concept
Samuel P. Huntington had diagnosed this chronic disease in the U.S. Navy less than a decade after World War II. The service that had won the greatest naval war in history suddenly found itself with no credible enemy fleet in sight, much less to fight. It had shrunk from a wartime high of 6,768 ships to just over 1,100.4 Naval aviation was struggling for its survival. In 1949, Congress canceled the United States—the Navy’s planned super carrier. The newly established U.S. Air Force was ascendent, especially in Department of Defense budget battles. The Navy seemed bereft of new ideas and incapable of expressing its continued value to the nation.
In his seminal May 1954 Proceedings article, Huntington argued the Navy’s malaise was caused by an outdated “strategic concept.” In his view, a strategic concept outlined a service’s “purpose or role in implementing national policy . . . a description of how, when, and where [it] expects to protect the nation against some threat to its security.” With no fleet to fight, Huntington argued, the Navy’s prewar strategic concept of command of the seas no longer pertained; it needed to change and conform to the postwar circumstances and the nation’s new national policy. Huntington then articulated a new strategic concept that called on the Navy to “apply naval power to that decisive strip of littoral encircling the Eurasian continent” through transoceanic power projection.5
At its core, then, Huntington saw a strategic concept as a marketing and fundraising tool, designed to answer the question, “What function do you perform which obligates society to assume responsibility for your maintenance?”6 And he made clear what the Navy had to do to answer:
Too often one still hears from the average American the question: “What do we need a navy for? The Russians don’t have one.” This attitude can only be overcome by a systematic, detailed elaboration and presentation of the theory of the transoceanic Navy against the broad background of naval history and naval technology. Only when this is done will the Navy have the public confidence commensurate with its important role in national defense.7
The Navy embraced Huntington’s transoceanic power projection. The concept had been beta tested in Korea and was later refined in Vietnam. More consequentially, the Navy took his admonition for a “systematic, detailed elaboration and presentation of the theory” to its institutional heart—albeit in a way even Huntington would likely find unhealthy. Since 1954, the Navy has been in a constant state of worry that if the American people lose sight of or disagree with its strategic concept, the dollars will stop flowing, ships will not be built, the fleet will shrink, and the service will be rendered irrelevant. Consequently, it is forever searching for the perfect description of its value to the nation. It has conducted “conversations with the country” and commissioned strategies to keep the flame of seapower burning in the hearts and minds of citizens and the need for a large, powerful fleet at the top of appropriation priorities in Congress.8
Thus, at the end of the Cold War, instead of tightening its helmet strings, the Navy gathered its inkwells and pens and started a quest for a new strategic concept.
The Search For A Post Cold–War Strategic Concept
The “Flight 0” version of the new strategic concept came in the form of . . . From the Sea, published in 1992. As described at the time, . . . From the Sea represented “a fundamental shift away from a global toward a regional perspective, and from open-ocean warfighting on the sea toward joint operations conducted from the sea.”9 The Navy–Marine Corps team, as part of the joint force, would:
provide powerful, yet unobtrusive presence; strategic deterrence; control of the seas; extended and continuous onscene crisis response; project precise power from the sea; and provide sealift if larger warfighting
scenarios emerge.10
These tasks were consistent with the four “mission areas” of the U.S. Navy outlined in 1974 by Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner, then president of the Naval War College: sea control, strategic deterrence, power projection, and forward presence.11 Just two decades after Huntington’s article, with the Soviet Navy rapidly gaining in size and capability, sea control had returned as the Navy’s primary mission and defining strategic concept, and it was the beating heart of the 1986 Maritime Strategy and the
600-ship Navy. Sea control was “intended to connote more realistic control in limited areas and for limited periods of time” than “command of the sea.”12
In hindsight, . . . From the Sea was little more than a readoption of Huntington’s concept of transoceanic power projection. However, forward presence gained much more attention in the new post–Cold War era. As explained in the new strategic concept:
The Navy and Marine Corps operate forward to project a positive American image, build foundations for viable coalitions, enhance diplomatic contacts, reassure friends, and demonstrate U.S. power and resolve. Naval forces will be prepared to fight promptly and effectively, but they will serve in an equally valuable way by engaging day-to-day as peace-keepers in the defense of American interests.13

Japanese Imperial Navy Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō
This heightened emphasis on forward presence was caused, at least in part, by worry over the size of the Navy. With post–Cold War demobilization in full swing, the battle force had fallen from 592 ships in 1989 to 471 ships in 1992 and was still falling.14 During the 1993 Bottom-Up Review, the Office of the Secretary of Defense approved the Navy’s request to size its carrier force based on forward presence rather than warfighting requirements.15 Using forward presence as a force-sizing justification offered the prospect of slowing demobilization for all ship classes.
This seemed especially attractive as the regional combatant commanders (CoComs), empowered by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act and with no checkbook to balance, began to exert a steady demand on forward-deployed naval forces for a variety of reasons.16 The Navy was happy, even anxious, to meet these demands, as they might provide justification for a larger fleet.
Unsurprisingly, then, in 1994, the Department of the Navy doubled down on the value of forward presence in the “Flight 1” version of its post–Cold War strategic concept, Forward . . . From the Sea. While this update acknowledged that “naval forces are designed to fight and win wars,” it elevated the importance and contributions of forward presence to a new level:
Our most recent experiences, however, underscore the premise that the most important role of naval forces in situations short of war is to be engaged in forward areas, with the objectives of preventing conflicts and controlling crises.17
Forward Presence As The New Strategic Concept

Flight 2 of the Navy’s strategic concept was the 2007 A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Sea Power. It continued the trend of the Navy thinking forward presence was its most important mission. Credit: Department of the Navy
During the 1990s—a period with a national policy of “engagement and enlargement,” steady unconstrained CoCom demands for naval forces, and no serious naval competitor—the notion that forward presence could prevent conflicts began to take hold in the Navy.18 If it could help arrest the post–Cold War fleet drawdown, so much the better. Deterring bad behavior by regional actors through demonstrations and shows of force had always been understood as part of forward presence. But the idea that forward presence, in and of itself, could prevent conflicts more broadly was something new.
Also new was the lack of discipline in the requests for naval forces from regional CoComs. Having a carrier strike group, expeditionary strike group/amphibious ready group, or surface action group—or all of them together!—provided any combatant commander with powerful, mobile forces to deal with crises. Who would not want them? But as the fleet shrank, what was needed was a more rigorous process to balance demand with supply. That never materialized. So, despite the Navy not being sized to satisfy presence demands, the Pentagon generally acceded to them.19
The Navy tried to make do. Aggregate demand from the CoComs amounted to about 130 ships continuously deployed any given year.20 Throughout the 1990s, the Navy kept about 100 ships continuously deployed—similar to the number forward deployed with the 600-ship Cold War fleet—despite the year-to-year decline in the total number.21 Indeed, by 1999, the force had shrunk to 336 ships.22 Attempting to maintain such a high level of presence with a smaller fleet meant an ever-increasing percentage of the Navy was always deployed, causing operational and personnel tempo to surge.23 Slowly but surely, the Navy’s culture changed from its Cold War “readiness-centric” culture to a peacetime “deployment-centric” culture.24 In the process, the material readiness of the force began a long, inexorable decline, particularly in the surface warfare community. More worrisome, the overall readiness of Navy “surge” forces, expected to deploy should war come, began to decay.25
For this reason, by the early 2000s, forward presence had begun losing its sheen. In 2003, the Office of the Secretary of Defense was prodding the Navy to improve its surge capability, which was suffering after a decade of frenetic presence operations. In response, then–Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark published the first version of the Fleet Response Plan (FRP). In addition to concerns about surge readiness, the FRP was a tacit recognition that the idea that forward presence alone could justify a larger battle force had proven to be a forlorn hope. These circumstances convinced the Navy it needed to revert to a readiness-centric culture that valued and emphasized surge forces as much as forward presence. Indeed, a key idea in the response plan was “presence with a purpose,” a not-so-subtle rejection of the idea of forward presence for its own sake.26
But the grip forward presence had on the service remained strong. The idea that forward presence could prevent conflicts was codified in the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, which declared, “We believe that preventing wars is as important as winning wars” [emphasis in the original]. And, given the logic of earlier versions of the post-Cold War concept, having ships forward was seen as the best way to prevent wars. Whether intended or not, the implication was that devoting combat-ready fleet assets to presence missions was as important as having surge forces ready to go to war. Moreover, the strategy raised the purported benefit of forward presence yet again, arguing it was essential to “protecting the existing global system of trade and security.”27
As its title suggests, a key aim of the 2007 strategy was to elicit international cooperation. Maintaining the status quo of the global system was central to this aim.28 But this formulation, however well intended, had a different impact on the Navy itself. Since the end of the Cold War, the advertised benefits of forward presence had progressively risen from a mission, to a force-sizing construct, to preventing wars and controlling crises, to protecting the global system. In essence, this thinking gradually elevated forward presence from one of the Navy’s enduring missions to its reason for being.
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus captured the Navy’s strategic concept of forward presence when he said, “Presence is what we do. It is who we are.”29
Be Careful What You Wish For
Few would argue forward presence is an unimportant mission. As Vice Admiral Turner described, presence:
is the use of naval forces, short of war, to achieve political objectives. The use of presence forces is for two broad objectives: to deter actions inimical to the interests of the United States or its allies; and to encourage actions that are in the interests of the United States and its allies.30
He went on to say there were two key tactics to accomplish these objectives: preventive deployments and reactive deployments. And there were five actions a naval force could execute or threaten to execute when assigned a presence mission: amphibious assault; air attack; bombardment; blockade; and exposure through reconnaissance. In addition, “almost any size and type of presence force can imply that the United States is concerned with the situation and may decide to bring other military forces to bear.”
Thinking about forward presence in this way should introduce a measure of rigor in deciding whether to undertake a presence mission requested by a regional commander. What is the precise objective of the mission? Are the naval assets assigned capable of accomplishing the objective? How will we know when the objective is accomplished? How long are we prepared to pursue the mission? Such rigor is notably absent when conducting presence operations to protect the existing global system of trade and security. Nearly any deployment, to whatever region, for however long, could reasonably be justified by such an expansive objective. And that helps explain why the incessant demands for naval forces from regional CoComs are seldom challenged, much less denied.31
More fundamentally, the idea that maintaining presence to protect the global system and prevent wars is equally important to winning wars is in direct conflict with the Navy’s own century-old standard for conventional deterrence: maintaining a fleet organized, trained, equipped, and ready for any military challenge to the United States. As Admiral William S. Sims—twice president of the Naval War College—wrote in 1915, “The mission of the fleet in time of peace is preparation for war.”32

Even such a forward-presence supportive document like The Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower warned, “There is a tension, however, between the requirements for continued peacetime engagement and maintaining proficiency in the critical skills necessary to fighting and winning in combat.”33 Just so. Ships conducting routine forward-presence missions burn combat readiness. Over time, unless the fleet was careful, an overemphasis on forward presence could lead to a decline in warfighting readiness, with potentially dire results.34
This appears to be exactly what happened. A 2010 review of the surface fleet, known widely as the Balisle Report, warned that the relentless operating tempo was threatening the long-term readiness of the surface navy.35 Seven years later, and a decade after adopting its new strategic concept of forward presence, there was a precipitous decline in fleet material readiness and training that contributed to four surface ship accidents in the Seventh Fleet area of responsibility, resulting in the deaths of 17 sailors. A comprehensive review of the issues that led to those accidents stated baldly: “Over time, the Navy’s ‘must do’ wartime culture was adopted for peacetime as long-term readiness and capability were sacrificed for immediate mission accomplishment.”36

The Navy’s Strategic Readiness Review conducted after the accidents offered a more bracing diagnosis:
The risks that were taken in the Western Pacific accumulated over time and did so insidiously. The dynamic environment normalized to the point where individuals and groups of individuals could no longer recognize that the processes in place to identify, communicate and assess readiness were no longer working at the ship and headquarters level.37
While the decline in material and combat readiness resulted from a calamitous combination of many decisions and policies, the relentless demands of the “deployment-centric culture” were a major contributor. Moreover, this culture contributed to a creeping sense that the Navy had lost or was losing its warfighting focus. In the estimation of former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, “There is an emerging realization around the world that the U.S. no longer possesses naval superiority and could lose a war at sea.”38
Nonsense. Despite its serious problems, the U.S. Navy still is the strongest navy in the world, by a significant margin. With 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and their multirole airwings, 50-plus nuclear-powered attack and guided-missile submarines, 100-plus P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, and the world’s largest unmanned aircraft ocean surveillance fleet, it likely possesses what Alfred Thayer Mahan referred to as “overbearing” naval power.38 While it may not be large enough to establish “command of the sea” everywhere on the global ocean, it is strong enough to guarantee no other navy can claim it.
Of course, as the old saying goes: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” The Navy cannot be too enraptured by its superior ships, submarines, aircraft, and technology—or the number of freedom-of-navigation missions it performs. It must take sober consideration of its own 2017 Strategic Readiness Review and other inputs.39 The Navy cannot claim it can prevent any war, anymore than it can guarantee it will win all future wars. The only thing within its power is to be as ready as possible should war break out, and to be manned, trained, and equipped to fight any adversary on, over, under, and from the seas—relentlessly, ruthlessly, and without remorse—until the adversary is swept from its environs. A navy defeated in war is a much more worrisome strategic outcome than a navy that finds itself fighting a war it supposedly failed to prevent.
The hopeful idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure helped get the Navy into its current readiness mess. To get out of it, it must change course and heed the 2018 National Defense Strategy: “The surest way to prevent war is to be prepared to win one.”
A Strategic Concept For Today: Para Bellum
If anything good comes out of the 2017 Navy ship accidents, it would be a renewed and sustained commitment to warfighting training and readiness and a deliberate moderation of forward-presence missions.
The early returns appear promising in this regard. The newest version of Naval Doctrine Publication (NDP) 1, Naval Warfare, drops forward presence altogether as one of the enduring functions of the naval service. In its place, it emphasizes naval diplomacy—“the application of naval capabilities in pursuit of national objectives during cooperation and competition below conflict.”40
The theme that forward presence is a means of generating influence is picked up in the newest “Flight 3” version of the Navy’s post–Cold War strategic concept, the 2020 triservice maritime strategy Advantage at Sea:
The Naval Service—forward deployed and capable of both rapid response and sustained operations globally—remains America’s most persistent and versatile instrument of military influence . . . [advancing] the prosperity, security and promise of a free and open rules-based order.41
The strategy’s description of forward presence as a means of diplomacy, influence, and advancing a rules-based order is less lofty than preventing wars and defending the global system. In addition to moderating the emphasis on forward presence and the benefits it brings, the Navy appears to be returning to a readiness-centric, warfighting culture. For example, after reading the Strategic Readiness Review, Rear Admiral Jeffrey Jablon, Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, admitted he better recognized the trade-offs involved between presence and warfighting, and said the submarine force was in the process of balancing those trade-offs. “We focused the force on warfighting. So, we inculcated warfighting as part of our culture in everything we do with respect to man, train, and equip, vice a peacetime mission that we were more focused on before the comprehensive review.”42
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday amplified this theme in his initial fragmentary order to the fleet: “Mission One for every Sailor—uniformed and civilian, active and reserve—is the operational readiness for today’s Navy.” His desired future state is “A Navy fully prepared to fight and win.”43
A Navy prepared to fight and win must have a high state of material readiness. Admiral Gilday’s first priority under the rubric of “warfighting” was therefore to improve ship maintenance and modernization. He said, “As we have learned over the past decade, it is cheaper to maintain readiness than to buy it back.” He ordered Naval Sea Systems Command to develop a plan within 60 days to improve and sustain the maintenance industrial base and to reduce the number of days lost to depot maintenance extensions.44
These steps need to be backed up by deliberate efforts to convince the Secretary of Defense and regional CoComs that Navy warfighting and material readiness should no longer be sacrificed on the altar of forward presence, and that the Navy will no longer confuse the ultimate end of winning a fight with merely being forward for the sake of being present. To drive this home, the Navy should urge and work with the Secretary of Defense to develop a new process to identify achievable objectives for presence forces, establish rigorous ways to design and implement the missions to accomplish them, and deny questionable requests for presence without purpose.
For example, the Secretary of Defense could ask all CoComs to submit yearly requests for naval presence. Requests would be examined by the Joint Staff and Navy, which would recommend to the Secretary of Defense which missions should be approved or disapproved. Once the Secretary approves the missions, the maintenance and operations costs to support them would need to be fully funded. The process also would need to account for emergent presence missions not considered during the annual program, with funding from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Such a process would help ensure Navy presence “requirements” would be programmed and budgeted for in the Pentagon’s yearly defense program and prevent the degradation of fleet readiness caused by lax or reflexive approvals for presence.
Most important, the Navy must send a strong signal to the deckplates that sending forces on presence missions is subordinate to preparing for war. As NDP-1 says, “During times of peace, the most important task of any military is to prepare for war.” The naval service does not typically undergo a lengthy period of transition from garrison to deployed and operational status. Naval forces are operational as soon as they take in all lines.45
Reordering the Navy’s priorities is the basis for a new strategic concept I propose calling “Para Bellum”—Prepare for War. It would be based on credible readiness and the demonstrated rapid assemblage of combat fleet power to designated theaters. It would promote and preserve “overbearing” naval combat power, vice presence for its own sake, and would do more to demonstrate readiness and deter rivals as a result.
Keep It Simple
The Navy seems intent on replacing the strategic concept of forward presence. But there is no need for yet another vision, strategic concept, or maritime strategy. For those counting, there have been four post–Cold War attempts to craft a new strategic concept. It is unlikely another swipe will fix the Navy’s ills.
It is time to adopt simplicity of thought and strategic purpose. The Navy has long had a serviceable, if unacknowledged, strategic concept built on preparing for war, if only it would embrace it. Admiral Sims captured this concept more than 100 years ago, and it remains perfectly suited for the number one navy in the world—now facing not one, but two, potent adversaries. Indeed, Admiral Tōgō would argue, it is suited even for conditions when the Navy finds itself without an adversary in its sights.
Such a new strategic concept is simple but deceptively powerful. As Henri Frederic Amiel, a 19th century Swiss moral philosopher, wrote: “A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.”46
Here is a potent message for naval strategists. By adopting a strategic concept that simplifies the duties and business of every officer and sailor to prepare for war, the U.S. Navy can gain a common purpose, correct its material deficiencies, enter a new era of realistic and demanding unit and fleet training, regain its warfighting mojo, and deter any potential adversary thinking about testing its mettle.
As the opening epigram advises, it is time to tighten up our helmets once again.
usni.org · December 1, 2021


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V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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