Quotes of the Day:
“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.”
- Eric Hoffer
“Age does not bring wisdom. Often it merely changes simple stupidity into arrogant conceit. Its only advantage, so far as I have been able to see, is that it spans change. A young person sees the world as they still picture, immutable. An old person has had his nose rubbed in changes and more changes and still more changes so many times that he knows it is a moving picture, forever changing. He may not like it –probably doesn't; I don't – but he knows it's so, and knowing it is the first step to coping with it come.”
- Robert a Heinlein
“Nothing has been discovered, nothing has been invented. We can only know that we know nothing. And that's the highest degree of human wisdom.”
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
1. Putin Announced His Manifesto Against the West Fifteen Years Ago. His Story Hasn’t Changed.
2. Peng Shuai emerges at Olympics, gives controlled interview
3. ISIS After the American Strike
4. Peng Shuai announces retirement from tennis and calls sexual assault claim "misunderstanding"
5. Is the U.S. Military Ready to Defend Taiwan?
6. Pentagon needs to prioritize hypersonic defense, not offense: CSIS
7. Video Supposedly Showing Harrowing F-35 Crash Aboard USS Carl Vinson Leaked
8. The Sliding-Doors Approach to the Russia Crisis
9. How to Break the Cycle of Conflict With Russia
10. Xi’s Big Show
11. Does Biden’s Russia policy need a bigger dose of realism?
12. Closing the Civil-Military Trust Gap
13. Ex-Trump national security adviser accuses Xi Jinping of staging the 'biggest land grab in history' in the South China Sea
14. McMaster pushes back on RNC, calls events of Jan. 6 'illegitimate political discourse'
15. U.S. Readies New Asia-Pacific Economic Strategy to Counter China
16. After A Decade of Incoherent Strategy in Syria, a Way Forward
17. Analysis | The News Corp breach illustrates how badly China wants to hack the U.S.
18. Top hardline Russian general warns Putin NOT to invade Ukraine and accuses him of a 'criminal policy of provoking a war'
19. U.S.-Led Air Bridge of Weapons to Ukraine Seeks to Shore Up Kyiv’s Ability to Resist Russia
20. View from Ukraine: Calm on the surface — but preparing for war
1. Putin Announced His Manifesto Against the West Fifteen Years Ago. His Story Hasn’t Changed.
Excerpts:
The United States and Europe have an opportunity to learn from past ineffective engagements with Putin and have this round turn out differently. Ideally, American and Europe’s leaders would adopt a stronger position of deterrence regarding Russia’s new offensive in Ukraine so as to make the penalties so severe that they force those around Putin to calculate the cost and benefits.
Putin told the world at Munich fifteen years ago that he has a narrative of how the West wronged his country, and he has used that story to appeal to the Russian people and to satisfy his need for validation, legitimacy, and special treatment. Taking his insecurities and Cold War nostalgia seriously gives him what he wants. By making clear that the consequences of aggressive action in Ukraine will be severe international political, economic, and military isolation would hit Putin where it matters.
Putin Announced His Manifesto Against the West Fifteen Years Ago. His Story Hasn’t Changed. - The Bulwark
Fifteen years ago this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a vitriolic speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he denounced the United States as a hyperbolic superpower, challenged Europe to reexamine security institutions across the continent, and questioned the rationale for expanding NATO. Sound familiar? On the fifteenth anniversary of his manifesto, as the world sits on the precipice of yet another conflict in Ukraine, Putin has dusted off the same talking points and the same demands, announcing last week that once again “fundamental Russian interests were ignored.” And just as the Bush administration did a decade and a half ago, the Biden administration is engaging in a series of talks which, while likely leading nowhere, are validating Putin’s bad behavior and giving him a bigger presence on the world stage than he deserves.
Founded more than fifty years ago, the Munich Security Conference has grown into a major annual event attended by world leaders, American and European defense ministers, parliamentarians from both sides of the Atlantic, journalists, policy experts, and more. The conference was, for decades, the place where U.S. defense secretaries reinforced America’s security commitment to Europe and occasionally chided their counterparts about contributing more to transatlantic security.
But on February 10, 2007, Putin’s litany of grievances disrupted this pattern, transforming the conference into a launch party for a resurgent Russia. The blockbuster tirade led to a series of diplomatic discussions and high-level “strategic framework” meetings that were, while interesting, ultimately fruitless—the same kind of meetings which are being repeated now to address the Ukraine crisis.
U.S. and European policies leading up to the February 2007 conference provided Putin useful material for his rant. In the months preceding the conference, the Bush administration in concert with America’s European allies was pursuing multiple, concurrent policies intended to strengthen transatlantic security. Bulgaria and Romania had agreed to host U.S. forces. NATO was close to extending membership invitations to Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia, having invited seven nations of Central and Eastern Europe to join in 2002. NATO had also made the decision to take over responsibility for the entirety of Afghanistan via the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission. As the Alliance began preparations for its April 2008 summit in Bucharest, its members were discussing whether and how to draw Georgia and Ukraine closer. And, the month before the conference, newly minted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had made the decision to place the “third site” of the nation’s missile defense system on the territory of some of NATO’s newest members in Central and Eastern Europe.
To Putin, these policies provided a way to portray Moscow as the victim of U.S.-led dominion in Europe with scant regard for Russia’s interests. Another Russian leader might have smiled on developments that brought democracy, rule of law, and free markets closer to a Russia struggling with long-term economic stresses, crumbling infrastructure, and declining demographics. Putin saw them are threats to his rule. Instead of seeing NATO’s ISAF mission as an opportunity for cooperation against the common threat of Islamic extremism, Putin portrayed it as NATO destabilizing his “near abroad.”
Podcast · February 04 2022
On our weekend omnibus podcast, Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes to vent about it all.
No one in the U.S. delegation or the international audience was prepared for what Putin would unload over nearly 45 minutes. The strident Russian president spent the majority of his speech and the following Q&A period railing against the Bush administration, staring down Gates and the U.S. congressional delegation led by Sen. John McCain throughout. He criticized the United States for being arrogant, for its “uncontained hyper use of force,” for having “overstepped its national borders in every way,” and for not adhering to the rule of law. He called America out for its policies on missile defense. He criticized NATO actions in Kosovo.
For the first two-thirds of the speech, which focused on castigating the United States, many of the Europeans in the audience were disturbingly open to Putin’s message. I remember sitting with the rest of the American delegation, seeing agreeable expressions and nods of approval from our European friends and allies.
But the Europeans’ trance broke when Putin redirected his ire toward the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He claimed the organization was being transformed into a “vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries,” paying insufficient attention to “relations between the spheres,” and making states “dependent and, as a consequence, politically and economically unstable.” This naked paranoia startled the Europeans. It made them concerned that Putin had bigger ambitions about transforming Europe, and that his rant was not only about President Bush and his policies, but about Europe and the institutions that keep it free and peaceful. The unease was palpable—the Europeans were happy to criticize American leadership, but deeply suspicious of any plan to replace the institutions it supported.
Putin’s remarks and Gates’s response—“one Cold War was quite enough”—led to a yearlong effort known as the “2+2 talks,” with Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and their Russian counterparts trying to define areas of cooperation, such as counterterrorism and nonproliferation, and trying to soothe areas of contention, such as missile defense and military deployments in Europe. Yet despite honest attempts at good relations, the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia loomed over the discussions as neither side was willing to accept the other’s position.
Putin’s Munich speech was a watershed moment in Russia’s relations with the free world. It made many in Europe aware of the danger Putin represented, but it also created division among them (and among Americans) about how to respond to Moscow. It put the United States in the lead position for engagement with Putin about his concerns and grievances. And it served as the manifesto for the revanchism Putin has pursued ever since. Perhaps the biggest and most lasting effect of Putin’s speech was the reaction it generated from the West, which sought to engage him and reason away his concerns. This helped to legitimate his grievances and his desire to be treated as the leader of a great power.
Since 2007, Putin has remained intent on shaping political and security developments in Russia’s periphery. He wants to be seen as a necessary player on the world stage. He wants Russia to be seen as global power whose approval must be sought. As he said at Munich and many times thereafter, he seeks to reestablish Russian influence in the world.
Successive U.S. administrations and European governments have failed to convince Putin that he could have more influence by playing a constructive, cooperative role than a destructive, antagonistic one. His country’s forces wreaked havoc in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014, splintering the territory of both nations and launching disinformation campaigns which have degraded their democratic processes (and those of other democracies as well). Putin and his cronies have paid relatively little compared to what damage they have been able to inflict militarily, psychologically, and diplomatically on millions of people.
With potential violence and devastation an order of magnitude greater than anything Europe has seen since World War II awaiting only Putin’s order, the Biden administration is again engaging in strategic framework talks with Russia, entertaining Moscow’s grievances and revisionist fantasies. Thankfully, United States and Europe have rejected Putin’s proposals, which essentially amount to a do-over of the Cold War. No doubt, talking is better than fighting, but the cost of talking is legitimizing Putin’s quest for dominion over Russia’s neighbors, as if that were the kind of thing about which the United States could or should negotiate.
For the most part, the collective position the transatlantic community has taken has been the right one: There needs to be an unambiguous message to Putin that any hostile actions by Russia against Ukraine will be met with consequences. For this threat to be seen as real and enforceable, NATO, the European Union, and individual European nations must be unified in their willingness to impose penalties on Russia for yet another attempt at disrupting peace and redrawing borders in Europe.
The United States and Europe have an opportunity to learn from past ineffective engagements with Putin and have this round turn out differently. Ideally, American and Europe’s leaders would adopt a stronger position of deterrence regarding Russia’s new offensive in Ukraine so as to make the penalties so severe that they force those around Putin to calculate the cost and benefits.
Putin told the world at Munich fifteen years ago that he has a narrative of how the West wronged his country, and he has used that story to appeal to the Russian people and to satisfy his need for validation, legitimacy, and special treatment. Taking his insecurities and Cold War nostalgia seriously gives him what he wants. By making clear that the consequences of aggressive action in Ukraine will be severe international political, economic, and military isolation would hit Putin where it matters.
2. Peng Shuai emerges at Olympics, gives controlled interview
I doubt that anyone does not see through Chinese actions here. And what is really interesting is how foolish China is to think that this would satisfy anyone in a free country around the world who can think critically.
Peng Shuai emerges at Olympics, gives controlled interview
AP · by JOHN LEICESTER · February 7, 2022
BEIJING (AP) — Nothing to see here, move on.
That was the message that Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai delivered Monday in a controlled interview in Beijing that touched on sexual assault allegations she made against a former high-ranking member of China’s ruling Communist Party. Her answers - delivered in front of a Chinese Olympic official - left unanswered questions about her well-being and what exactly happened.
The interview with French sports newspaper L’Equipe and an announcement that International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach met Peng for dinner this weekend seemed aimed at defusing sustained international concerns about the three-time Olympian and former No. 1-ranked tennis doubles player. Those concerns have threatened to overshadow the Winter Olympics underway in Beijing.
Peng told L’Equipe that the concerns were the result of “an enormous misunderstanding.” But the format of the interview appeared to allow for no sustained follow-ups, with questions submitted in advance and a Chinese Olympic committee official sitting in on the discussion, translating Peng’s comments from Chinese.
ADVERTISEMENT
Large parts of the hour-long interview, conducted Sunday in a Beijing hotel and organized through China’s Olympic committee with the IOC’s help, focused on Peng’s playing career. At age 36, and after multiple knee surgeries, Peng said she couldn’t envisage a return to tour-level professional tennis. She hasn’t played on the women’s tour since February of 2020.
The newspaper published her comments verbatim – which it said was another pre-condition for the interview – in question-and-answer form. Photos of Peng during the interview showed her wearing a red tracksuit top with “China” in Chinese characters on the front.
L’Equipe asked Peng about sexual assault allegations that sparked the controversy in November. The allegations were quickly scrubbed from her verified account on a leading Chinese social media platform, Weibo. She subsequently dropped out of public view for a while, leading to “where is Peng Shuai?” questions online and from players and fans outside of China.
In her lengthy post, Peng wrote that Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier and member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, had forced her to have sex despite repeated refusals. Her post also said they had sex once seven years ago, and that she developed romantic feelings for him after that.
The interview with L’Equipe was her first sit-down discussion with non-Chinese media since the accusation. She walked back the original post.
“Sexual assault? I never said that anyone made me submit to a sexual assault,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.
“This post resulted in an enormous misunderstanding from the outside world,” she also said. “My wish is that the meaning of this post no longer be skewed.”
Asked by L’Equipe why the post disappeared from Peng’s account, she said: “I erased it.”
“Why? Because I wanted to,” she added.
The obvious follow-up question of why she posted in the first place wasn’t asked.
The IOC also worked Monday to defuse the situation. It said Bach dined with Peng on Saturday, a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the Winter Olympics. The IOC said Peng also attended the China-Norway Olympic curling match with IOC member Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.
Speaking in his daily Olympic press conference, IOC spokesman Mark Adams wouldn’t say whether the IOC believes Peng is speaking freely or is under duress
“We are a sporting organization, and our job is to remain in contact with her and, as we’ve explained in the past, to carry out personal and quiet diplomacy, to keep in touch with her, as we’ve done,” he said. “I don’t think it’s for us to be able to to judge, in one way, just as it’s not for you to judge either.”
He said the IOC cannot pass judgement on whether there should be an investigation of her initial allegations.
“I think we can say that we are doing everything we can to make sure that this situation is as it should be,” he said.
In the interview with L’Equipe, Peng did not reply directly to a question about whether she has been in trouble with Chinese authorities since the post. Instead, she responded with a pat-sounding answer that echoed views often expressed by the Chinese government about sport and politics.
“I was to say first of all that emotions, sport and politics are three clearly separate things,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “My romantic problems, my private life, should not be mixed with sport and politics.”
Asked what her life has been like since the November posting, she replied: “It is as it should be: Nothing special.”
Peng thanked fellow players who expressed concerns about her. They included 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, who tweeted “we must not stay silent” in November and called for an investigation.
But Peng also expressed bafflement.
“I would like to know: Why so much worry?” she asked. “I never disappeared. It’s simply that many people, like my friends and among them those from the IOC, sent me messages and it was completely impossible to respond to so many messages.”
The women’s professional tennis tour suspended all WTA tournaments in China because of concerns about Peng’s safety. Peng told L’Equipe that a WTA mental health counselling unit sent her emails and a text message.
“That was very unfamiliar to me,” she said. “Why would I need psychological help or that type of thing?”
___
AP journalist Sarah DiLorenzo contributed.
AP · by JOHN LEICESTER · February 7, 2022
3. ISIS After the American Strike
Conclusion:
Will Abdullah’s death slow ISIS down? Probably not much. If the past is any guide, a new commander will take his place, and it may not be long before ISIS is once again capable of an action as lethal as the prison raid. Neither the Biden Administration nor its European allies show any appetite for going back into Syria to stop another retrenchment. “Counterterrorism operations like this can disrupt an insurgency, but not defeat an insurgency,” Cafarella said.
ISIS After the American Strike
For an indication of the terrorist group’s future, look to its recent past.
February 4, 2022
On Thursday morning, President Joe Biden made a celebratory announcement: Hajji Abdullah, the leader of the terrorist group ISIS, had died in a raid by American special-operations troops in northwestern Syria. The raid, Biden said, was a “testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide.” But it’s not clear that killing an insurgent leader disables his group. The previous leader of ISIS, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was killed two years ago, in another American raid. His successor, Hajji Abdullah, also known as Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, carried out a startlingly audacious attack just last month.
In the city of Hasakah, in northeastern Syria, two suicide car bombers struck near the al-Sinaa prison, opening the way for a force of ISIS fighters that appears to have numbered in the hundreds. The insurgents stormed the prison, in an attempt to free some three thousand ISIS prisoners, who were under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish militia backed by the United States. The prison is situated in an urban area, and yet the ISIS force managed to slip past S.D.F. checkpoints, suggesting that insurgents could have infiltrated Kurdish ranks. Once in place, they attacked the prison from several directions.
The siege, divided between periods of combat and negotiation, lasted seven days and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. ISIS seemed to have a goal beyond freeing its imprisoned fighters. Al-Sinaa held some seven hundred boys—most of them between the ages of ten and seventeen—who were raised in ISIS territory, and are sometimes referred to in jihadi literature as “the Cubs of the Caliphate.” Jennifer Cafarella, a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington, told me that, during the negotiations, the insurgents placed special emphasis on the boys, trying to swap them for Kurdish prisoners that ISIS had taken.
In the end, American airpower helped the S.D.F. retake the prison, and more than three hundred people tied to ISIS were killed. But the commandos succeeded in springing a significant number of their comrades, and, though some of the kids were recaptured, not all of them were. It was by far the most ambitious attack that ISIS has carried out since being forced out of its previous stronghold, the town of Baghouz, in eastern Syria, two years ago. “This was a bit of a wake-up call,” Charles Lister, the director of counterterrorism at the Middle East Institute, in Washington, told me. “Slowly but surely, ISIS is recovering.”
Since the American military largely departed from Syria, in 2019, ISIS has had ample space to regroup and recruit. As of January, fewer than a thousand American troops were still assisting the S.D.F. in northeastern Syria; elsewhere, the U.S. has even less visibility. “From an intelligence standpoint, Syria is a black hole,” Cafarella said. Two years ago, the United Nations estimated that there were more than ten thousand active ISIS fighters in the area, but the actual number is uncertain. In the vast ungoverned spaces that straddle the border between Iraq and Syria, they have plenty of places to hide. “We don’t have the forces to put pressure on them across Syria and Iraq.”
Eleven years after the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad kicked off a catastrophic civil war, Syria remains a fractured country, dominated by warring militias and armies. The Turkish Army contends with its Kurdish enemies; Russian and Iranian troops work to bolster al-Assad’s rule, while an array of Islamist groups fight against it. Members of one such group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, fired on a U.S. helicopter in this week’s raid, before the Americans returned fire, killing at least two of them.
Especially in such an unsettled region, any attack on an insurgent leader risks inspiring others to take up his cause. On Thursday, two senior Biden Administration officials told reporters that the strike on Abdullah had required months of painstaking planning, in part to avoid killing citizens. Abdullah had installed himself on the top two floors of an apartment building, from which he never ventured out, communicating by couriers. An ordinary Syrian family occupied the ground floor. The planners were concerned that Abdullah, if trapped, might detonate a bomb that took the building down with him.
The effort to avoid excess casualties appears to have been only partly successful. When the Americans surrounded the apartment, the family on the ground floor ran to safety, moments before Abdullah detonated a bomb—possibly on his person and possibly inside the apartment. The explosion destroyed the entire third floor, killing Abdullah and others, including his wife and several children. On the second floor, one of Abdullah’s lieutenants and the lieutenant’s wife resisted capture and were killed by American forces. At least six children appeared to have died in the fight, Lister said.
Will Abdullah’s death slow ISIS down? Probably not much. If the past is any guide, a new commander will take his place, and it may not be long before ISIS is once again capable of an action as lethal as the prison raid. Neither the Biden Administration nor its European allies show any appetite for going back into Syria to stop another retrenchment. “Counterterrorism operations like this can disrupt an insurgency, but not defeat an insurgency,” Cafarella said.
4. Peng Shuai announces retirement from tennis and calls sexual assault claim "misunderstanding"
Retirement means we likely will never hear from her again. She will have her "privacy protected" forever more by the party.
Peng Shuai announces retirement from tennis and calls sexual assault claim "misunderstanding"
Axios · by Rebecca Falconer
Flashback: The former world no. 1 doubles player alleged in a since-deleted post on Weibo last November that Zhang coerced her to have sex with him and that they had an intermittent consensual relationship for about 10 years.
What she's saying: "I never said anyone sexually assaulted me," Peng told L'Équipe."My private life should not be brought up in sports and politics."
What else is happening: The interview came as the International Olympic Committee announced that its president, Thomas Bach, met with Peng for dinner over the weekend.
-
IOC member Kirsty Coventry was also at the dinner and the pair attended the China-Norway mixed curling match together on Saturday night, per a committee statement.
-
Bach said last Thursday if Peng "wants to have an inquiry, of course we would support her in this, but it must be her decision," according to the Independent.
-
The IOC defended criticism that it had been slow to respond after the 36-year-old made the allegations, saying it was conducting "quiet diplomacy."
What to watch: Peng and Coventry will remain in contact and the Chinese tennis star and the IOC agreed "that any further communication about the content of the meeting would be left to her discretion," per Sunday's statement.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with details from Peng's interview with L'Équipe.
Axios · by Rebecca Falconer
5. Is the U.S. Military Ready to Defend Taiwan?
This is quite a critique that goes beyond Taiwan, though the defense of Taiwan provides useful context to look at the defense issues Ms. McCusker, former DUSD (Comptroller) describes.
Excerpts:
If, as noted above, Taiwan matters to the United States and China’s capability to act against Taiwan is improving while the timeline for a potential action by China is shrinking, we must ask if the United States is properly resourcing the military to defend Taiwan if called upon to do so. Is the U.S. military currently set up for success?
The short answer is no.
The U.S. military currently has four key barriers to success.
First, defense is not a priority for the current administration, demonstrated by the fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget request.
Second, delays in annual appropriations and authorizations reduce buying power, hinder readiness, and delay the pursuit of a competitive advantage.
Third, the definition of defense has been expanded to allow for diversion of defense resources and diffusion of attention to non-defense priorities.
Fourth, institutional and statutory rules and processes do not promote speed and agility in testing, procuring, and integrating modern capabilities.
The administration, Congress, and the Department of Defense created these barriers to success. So, they are also fixable.
Is the U.S. Military Ready to Defend Taiwan?
Any defense of Taiwan planning must fix four barriers to succeed.
As the debate intensifies on U.S. policy related to the defense of Taiwan, it is useful to examine when and why the United States would carry out such a mission and the potential obstacles to a successful outcome. Is the United States prioritizing national security in its resourcing and budgeting decisions? Is the U.S. military on a path to success in modernizing its equipment, processes, and capabilities to maintain a competitive edge over China?
We may not have much time to align the answers to these questions.
China regards Taiwan—an island democracy with 23 million citizens—as a renegade province to be folded back under Beijing’s control. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act does not require the United States to defend Taiwan but ambiguously states Washington will maintain the capacity to do so.
It is evident that Taiwan matters to the United States. China’s control of Taiwan would give the People’s Republic of China (PRC) a forward base 150 miles off the mainland, bringing Chinese aircraft and missiles much closer to vital trade routes and important U.S. allies like Japan and Australia.
As China’s fifth most important trading partner, control over Taiwan would provide Beijing with an important economic asset linked to a strong technology industry. Taking Taiwan would provide the PRC with semiconductor factories that are critical to microelectronics.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s most recent annual report to Congress, released in November 2021, finds that decades of improvements by China’s armed forces “have fundamentally transformed the strategic environment” and weakened military deterrence across the Taiwan Strait, diminishing the U.S. position.
Indications are that the moment of maximum danger in a conflict with China over Taiwan may be only a few years away.
Barriers to Success
If, as noted above, Taiwan matters to the United States and China’s capability to act against Taiwan is improving while the timeline for a potential action by China is shrinking, we must ask if the United States is properly resourcing the military to defend Taiwan if called upon to do so. Is the U.S. military currently set up for success?
The short answer is no.
The U.S. military currently has four key barriers to success.
First, defense is not a priority for the current administration, demonstrated by the fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget request.
Second, delays in annual appropriations and authorizations reduce buying power, hinder readiness, and delay the pursuit of a competitive advantage.
Third, the definition of defense has been expanded to allow for diversion of defense resources and diffusion of attention to non-defense priorities.
Fourth, institutional and statutory rules and processes do not promote speed and agility in testing, procuring, and integrating modern capabilities.
The administration, Congress, and the Department of Defense created these barriers to success. So, they are also fixable.
Defense Is Not a Priority
When the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the FY 2022 discretionary top lines for defense and non-defense departments and agencies in early April 2021, it was clear that defense was not a priority. The OMB press release on the subject did not even mention defense. The discretionary totals contain a nearly 16 percent increase for domestic activities, while the proposed defense number would not have kept pace with inflation, which at the time was much lower than it is now.
Upon release of the fiscal year 2022 president’s budget request to Congress in late May, the lack of attention to defense was further emphasized. The White House budget summary mentions no actual military capabilities.
The Biden administration’s proposed $715 billion Department of Defense (DoD) topline would not keep pace with inflation. As inflation skyrockets and the defense budget stalls, officials are cutting investments essential to the readiness of our national security apparatus.
Why is this a problem?
Since 2000, the DoD has spent about twice as much of its expenditures on operations and maintenance (O&M) costs as it did to procure new capabilities. As platforms age, their O&M costs skyrocket; and U.S. equipment is rapidly aging. The average aircraft in the Air Force is thirty-one years old, and some fleets average sixty years old. The majority of the Navy’s classes of ships are no longer in production. Additionally, in 2020, maintenance, refueling, and complex overhaul led to less than half of the carrier fleet available for deployments.
In contrast, the Pentagon recently reported that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy had amassed the largest fleet in the world. It cited the acceleration of Chinese nuclear warfare development in its annual report to Congress on military developments involving China, and called a recent test-firing of a Chinese hypersonic missile “a near-Sputnik moment.”
Real Growth for Defense Spending
The solution to this first barrier is that the administration should support the recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission by providing 3-5 percent real growth for defense spending. It needs to be real defense spending that will result in readiness and modern military capacity and capability.
The Democrat-led Congress even acknowledges the dangerous lack of attention paid to the national security budget. The FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act increased the DoD budget by $25 billion, or 3 percent over the requested amount. With appropriations still pending, the final FY2022 top line is unknown, but the Senate has also proposed increasing the budget by $23 billion over the request. The increases provided by Congress are admittedly a bit of a mixed bag since Congress has been guilty for years of diffusing defense resources to non-defense spending. Still, the signal that increases in defense spending are necessary is clear.
Within this top line, resources should be aligned to the readiness of the current force—to include incrementally integrating new capabilities into that force—and procurement of new capabilities that should be emerging from research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) investments made over the last five to ten years.
The FY2023 budget should request real growth for defense and recognize that the United States is a global power that must be able to engage simultaneously in multiple areas.
Killing Continuing Resolutions
Second, delays in annual appropriations and authorizations reduce buying power and hinder the pursuit of competitive advantage.
The DoD is currently operating under a continuing resolution (CR) through February 18, 2022, the second so far for this fiscal year. CRs essentially extend last year’s funding and priorities into the new year to avoid a lapse in appropriations and government shutdown when Congress can’t agree on regular annual spending. When the current CR ends, DoD will have operated under temporary, damaging funding extensions like this one for nearly 1,400 days during the last twelve years.
CRs are expensive and damaging to national security. The longer the CR, the more the damage. In this way, and as noted frequently during Congressional testimony, CRs compound the harm already done by insufficient top lines.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explained in a statement that a full-year CR for FY 2022 “would cause enormous, if not irreparable, damage for a wide range of bipartisan priorities.” He said:
The department’s efforts to address innovation priorities such as cyber, artificial intelligence and hypersonics programs would be slowed. … It would misalign billions of dollars in resources in a manner inconsistent with evolving threats and the national security landscape, which would erode the U.S. military advantage relative to China, impede our ability to innovate and modernize, degrade readiness, and hurt our people and their families. And it would offer comfort to our enemies, disquiet to our allies, and unnecessary stress to our workforce.
During floor debate on the current CR on December 2, 2021, members of Congress repeatedly conveyed the importance of full-year funding. They stated that passing annual appropriations is their “most basic constitutional responsibility.” Industry has also conveyed the destructive nature of CRs through letters that members included in the congressional record. But despite clear comments on the cumulative, damaging nature of CRs to national security, the industrial base, uniform personnel, military competitiveness, and local communities across the country, and the unambiguous acknowledgment that enacting annual appropriations is Congress’ primary constitutional responsibility, members spent most of the recent debate in Congress blaming each other for not getting the job done.
Meanwhile, time ticks by, and the lack of sufficient and appropriately placed resources further inhibits the military capability necessary to carry out the nation’s strategy or defend Taiwan.
The solution to this second barrier is straight forward. Congress must start taking its responsibility to pass annual appropriations on time seriously instead of relying on continuing resolutions almost every fiscal year.
Defining National Security
Third, non-defense spending in the defense budget continues to grow as definitions are expanded and resources and management attention are diverted to non-defense priorities.
Public perception is that the DoD budget is growing exponentially, and it only pays for military capabilities and operational spending. This is misleading. For years, the defense budget has included funding for programs and activities that do nothing to advance military capability or increase national security.
The Biden administration is redefining what is included in “national security.” It has further increased the amount of non-defense spending in the defense budget, compounding the problems associated with the declining defense top line and unreliable funding, and diffusing the U.S. ability to successfully carry out a defense of Taiwan mission.
The secretary of defense’s concept of Integrated Deterrence, which he indicates will be foundational to the revised National Defense Strategy, furthers the subservience of hard power and military capability—which should be his primary function in backing foreign policy.
Every time a new mission is assigned to DoD, it must manage, plan, execute, assess, and report on the activity. This draws personnel, management focus, and resources, beyond those appropriated for the function, away from what should be its core mission: preparing for, fighting, and winning America’s wars.
For example, the DoD spends more on the Defense Health Program than on new ships. It spends almost $10 billion more on Medicare than on new tactical vehicles. It spends more on environmental restoration and running schools than on microelectronics and space launch combined.
Solving this barrier by redefining national security, and therefore what belongs in the DoD budget, to focus on military capability should be a U.S. priority. Removing lower priority expenses or transitioning their funding to another, more appropriate department or agency will result in a real sense of what defense costs and make room in the budget for military readiness, modernization, and operations, including those critical to Taiwan efforts.
Time Is of the Essence
Fourth, institutional and statutory rules and processes do not promote speed and agility in testing, procuring, and integrating modern capabilities.
The United States must compete with China and any other adversary that threatens U.S. national security. With the small wiggle room DoD has left after the aforementioned obstacles have wreaked havoc on its budget, the department must spend its funding as economically as possible. Barriers to doing so come in many forms, including incentive structures that support bureaucracy and risk-aversion over innovation, agility, and speed; legacy and diverse business systems that don’t communicate; and general stagnation and opposition to creative change.
The ability to integrate and operationalize new technologies will likely determine success on the future battlefield. Unfortunately, technology companies find it difficult to work with the DoD. With technology solutions being ideal for defense adoption, many start-up firms decline to enter or quickly exit the federal market. DoD needs to maintain access to these cutting-edge businesses to ensure that the warfighting capabilities it delivers are relevant and remain relevant.
Transforming future concepts of operations into actionable programming guidance will require a new construct that abandons the legacy lifecycle funding model where a technology slowly moves from research, development, test, and evaluation to procurement and concludes with operations and maintenance. Instead, the budgeting process needs to support timely movements of funding to capture technology solutions and move them quickly from concept to a fielded capability. This approach also forces a reevaluation of how DoD conducts oversight and management.
The seemingly immense changes necessary to solve this fourth barrier and modernize how DoD operates can be made more manageable by adopting an acquisition approach built around evolutionary innovation. This will require leadership, cultural change, and funding lines that are flexible and responsive to rapid iterative development, testing, and fielding.
To seize the opportunities of an evolutionary approach to modernization, the Pentagon needs three things.
First, it needs stable lines of funding that can accommodate the open-ended nature of an evolutionary development process and provide current year funding for any type of appropriation aligned with joint and combatant command needs.
Second, it needs business systems that can track metrics for an information-age military capability to keep up with the speed of continuous development and enable effective oversight. The Advancing Analytics capability, initially developed to support the DoD’s full financial statement audit, can meet this need when fully implemented.
Third, it needs congressional support to modernize the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process to match acquisition reforms made over the last decade with agile, responsive, and transparent funding not tied to a specific stage in development or fiscal year. The recently enacted NDAA provision that requires a commission to look at this issue, if structured correctly, should help shed light on what works, what does not work, and specifically what changes will have the most positive impact.
Conclusion
Any defense of Taiwan planning must fix the above four barriers to succeed.
Proper budgeting is essential in the success of all U.S. military priorities. The defense budget must account for inflation, which increases the cost of must-pay bills, and it must support the modernization necessary to remain competitive.
Congress should prioritize and hold itself accountable for executing its fundamental constitutional responsibility of passing annual appropriations bills. We can’t spend good intentions or fall back on blaming others when it comes to defense priorities.
Defense should remain focused on its primary and core function, deterring, preparing for, and winning America’s wars. Administration officials and Congress should remove non-defense spending from the defense budget to make clear what the nation is really spending for its security and to support federal priorities within other agencies with corresponding missions.
And finally, DoD and Congress should shake off the chains of the past in the way it plans, programs, budgets, and executes the sustainment and advancement of the world’s best fighting force.
With these four barriers solved, the United States exponentially increases its ability to succeed in all future endeavors, including defending Taiwan.
Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She is a former Acting Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller).
Emily Coletta is a project coordinator and research assistant at AEI.
6. Pentagon needs to prioritize hypersonic defense, not offense: CSIS
Excerpts:
The CSIS study explains that: “As a practical matter, access to strategic theaters requires effective hypersonic defenses. […] The United States does not compete with unlimited resources. It is not possible to actively defend every critical asset or even broad areas that hypersonic missiles might target. This simple reality requires policy and strategy expectations aligned to preferential defense and a more limited defended asset list.”
Lewis foot-stomped this, saying it is critical that DoD leaders “don’t get distracted” by sensational things, like China’s experimental fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) that may or may not be nuclear capable.
“I don’t want to dismiss what the Russians and Chinese are doing,” he hastened to say. But the real point of the Chinese FOBS was the messaging, not necessarily the capability. “It’s trying to say: We’re now a world power. We want to be able to shoot anything around the world, and we’re not constrained to our backyard,” he said.
Pentagon needs to prioritize hypersonic defense, not offense: CSIS - Breaking Defense
"You really need to worry about the tactical things. You really need to defend your surface ships, air bases, all that stuff," NDIA's Mark Lewis said.
Hypersonic missile defense will be crucial in future warfare, according to CSIS. (CSIS graphic)
WASHINGTON: As the Defense Department looks for ways to up its hypersonics game, it needs to refocus its priorities towards protecting ships, air bases and other critical tactical assets from Chinese and Russian cruise missiles and glide vehicles, asserts a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“Notwithstanding all the hyperbole, hypersonic missiles are not unstoppable,” Tom Karako, coauthor along with Masao Dahlgren of the study “Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat,” told Breaking Defense.
“The single most important capability here will be space sensors to track these threats, followed by a glide phase interceptor and a command and control function that can contend with a geographically broad, temporally compressed decision-space,” Karako said. “Hypersonic gliders, for instance, are sometimes described as targeting the gaps and seams of our sensors or interceptors, but they also target the gaps and seams of our command and control structure.”
The report comes just days after the Department of Defense arranged a high-level meeting between senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and the CEOs of major defense contracting firms — the latest signal of the urgency with which the US is pursuing hypersonic capabilities.
But the CSIS study finds that there is a ginormous disparity between Defense Department spending on offensive hypersonic missile programs and ways to defend against them. Whereas DoD and the services splashed out more than $2.5 billion for offensive hypersonic missile programs in their fiscal 2022 budget requests, CSIS analysis shows that funds budgeted for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and DARPA on defensive capabilities barely topped $2.5 million.
Mark Lewis, former acting secretary of DoD’s Office of Research & Engineering and an expert on hypersonic tech, agreed with CSIS’s assessment.
“There’s much more emphasis right now on offense and defense,” he told Breaking Defense.
At the same time, Lewis, who currently heads the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technology Institute, cautioned that it is hard to precisely quantify how much is being spent at DoD on each basket.
CSIS chart 2022 on hypersonic defense spending. (CSIS)
This is in part, he explained, because defensive efforts at MDA and the Space Development Agency (SDA) are entangled with other missile defense activities.
Indeed, there are a number of long-standing policy issues with regard to how MDA, SDA and the services will share responsibility for hypersonic missile defense that remain unresolved — leading to both overlaps and cracks in development efforts.
Further, Lewis explained, there is some technology “bleed” between offensive and defensive capabilities — something that Karako also pointed out. “Some of the same characteristics that make hypersonic weapons attractive may hold the key to new approaches to defense design,” Karako said.
And finally, a lot of what is going on in the defensive arena is highly classified. “Not seeing something doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t happening,” Lewis said.
The CSIS study stresses that “hypersonic technology” isn’t a “thing.” Rather it is an attribute — super high speed — that leads to a number of different types of weapon delivery systems that stress US defense and response capabilities. For this reason (as the study’s name suggests), defending against such delivery systems “might be better framed or understood as a complex form of air defense, rather than, say, as an adjunct to ballistic missile defense,” Karako said.
This will necessitate a change in Pentagon thinking about how to approach its strategies and investments.
For Lewis, a key takeaway from the CSIS study is that DoD and the services need to keep their eyes fixed on the issue of protecting against the tactical uses of scram-jet based hypersonic missiles and maneuvering glide vehicles.
“You really need to worry about the tactical things. You really need to defend your surface ships, air bases, all that stuff,” Lewis said.
The CSIS study explains that: “As a practical matter, access to strategic theaters requires effective hypersonic defenses. […] The United States does not compete with unlimited resources. It is not possible to actively defend every critical asset or even broad areas that hypersonic missiles might target. This simple reality requires policy and strategy expectations aligned to preferential defense and a more limited defended asset list.”
Lewis foot-stomped this, saying it is critical that DoD leaders “don’t get distracted” by sensational things, like China’s experimental fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) that may or may not be nuclear capable.
“I don’t want to dismiss what the Russians and Chinese are doing,” he hastened to say. But the real point of the Chinese FOBS was the messaging, not necessarily the capability. “It’s trying to say: We’re now a world power. We want to be able to shoot anything around the world, and we’re not constrained to our backyard,” he said.
7. Video Supposedly Showing Harrowing F-35 Crash Aboard USS Carl Vinson Leaked
Video Supposedly Showing Harrowing F-35 Crash Aboard USS Carl Vinson Leaked
USS Carl Vinson—Public Domain
SHARE
What appears to be a smartphone video of a monitor that is playing closed-circuit camera system footage of the January 24th crash of an F-35C aboard the USS Carl Vinson has emerged online. The carrier was sailing in the tumultuous South China Sea at the time that the jet from VFA-147, the 'Argonauts,' crashed during a landing attempt aboard the ship. This is the second video to emerge that has supposedly shown the landing attempt in question. However, this one, which includes the in-deck Pilot's Landing Aid Television (PLAT), as well as a video shot from the ship's Island Camera Room, gives us a full look at the actual incident, not just the moments leading up to it.
We must stress that this video's authenticity remains unconfirmed from an official source, although it appears to fit the circumstances of the crash, as well as with another confirmed video previously leaked of the aircraft making its doomed approach that was shot from the fantail of the ship. Still, the facts surrounding the authenticity of this video could change.
That being said, it shows a grim sequence of events. The F-35C appears to settle into a low power state during the final moments of its approach, with frantic calls from the Landing Signal Officer to add power/select burner and to wave-off just before the aircraft slams into the deck. It looks like at least one of its main landing gear is sheared off in the impact and the jet goes careening sideways down the landing area trailing flames before falling into the water in front of the ship.
The new video supposedly shows closed-circuit footage of the crash:
The leaked video shot from the fantail of the USS Carl Vinson of the moments leading up to the crash that the Navy has confirmed as authentic:
While the scene is horrific, it is amazing how fast the crash crew swarms the landing area and starts spraying foam in order to stave off a potential fire. Truly amazing work here. Clearly, their training had them ready to go at the instant trouble reared its ugly head.
We also hear the call that there is a pilot in the water and we don't clearly see the ejection. This may point to it happening after the jet has hit the water. It just isn't clear at this time, but we know they did eject and that they survived.
Seven sailors were hurt in this event, but looking at this video, it's pretty amazing more weren't and that everyone survived their initial injuries.
Still, assuming this video is as authentic as it appears to be, lots of unanswered questions remain and the Navy's investigation will try to answer them. But above all else, the video is a stark reminder that carrier aviation remains a dangerous business, no matter how routine talented aviators and sailors make it look. Oftentimes, we hear the anecdote that things can go from normal to terrifying in the blink of an eye — that things happen fast in carrier operations. The video is yet another piece of evidence of how true that axiom is. And this is not just the case on some dark and stormy night or after a combat mission over enemy territory. It can happen suddenly on a bright and sunny day in calm waters, deep into a carrier's cruise.
Finally, there is another story here about how a ship with thousands of people onboard can maintain confidential information in a smartphone and social media age. Both in this case and in the case of F-35B crash off the HMS Queen Elizabeth, leaked crash footage emerged in remarkably the same fashion. In fact, in the case of the F-35C crash, we got a picture of the jet in the water first, and in the case of the F-35B crash, we even got a recovery image of the jet after it was pulled from the seafloor. These leaks are happening during a time of peace, but what about more sensitive information during a time of war?
On the other hand, maybe the Navy should be more forthcoming about releasing videos of incidents that do not give away any highly sensitive information as it seems as if it will just leak anyway outside of their control.
This is all something to think about considering the pattern of recent events.
As for the hulk of the F-35C that now resides on the seafloor, a salvage operation is underway. The uniquely sensitive nature of any F-35 variant, especially an intact airframe, and the location where the mishap occurred, in the South China Sea where China has a massive amount of its naval capabilities, makes the operation especially urgent.
We will continue to keep you informed as to how this ongoing story plays out.
Contact the author: tyler@thedrive.com
Don't forget to sign up Your Email Address
8. The Sliding-Doors Approach to the Russia Crisis
Excerpts:
The key is to present these scenarios in tandem. Without an ambitious diplomatic track, Putin could well accept confrontation with the West. And without the prospect of confrontation following an invasion, he would have no reason to give up his goal of controlling Ukraine and undermining NATO. The two go together. Even if one favors greater concessions to Russia over Ukraine, as some have argued, this framework of sharpening the choices would remain essential. Otherwise, Putin could simply reject any concessions as insufficient and invade anyway.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a catastrophe—for Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of Europe. It would destabilize the European security order and the global geopolitical situation more generally. But until recently, at least, Putin appears to have felt that he is in control of the consequences, and that they could work in his favor. That’s why it is essential to shape the strategic environment in which diplomatic efforts take place by pulling back the curtain on what will happen if Russia attacks.
The Sliding-Doors Approach to the Russia Crisis
Putin knows that the West will not fight for Ukraine because it is not a NATO ally, so traditional military deterrence will not work.
The prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine creates a set of problems not encountered since the early Cold War period. These problems do not lend themselves to a typical diplomatic negotiation to find a compromise, nor are they a good fit for the traditional tools of deterrence. An invasion may well occur regardless of the West’s response—but the only chance of preventing it is a “sliding doors” approach to sharpen the choices that Russian President Vladimir Putin faces and exacerbate his dilemmas. This entails a mix of steps that may increase tensions with Russia in the short term, such as new troop deployments to Eastern Europe, and an ambitious diplomatic track to discuss Europe’s security architecture. Some observers have expressed concern that these two elements contradict each other, but they are actually complementary and part of a single strategy—each is necessary for the success of the other.
Let’s start with what Putin wants. He has never regarded Ukraine as a real state and worries about the country’s move toward the West and away from Moscow, which accelerated following Russia’s partial invasion in 2014. More broadly, he has two oft-stated goals. One is to reverse, as much as possible, the Soviet Union’s collapse, something he called the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. The other is to replace a European security architecture based on the equal sovereign rights of all states, no matter how small, with something that accords Russia influence commensurate with its power. Toward this end, Russia has demanded that NATO close its door to new members and roll back military deployments to what they were in 1997.
Hitherto, Putin has been content to aggressively pursue these goals incrementally and below the threshold of major war. Analysts are surprised that he seems to have changed his approach, with an invasion force parked near the border with Ukraine. Some argue that it’s still the same strategy—he intends not to invade fully, but to use the assembled force as leverage. Others argue that he sees a moment of opportunity, with the West distracted and unwilling to resist. Now into his third decade of rule, Putin is looking toward his legacy. Perhaps the right question, then, is not “Why now?” but “If not now, then when?” Ukraine is a prize, not just for Putin but also for Russian nationalism, as is undermining the post–Cold War European security architecture.
At any rate, Putin knows that the West will not fight for Ukraine as it is not a NATO ally, so traditional military deterrence will not work. Yes, the West has threatened massive economic sanctions but little historical evidence suggests that sanctions alone can provide enough punishment to deter a major power from doing something it really wants to do. Moreover, Putin has long pursued national resilience to prepare his country to weather that storm. He has also accumulated leverage of his own—on energy supplies and with his cyber threat—that he can use to divide the West.
Negotiations, on their own, have little prospect of succeeding. The Russian demands are so far-reaching that the United States and its allies could never agree to them or come close to halfway. Even if NATO were to make a statement that Ukraine would not be admitted to the alliance for the next 10 years, it would still not stop Ukraine’s move toward the West as Putin sees it.
The NATO response, which has come into focus over the past couple of weeks, appears to recognize the complexity of the problem. It moves beyond economic sanctions and negotiations to bridge the gap between the two sides over Ukraine. Essentially, NATO is endeavoring to sharply define Putin’s choice, creating two separate scenarios that he will have to choose between.
The first scenario, if Russia invades Ukraine, involves a worsening of Russia’s security environment as Putin perceives it. Call it a “measures short of war” approach. It includes tough economic and technology sanctions, and holds out the prospect of backing an insurgency to drive Russia out of Ukraine. It promises new U.S. Army deployments to Eastern and Northern Europe, potentially including offensive weaponry. It is a world where Finland and Sweden are closer to joining NATO. Russia may end up with control of Ukraine in the short term, but by the metrics the regime uses, it will be much less secure than it is today.
The second scenario, if Russia de-escalates, offers a substantive negotiation over reinvigorating Europe’s security architecture, including discussions on new reciprocal arms-control agreements that could address Russian concerns over NATO deployments in Eastern Europe. It is a world where high-level engagement and transactional cooperation between the West and Russia are still imaginable. Putin would have to give up his ambition of immediately gaining control of Ukraine and collapsing the European security order, but he would have additional influence within the order.
The key is to present these scenarios in tandem. Without an ambitious diplomatic track, Putin could well accept confrontation with the West. And without the prospect of confrontation following an invasion, he would have no reason to give up his goal of controlling Ukraine and undermining NATO. The two go together. Even if one favors greater concessions to Russia over Ukraine, as some have argued, this framework of sharpening the choices would remain essential. Otherwise, Putin could simply reject any concessions as insufficient and invade anyway.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a catastrophe—for Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of Europe. It would destabilize the European security order and the global geopolitical situation more generally. But until recently, at least, Putin appears to have felt that he is in control of the consequences, and that they could work in his favor. That’s why it is essential to shape the strategic environment in which diplomatic efforts take place by pulling back the curtain on what will happen if Russia attacks.
9. How to Break the Cycle of Conflict With Russia
Conclusion:
Of course, not everyone would welcome such an alternative arrangement, and this crisis has made it even less likely. Many consider seeking mutual agreement on a stable regional order to be tantamount to appeasement. This view has the effect of stifling debate and shutting down discussions of alternatives. It is perhaps unsurprising that our proposal faces little competition in the marketplace of ideas. Nonetheless, both Russian and Western government officials with whom we discussed our proposal—which was written before the current crisis—indicated they had little incentive to compromise. Each side believed it had the long-term advantage over the other in the region. The former could rely on the favorable balance of military power, while the latter saw its power of attraction as unstoppable. Those from the states caught in between were daunted by the polarization of their countries’ debates on these issues and by their perceived inability to influence the decisions of the major powers. One former senior Ukrainian official told us he feared that our proposal would be considered only “after a major catastrophe.” Still, we encountered many—both inside and outside government—who recognized that the status quo serves no one and were willing to consider alternatives like ours.
Europe might well be on the brink of a major catastrophe. Regardless of what the Russian government does with the huge force it has assembled around Ukraine, Putin has made clear that Russia’s waning influence in its backyard is now a problem for everyone else. Moscow’s willingness to use force to prevent its neighbors from drifting into the Western orbit means that continued pursuit of geopolitical pluralism in post-Soviet Eurasia by the United States and its allies might well lead to greater insecurity and misery for the region’s states or even to their further dismemberment. Pluralism works inside a country when there are institutions and rules that govern competition among divergent interests. In post-Soviet Eurasia, there is a lot of geopolitical competition, but no agreed-upon institutions or rules to govern that competition. Until Russia, the United States, Europe, and the states stuck in between them reach a consensus on a revised regional order, post-Soviet Eurasia will remain a source of instability and conflict. Our proposal shows that such consensus might yet be possible.
How to Break the Cycle of Conflict With Russia
Seeking Consensus Isn’t Appeasement—It’s Pragmatism
February 7, 2022
To judge from recent developments around Ukraine, the United States’ post–Cold War policy toward Russia’s neighbors might seem like a failure. Moscow has deployed more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, and U.S. efforts to de-escalate the situation have so far come up short. But Europe’s most serious security crisis in decades is not the result of Washington’s failure to achieve its core objectives in the region but, paradoxically, a symptom of its runaway success.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has sought to bolster the sovereignty of what used to be called the “new independent states,” thereby ensuring that a new Eurasian superpower did not emerge from the rubble of the Soviet Union. By encouraging these countries to forge deeper ties with the West—and to weaken their links to Moscow—Washington hoped to strengthen their independence.
But Washington’s strategy may have worked too well. Many former Soviet republics, and especially Ukraine, now want to join the Western camp—and Russia is prepared to go to war to stop them. Regardless of how the current crisis over Ukraine plays out, Russia is destined to clash again with the United States and its allies over the status of these former Soviet republics unless all parties can agree on a mutually acceptable arrangement for the regional order.
That may sound like a tall order, especially since all sides appear inclined to dig in their heels. But a recent initiative of the RAND Corporation and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation offers limited grounds for optimism. The think tanks assembled a group of nongovernmental experts from the United States, the European Union, Russia, and five post-Soviet Eurasian countries and tasked them with mapping out a mutually acceptable settlement. The document they produced suggests there could be just enough common ground to escape the cycle of conflict.
CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, it was far from clear that the former republics would remain sovereign states. Many Red Army units deployed in these countries became Russian military units overnight, and several of them fought alongside separatist movements that took up arms against the newly independent governments. The former republics were also highly economically dependent on Moscow, thanks to the legacy of the centralized Soviet economy. Russia initially controlled all of the former Soviet Union’s hydrocarbon export pipelines, including those leading to the profitable European market. And decision-makers in Moscow had difficulty adjusting to the reality that their counterparts in the neighboring states were now sovereign equals under international law, not subordinate regional party bosses.
The implications for the United States were clear: unless it sought to strengthen Western ties to Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the seven other non-Baltic republics (the Westward trajectory of the Baltic republics was already clear), Moscow could, with time, reconstruct some sort of union across the Eurasian landmass. U.S. President Bill Clinton entered office in 1993, according to his top Russia adviser, Strobe Talbott, with the conviction that “we must convince everyone in the region that ‘Russia’s not the only game in town’ and that the U.S. was committed to helping what we called the new independent states survive to become old independent states.” Writing in Foreign Affairs the following year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski articulated the intellectual architecture for this approach: “The central goal of a realistic and long-term grand strategy should be the consolidation of geopolitical pluralism within the former Soviet Union.”
Successive U.S. administrations, along with U.S. allies in Europe, did just that. Washington pushed for new pipelines that would eventually break Russia’s energy export monopoly and thus provide producer and transit countries with independent revenue streams. It lent political and financial support to regional groupings of the former republics, such as GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova), that excluded Russia. It brought a new generation of military officers from these states to study at U.S. military educational institutions in hopes that they would return home with a less Russia-centric worldview than their elders who had studied in Moscow. It supported European Union efforts to encourage these states to adopt the bloc’s regulatory and technical standards, at least in part to displace the standards used by Russian-led regional organizations. And on and on.
By most measures, these efforts were enormously successful. Although pro-Russia sentiment survives in certain corners of certain capitals, the prospect of any former Soviet republic voluntarily ceding its sovereignty back to Moscow is beyond remote. Russia is not an attractive political or economic model for the region’s leaders. Its share of the imports and exports of most former Soviet republics is stagnant or steadily dwindling, and its hydrocarbon export monopoly was broken decades ago. Travel to Europe is now visa free for citizens of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. And Belarus, nominally Russia’s closest ally, received more EU Schengen zone visas per capita than any other major country in 2019.
The United States did not anticipate the ferocity with which Russia would resist its neighbors’ Westward drift.
But efforts aimed at bolstering these states’ sovereignty and independence were sometimes difficult to distinguish from efforts to reduce Russia’s influence in the region. Either way, the United States did not anticipate the ferocity with which Russia would resist its neighbors’ Westward drift. As Moscow first demonstrated by invading Georgia in 2008, what it cannot achieve through persuasion, it is prepared to impose with force.
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine, and its current mobilization of forces on Ukraine’s borders, have made it clear that the 2008 Russo-Georgian war was not an aberration. There should be no doubt that Moscow is willing to use its military might to avoid being surrounded by states that are closely linked to NATO and the EU. In some countries, such as Moldova, the Kremlin has settled for an effective veto on potential EU or NATO membership by supporting pro-Russian separatist regions and fueling territorial disputes that impede accession to Western clubs. In others such as Belarus, the mere possibility of somewhat more Western-friendly opposition forces ousting the relatively pliant regime of President Alexander Lukashenko in August 2020 was enough to trigger Russian bomber flights over the country and, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, mobilization of reserve riot police to crush protests in the event that Minsk lost control. And of course in Ukraine, Putin has now mustered the largest military buildup in Europe since the Cold War to put an end to Kyiv’s attempt to join the Western camp.
In short, pursuit of geopolitical pluralism turned out to come with costs as well as benefits. The U.S. strategy helped prevent a neo-Soviet Union from reemerging, but it did not create an alternative regional architecture that both Russia and its neighbors could accept. Nor did it account for Russia’s willingness to use military force to stop its neighbors from getting too close to the EU and NATO. (Of course, Russia’s ham-fisted approach toward these states made them even more eager to flee.) The current crisis over Ukraine is the latest and most obvious indication that continued pursuit of geopolitical pluralism in post-Soviet Eurasia will create significant risks for the United States and its allies—and especially for Russia’s neighbors.
Some might counter that the core problem is not Western policy but Russian neoimperialism. If Moscow could accept that its neighbors are fully sovereign states and allow them to align however they choose, there would be no issue. That is certainly true. But Moscow clearly doesn’t see it that way, and it is unwilling to let its neighbors make their own choices. To the contrary, it is willing to go to war, annex territory, and prop up separatist proxies to ensure that the choices of these states are limited. One may hope that Russia’s next leader will take a different tack from Putin’s. But hope is not a strategy, and in the meantime, the Russian military may well take actions in Ukraine that tie the hands of Putin’s successor.
IMAGINING AN ALTERNATIVE
No matter how this current crisis is resolved, Russia’s immediate neighborhood will continue to be a flash point unless Russia, the United States, European powers, and the countries of post-Soviet Eurasia—particularly those six sandwiched between Russia and Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—can reach a broad agreement on the norms, institutions, and rules that should govern states’ interactions in the region. Even if the EU and NATO were prepared to offer the post-Soviet states full membership—and they are not—continuing with the current approach risks repeated Russian assaults on them in one form or another. A mutually agreed alternative would benefit all parties. The challenge is imagining what that alternative might be.
In an attempt to do just that, the RAND Corporation and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation asked a group of nongovernmental experts from the United States, Europe, Russia, and five post-Soviet Eurasian countries to hash out a mutually acceptable regional arrangement. All of the participants, including me, were acting in the capacity of private citizens and so had the ability to venture beyond the confines of their country’s policies. But all still had to consider the potential reception to any proposed agreement back home. The document we produced was by definition a compromise that did not fully reflect the views of any single author or fully satisfy any country’s maximalist goals, but it might therefore indicate where a multilateral negotiation could lead.
It was not easy to unite a group that included authors from countries, including Russia and Ukraine, that are essentially at war. But we did eventually settle on a comprehensive proposal for a revised regional order that covers security, regional conflicts, and economic integration. Our proposal would create a new consultative body for major-power engagement on regional security, new norms for the behavior of NATO and the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization toward nonmembers (such as not calling into question the legitimacy of the other and its current membership), and an offer of multilateral security guarantees and other confidence-building measures to nonaligned states. It would facilitate increased multidirectional trade within the region; establish regular dialogue between the EU, the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and nonmembers of those trading blocs; and establish new rules to avoid future crises. Finally, our plan would provide mechanisms and processes to immediately improve the livelihoods of people living in regional conflict zones and eventually progress toward mutually agreed settlements.
A mutually agreed alternative to the current regional order would benefit all parties.
Our approach reflects the fact that disputes over security, regional conflicts, and regional integration are all interlinked. For example, Georgia’s separatist conflicts would need to be addressed in a mutually acceptable way if Tbilisi were to consider a nonaligned status. And conversely, these conflicts will remain unresolvable without movement toward a common approach on the regional security regime. The disputes over these issues cannot be separated, and therefore the solutions must be combined.
To see how this might work in practice, consider the hardest and most relevant case for today: Ukraine. In return for voluntarily adopting a nonaligned status, Kyiv could receive both multilateral security guarantees and Russian commitments of military restraint, including along the border area. Russia and the West would hold regular consultations on security issues and, importantly, commit to seeking mutual consensus before making changes to the regional security architecture. They would commit to respecting Ukraine’s nonalignment. The current negotiations over the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine would have been significantly accelerated as part of a new international commitment to settling the conflict. And in addition to its current free trade deal with the EU, Ukraine would benefit from a restoration of trade with Russia (now hampered by Moscow’s punitive sanctions) and the creation of a trilateral consultation mechanism with the EU and the EAEU. These arrangements would provide far greater security, stability, and prosperity to Ukraine than the status quo—even if Russia were not threatening an imminent invasion.
BLINKERED THINKING
Of course, not everyone would welcome such an alternative arrangement, and this crisis has made it even less likely. Many consider seeking mutual agreement on a stable regional order to be tantamount to appeasement. This view has the effect of stifling debate and shutting down discussions of alternatives. It is perhaps unsurprising that our proposal faces little competition in the marketplace of ideas. Nonetheless, both Russian and Western government officials with whom we discussed our proposal—which was written before the current crisis—indicated they had little incentive to compromise. Each side believed it had the long-term advantage over the other in the region. The former could rely on the favorable balance of military power, while the latter saw its power of attraction as unstoppable. Those from the states caught in between were daunted by the polarization of their countries’ debates on these issues and by their perceived inability to influence the decisions of the major powers. One former senior Ukrainian official told us he feared that our proposal would be considered only “after a major catastrophe.” Still, we encountered many—both inside and outside government—who recognized that the status quo serves no one and were willing to consider alternatives like ours.
Europe might well be on the brink of a major catastrophe. Regardless of what the Russian government does with the huge force it has assembled around Ukraine, Putin has made clear that Russia’s waning influence in its backyard is now a problem for everyone else. Moscow’s willingness to use force to prevent its neighbors from drifting into the Western orbit means that continued pursuit of geopolitical pluralism in post-Soviet Eurasia by the United States and its allies might well lead to greater insecurity and misery for the region’s states or even to their further dismemberment. Pluralism works inside a country when there are institutions and rules that govern competition among divergent interests. In post-Soviet Eurasia, there is a lot of geopolitical competition, but no agreed-upon institutions or rules to govern that competition. Until Russia, the United States, Europe, and the states stuck in between them reach a consensus on a revised regional order, post-Soviet Eurasia will remain a source of instability and conflict. Our proposal shows that such consensus might yet be possible.
10. Xi’s Big Show
I would like to see an influence campaign created using all that China is doing to expose the evil nature of the CCP. It seems the Olympics and the actions of China could harm China's reputation and soft power in ways the CCP did not anticipate. It may not come out of this as an "esteemed equal."
Engagement was never successful in fully diminishing the party’s yearning to be esteemed as an equal, and perhaps even a superior in certain respects, by other great powers. It is perhaps not surprising that when the CCP is spurned or repudiated by the United States or “the West,” one of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s favorite tropes is to complain that arrogant outsiders have “wounded the feelings of the Chinese people”—an almost comically melodramatic way for a modern great power to explain its disaffection. The problem is this: Because the CCP still tenaciously clings to its retrograde Stalinist conceits, despite all its successes, it can never fully absolve itself of the political disapprobation heaped on it by democratic states. Mao would have recognized this as an “antagonistic contradiction,” meaning that it could never be resolved peacefully.
Xi has inherited this unsolvable dilemma: he wants the outside world to accept his dynamic version of Chinese autocracy, and also to fear it and respect it. His Olympics opening ceremony was all peace and love. But on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang—and in his standoffs with Australia, Canada, India, and the United States—he’s aggressive and unyielding, lest compromise be viewed as weakness. The tragic result is that even as China approaches its dream of restored wealth and power after a century and a half of struggle and failure, its success is now being put in jeopardy by a leader who cannot let go of an outdated Leninist narrative of grievance and hostility.
Xi’s Big Show
What the Olympics Reveal About China
February 6, 2022
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done many things with impressive vigor and stunning results. It has created an historic economic boom after a disastrous Marxist-Leninist revolution; launched an expansive and expensive project to extend China’s global influence around the world via its Belt and Road Initiative; trained and equipped a world-class military; and organized a latter day techno-autocracy that makes George Orwell’s 1984 seem like a grade school primer. And as the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics last Friday reminded viewers, the CCP can put on a good show.
This year’s ceremony was more modest and subdued than the one in 2008 but was equally well executed. The performance featured phalanxes of singing, smiling, and waving children whose choreography was reminiscent of the performances that were staged during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, which featured kids dancing as “Chairman Mao’s little sunflowers.” Stern-faced soldiers belonging to the People's Liberation Army marched China’s national flag to an official raising. Countless synchronized mass performances featured phalanxes of girls shaking pom-poms and boys wielding lightsabers, creating gorgeous electronic flowers in the darkness.
Surveying the proceedings from on high was Chinese President Xi Jinping. Clad in a black COVID-19 mask and a full-length blue parka that made him look inflated, he anointed the ceremony with a turgid benediction. Xi’s attempt to establish a cult of personality rivaling that of Mao Zedong is constantly being undercut by his lack of charisma: as the scholar Geremie Barmé has put it, “The new Xi Jinping cult is all cult and no personality.” It’s perhaps for this reason that Xi so readily defaults to pomp, ceremony, and ritual to make an impression.
The CCP chose to build the opening ceremony around the theme “one world, one family.” This struck a somewhat discordant note; in many places, including China, an elite consensus has taken hold that globalization is slowing as countries “decouple.” And even amid Xi’s efforts to woo the world into seeing China as a country that wants peace and harmony, there are myriad signs of his more belligerent impulses from Taiwan to the Indian border and Hong Kong to Xinjiang.
BIG SHOW, SMALL CROWD
Beijing is the only city that has hosted both a summer and winter Olympics and, like the opening ceremony of the 2008 summer games, Friday’s spectacle took place in the magnificent National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest. As in 2008, film director Zhang Yimou (whom the party had prevented from collecting a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994) was back as artistic director. In the intervening years, he has honed his skills choreographing big, brassy, outdoor theatrical productions at major tourist destinations around the country. The artist Cai Guo-Qiang returned, as well, as grand master of fireworks. With a carefully stage-managed performance, where no embarrassing details could mar the perfection of its appeal, the CCP aimed to show the world that Xi has restored China’s greatness through a process of rebirth and redemption.
In more subtle ways, the ceremony served as a rebuke to the CCP’s growing list of critics and opponents. In the parade of international teams, Beijing forced Taiwan to march under the name “Chinese Taipei,” and right behind Hong Kong, as if the island were next in line for annexation. Then, to push back against international condemnation of China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the western-most province of Xinjiang, the ceremony concluded with a female Uyghur athlete teamed up with a male Han Chinese counterpart to light the Olympic flame. The flame was set in the middle of a massive snowflake that Zhang elegiacally described as, “Different snowflakes come to Beijing and assemble into a giant snowflake of humankind.” The choice of a Uyghur was a clear rebuke to all those who had decried this year’s Winter Olympics as “the genocide games.” That criticism did not stop corporate sponsors such as Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Intel, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Visa from providing financial support to the games. Eager to avoid retaliation by Beijing, they have said little about the hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs who have been detained in special “re-education centers” in Xinjiang or about Beijing’s abrogation of Hong Kong’s right to a “high degree of autonomy.”
Watching the ceremony, it was hard not to wonder: Who was the CCP trying to impress?
Although the Bird’s Nest seats 88,000 people, on the night of the opening ceremony, it was half empty. Because China’s vaccines are largely ineffective against the highly infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19, and the CCP has stubbornly resisted turning to foreign imports, the country has maintained a “zero-COVID” strategy. Therefore, only a handpicked audience of 15,000 spectators was allowed to attend the ceremony, essentially reducing the stadium to a giant TV studio sound stage, a situation that fit the party’s political needs perfectly. The leaders of a self-proclaimed People’s Republic were doubtless relieved that such a controversial and high-profile event would not actually involve too many of “the people”—especially unreliable ones from foreign countries who may be inclined to make unscripted protests.
The foreign leaders in attendance were a ragtag group of subprime autocrats, including Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan; Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia; Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia; and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan, who was recently almost defenestrated. Russian President Vladimir Putin was there, too, of course, and he spoke with Xi at a meeting, which both leaders believe will “inject more vitality into China-Russia relations,” according to a report from Chinese state media. Finally, as if he’d somehow wandered into the wrong party, there was UN Secretary-General General António Guterres, who has distinguished himself with his silence on China’s human rights abuses.
LOVE AND FEAR
Watching the ceremony, it was hard not to wonder: Who was the CCP trying to impress? Do Chinese leaders imagine they can win foreign countries with such propaganda, even as they’ve been so willfully (and successfully) alienating country after country with their bullying, saber- rattling, and retaliatory trade policies? And why does there remain such enduring sensitivity to criticism among Chinese leaders now that they finally have so much to be proud of? In short, how can Beijing be conducting punitive “wolf warrior diplomacy” abroad, while still expecting to sweet-talk these same countries with well-produced but saccharine propaganda displays?
First, one must remember that this ceremony was produced as much for a local Chinese audience as it was for foreigners. The wellspring of China’s new nationalism is, after all, pride in the growing prowess of “the Motherland,” especially in international competition, whether in diplomacy, trade, or sports.
The CCP aimed to show the world that Xi has restored China’s greatness.
But the CCP has always been gripped by an almost obsessive desire to impress—and, if possible, even awe—foreigners. China’s impressive portfolio of developmental accomplishments has never been able to fully slake this longing of party leaders to win the acceptance and respect of the very countries that, because of their censoriousness, China simultaneously treats as adversaries. This is a longstanding contradiction that not even “engagement,” an embracing policy supported by nine U.S. presidential administrations, could resolve.
Engagement was never successful in fully diminishing the party’s yearning to be esteemed as an equal, and perhaps even a superior in certain respects, by other great powers. It is perhaps not surprising that when the CCP is spurned or repudiated by the United States or “the West,” one of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s favorite tropes is to complain that arrogant outsiders have “wounded the feelings of the Chinese people”—an almost comically melodramatic way for a modern great power to explain its disaffection. The problem is this: Because the CCP still tenaciously clings to its retrograde Stalinist conceits, despite all its successes, it can never fully absolve itself of the political disapprobation heaped on it by democratic states. Mao would have recognized this as an “antagonistic contradiction,” meaning that it could never be resolved peacefully.
Xi has inherited this unsolvable dilemma: he wants the outside world to accept his dynamic version of Chinese autocracy, and also to fear it and respect it. His Olympics opening ceremony was all peace and love. But on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang—and in his standoffs with Australia, Canada, India, and the United States—he’s aggressive and unyielding, lest compromise be viewed as weakness. The tragic result is that even as China approaches its dream of restored wealth and power after a century and a half of struggle and failure, its success is now being put in jeopardy by a leader who cannot let go of an outdated Leninist narrative of grievance and hostility.
11. Does Biden’s Russia policy need a bigger dose of realism?
Excerpts:
In a world of sovereign states, realism in crafting foreign policy is unavoidable. But too many realists stop there, rather than acknowledging that cosmopolitanism and liberalism often have something important to contribute. Realism is thus a necessary but insufficient basis for foreign policy.
The question is one of degree. Since there is never perfect security, an administration must decide how much security will be assured before it incorporates other values such as freedom, identity or rights into its foreign policy. Foreign-policy choices often pit values against practical or commercial interests, such as when the US decides to sell arms to authoritarian allies, or to condemn China for its human-rights record. When realists treat such trade-offs as similar to Churchill’s decision to attack the French fleet, they are simply ducking the hard moral questions.
But President Joe Biden cannot ignore the issue. His diplomatic challenge today is to find a way to avoid war without abandoning Ukraine or the values that sustain America’s soft power and network of alliances.
Does Biden’s Russia policy need a bigger dose of realism? | The Strategist
Was the current crisis in Ukraine caused by a lack of realism in US foreign policy? According to some analysts, the liberal desire to spread democracy is what drove NATO’s expansion up to Russia’s borders, causing Russian President Vladimir Putin to feel increasingly threatened. Viewed from this perspective, it’s not surprising that he would respond by demanding a sphere of influence analogous to what the United States once claimed in Latin America with its Monroe Doctrine.
But there’s a problem with this realist argument: NATO’s 2008 decision (heavily promoted by the George W. Bush administration) to invite Georgia and Ukraine eventually to join the alliance can hardly be called liberal, nor was it driven by liberals. In making such arguments, realists point to the aftermath of World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson’s liberalism contributed to a legalistic and idealist foreign policy that ultimately failed to prevent World War II.
Accordingly, in the 1940s, scholars such as Hans Morgenthau and diplomats like George Kennan warned Americans that they must henceforth base their foreign policy on realism. As Morgenthau explained in 1948, ‘[A] state has no right to let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of liberty get in the way of successful political action.’ Or, in the more recent words of the University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer: ‘States operate in a self-help world in which the best way to survive is to be as powerful as possible, even if that requires pursuing ruthless policies. That is not a pretty story, but there is no better alternative if survival is a country’s paramount goal.’
In a famous historical example of this approach, Winston Churchill, in 1940, ordered an attack on French naval vessels, killing some 1,300 of Britain’s allies rather than letting the fleet fall into Hitler’s hands. Churchill also authorised the bombing of German civilian targets.
But while many observers justified those decisions when Britain’s survival was at stake, they condemned the February 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden, because victory in Europe was already assured at that point. Churchill could invoke the necessity of survival to justify overriding moral rules in the early days of the war, but he was wrong to continue to do so later, when survival was not in doubt.
In general, such dire straits are rare, and most leaders are eclectic in selecting the mental maps with which they navigate the world. Hence, when Donald Trump was asked to explain his mild reaction to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he said, ‘America first! The world is a very dangerous place!’
When realists describe the world as if moral choices don’t exist, they are merely disguising their own choice. Survival may come first, but it is hardly the only value worth upholding. Most of international politics today is not about survival at all. Smart realists might not urge NATO to extend membership to Ukraine, but nor would they support abandoning that country altogether.
After all, a smart realist knows about different types of power. No president can lead at home or abroad without power; but power is about more than bombs, bullets and resources. There are three ways to get others to do what you want: coercion (sticks), payment (carrots) and attraction (soft power). A full understanding of power encompasses all three aspects.
If others around the world associate a country with certain moral positions, that recognition confers soft power. But because soft power is slow-acting and rarely sufficient by itself, leaders will always be tempted to deploy the hard power of coercion or payment. They must bear in mind that, when wielded alone, hard power can involve higher costs than when it is combined with the soft power of attraction. The Roman Empire rested not only on its legions but also on the attractiveness of Roman culture.
In the Cold War’s early days, the Soviet Union enjoyed a good deal of soft power in Europe, because it had stood up to Hitler. But it squandered that goodwill when it used hard military power to suppress freedom movements in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The US, by contrast, combined a military presence in Europe after the war with aid to support European recovery under the Marshall Plan.
A country’s soft power rests on its culture, its values and its policies (when they are seen by others as legitimate). In America’s case, soft power has often been reinforced by the narratives that US presidents use to explain their foreign policies. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, for example, framed their policies in ways that attracted support both at home and abroad, whereas Richard Nixon and Trump were less successful in winning over those outside the US.
In a world of sovereign states, realism in crafting foreign policy is unavoidable. But too many realists stop there, rather than acknowledging that cosmopolitanism and liberalism often have something important to contribute. Realism is thus a necessary but insufficient basis for foreign policy.
The question is one of degree. Since there is never perfect security, an administration must decide how much security will be assured before it incorporates other values such as freedom, identity or rights into its foreign policy. Foreign-policy choices often pit values against practical or commercial interests, such as when the US decides to sell arms to authoritarian allies, or to condemn China for its human-rights record. When realists treat such trade-offs as similar to Churchill’s decision to attack the French fleet, they are simply ducking the hard moral questions.
But President Joe Biden cannot ignore the issue. His diplomatic challenge today is to find a way to avoid war without abandoning Ukraine or the values that sustain America’s soft power and network of alliances.
12. Closing the Civil-Military Trust Gap
Three key observations about civilian political appointees in these excerpts:
This does not mean the military is absolved from responsibility for the relationship — far from it. But it does mean that civilian political appointees, as the de jure departmental leaders, set the conditions for the relationship and need to be better prepared to take on this role. Specifically, beyond their functional or regional areas of expertise, civilian leaders at the deputy assistant secretary-level and above need to appreciate their critical role in running their organizations, and recognize that some of their effectiveness is contingent on being able to place their issues in a broader defense context. Regional deputy assistant secretaries, for example, should understand the strategic and readiness implications of their policy initiatives rather than focusing exclusively on their region.
Ironically, though, based on both personal experience and several informal conversations over the years, I would argue that most political appointees are drawn to their positions precisely because they want to serve a particular president and shape defense policy in their areas of expertise. By virtue of their backgrounds working on Capitol Hill or campaign staffs, or researching at think tanks or academic institutions, many are drawn to the Department of Defense to work on issues of interest to them. Leadership is not part of their backgrounds so leading a defense organization holds little appeal, or is considered unimportant — or, conversely, is overwhelming. The notion that a well-led organization might foster trust among its staff; lead to franker, fuller internal discussions; subsequently produce better external conversations; and ultimately result in better policy outcomes simply does not occur.
Closing the Civil-Military Trust Gap - War on the Rocks
U.S. government political appointees wield considerable power, including in the Department of Defense. A president needs these appointees to ensure the department is acting in a manner consistent with his direction as commander-in-chief and to help him exercise control over it. Interestingly, though, once in place, except for the most senior officials, little is known about how most appointees fulfill their responsibilities, even though their performance is critical to the department’s overall effectiveness. The scholarly literature on civil-military relations reinforces this tendency to overlook appointees below the most senior level. It pays more attention to debates over civilian and military authorities — who’s in charge, who makes decisions, and on what issues — than over how appointees perform their duties. Typically, these debates take on either a legalistic or an academic tone. The former involves close scrutiny of Title 10 of the U.S. Code to discern specific civilian and military legal authorities. The latter places academic analysis of civilian control at the heart of the debates. While both approaches are important, indeed core, to understanding civil-military relations, neither focuses on enhancing the Department of Defense’s overall effectiveness. In fact, they can foster mistrust by dwelling on perceived violations of various civilian or military prerogatives.
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and Professors Peter Feaver and Richard Kohn recently highlighted the implications of such a trust gap. This trust deficit helps explain why civil-military relations, in practice, might tend toward the transactional, even acrimonious, rather than collaborative. Civilian defense leaders, especially those serving at the deputy assistant secretary of defense level and above (including military department equivalents), need to be grounded in the law and in civil-military theory. However, if they want to improve departmental effectiveness, they also need to find a way to partner with the military that respects boundaries, while understanding that the best solutions to vexing problems usually come from working together in an atmosphere of trust. Despite this need for trust, how to improve it is barely addressed in the civil-military literature, much less in the Department of Defense.
Who’s Responsible for Building Trust?
Even when one accepts that trust improves civil-military collaboration and enhances departmental effectiveness, in practice, it is difficult to discern who sets the conditions to foster it. Feaver and Kohn, for example, argue that the responsibilities for building trust rest with the military, noting that
Although the military is clearly the subordinate in this relationship, it must be the initiator and not wait for superiors to take the first step … As with other professional occupations (e.g., lawyers, doctors, teachers, and the clergy), it is up to the experts, not their bosses or clients, to mold the relationship and influence the interactions as much as they can to provide the most functional and effective outcomes.
What this approach does not account for, however, is the different nature of these power relationships. As Andrew Abbott points out in The System of Professions, lawyers, doctors, clergy, etc. control the power dynamic when acting in their professional capacity. Arguably, this is not the case in actual civil-military relationships, where foundational documents like the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist Papers make it clear that power rests with civilians. Moreover, in my experience, when military subordinates initiated informal conversations or honored civilians at official events, frequently they were perceived as being manipulative or currying favor, rather than strengthening relationships.
Senior defense official and scholar Mara Karlin offers a somewhat different perspective. She argues that, although the military is subordinate in this relationship, civilian leaders should bring relevant expertise, including deep knowledge of the military, to add value. Karlin also notes that chronic vacancies and frequent turnover in the senior civilian positions further complicate practical efforts to build trust and improve civil-military dialogue.
In both cases, however, Feaver and Kohn, as well as Karlin, agree that the military is the subordinate partner and that greater civilian expertise about the military is essential to improving civil-military trust, and by extension, departmental effectiveness.
This does not mean the military is absolved from responsibility for the relationship — far from it. But it does mean that civilian political appointees, as the de jure departmental leaders, set the conditions for the relationship and need to be better prepared to take on this role. Specifically, beyond their functional or regional areas of expertise, civilian leaders at the deputy assistant secretary-level and above need to appreciate their critical role in running their organizations, and recognize that some of their effectiveness is contingent on being able to place their issues in a broader defense context. Regional deputy assistant secretaries, for example, should understand the strategic and readiness implications of their policy initiatives rather than focusing exclusively on their region.
Ironically, though, based on both personal experience and several informal conversations over the years, I would argue that most political appointees are drawn to their positions precisely because they want to serve a particular president and shape defense policy in their areas of expertise. By virtue of their backgrounds working on Capitol Hill or campaign staffs, or researching at think tanks or academic institutions, many are drawn to the Department of Defense to work on issues of interest to them. Leadership is not part of their backgrounds so leading a defense organization holds little appeal, or is considered unimportant — or, conversely, is overwhelming. The notion that a well-led organization might foster trust among its staff; lead to franker, fuller internal discussions; subsequently produce better external conversations; and ultimately result in better policy outcomes simply does not occur.
This organizational neglect can have cascading impacts. On a political appointee’s own staff, it might mean poor morale and stunted careers due to inattention to administrative tasks such as performance reports and follow-on assignments. When working with military-led organizations such as the Joint Staff, at a minimum, it increases the likelihood that some options will not be considered. At worst, it encourages beliefs that organizational disagreements automatically reflect a more profound civil-military divide. Given the pre-existing civil-military trust deficit, unsurprisingly, some senior political appointees default to the latter, and, as they adopt this position, the trust deficit grows.
To be clear, important civil-military disagreements will persist, and they should. The U.S. Constitution and Title 10 intentionally foster healthy civil-military tensions. But the civil-military trust gap suggests something other than healthy tensions. It suggests an organizational problem that undermines departmental effectiveness. Thus, bridging this gap becomes an important, practical organizational challenge. And one of the first steps in addressing this challenge is to create more consistent, effective civilian leaders who understand the critical role trust plays in organizational leadership. Again, this does not absolve the military of its role in the relationship. Rather, it highlights the crucial role political appointees play in setting the tone for civil-military interactions and leading their organizations.
The following six ideas are intended to start the conversation on how to more deliberately prepare appointees for their leadership roles, and how to encourage civil-military trust in the process. In many ways, they only begin to hint at possible solutions. The key is to accept that the trust gap exists and that political appointees have an important role to play in bridging it. Indeed, assuming they accept the above analysis, serving and past political appointees are some of the best positioned to address the problem.
Closing the Trust Gap: Building Better Civilian Leaders
First, the president and his transition team should emphasize executive leadership skills, as well as functional or academic expertise when filling senior defense positions. Civilian leaders generally come from different organizational cultures than those of their military partners. Civilian cultures — particularly Capitol Hill staffs, academia, and think tank — tend to stress individual accomplishments, flat hierarchies, and minimal leadership responsibilities. Some appointees are born leaders and need no assistance when thrust into this new role. For those who are not, they should have access to leadership and management literature that can help them understand the scope of their responsibilities and develop their own leadership styles. Myriad candidates exist for this list, but it should include books such as Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive and Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead. Both offer straightforward advice and appeal to leaders of all ages and ranks. Drucker makes the case that executive effectiveness can be learned, and Brown’s is devoted to ways to build personal trust.
Second, political appointees should understand the connection between individual and organizational leadership. This can be as simple as supplementing books by Drucker and Brown with organizational leadership books such as Chalmers Brothers et al.’s Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence and Edgar and Peter Schein’s Humble Leadership. The former discusses the leader’s role in shaping organizational culture. The latter argue that organizational effectiveness resides in moving from a transactional culture to a “personized” one based on openness and trust. They contend that individuals from vastly different cultures can find value in each other’s ideas once they overcome a transactional relationship and create a thriving, trusting organization in the process.
Third, complement this study of leadership with executive coaching for political appointees at the deputy assistant secretary level and above. This might seem an expensive luxury, but the organizational payback should more than offset the expense. The Army, for example, believes coaching is important enough to offer it to lieutenant colonels competing for battalion command. Coaching or mentoring is important for effective leaders at all levels. It helps connect theory to practice. Moreover, for those new to the rewards and stresses of leadership, an informal mentor can offer feedback essential to growing as an executive and building trust across an organization.
Fourth, create executive-level, immersive defense orientation programs for prospective political appointees akin to the military’s Capstone and Pinnacle programs, in which general and flag officers study the major issues and organizations affecting national security. If such a program exists for senior military officers, should political appointees not have similar opportunities? Such courses would allow appointees to understand their responsibilities within the context of larger defense issues, organizations, and processes, and to more effectively engage with their military counterparts. The orientation should prepare them well enough that they are neither enthralled, nor stymied, by what they subsequently encounter. Ideally, this orientation should operate independently of any orientations the organizations the appointee will lead create; occur prior to confirmation because of the time demands on their schedules once confirmed; offer different formats based on the experience, seniority, and availability of the political appointee; and include a supplemental reading list and access to external experts for future reference.
Fifth, routinely use experiential learning, such as wargames with military counterparts, to explore important defense issues during political appointees’ tenures in office. These should cover a variety of topics, e.g., great-power competition, next-generation acquisitions, and space warfare. The key is to explore myriad implications of major policy decisions in an informal setting to encourage learning while simultaneously building personal relationships.
Finally, in addition to these developmental initiatives, it might be useful for the Department of Defense to ask a federally funded research and development center to initiate a longitudinal study of political appointees that stretches across administrations and political parties. Except for the occasional analysis, little information is available on past appointees. Such a study, at a minimum, would collect data on appointees’ previous experiences (including leadership and management), formal and informal preparations for their defense positions, and U.S. government service and duration. Certainly, other critical factors impact decisions on political appointments, but this could, at least, shape development programs and provide more context for making or denying such appointments.
These ideas only start the civilian leadership conversation. All are grounded on the assumption that closing the civil-military trust gap will enhance departmental effectiveness. This means developing civilian political appointees who can effectively guide their organizations and lead military men and women, as well as civilians. To this end, a crucial first step is valuing civilian leadership development for these appointees and placing it in a larger departmental context. Absent such a focus, the trust gap will persist, civil-military relations will remain largely transactional, and the Department of Defense overall will continue to reap the unfortunate rewards of suboptimal civil-military interactions.
Paula G. Thornhill is a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general who served on multiple Pentagon staffs, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. She is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University (SAIS) and is the author of Demystifying the American Military.
13. Ex-Trump national security adviser accuses Xi Jinping of staging the 'biggest land grab in history' in the South China Sea
Note how China responds to human rights accusations.
Excerpts:
China has inflamed tensions in the South China Sea in recent years by expanding its claimed territory, to the objection of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific'For this reason, the United States and numerous other States have rejected these claims in favor of the rules-based international maritime order within the South China Sea and worldwide,' the report states.
But within its land borders, more than a million Uyghurs have been accused of 'ideological viruses' and 'terrorist thoughts' by the Chinese government since 2017, and many have been shipped to concentration camps where they are tortured and brainwashed, according to Geoffrey Cain in his book 'The Perfect Police State.'
China has denied the claims and said the camps are necessary to fight extremism.
The Biden administration sanctioned China in March of last year over its abuses along with the European Union, UK and Canada. China retaliated by restrictions European officials and charities from entering and doing business there.
China fired back at the US that same month over its own alleged human rights abuses including the government's poor response to the coronavirus pandemic and racism, in a report that began with the words 'I can't breathe.'
Ex-Trump national security adviser accuses Xi Jinping of staging the 'biggest land grab in history' in the South China Sea as controversial Winter Olympics get underway in Beijing
- Retired Lt. General HR McMaster worked for Trump admin from 2017 to 2018
- His interview on CBS News was delayed by nearly half an hour thanks to technical difficulties at the top of his appearance
- McMaster called out China for a range of human rights abuses, including arresting people accused of planning protests against Beijing Olympics
- Recent report by the State Department said China 'unlawfully claims sovereignty or some form of exclusive jurisdiction over most of the South China Sea'
PUBLISHED: 13:47 EST, 6 February 2022 | UPDATED: 21:29 EST, 6 February 2022
Daily Mail · by Elizabeth Elkind, Politics Reporter For Dailymail.Com · February 6, 2022
Donald Trump's former national security adviser on Sunday accused Beijing of staging the 'biggest land grab in history' with its territorial encroachment on the South China Sea.
Beijing has laid claim to a vast majority of the waters there, and China's aggressive buildup in military presence and increased exercises in the region has served to alarm and anger US allies there as well as American officials at home.
Retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster made the stark warning about an increasingly 'aggressive' China after troublesome technical issues led to his appearance on CBS News' Face The Nation to be delayed by nearly half an hour.
Meanwhile, the 2022 Winter Olympics are currently underway in China with the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania all staging diplomatic boycotts of the games over government's human rights abuses.
During his Sunday interview the general, who served in Donald Trump's White House from 2017 to 2018, reiterated that China is trying to expand its claim on the South China Sea and was 'weaponizing' islands in the area to do it.
'Now they're painting some of their naval ships Coast Guard colors so they can claim, really, the biggest land grab in history in the South China Sea,' McMaster said.
McMaster, who served as Donald Trump's National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2018, condemned China's human rights abuses and warned they were amassing territory in the South China Sea at an alarming rate
'And then, of course, Taiwan is probably the most dangerous flashpoint, and we've seen how aggressive they've been there as well.'
The South China Sea and self-governing Taiwan are two of China's most sensitive territorial issues and both are frequent areas of tension between the United States and China.
Xi Jinping's government has arrested people accused of planning protests of the Olympics
'So it's really important, I think, for the free world to come together to strengthen again our confidence and to communicate to these totalitarian regimes that they can't accomplish their objectives at our expense,' McMaster said.
Earlier he listed off the ways in which the Chinese government under Xi Jinping methodically cracked down on personal freedoms.
'China already is more and more aggressive in terms of extending and tightening its exclusive grip on power internally. You've seen how they've gone across sectors of the economy, continuing the genocidal campaign in Xinjiang, extinguishing human freedom in Hong Kong, persecuting journalists,' McMaster said.
He referenced reports from recent days that the Chinese government was cracking down on activists accused of trying to stage demonstrations in Beijing as human rights groups are concerned Xi is using the Olympic games as a propaganda vehicle.
'Anybody who might criticize the Chinese government during the Olympics have been intimidated or imprisoned,' McMaster said.
His initial appearance on the news program lasted less than a minute amid technical difficulties. A smiling McMaster appeared to chuckle as CBS host Margaret Brennan asked him about former Vice President Mike Pence, before Brennan abruptly cut to commercial.
Meanwhile late last month Taiwan reported the largest incursion since October by China's air force in its air defense zone, with the island's defense ministry saying Taiwanese fighters scrambled to warn away 39 aircraft in the latest uptick in tensions.
Under current international law Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Indoesia, China and Taiwan all claim a portion of the South China Sea.
A report released by the US State Department earlier this year found China 'unlawfully claims sovereignty or some form of exclusive jurisdiction over most of the South China Sea.'
China has inflamed tensions in the South China Sea in recent years by expanding its claimed territory, to the objection of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific
'For this reason, the United States and numerous other States have rejected these claims in favor of the rules-based international maritime order within the South China Sea and worldwide,' the report states.
But within its land borders, more than a million Uyghurs have been accused of 'ideological viruses' and 'terrorist thoughts' by the Chinese government since 2017, and many have been shipped to concentration camps where they are tortured and brainwashed, according to Geoffrey Cain in his book 'The Perfect Police State.'
China has denied the claims and said the camps are necessary to fight extremism.
The Biden administration sanctioned China in March of last year over its abuses along with the European Union, UK and Canada. China retaliated by restrictions European officials and charities from entering and doing business there.
China fired back at the US that same month over its own alleged human rights abuses including the government's poor response to the coronavirus pandemic and racism, in a report that began with the words 'I can't breathe.'
Daily Mail · by Elizabeth Elkind, Politics Reporter For Dailymail.Com · February 6, 2022
14. McMaster pushes back on RNC, calls events of Jan. 6 'illegitimate political discourse'
I have to agree with HR. An attack on the first branch of government cannot be described as legitimate political discourse.
McMaster pushes back on RNC, calls events of Jan. 6 'illegitimate political discourse'
The Hill · by Olafimihan Oshin · February 6, 2022
Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster in an interview on Sunday pushed back on the Republican National Committee (RNC), saying the events of Jan. 6 amounted to "illegitimate political discourse."
"It was it was illegitimate political discourse because it was an assault on the first branch of government," McMaster said during an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"And so I think it's really important for us to come together now, Margaret,” McMaster told host Margaret Brennan. “And, you know, I really think it is possible to improve the transparency and the security of our elections, while ensuring that every eligible voter … gets to vote.”
WATCH: Fmr. National Security Adviser @LTGHRMcMaster calls the January 6 Capitol attack “illegitimate discourse because it was an assault on the first branch of government.” pic.twitter.com/V8xWqrakcI
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 6, 2022
His remarks come after the RNC on Friday voted to censure the only two Republicans on the House panel investigating Jan. 6. The RNC resolution said that Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) have been engaged in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” The Republican lawmakers were also censured for their past criticism of former President Trump.
McMaster also said on Sunday that former Vice President Mike Pence was "absolutely" correct to push back on Trump's claims that Pence could have overturned the results of the 2020 election.
Speaking at an event on Friday, Pence said he had no right to overturn the 2020 election.
“And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence said. “The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone.”
“All Americans should agree with Vice President Pence. And it was time, Margaret, I think to demand more from our political leaders, demand that they stop compromising confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes to score partisan, political points,” McMaster, who served in the Trump administration, told Brennan on Sunday. “And as you know, this happens across both political parties and it's just time to stop.”
McMaster added that it is "pretty clear that we are emerging from a number of traumas of the past couple of years, and it's time for Americans to come together and to restore our confidence in who we are as a people and in our democratic principles, institutions, and processes.”
--Updated at 1:13 p.m.
The Hill · by Olafimihan Oshin · February 6, 2022
15. U.S. Readies New Asia-Pacific Economic Strategy to Counter China
Can we recover from the worst strategic mistake made in the 21st Century: withdrawal from TPP?
Excerpts:
Some governments in the region including Japan, Australia and Singapore have pressed the U.S. to return to the TPP, even as administration officials have ruled it out, citing a lack of sufficient support from either party in Congress and opposition from labor unions.
For now, these governments welcome signs of Mr. Biden’s broader economic engagement with the region.
“Short of coming back to the TPP, there are many areas where the U.S. can play a leadership role,” Koji Tomita, Japan’s U.S. ambassador, said in a recent panel discussion.
U.S. Readies New Asia-Pacific Economic Strategy to Counter China
Biden administration aims to work more closely with Asian nations on trade issues, but some say effort won’t substitute for previous pact the U.S. abandoned
While details of the plan have yet to be released, the framework isn’t expected to try to return the U.S. to the TPP. A cross-section of economists, diplomats and trade experts say the administration faces a battle in creating an effective pact that brings together many of Asia’s economies to set the rules of engagement for commerce and new technology.
The framework is expected to be unveiled “within weeks,” Sarah Bianchi, deputy U.S. Trade Representative for the Asia-Pacific region, said at a recent trade conference.
President Biden isn’t expected to offer tariff cuts and other traditional market-opening tools to trading partners, which are opposed by U.S. labor groups and their Democratic allies as well as some Republicans on grounds that they come at the expense of U.S. jobs and manufacturing.
At the same time, these so-called market-access measures are considered essential to building stronger U.S. relations in the region, particularly with less developed nations in South and Southeast Asia seeking to sell more agricultural and manufacturing products in the U.S. market.
“Market access could be one of the important returns that the countries in the region would expect from the U.S. leadership,” South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo said after a meeting with U.S. officials in Washington last month.
Without market-access measures, the framework could become simply another club for the U.S. and its rich allies such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, which already operate on similar values and rules, some diplomats and economists say.
“The real question is, ‘How do we get countries like Vietnam and Indonesia into this?’” said Bill Reinsch, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think these are the countries that are going to be cautious, that are going to take a wait-and-see approach to see how it evolves entering into these kinds of commitments.”
The Biden administration sees the new Indo-Pacific framework as a significant step in U.S. efforts to move beyond security ties to counter China’s growing ambitions in Asia.
Mr. Biden last year reinforced the U.S.’s substantial presence with the strengthening of the “Quad” group including India, Japan and Australia, as well as a new submarine pact with Australia and the U.K. But it has lacked a comprehensive economic strategy since pulling out of the TPP in 2017 amid bipartisan worries about the negative impact of trade agreements on American jobs.
South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo, at right last October in Paris, has said many of Asia’s developing economies are looking for more U.S. market access.
Photo: Yonhap News/Zuma Press
The new framework comes as China beefs up its economic diplomacy in the region. China in recent months applied to join the new iteration of the TPP and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, an alliance between New Zealand, Chile and Singapore viewed as a model for future digital-trade agreements.
A digital trade agreement could cover a range of issues including technology standards to facilitate e-commerce such as electronic payment and invoicing, and rules governing personal data protection and cross-border data flows. Setting standards for 5G technology and the ethical use of artificial intelligence could also be part of such an agreement.
Beijing’s pro-trade steps have fueled concerns among American businesses and close allies. They worry that the U.S.’s absence in regional trade agreements gives Beijing an opening to establish its leadership in setting rules and standards for trade and economy, particularly in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital trade.
Mr. Biden unveiled the idea for the new economic framework during the East Asia summit in October and is expected to roll out details in the weeks ahead.
“This is an incredibly important aspect of our effort to ensure a free and open region,” Laura Rosenberger, senior director for China at the White House National Security Council, said in a recent speech to the National Bureau of Asian Research.
She emphasized “the importance of U.S. leadership in establishing the rules of the road…so that we do not let China put U.S. workers and companies in long-term disadvantage.”
The framework will be structured as a collection of individual agreements, which nations in the region can pick and choose to sign up on. It will likely exclude tariff cuts and other legally binding market-opening steps that require Congressional approval.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai will lead the trade component of the framework, which will include digital trade, labor standards and trade facilitation. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will oversee the segments on supply chains, infrastructure and decarbonization, and tax and corruption.
In putting together the strategy, the administration must find a balance between the demands of the trading partners, U.S. businesses and labor, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
U.S. business groups have been lobbying for strong digital-trade provisions in the framework, hoping it will serve as a vehicle for ensuring U.S. leadership in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G.
Charles Freeman, senior vice president for Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says a digital agreement must be “front and center” of the broad strategy.
“There’s a lot that needs to be done to get us back to some sort of competitive parity with China,” he said.
Meanwhile, some in Mr. Biden’s party worry that the framework could become a backdoor scheme to introduce significant rules in digital trade and other areas detrimental to workers and consumers without Congressional approval.
“The U.S. has thus far failed effectively to regulate the tech sector here at home to ensure that consumer privacy rights are protected,” said Rep. Andy Levin (D., Mich.) during a House hearing last month. “How can we ensure that U.S. engagement in digital trade in future agreements doesn’t perpetuate a race to the bottom?”
Some governments in the region including Japan, Australia and Singapore have pressed the U.S. to return to the TPP, even as administration officials have ruled it out, citing a lack of sufficient support from either party in Congress and opposition from labor unions.
For now, these governments welcome signs of Mr. Biden’s broader economic engagement with the region.
“Short of coming back to the TPP, there are many areas where the U.S. can play a leadership role,” Koji Tomita, Japan’s U.S. ambassador, said in a recent panel discussion.
16. After A Decade of Incoherent Strategy in Syria, a Way Forward
Excerpts:
The indecisiveness of the United States in Syria is in some ways understandable. Nation building and democratization efforts in conflict-torn countries rarely go well and the United States must grapple with numerous other challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic, the rise of China, and climate change.
Yet to hope that the problems of Syria will remain confined to the Middle East would be shortsighted and dangerous. In an interconnected world, Salafi-jihadist violence, conflict spillovers, and humanitarian and refugee crises are bound to have far-reaching international repercussions.
Syria also differs from Afghanistan and Iraq in that the incipient democratization processes of its autonomous administration are not the result of foreign occupation but rather grassroots initiatives. In other words, the United States does not need to export democracy or engage in nation building in Syria—it simply ought to defend and consolidate the achievements of its local allies. To do so will not require large numbers of troops. As long as the United States remains consistent in its policies, the current light footprint would suffice to foster security and democratization in northeastern Syria. In turn, the autonomous administration’s commitment to secularism and equal rights could serve as a model for all Syrians and help inoculate poor and marginalized communities from the spread of Salafi-jihadism and other radical ideologies.
After A Decade of Incoherent Strategy in Syria, a Way Forward - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Federico Manfredi Firmian · February 7, 2022
The US raid that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi came hard on the heels of the Hasakah prison break—the largest US combat involvement with the Islamic State since the downfall of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate three years ago. With US support, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces managed to regain control of the prison after more than a week of fighting, although a significant number of militants managed to escape—a stark reminder that the chaos in Syria continues to reverberate, no matter how much the United States might like to move on.
Over the past decade, the lack of a coherent US policy toward Syria has had disastrous consequences, in the immediate region and beyond. Today, however, the United States can redress some of its past errors and help the people of Syria secure a sustainable peace. In doing so, the United States has the opportunity to improve the security outlook of the Middle East and the world at large—if it chooses to take it.
The single greatest blunder the United States made in Syria was to support armed Islamist opposition groups, in partnership with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. This policy effectively began in 2012, became increasingly reckless over the course of 2013, and was finally axed in 2017.The CIA’s vetting of rebel groups was supposed to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of radicals. Instead, most of the arms Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia smuggled into Syria went to armed groups with links to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafi-jihadist networks. Rather than pave the way for a political transition, such policies only fueled a destructive civil war that accelerated the emergence of jihadist armed groups.
The epitome of all that went wrong with US policy in Syria was Timber Sycamore—a billion-dollar CIA program to arm and train Syrian rebels fighting the forces of Bashar al-Assad. Timber Sycamore ultimately failed to unseat Assad, helped turn Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and caused untold misery to the Syrian people. A three-year study funded by the European Union and the German government later established that efforts by the United States and its allies to arm Syrian rebels “significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons” of the Islamic State.
But not all US policies in Syria had negative repercussions. The US partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces represents a highly promising example of how the United States can contribute to peacebuilding and grassroots democratization in the Middle East. Doing so will not require large US troop deployments or a commitment to nation building; it will require only that the United States continue to support the achievements of its local allies.
A Rare Bright Spot
The military backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces is the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG), or People’s Protection Units. At first glance, this organization may not appear like an obvious US ally. Founded in 2011 to defend Syrian Kurdish communities from the ravages of war, it is ideologically close to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerana Kurdistan, or PKK), a US-designated terrorist organization. The most prominent figures in the YPG, moreover, all received PKK training. Still, from the outset of the war in Syria, the YPG was first and foremost concerned with protecting vulnerable Syrian communities from the violence of Islamist armed groups—and that duty took precedence over all other questions.
The United States first established relations with the YPG in 2012. In the following years, the rise of the Islamic State set the stage for ever-closer ties between the US military and Syrian Kurdish fighters. In the summer of 2014, as the United States marshaled a broad international coalition to fight the Islamic State, the YPG was already engaged in strenuous battles against the jihadists in Syria as well as in the borderlands of Iraq.
There, the YPG was fighting to save tens of thousands of Yazidis besieged on Mount Sinjar. Alongside its all-women sister militia, the Women’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ), the YPG breached Islamic State positions, enabling thousands of Yazidis to escape into Syrian territory. US airstrikes against the Islamic State provided the YPG and the YPJ with much-needed respite. The United States then deployed special operations forces to Syria to fight alongside the YPG, and US support for Syrian Kurdish fighters later proved decisive in the battle for Kobanî, effectively preventing the fall of the city to the Islamic State.
The US military soon deepened its ties with the YPG, and in the process helped the group mature into a broader and more inclusive force—the Syrian Democratic Forces. Formally established in 2015, the Syrian Democratic Forces brought together the YPG, the YPJ, several Arab tribal militias, and minority self-defense groups such as the Assyrian Military Council and Yazidi units.
In a region where powerful state actors have long exploited sectarian and ethnic identities as vectors of influence, the Syrian Democratic Forces thus built a military coalition that is both Kurdish and Arab, and primarily Muslim but with Christian and Yazidi representation. All-women military units, moreover, came to represent an important avenue for the pursuit of women’s rights.
With the backing of the US military, these diverse forces went on to liberate much of northeastern Syria from the Islamic State, including Raqqa in October 2017. Subsequent advances in the Deir al-Zor governorate brought roughly one-third of Syria under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces and enabled the growth and consolidation of an autonomous administration based on democratic principles such as secular rule, freedom of religion, and equal rights, regardless of gender or ethnic background. These developments coincided with the greatest extent of US influence in Syria.
Turkey’s Gambit
Unfortunately for the Syrian Democratic Forces, however, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, opposed any form of Kurdish autonomy in Syria and remained committed to supporting Islamist opposition groups, despite their appalling human rights record. From 2016 onward, Erdoğan directed Turkey’s military to prop up the beleaguered rebels and help them take over territories that would otherwise have come under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
In early 2018, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch, seizing the Afrin district in partnership with Islamist rebel forces and forcing thousands of Kurds and other minorities to flee. The Turkey-backed rebels went on to engage in systematic war crimes and human rights abuses in Afrin, as documented by the United Nations, human rights groups, and independent journalists.
Erdoğan, meanwhile, redoubled his efforts to cajole then US President Donald Trump into allowing Turkey to take over a thirty-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the Syria-Turkey border, allegedly to prevent the PKK from operating in the area. In October 2019, Trump agreed to withdraw US troops from Syria’s borderlands, thus enabling the Turkish military and Islamist rebels notorious for human rights abuses to take over a thirty-two-kilometer-wide strip of territory between the Syrian border towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. The military operation permanently displaced some two hundred thousand people, and the Turkish-backed rebels once again engaged in widespread war crimes and murders of civilians.
Trump brushed off the violence as irrelevant to US interests. His assessment could not have been further from the truth. The partial US withdrawal from northern Syria enabled some of Assad’s forces to return to Manbij, Kobanî, Qamishli, Hasakah, and Raqqa, as part of a ceasefire agreement that Russian President Vladimir Putin brokered with Erdoğan. Aside from strengthening the hands of Assad and Putin, the instability created conditions conducive to an Islamic State comeback in the borderlands of Syria and Iraq. The partial US withdrawal also greatly damaged the reputation of the United States: it made the US government appear incoherent and unable to stand up for its allies.
A Fragile Equilibrium
Against this backdrop, the fact that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria managed to survive is proof of the resilience of the Syrian Democratic Forces. With a total fighting force of approximately one hundred thousand, including both military and police, the Syrian Democratic Forces remain a major force within Syria. Assad and Putin may want them to disband, give way to the Syrian Arab Army, and join local police or paramilitary forces, but their commander-in-chief, Mazloum Abdi, does not want to accept such a poor deal—at least not as long as the United States maintains a military presence in Syria. The United States currently has approximately nine hundred troops in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, and their presence is key to preventing an Islamic State resurgence and holding back both Erdoğan on one side and Assad on the other.
The status quo, however, remains fragile. Erdoğan, in particular, regularly threatens new military interventions against the Syrian Democratic Forces, and Turkey continues to violate the ceasefire on an almost daily basis, even carrying out air strikes to displace civilians from border areas.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State may no longer hold any territory, but it still has up to sixteen thousand active fighters in the desert borderlands of Syria and Iraq. Islamic State recruiters also continue to enlist poor locals. In 2021, they took advantage of Syria’s worst drought in seventy years to entice desperate farmers to join them with offers of money and food. The organization also continues to carry out deadly attacks in both Iraq and Syria, and is patiently waiting for an opportunity to revive the caliphate.
As the January 2022 Hasakah prison break dramatically demonstrated, the management of facilities and camps housing Islamic State fighters and their families represents yet another challenge for the Syrian Democratic Forces. Makeshift prisons in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria hold approximately eleven thousand suspected Islamic State fighters, while camps such as al-Hol host over sixty thousand women and minors, for the most part the wives and children of fighters. General Kenneth Franklin McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, has repeatedly warned that al-Hol and other such camps may give rise to the next generation of Islamic State fighters.
The Way Forward
To avert such a scenario, the United States needs to keep working closely with the Syrian Democratic Forces, alongside local tribes, on reconciliation programs. The Syrian Democratic Forces also remain an important partner in US counterterrorism efforts beyond the autonomous administration. They provided crucial intelligence in the hunt for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and al-Qurayshi. “The SDF is essential,” senior administration officials said after the al-Qurayshi raid. “We cannot do any of this without them. . . . [They are] critical, vital enablers for operations like this.”
An effective counterinsurgency strategy, however, also requires reviving the economy of northern and eastern Syria. Ongoing humanitarian efforts are a step in the right direction. But a far more consequential move would be for the United States to exempt the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria from the Caesar Act sanctions, which target Assad’s regime but effectively preclude foreign investors from doing business in any part of Syria.
The United States should also communicate to Turkey that its ceasefire violations in northeastern Syria are unacceptable. Holding back Turkey would in turn help the United States curtail the influence of Assad, Russia, and Iran in the autonomous administration.
The indecisiveness of the United States in Syria is in some ways understandable. Nation building and democratization efforts in conflict-torn countries rarely go well and the United States must grapple with numerous other challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic, the rise of China, and climate change.
Yet to hope that the problems of Syria will remain confined to the Middle East would be shortsighted and dangerous. In an interconnected world, Salafi-jihadist violence, conflict spillovers, and humanitarian and refugee crises are bound to have far-reaching international repercussions.
Syria also differs from Afghanistan and Iraq in that the incipient democratization processes of its autonomous administration are not the result of foreign occupation but rather grassroots initiatives. In other words, the United States does not need to export democracy or engage in nation building in Syria—it simply ought to defend and consolidate the achievements of its local allies. To do so will not require large numbers of troops. As long as the United States remains consistent in its policies, the current light footprint would suffice to foster security and democratization in northeastern Syria. In turn, the autonomous administration’s commitment to secularism and equal rights could serve as a model for all Syrians and help inoculate poor and marginalized communities from the spread of Salafi-jihadism and other radical ideologies.
Federico Manfredi Firmian (@ManfrediFirmian) is a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
mwi.usma.edu · by Federico Manfredi Firmian · February 7, 2022
17. Analysis | The News Corp breach illustrates how badly China wants to hack the U.S.
Excerpts:
“There is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech last week, in which he described over 2,000 FBI investigations focused on Chinese theft of U.S. data.
The News Corps. hackers accessed documents that would be of high interest to Chinese officials including those related to stories about Taiwan, China’s Uyghur Muslim minority which the White House has said are the focus of Beijing-backed human rights abuse, and Biden administration efforts to ramp up protections against Chinese technology, Dustin noted on Twitter.
Analysis | The News Corp breach illustrates how badly China wants to hack the U.S.
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! I’m glad to see the Guernica tapestry is back at the United Nations after an absence.
Below: North Korea has stolen tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, and the FCC is looking at a $5.6 billion bill to shed telecoms of Chinese components that cause hacking risks.
A hack on journalists shows the breadth of China's espionage efforts
A multiyear email breach at News Corp. publications shows the massive scope of Chinese hackers’ intelligence gathering.
The hackers, who are likely tied to the Chinese government, gained access to emails and documents from reporters and others at publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and News UK, Aaron Gregg and Eva Dou report. They were rooting around in those systems since at least February, 2020, the Journal’s Alexandra Bruell, Sadie Gurman and Dustin Volz report.
“There is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech last week, in which he described over 2,000 FBI investigations focused on Chinese theft of U.S. data.
The News Corps. hackers accessed documents that would be of high interest to Chinese officials including those related to stories about Taiwan, China’s Uyghur Muslim minority which the White House has said are the focus of Beijing-backed human rights abuse, and Biden administration efforts to ramp up protections against Chinese technology, Dustin noted on Twitter.
The hacks affected “scores of reporters,” some of whom had documents compromised related to 20 or more news stories, he said.
The Journal has notified reporters about specific stories that were compromised, the paper said. The investigation so far suggests subscriber information wasn’t breached.
There’s no definitive evidence China was behind the breach, but there’s a clear “China nexus,” said David Wong, vice president of the cyber firm Mandiant, which is helping News Corp. respond to and remediate the breach. He described the hackers as “likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests.”
Despite the huge breadth of Chinese cyber activity, the nation has typically shrugged off claims about specific hacks — often arguing it's too difficult to prove anyone's responsible for anything in the shadowy world of cyberspace. U.S. officials dispute that claim and some industry reports have provided highly detailed evidence of Chinese hacking operations.
In this case, Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu denied Chinese involvement, saying China “firmly opposes and combats cyberattacks and cyber theft in all forms.”
“We hope that there can be a professional, responsible and evidence-based approach to identifying cyber-related incidents, rather than making allegations based on speculations,” he said.
The good news: The hack appears to be limited to emails and Google docs including some reporters' article drafts. That means the hackers likely didn’t access the most sensitive conversations with sources, which security experts urge reporters to conduct using encrypted messaging apps.
However: Sensitive information can certainly creep into reporters’ emails, either because of accidents or carelessness or because analysts can deduce such information by putting together otherwise innocuous clues.
“You can draw some pretty good inferences from a pattern of email behavior,” a Journal staffer told CNN’s Oliver Darcy when describing a sense of alarm among staffers at the newspaper.
This is just the latest China-linked hack to hit media.
-
China-linked hackers penetrated both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in 2013, focused at least in part on monitoring the newspapers’ China coverage.
- A 2015 China-linked hack of information from more than 20 million current and former federal employees at the Office of Personnel Management also scooped up information about numerous reporters who were accredited to enter federal buildings.
Media has been a target for other governments as well.
-
Iranian efforts to influence the 2020 election included attempting to break into the computers of a company that manages content management systems for numerous U.S. newspapers, according to Justice Department indictments. The Wall Street Journal identified the company as Lee Enterprises, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Omaha World-Herald among other newspapers.
-
Pegasus spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group has routinely been used to target journalists working in repressive nations as well as political dissidents and civil society activists, according to an investigation by The Post and media partners.
The keys
North Korea stole tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency as it ramped up missile program, the U.N. reports
The country stole more than $5 million in cryptocurrency from exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia, a U.N. member state told sanctions experts who monitor North Korea. Cyberattacks, particularly with the goal of stealing cryptocurrency, “remain an important revenue source” for Pyongyang, they said in a confidential report seen by Reuters’s Michelle Nichols.
North Korea has a long history of funding its weapons programs with the proceeds of cyberattacks on cryptocurrency exchanges. U.N. experts say it stole billions to boost the program in 2019 and 2021.
Sanction monitors also cited a report by cryptocurrency analysis firm Chainalysis that found that North Korean hackers stole almost $400 million in digital assets last year.
The report comes in the wake of a busy month for North Korea’s missile program, which carried out nine tests in January. North Korea has “demonstrated increased capabilities for rapid deployment, wide mobility (including at sea), and improved resilience of its missile forces,” the monitors said.
Defense contractors’ spotty cybersecurity records may spell trouble for new Pentagon rules
A Pentagon review of 220 defense contractors found that three-fourths don’t currently meet cybersecurity standards for protecting weapons systems, README’s Shaun Waterman reports. That could pose problems for the Biden administration’s plans to roll out similar rules to more than 200,000 companies that do business with the Pentagon.
The new rules are “the latest and most ambitious Pentagon effort to stanch a wave of hacking attacks by U.S. adversaries against defense contractors going back more than a decade, which has led to the hemorrhaging of confidential weapons design and other data,” Waterman writes. The rules could go into effect within two years.
A government program to reimburse companies to “rip and replace” Huawei and ZTE equipment could cost as much as $5.6 billion
The Federal Communications Commission received more than 180 applications for FCC reimbursements under the program which aims to replace telecom equipment that might be especially vulnerable to Chinese hacking and spying, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. The new price tag is nearly $4 billion more than what the FCC originally estimated the effort costing in September 2020, the Verge’s Mitchell Clark reports.
The U.S. government has said Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE pose risks to national security, arguing that they could be used by China’s government to spy on Americans. The companies dispute the claims.
Congress still has to allocate funding for the reimbursement program, Clark reports. The FCC is reviewing applications by telecommunications companies, so it’s possible that the final cost of the program will change.
Hill happenings
Supporters and opponents are mobilizing around the EARN IT Act
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to debate the bill this Thursday, which would hike tech firms' liability when their users share child pornography and which cybersecurity advocates fear could result in weakening encryption.
-
The legislation’s supporters are touting a letter from more than 250 organizations supporting the bill, which primarily focus on opposing child exploitation.
-
The Internet Society joined encryption advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in blasting the proposal, saying it could pave the way for weakened end-to-end encryption, which prevents people besides the recipient and sender from reading messages.
A version of the bill has also been introduced in the House.
Global cyberspace
Industry report
Cyber insecurity
Securing the ballot
Chat room
Software developer Ryan Macy and the information security consultant who goes by the handle “Corgi” offered an inside look at a marriage where one partner builds software and the other is in cybersecurity.
Daybook
-
Yevheniya Kravchuk, the deputy chairwoman of the Ukrainian parliament’s humanitarian and information policy committee, discusses Russian disinformation at a Transatlantic Task Force on Ukraine event Tuesday at 10 a.m.
-
David Nalley, the president of the Apache Software Foundation, testifies at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on a vulnerability in the Apache log4j library on Tuesday at 10 a.m.
-
National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, CISA Chief of Staff Kiersten Todt and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General John Carlin speak at the Cyber Initiatives Group’s first-quarter summit Wednesday.
-
The Securities and Exchange Commission is set to consider new cybersecurity rules for investment advisers and companies at a meeting Wednesday at 10 a.m.
-
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to discuss the EARN IT Act at a meeting Thursday at 9 a.m. The bill, which would remove social media sites’ liability protections when users share child pornography, has come under fire from encryption and privacy advocates.
-
INSF and WCAPS host an event on challenges and opportunities for Black women in the intelligence community Thursday at 11 a.m.
Secure log off
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
18. Top hardline Russian general warns Putin NOT to invade Ukraine and accuses him of a 'criminal policy of provoking a war'
Is this true? Can this be exploited? How does a Russian general get away with this? Is this an off ramp? (e.g., does this provide Putin a chance to listen to the best military advice of his generals?) Or is Putin doing something we are not seeing? All warfare is based on deception.
Top hardline Russian general warns Putin NOT to invade Ukraine and accuses him of a 'criminal policy of provoking a war' in rare outbreak of internal dissent as Emmanuel Macron flies to Moscow for talks
- Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov has accused Putin of using the 'artificial' conflict as a distraction tactic
- He says Russia does not have 'critical' threats to justify war and Ukraine has the right to self-defence
- Emmanuel Macron is holding crisis talks with Putin today after the US warned of an invasion 'any day'
PUBLISHED: 04:08 EST, 7 February 2022 | UPDATED: 07:52 EST, 7 February 2022
Daily Mail · by Jack Newman For Mailonline · February 7, 2022
A top retired Russian general has warned Vladimir Putin not to go to war with Ukraine, accusing the leader of whipping up an 'artificial' conflict to distract from his domestic problems.
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, 78, penned an open letter titled 'The Eve of War' in which he blasted Putin's 'criminal policy of provoking a war' despite Russia not facing any 'critical threats'.
The rare outburst of internal dissent comes as Emmanuel Macron jets to the Kremlin for crisis talks with Putin, a day after the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said an invasion could come 'any day' at an 'enormous human cost'.
Ivashov, who has retired from military services and is active in politics as the chairman of the All-Russian Officers' Assembly, previously served as Putin's chief of military cooperation in the Ministry of Defence.
In an open letter on the assembly's website he said he fears Russia will become a 'pariah of the world community' if an invasion is launched.
The decorated general, who was one of the most respected and hawkish generals in the Russian MoD and is known as a hardline nationalist who still champions the Soviet system and is close to the remains of the Communist party.
Since being fired by Putin in 2001 he has become a fierce critic of the Russian president - and has frequently called for him to resign and accused him of 'crimes against Russia'.
His latest intervention shows that there is at least some opposition to a war with Ukraine within Russia, and comes after a petition was signed by 5,000 citizens demanding Putin call off the conflict.
Ivashov said: 'As for external threats, they are certainly present. But, according to our expert assessment, they are not currently critical, directly threatening the existence of Russian statehood and its vital interests.'
Commenting on the letter, Stanford Russia expert Michael McFaul, who previously served as the US ambassador to Russia, said: 'This is a big deal. At one time, General Ivashov was one of the most respected (and hawkish) leaders in the Russian MOD.
'Russian generals don't usually get involved in public policy debates, especially ones like Ivashov.'
A top retired Russian general has warned Vladimir Putin not to go to war with Ukraine, accusing the leader of whipping up an 'artificial' conflict to distract from his domestic problems. Pictured: Ukraine's live fire exercises
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov (pictured) penned an open letter in which he blasted Putin's 'criminal policy of provoking a war' despite Russia not facing any 'critical threats'
Ivashov published the open letter on the website of the All-Russian Officers' Assembly, calling on Putin to stop the invasion
The decorated general was one of the most respected and hawkish generals in the Russian MoD and was known as a hardline nationalist
Ukrainian Special Forces posing with one of their Humvees after a shipment of US military cargo to prepare for a potential invasion
Around 80 tonnes of US arms and ammunition sits on the runway of a Ukrainian airport after being delivered from the US
U.S. soldiers disembark from a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III as they arrive at Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport in Poland
Civilians participate in a Territorial Defence unit training session in Obukhiv, Ukraine, as the threat of Russian invasion grows
The All-Russian Officers' Assembly is an independent group established in 2003 discusses the role of the Russian military in the state, and is considered a retirement home for former officers with often nationalist views.
In his letter, Ivashov argues that Ukraine has a right to self-defence as an independent nation, and the international backlash to the annexation of Crimea 'convincingly shows the failure of Russian foreign policy'.
He continued: 'Attempts to "love" the Russian Federation and its leadership through an ultimatum and threats of the use of force are senseless and extremely dangerous.
'The use of military force against Ukraine, firstly, will call into question the existence of Russia itself as a state; secondly, it will forever make Russians and Ukrainians mortal enemies.
'Thirdly, there will be tens of thousands of dead young, healthy men on one side and on the other, which will certainly affect the future demographic situation in our dying countries.
'On the battlefield, if this happens, Russian troops will face not only Ukrainian military personnel, among whom there will be many Russian guys, but also military personnel and equipment from many NATO countries, and the member states of the alliance will be obliged to declare war on Russia.'
The general argues that Ukraine has a right to self-defence as an independent nation, pictured carrying out live-fire exercises
US intelligence officials have warned of Russia being '70 per cent ready' to invade Ukraine and an intelligence report indicates Russia would be able to overrun Ukraine in just two days
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks to reporters during an overnight flight to Washington to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden for talks on Russia
A C-17 transport plane is prepared at Fort Bragg for deployment to Eastern Europe with members of the 82nd Airborne Division amid escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia
Ivashov added that such an invasion would 'threaten peace and international security' and would result in heavy sanctions for Russia.
He said: 'The president and the government, the Ministry of Defense cannot fail to understand such consequences, they are not so stupid.'
The hardline general then questions why would Putin risk such hostility and conflict, concluding that it is a distraction from the country's internal problems.
He said: 'In our opinion, the country's leadership, realising that it is not capable of leading the country out of the systemic crisis which can lead to an uprising of the people and a change of power in the country, with the support of the oligarchy, corrupt bureaucrats, state media and security forces, decided to activate the political line for the final destruction Russian statehood and the extermination of the country's indigenous population.
'And war is the means that will solve this problem in order to retain its anti-national power for a while and preserve the wealth stolen from the people. We cannot suggest any other explanation.'
The US suggested in letters that Russian inspectors can gain access to NATO bases in Romania and Poland (pictured above) to guarantee that no Tomahawk missiles are being stationed there. Comes as Pentagon announces 2,000 troops in the U.S. will deploy to Poland and Germany and another 1,000 will head to Romania from their base in Germany
US intelligence analysis concluded that the likelihood of a diplomatic resolution of the crisis appears to be increasingly slim
The remarks come as Putin prepares for talks today with Macron who flew to Moscow in a bid to deescalate the tensions which are threatening an imminent war.
Russia has denied any plans to attack its neighbor, but is urging the US and its allies to bar Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations from joining NATO, halt weapons deployments there and roll back NATO forces from Eastern Europe.
Washington and NATO have rejected the demands.
Macron, who is set to meet in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin before visiting Ukraine Tuesday, said last week that his priority is 'dialogue with Russia and de-escalation'.
Before heading to Moscow, Macron had a call with US President Joe Biden in which they discussed 'ongoing diplomatic and deterrence efforts in response to Russia's continued military build-up on Ukraine's borders, and affirmed their support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity'.
In an interview with French newspaper Journal du Dimanche published on Sunday, Macron said that 'we won't get unilateral gestures but it is indispensable to prevent a degradation of the situation before building confidence gestures and mechanisms'.
Russia would be able to overrun Ukraine in just two days in an invasion that could kill 50,000 civilians, according to US intelligence
'The geopolitical objective of Russia today is clearly not Ukraine, but to clarify the rules of cohabitation with NATO and the EU,' Macron said.
'The security and sovereignty of Ukraine or any other European state cannot be a subject for compromise, while it is also legitimate for Russia to pose the question of its own security.'
US officials have confirmed that Russia has already assembled at least 70 per cent of the military firepower it likely intends to have in place by mid-month to give Putin the option of launching a full-scale invasion.
'If war breaks out, it will come at an enormous human cost to Ukraine, but we believe that based on our preparations and our response, it will come at a strategic cost to Russia as well,' national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Sullivan did not directly address reports that the White House has briefed lawmakers that a full Russian invasion could lead to the quick capture of Kyiv and potentially result in as many as 50,000 casualties as he made appearances on a trio of Sunday talk shows.
US officials, who discussed internal assessments of the Russian buildup on the condition that they not be identified, sketched out a series of indicators suggesting that Putin intends to start an invasion in the coming weeks, although the size and scale are unclear.
Civilians participate in a Territorial Defence unit session to receive basic combat and survival training
They stressed that a diplomatic solution appears to remain possible.
Officials pointed to the fact that Russia's strategic nuclear forces that usually is held each fall was rescheduled for mid-February to March.
That coincides with what officials see as the most likely window for invasion.
Last week, Biden administration officials said that intelligence findings showed that the Kremlin had worked up an elaborate plot to fabricate an attack by Ukrainian forces that Russia could use as a pretext to take military action against its neighbor.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that the scheme included production of a graphic propaganda video that would show staged explosions and use corpses and actors depicting grieving mourners.
'It could happen as soon as tomorrow or it could take some weeks yet,' Sullivan said. He added that Putin 'has put himself in a position with military deployments to be able to act aggressively against Ukraine at any time now.'
Sullivan said that the administration held on to hope that the Russians would move to de-escalate the situation through diplomacy.
Ukraine is holding military exercises in Chernobyl, with troops firing at abandoned buildings and launching grenades in the deserted exclusion zone as Russian troops continue to amass on the border
Western intelligence assessments also believe Kyiv's government would fall within that timeframe, and lead to a humanitarian crisis involving around 5million refugees. (Pictured: Military helicopters take part in the Belarusian and Russian joint military drills at Brestsky firing range on Friday)
'The key thing is that the United States needs to be and is prepared for any of those contingencies and in lockstep with our allies and partners,' Sullivan said. 'We have reinforced and reassured our allies on the eastern flank.'
It comes as Germany was accused of being 'missing in action' by allies as international tensions continue to mount over Russia's military build-up on the Ukrainian border.
While other NATO members deploy battlegroups, send tactical supplies and offer more vocal support, the Germans have appeared to draw a line in the sand and refused to offer tangible support.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will travel to the White House next week to reassure Americans that his country stands alongside the United States and other NATO partners in opposing any Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Scholz has said that Moscow would pay a 'high price' in the event of an attack, but has so far failed to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, bolster its troop numbers in the region or elaborate on any planned sanctions he would take against Vladimir Putin.
'The Germans are right now missing in action. They are doing far less than they need to do,' Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat and member of the Armed Services Committee, recently told an audience of Ukrainian Americans in his state, Connecticut.
Western intelligence assessments believe Kyiv's government could fall within two days of an invasion and lead to a humanitarian crisis involving around 5million refugees and more than 50,000 civilian casualties.
Germany's Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht again ruled out supplying Kyiv with arms, after Ukraine's embassy in Germany sent a list with specific requests to the foreign and defence ministries in Berlin.
The list included missile defence systems, tools for electronic warfare, night vision goggles, digital radios, radar stations and military ambulances - equipment which, in part, is already in short supply.
Referring to an earlier build-up last year, one European official - speaking on condition of anonymity - told the Washington Post: 'Our worry would be that you don't park battle groups… on the border of another country twice and do nothing.
'I think that's the real fear that I have. [Putin's] now put them all out there. If he does nothing again… what does that say to the wider international community about the might of Russia?'
German media reports said Mr Putin – who objects to the idea of the Ukraine being admitted as a Nato member – had a three-step plan to bring Ukraine under a new 'union state' including Russia and Belarus, with Moscow as the centre of control.
The report, attributed by the Bild newspaper to a foreign secret service source, said Ukrainian activists will be rounded up and put into camps once a pro-Russian government had been installed.
Putin has continued to deny plans to attack Ukraine but urged the US and its allies to provide a binding pledge that they do not accept the former Soviet state into NATO or deploy offensive weapons. (Above, ground attack aircraft at Luninets airfield in Belarus on Friday)
It warned that an invasion was currently 'the most likely scenario' – adding that it could happen as early as this month as temperatures plummet and allow heavy ordnance and machinery to more easily traverse Ukrainian territory.
In recent months, Russia has conducted a series of joint drills with Belarus and repeatedly sent its nuclear-capable long-range bombers to patrol the skies over its neighbour, which borders Nato members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Belarus' authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has increasingly relied on the Kremlin's political and financial support amid bruising Western sanctions triggered by his crackdown on domestic protests, has called for closer defence ties with Moscow and recently offered to host Russian nuclear weapons.
As war fears mounted, Ukrainian authorities launched a series of drills for civilians to prepare for a possible Russian invasion.
It comes as US military and intelligence officials believe Russia is set to run a major nuclear weapons exercise in the coming weeks as a warning to Nato not to intervene in the event of Putin invading Ukraine, the Financial Times reported.
General Mark Milley, chair of the joint chiefs, and Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, said on Thursday that Putin was planning to begin the exercises in mid-February, according to a Congressional aide.
Russia usually holds its annual nuclear exercises in the autumn but the US believes Putin has decided to hold them earlier this year as a show of strength.
Meanwhile, NATO has warned that Russia is massing nuclear-capable missiles along with 30,000 troops in Belarus.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO general secretary, said earlier this week that Russia has already deployed thousands of troops including Spetsnaz special forces, along with Iskander missiles that can be tipped with nukes, fighter jets, and S-400 anti-aircraft systems.
Daily Mail · by Jack Newman For Mailonline · February 7, 2022
19. U.S.-Led Air Bridge of Weapons to Ukraine Seeks to Shore Up Kyiv’s Ability to Resist Russia
U.S.-Led Air Bridge of Weapons to Ukraine Seeks to Shore Up Kyiv’s Ability to Resist Russia
Planeloads of missiles, ammunition and arms aim to deter a Russian invasion by making it more costly
Until Russia’s current escalation, Turkey and the U.S. have been the only countries willing to risk Moscow’s ire by supplying Ukraine with arms. Turkey provided Kyiv with a fleet of TB2 Bayraktar armed drones that Ukraine has already used on the battlefield in the Russian-controlled Donbas area in the country’s east. Alongside the U.S., British, Canadian and Polish trainers have long been training Ukrainian armed forces in modern warfare.
Moscow has an overwhelming advantage in air, sea, artillery, missiles and manpower that the latest Western supplies are unlikely to eliminate. Yet officials from several countries have said that their concerted effort in military assistance signals Western resolve and complicates Russia’s invasion costs and choices.
Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO. Russia—while denying that it plans a military invasion—has said that it won’t accept Ukraine joining the Western alliance. With well over 100,000 forces massed on Ukrainian borders, Russia has the capacity to launch an imminent invasion if it decides to do so, U.S. officials say.
U.S. shipments have so far included a panoply of materiel, including small-arms ammunition, mortar and artillery shells, antitank guided missiles, bunker-busting missiles, grenade launchers, explosive ordnance disposal suits and Mossberg 500 pump-action shotguns, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. The U.K. has supplied thousands of antitank missiles and the Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania sent American-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles.
U.S. military aid offloaded at Boryspil airport in Kyiv, Ukraine on Thursday.
Photo: Arthur Bondar for The Wall Street Journal
The cockpit of a Russian Su-30 fighter jet as it took part in a training mission in Krasnodar Region, Russia, in January.
Photo: Vitaliy Timkiv/Associated Press
Stepan Poltorak, who served as Ukraine’s defense minister from 2014 to 2019, said that Ukraine needed a close, consistent relationship in defense development and procurement with the U.S. and NATO, rather than piecemeal deliveries. Current stopgap consignments exclude complex weapons systems, given the training time required for new operators.
The latest U.S. planeload arrived in Kyiv on Saturday. The U.S. has sent roughly 650 tons of arms and equipment to Ukraine since Jan.22. Since Russia’s seizure of Crimea and occupation of the eastern Donbas areas in 2014, the U.S. has delivered $2.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine.
“Those deliveries are ongoing,” a Pentagon spokesman said. “The U.S. is identifying additional equipment held in Department of Defense inventories.”
Last month, the U.S. administration notified Congress it planned to transfer five Russian-made Mi-17 transport helicopters to Ukraine’s possession. The Afghan army had been using the helicopters, which are now in Ukraine for servicing. A U.S. official said the administration was awaiting the conclusion of approval procedures.
A large portion of the U.S. shipments to Kyiv have been taken up with ammunition in a variety of calibers, including high-intensity grenades, high-caliber rifle rounds, armor-penetrating tracers, hundreds of thousands of rounds of antitank ammunition and a surplus of 7.62 caliber bullets for the Soviet-designed small arms in wide use in the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine has been suffering from a severe shortage of ammunition, a U.S. official said. Several Ukrainian weapons depots were destroyed in accidents that Kyiv blamed on Russian sabotage after 2014. Russian secret services were later implicated in an attack on Czech weapons depots that supplied Ukraine. Ukraine’s only ammunition plant, in the city of Luhansk, is located in an area that has been under Russian control since 2014.
The enlarging group of foreign partners is forming to restock Kyiv’s stores. Last month, the U.K. sent roughly 2,000 short-range NLAW antitank missiles to Kyiv. Ukrainian forces began training exercises with the NLAW missiles near the city of Chernihiv, northeast of Kyiv, this weekend.
“Ukraine has every right to defend its borders, and this new package of aid further enhances its ability to do so,” said Ben Wallace, the U.K.’s secretary of state for defense. “Let me be clear, this support is for short-range and clearly defensive weapon capabilities. They are not strategic weapons and pose no threat to Russia.”
A Ukrainian soldier took part in an exercise involving NLAW anti-tank missiles in western Ukraine, in late January.
Photo: Pavlo Palamarchuk/Associated Press
In 2019, Turkey began supplying Ukraine with the Bayraktar TB2 drone, which Ukraine has used in the Russia-controlled Donbas region.
Photo: birol bebek/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Ukraine and the U.K. are also negotiating Kyiv’s purchase of two refurbished Royal Navy minesweepers and are discussing frigate production and the joint development of eight missile warships.
In 2019, Turkey began supplying Ukraine with the Bayraktar TB2 drone, which Ukraine used to destroy a howitzer artillery gun in the Russian-controlled Donbas region in October. On a visit to Kyiv last week, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan formalized a deal with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to produce Turkish drones in Ukraine. Construction on a production facility outside of Kyiv already is under way.
Mr. Zelensky said the Turkish drones represented “an increase in Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.”
A vocal opponent of the Russia buildup, Poland has pledged to supply Ukraine with drones and a short-range, man-portable antiaircraft system, the Piorun, which is designed to hit low-flying aircraft, such as helicopters, at up to 13,000 feet. Mariusz Błaszczak, Poland’s minister of national defense, said Poland was giving Ukraine its newest weapon.
In a December visit to Washington, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov carried a wish list topped by antimissile systems, according to Ukrainian and U.S. officials, signaling Ukraine’s understanding of Russia’s ability to strike at long range.
“We believe the chances for advancement of the enemy forces are high,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister now with the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Kyiv think tank.
Mr. Zagorodnyuk said Ukraine would resort to “small groups tactics making Russian advantages in aviation less relevant.” He listed several items Ukraine would find useful, including sniper rifles, night-vision goggles, combat and reconnaissance drones and counter-battery and counterdrone radar systems.
The current Russian military buildup has inspired several governments to change policies on supplying such aid, but others have balked, especially those with important trade and energy relations with Russia.
Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov during National Guards exercises in the abandoned city of Pripyat near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, on Friday.
Photo: Mykola Tymchenko/Associated Press
Invoking its guilt over its World War II invasion of the Soviet Union, Germany has declined to provide Ukraine with military aid beyond 5,000 helmets and medical supplies. Berlin has also declined to allow Estonia to send Ukraine a German-origin D-30 howitzers, which can hit targets at 12 miles.
Other countries have shared nonlethal aid, as Canada did Friday, sending Ukraine a planeload of gear, including surveillance and detection equipment, according to Canada’s Department of National Defense.
Washington’s own position on the issue has evolved, from President Barack Obama’s resistance to sending lethal aid to Ukraine, to President Donald Trump’s decision to provide Javelin antitank weapons in 2019, to President Joe Biden’s approval last month of a new $200 million Ukrainian military-aid package, which paved the way for the current air shipments.
Mr. Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, hailed the arrival of a shipment last week. On Twitter, he posted a photo from the plane’s cargo hold, which depicted arms and equipment secured in large gray storage containers. “Most importantly—this isn’t the end,” Mr. Reznikov wrote. “To be continued.”
20. View from Ukraine: Calm on the surface — but preparing for war
View from Ukraine: Calm on the surface — but preparing for war
One of the country’s best-known writers says Ukrainians aren’t panicking, but they’re also training in everything from first-aid to firearms.
Special Contributor
On a recent morning, a snowstorm was blowing and the wind was howling outside the window of our Kyiv apartment. But by noon, the sun was out over the historic center of the city. Everything was calm, or at least it looked calm.
With Russian troops massed around Ukraine, my mind was 90 kilometers away in our little house in Lazarivka, a village between Kyiv and Zhitomir, closer to the Polish border than the Russian one. I enjoy working there, listening to the soothing silence.
But on this day, I was thinking about something more mundane: I was wondering if the heating was working in case a Russian attack forces us to flee the capital and take refuge there. After all, the nighttime temperatures in Lazarivka can drop as low as 8 degrees Fahrenheit at this time of year. If the gas goes out and the boiler fails, as sometimes happens when the weather worsens, we might have to wait until spring to repair it. Russian President Vladimir Putin, of course, might not wait quite so long.
You might think me naive — shouldn’t I be worried about bigger things? And wouldn’t a full-blown invasion also affect my little village?
Possibly. It would certainly affect Kyiv. And our neighborhood as well. My logic goes like this: If Putin bombs our capital, he will no doubt target our security and law enforcement services, some of which have their headquarters just a few hundred meters from our apartment. This includes the SBU intelligence agency, housed in a gloomy, gray monument to terror that, during the German occupation, was used by the Gestapo, and then later by the Soviet Union’s KGB. Next to the side entrance, there is a commemorative plaque recording the passage of Ukrainian prisoners taken inside to be shot.
So I imagine we will be taking advantage of that little place in Lazarivka. Still, I’m not panicking. Call it preparation, after years of practice. I remember well how I checked on the heating back in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea. (The heating was fine, and anyhow, we never fled the capital.)
In fact, today, on the surface, no one is panicking. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy isn’t panicking, at least not in public. When I go outside, the young people in the trendy bars on the historic Yaroslaviv Val Street appear to be having a good time, as do the older middle-class folk and foreigners at Kyiv’s classic French-style cafes. I don’t overhear any talk of war. Some have just returned from holiday in Egypt and are looking unusually tanned. Others are planning an escape to the Dominican Republic for February.
ADVERTISEMENT
No one is queuing outside bank branches. There are no crowds outside the currency exchanges. Yet make no mistake: Much in the way I phoned my neighbor the other morning, asking him to check that everything was in working order at my village home, Ukraine is preparing. At those banks and currency exchanges, as the value of the Ukranian hryvnia drops, more and more Ukrainians are converting their savings into something more reliable — euros or, ideally, U.S. dollars.
Meanwhile, under a recently enacted national resistance law, scores of military reservists and volunteers — in between visits to the cafe — are preparing for conflict under the leadership of professional soldiers. The young, in particular, are signing up to learn how to handle small arms. A journalist friend of mine is taking first-aid courses. She is hardly alone. A local nongovernmental organization is running a program on “how to survive during street fighting.” As many as 30,000 women and girls from across the country are reported to have signed up for its courses. Among the trainees is a friend who recently shared on Facebook a long set of rules for survival in the event of conflict. I found one rather strange: Don’t rely on bomb shelters. Why not? Because by the time you hear a warning siren, it will already be too late, and too many people will be rushing to one anyway.
Kyiv’s mayor clearly thinks otherwise. He recently announced plans to use the capital’s subway stations as shelters to supplement the already 5,000 bunkers built during Soviet times in the cellars of schools and residential buildings. The station nearest to our apartment is Golden Gate, and it is reassuringly deep: These stations were also Soviet creations — and it takes five or six minutes to reach the platform, using two consecutive escalators. But having read my friend’s Facebook post, I’m not sure what to do if the sirens near my apartment go off.
It all feels a lot like 2014, when Ukrainians attempted to go about their lives as if everything was normal. There were in those tense days protesters massing in the center of Kyiv, in the square we call “Maidan.” And there was, across Ukraine, a sense that Russia might invade the country, moving in from the east, at any moment. The threat of conflict was everywhere then as it is now, with Ukraine a top story in the international press. And I remember this: that in Kyiv, it was impossible to purchase theater tickets.
Something similar is happening now. At the end of January, I went to the Theatre on Podil, in one of Kyiv’s oldest districts, to see “Last Summer in Chulimsk” by the Soviet playwright Alexander Vampilov. Performed in Russian and set in Siberia, it has nothing to do with war, or for that matter with Ukraine; it is, at its heart, a love story. The performance was sold out, and at the end of the evening, the actors received a well-deserved standing ovation.
I checked to see what would be on the next day. A Viktor Rozov work, called “Forever Alive.” This one about World War II. I can report that it was sold out as well.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
