Quotes of the Day:
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“No man on earth is truly free, all are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.”
- Euripides
“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
- Will Durant
1. To Solve a Problem, You Need to Define It…Accurately
2. Preparing for strategic competition: The need for irregular warfare professional military education
3. Record Defense Budget Flunks the China Test
4. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 31, 2023
5. DOJ Reveals New Iran-backed Assassination Attempt on Iranian American Journalist
6. Pentagon launches management reform institute to address challenges
7. Is the Ukraine War moving toward a ‘Korea solution’?
8. I used to work in a secure facility and here's the ugly truth about how Congress handles classified documents
9. Over-Classification Undermines Democracy, US Intelligence Director Says
10. Why Military Leaders Need to Rethink Battlefield Intelligence in a Smartphone Era
11. U.S. funds not misused in Ukraine, U.S. Treasury says amid corruption crackdown
12. How will the Russia-Ukraine war end?
13. How America Would Be Screwed if China Invades Taiwan
14. Getting Serious About Responsible Defense Spending
15. The Cod Wars and Lessons for Maritime Counterinsurgency
16. America should reach out to children of Russia’s elites
17. Taiwan scrambles fighter jets amid Chinese air and navy manoeuvres
18. Is Washington’s arms control theology finally on the verge of collapse?
19. Former Wagner commander describes brutality and incompetence on the frontline
20. Psychology wins wars
1. To Solve a Problem, You Need to Define It…Accurately
Excerpts:
This is a thinking game.
Welcome to the cognitive domain.
Tue, 01/31/2023 - 8:02pm
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/solve-problem-you-need-define-itaccurately
To Solve a Problem, You Need to Define It…Accurately
By 4Sight
“Fighting in the Revolutionary War, well, is terrifying. But I’m terrifyingly terrified that the terrified Regulars won’t be terrified no longer.”
~ Francis Marion (The Swamp Fox)
This initiates a series addressing Unrestricted Warfare, or in the parlance of Harry Potter, that which cannot be named[1]. How far we will take this series is yet to be determined. However, it will likely form the basis of a 4Sight seminar or roundtable.
Whether you are a strategic analyst, planner or executive decision-maker, if you are seriously engaged with what is happening and what is right around the corner, it is advisable to read Unrestricted Warfare[2], by PLA LTG (RET) Qiao Liang and COL (at the time of its publication) Wang Xiangsui, as well as The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, by Ralph Sawyer.
Before we begin our exploration into Unrestricted Warfare, it is necessary to introduce two concepts which are critical to problem solving: Defining and Contextualizing. This essay explores the challenges we face in conducting what may seem to be a rather simple exercise. At times, we may not appear to be addressing Unrestricted Warfare directly. But occasionally, an indirect approach helps remove preconceived notions.
“It’s the Economy, Stupid”
There is a lot packed into that phrase James Carville coined in 1992. In Carville’s case, it defined the messaging problem needed to help get his candidate elected. For most problems, there are solutions. Most solutions have price tags, be it time, money, logistics or even lives. If we understand the problem, we can define it. If we can define it, we have an opportunity to provide a cost-effective solution. It is as simple as that. Right? “Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.” ~ Carl von Clausewitz. Conversely, if we cannot accurately define a problem, the problem festers, accelerates or overwhelms. Global events are escalating at such a pace, definitions require precise accuracy. Otherwise, analysts, planners and their decision-makers will be overcome by events.
To a certain extent, problems mimic each other. Civil war is war, but not like war across one’s borders. That distinction drives a different set of solutions. This was relevant in Afghanistan. Was it a civil war, an uprising or an insurgency? In Yemen, there are civil war, secession and fragmentation scenarios, as well as an outside military intervention problem. The solutions for each are different.
Warning is the foundation of decision-based analysis. One of the judgment types in strategic warning intelligence is definitional. We consider definitional judgment to be the Knight on the chessboard of analysis because it can be the opening move to reaching an accurate definition of a problem, allowing decision-makers to seize the initiative.
When defining problems, most analysts rely on their education and experience, but they have trouble adjusting to a totally new experience which may appear to be like an old one but is not an update of the old one. As long as there is a historic precedent, analysts are good at making a diagnosis. When there is no precedent, most have extreme difficulty determining the alternative choices. Ignorance about the alternatives leads to what we call “premature cognitive shutdown,” when an open mind is required. Unfortunately, the list of warning failures from misdiagnoses is long and infamous.
When instability problems are assessed through their phenomenology[3], we understand they are different phenomena because they require different solutions. However, most information systems only provide real insight into four of them. This is what we call “Fidelity on Four[4].” Fidelity refers to the degree with which a phenomenon appears to be replicated; requiring further analysis before making a judgment. The four are Insurgency, Insurrection (aka Uprising), Coup d’état and Civil War.
Therefore, an uprising looks a lot like an insurgency. All the government overthrows during the so-called “Arab Spring” looked like successful popular revolutions. On close examination, they were praetorian coups by palace guards and the military units in the capitals. The exception was Libya because the phenomenon changed to an outside military intervention problem. As for uprisings and insurrections, these are important to distinguish because the policy responses appropriate to each are different. However, we seldom get information that has the fidelity to know which is occurring. The difference lies in the amount of central control behind the popular uprising.
We can tell when there is a popular movement but not distinguish whether it is a revolution, anarchy or the start of a civil war. As one of our staff, who goes by the nom de plume Flavius Belisarius, asked, “was the post-2001 Afghanistan problem an insurgency or a Pashtun insurrection that evolved into an insurgency?” Is an assassination a coup d’état or a change of government? A revolution is a change of the system, but revolutions become apparent after the fact. Think about that.
Analysts and planners sometimes use these terms without discrimination, but the diagnosis and subsequent definition drives the response of the executive decision-maker. Popular consent, as well as professional peer pressure, defined the Afghanistan problem as an insurgency for nearly two decades. It was first and foremost a Pashtun insurrection from which parts of the Taliban confederacy took on the mantle of insurgency. That is why few of our solutions worked. Population movements, such as the Cuban boat lift, Darfur, Rohingya and other mass migrations are no longer simply “events.” They are very destabilizing processes, often violent and require careful analysis to determine who is behind and financing them. Population movements are hardly spontaneous and can be instruments of state policy or influence operations orchestrated by state and non-state actors. They can be quite violent and bloody (1-2 million people were killed during the partition of India in 1947). By analyzing the phenomenology, analysts and planners can make better reasoned approaches and work, in-concert, to mutually facilitate judgment accuracy in defining problems.
“Location, Location, Location”
That often-used realtor’s advice to would-be home buyers puts context into perspective. Context derives from a Latin root meaning “to knit together” or “to make a connection.” Contextualizing involves linking observations to a set of relevant facts, events or points of view that make it possible to begin the problem-solving process. Decision-makers are driven by the need to act. They need problems broken down and simplified. Therefore, there is a need to address them in human terms.
All human behavior are the actions of living systems. All living systems exist in dynamic tension with their environment and with themselves in processing information, matter and energy. As systems grow more complex, new features emerge. Emergence is a key concept[5]. As systems evolve and learn, threats emerge in new ways. Human behavior is not data centric. It is systematic, based on subjective probabilities. It is no easy task to contextualize a defined problem when it is prone to evolve.
For example, of the various phenomena of violent internal instability, insurgency stands out as a chronic problem. It is a balance between the amount of resources applied by both sides and it adds a military dimension similar to civil war. When the balance changes in favor of the opposition, an insurgency can emerge as an insurrection. If the insurrection is widely supported, it can re-emerge as a popular uprising. If the balance changes in favor of the government, it can transition from a military to a police problem.
Therefore, the analysis must be an iterative process, with contextualization applied throughout. Analysts, planners and decision-makers must be dexterous enough to anticipate and adjust with the changes and not get shackled to a static definition. Flexibility at the policy level is essential, which is easier said than done (harkening back to the Clausewitz quote). The critical challenge then becomes identifying and effectively communicating the interrelated conditions in which the phenomenology exists and the problem occurs.
Once the problem has been explained, the executive decision-maker will likely ask a question. “So what?” This is where we need to break things down within two distinct, yet interconnecting spheres: its meaning and its significance. Decompositional judgment has a role here. The meaning is directly related to its definition and its significance is related to those interrelated conditions which puts it into context. In this arena, data performs an important function.
The Afghanistan problem underscores the topics we have already covered. Let us view it through a more strategic lens, by placing the Taliban within the regional context of Pakistan and India. If we ask most Americans about the Pressler Amendment, we will hear crickets. If we ask a taxi driver in Islamabad or Karachi, we may get a dissertation. The Pressler Amendment dramatically slashed US military support for Pakistan. After which, Pakistan faced a serious problem. They needed to augment their strategic depth and protect their western flank without compromising their force structure along their contiguous border with India. The Taliban became relevant to Pakistan’s regional defense strategy against India by denying access to Pakistan’s western flank. After December 2001, a decentralized and fragmented Taliban was dependent on Pakistan for survival in multiple ways. Therefore, within the context of Pakistan’s regional concerns, one solution to NATO’s Taliban problem in Afghanistan would have involved making the Taliban irrelevant to Pakistan. Unfortunately, bringing Indian companies into Afghanistan, especially those working on Afghanistan’s infrastructure, was unhelpful. Beyond the regional security context, there was, of course, the Taliban’s context within Afghanistan, vis-à-vis the various internal instability phenomena referenced in the previous section. Given the events of 2021, consider the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. We will save that for another time.
Reflect on what we have outlined regarding the need for accurately defining and contextualizing problems at the country and regional levels. When you expand your perspective and entry points of analysis to a global level, you will see different phenomena and processes emerge. It takes effort. But for those analysts and planners who really enjoy their work, they should pounce on the opportunity to exercise their tradecraft.
Good COP/Bad COP
There is another challenge directly linked to defining and contextualizing problems. That is getting everyone on the same page with a Common Operating Picture (COP). It is common knowledge that the goal of a good COP is to develop a collective view of a situation within and across organizations. A good COP will help tear down organizational silos, unify plans and operations and bring synergy to problem solving. A bad COP handicaps those efforts, costs lives and money and could eventually compromise national interests.
The art of developing a good COP requires much more than a common view. It requires understanding. Unfortunately, understanding seems to be the missing link in many COP development activities. Given many of the intangible aspects of Unrestricted Warfare and the unrelenting pace of global security events, it is important to remain disciplined and take the essential steps required for understanding. This is why defining and contextualizing are critical analytical and planning skills.
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall….”
We have all done it. It is human nature. When assessing a threat or developing a COP, we sometimes hear someone say, “If I were _____, I would _______,” or words to that effect. It is called mirroring. It will get us into trouble every time we enslave ourselves to the magic mirror. When we mirror, we place the threat in our own shoes, as we try to rationalize situations from our own perspective. It takes discipline and training to overcome mirroring because it can easily become a chronic problem. We must appreciate threats from their perspective, for the insight needed to gain and maintain the initiative.
The challenge with Unrestricted Warfare, as well as Irregular Warfare is they require a greater depth of understanding of human behavior and decision processes. If we slip-up and engage with opponents through the prism of our own perspective, we will find ourselves in a maze with no exit. Engaging in Unrestricted and Irregular Warfare is not mental gymnastics, it is psychological judo.
The Cognitive Domain
The paradox of Irregular Warfare is when it is all said and done, no one should realize what was actually done. Therefore, when we define and contextualize the problems associated with or exploited by Unrestricted Warfare, we had best be precise and be prepared to challenge conventional wisdom with reasoned analyses with probative value.
Imagine what it was like for Galileo Galilei and Christopher Columbus to challenge the common knowledge and professional opinions of their times. Of course, it is easy to criticize their peers and seniors centuries later. Now, think about the challenges we face in defining and contextualizing problems related to Unrestricted Warfare in our time, when professional opinions and conventional wisdom are influenced by malign activities masquerading as reasonable arguments.
This is where we begin our examination of Unrestricted Warfare.
This is a thinking game.
Welcome to the cognitive domain.
[1] The First Rule of Fight Club and Irregular Warfare Should be the Same, David Maxwell, SWJ, 1/22/2023.
[2] Unrestricted Warfare can also be found in audio format.
[3] 4Sight’s Strategic Warning Intelligence Forecasting Techniques™ (SWIFT™)
[4] SWIFT™
[5] IBID
About the Author(s)
4Sight
4Sight is a veteran-owned, boutique private intelligence firm that builds internal, organic capacities. They are dedicated to improving specific cognitive skills and analytical judgments. 4Sight specializes in violent internal instability, analysis of war preparations and early warning architectures.
2. Preparing for strategic competition: The need for irregular warfare professional military education
Our attempt to find a home for Irregular Warfare so that it is no longer an intellectual orphan within DOD.
Excerpts:
A consolidated irregular warfare program could allow the DOD to generate the irregular warfare professionals necessary to meet the demands of strategic competition in the 21st century. It could include career-long education for appropriate branches and specializations, advanced IW strategy and campaign planning for select personnel at intermediate and senior service equivalent levels, and IW supporting components inserted into service education at all levels from the basic course through senior service colleges. The services might also consider including IW curriculum in the service academies and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
The U.S. has the best trained and educated military in the world — for traditional warfare. The national security and defense strategies highlight the requirement to conduct strategic competition in the gray zone as well as to deter war, and to fight and win the nation’s wars. It may be time to give IW equal priority in professional military education and find it a home.
Preparing for strategic competition: The need for irregular warfare professional military education
BY CHARLES T. CLEVELAND, DANIEL EGEL, DAVID MAXWELL AND HY ROTHSTEIN, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 01/31/23 12:00 PM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3837521-preparing-for-strategic-competition-the-need-for-irregular-warfare-professional-military-education/
AP Photo/Olivier Matthys
U.S. Secretary for Defense Lloyd J. Austin III speaks during a media conference after a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. NATO Defense Ministers met in Brussels as the military alliance pressed ahead with plans to hold a nuclear exercise as concerns deepened over President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that he would use any means necessary to defend Russian territory.
The Department of Defense (DOD) does not provide the irregular warfare (IW) professional military education necessary for success in competition and conflict in the 21st century. This is a not a new problem, but it is one that may deserve new attention from the Congress and the Pentagon.
More than 30 years ago, the late Ambassador Michael Sheehan, who also served as the assistant secretary of defense responsible for irregular warfare, observed that IW had “lost its significance as a separate type of conflict that requires different doctrine and training.” Sheehan concluded that a consequence was that the United States lacked the “operational level and campaign planning” necessary for irregular warfare above the tactical level.
Congress — reflecting on the findings from the Skelton Panel in the 21st century — has affirmed that “the primary purpose of [professional military education] is to develop military officers, throughout their careers, for the rigorous intellectual demands of complex contingencies and major conflicts.” It is perhaps unsurprising that the United States was unable to assemble high-level irregular-warfare-proficient campaign headquarters in either Afghanistan or Iraq — which may provide a critical vulnerability as U.S. adversaries are increasingly turning to irregular approaches to undermine U.S. conventional supremacy.
There are plenty of opportunities for irregular warfare-focused education. Indeed, the joint force has developed and sustained a multitude of educational offerings directly related to irregular warfare, including programs operated by the National Defense University and specifically the College of International Security Affairs (CISA), the Air University, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Joint Special Operations University, the Marshall Center, the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center of Security Studies, and the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (which includes CISA’s Joint Special Operations Master of Arts Program).
However, there is no coherent professional military education “architecture” for irregular warfare. There is no dedicated IW segment in DOD education and no mechanism for relevant officers, enlisted, and civilians to receive the “continuous access to IW-related training, doctrine, and education” which the Irregular Warfare Annex to the 2020 National Defense Strategy highlighted as a requirement.
The Joint Staff has declared that it cannot tell services how to design irregular warfare curriculum, and neither Special Operations Command nor the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict have a specified role. Professional military education for irregular warfare is typically “sequestered to electives,” and often the requirement for IW professionals in attending traditional military education is to function as a “training aide” for conventional counterparts, which arguably impedes the education for all domains of warfare, including land, air sea, cyber, and space.
This highly diffuse approach for irregular warfare is in sharp contrast to that currently being deployed by the Space Force. Developing an “independent” professional military education for the Space Force was a priority of the first Chief of Space Operations, General John W. Raymond, and it reflected a recognition that the “Space Force works in a radically different domain in terms of physics, size, and legal regime” than the rest of the Air Force.
Further, rather than executing this independent and specialized education via an existing military institution, the Space Force decided to partner with a civilian university. This approach allowed the Space Force to “tailor curriculum to meet the unique and evolving needs of space operations by capitalizing on the multidisciplinary, strategy-focused course offerings in international security, ethics and leadership, international public policy and more” at its university partner, Johns Hopkins University.
This approach may offer two important lessons for how the DOD could overhaul its approach.
First, irregular warfare may require its own independent professional education. Irregular warfare operates in a wholly different domain than conventional forces — which Gen. Raymond Odierno, Gen. James Amos, and Adm. William McRaven called the “human domain.” Thus, as Space Force operations in the space domain necessitated an independent program, irregular warfare may necessitate its own program as well — in order to develop IW-proficient campaign headquarters.
Second, effectively executing this may require a more robust partnership with a civilian university. Irregular warfare by its nature requires an understanding of typically civilian disciplines, including anthropology, economics, geography, politics, psychology, and sociology. These can and are taught at military education institutions, but partnerships with civilian universities — following the approach currently being employed by the Space Force — may provide the DOD a new approach for ensuring its irregular warfare commanders, planners, and operators are immersed in these tools. Education through a partnership with a world-class university may also expose military officers to other elements of national power that often prove critical in the success of irregular approaches, since irregular warfare is the military contribution to political warfare or competitive statecraft, the province of national level civilian policymakers.
While the congressionally authorized Irregular Warfare Center may provide a mechanism for partnering with a civilian university, congressional leadership may be necessary to implement these two pragmatic lessons offered by the Space Force.
Establishing independent professional military education for irregular warfare may require that Congress empower and require the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and Special Operations Command to bring coherence to IW education. These organizations were created to address U.S. failures in IW but were not given needed authorities for personnel development and management — and just as Space Force education has a champion in the new service chief, irregular warfare may need a “senior champion” as well.
A consolidated irregular warfare program could allow the DOD to generate the irregular warfare professionals necessary to meet the demands of strategic competition in the 21st century. It could include career-long education for appropriate branches and specializations, advanced IW strategy and campaign planning for select personnel at intermediate and senior service equivalent levels, and IW supporting components inserted into service education at all levels from the basic course through senior service colleges. The services might also consider including IW curriculum in the service academies and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
The U.S. has the best trained and educated military in the world — for traditional warfare. The national security and defense strategies highlight the requirement to conduct strategic competition in the gray zone as well as to deter war, and to fight and win the nation’s wars. It may be time to give IW equal priority in professional military education and find it a home.
Lt. Gen. Charles T. Cleveland (Ret.) is an adjunct researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a senior mentor to the Army War College.
Daniel Egel is a senior economist at RAND.
Col. David Maxwell (Ret.) is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Global Peace Foundation and a senior advisor to the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy.
Col. Hy Rothstein (Ret.) is a recently retired faculty member of the Naval Postgraduate School.
3. Record Defense Budget Flunks the China Test
Conclusion:
Putin wrecked the European peace. Xi’s China shows signs of belligerence, ambition, and volatility on our Pacific defense perimeter. Zelensky’s pleas testify to the danger of a nation leaving its defenses undersupplied. We need a mass of what the military calls “fires” and the ships to deliver them. Then we will dampen Chinese temptations. Place the orders, pay on delivery.
Record Defense Budget Flunks the China Test
By Jeffrey Jeb Nadaner
January 31, 2023
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/01/31/record_defense_budget_flunks_the_china_test_878724.html
One consolation of the $1.7 trillion 2023 spending bill was a bipartisan Congress providing several tens of billions of dollars over the President’s narrow defense request. While most lines of that $858 billion defense appropriation are necessary, it fails in its totality. The record budget folds before our most important national security test: to rescue our precarious Pacific posture.
The bill rightly seeds pioneering capabilities that will be fielded in quantities in the 2030s. It refills Ukraine-depleted stockpiles, but these weapons, however, are generally short-range and of lesser utility vis-à-vis China.
In the vast waters between Hawaii and Shanghai, mid-to-long range strike forms the sine-qua-non of deterrence. Our current stores are miserable, the planned step increases off the mark. The 2023 budget funds just a little more than a thousand new mid-to-long range conventional missiles, to add to our inventories: approximately 80 Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs), 600 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs), 90 Extended Range HARMs (AARGM-ERs), 100 Naval Strike Missiles (NSMs), and 150 Tomahawks.
That calculation is the best-case scenario making considerable assumptions: the Military Services fully use their new appropriations, negotiate highly advantageous price per missile deals with the primes, and get the dollars under contract in Fiscal Year 2023 (which ends just nine months from now, on September 30th). The ultimate 2023 numbers could -- and are apt to -- be substantially lower. As an aside, the FY23 Congressionally funded upgrades to some of our existing stocks of older cruise missiles, however essential, do nothing to expand our limited inventories. Quantity, not just quality, matters when facing high-tech China.
This year’s new cruise missile appropriation covers a mere few days to few weeks of combat. Beijing understands our numbers. Does Washington? To deter China, we require months-worth of the long-bolts. Xi and the Politburo need to know that U.S. magazines have depth and will not exhaust. No quick victories against the United States.
China has built massive air, naval, missile, and space forces -- the likes of which we have not faced since the days of the Warsaw Pact. At 340 capital ships and growing, China’s navy outnumbers ours by several dozen. The danger is “during this decade, in fact in the next six years,” as Admiral Philip Davidson testified in 2021 and our Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, recently reaffirmed. China possesses the homefield advantage, concentration in the first island chain, anger, and luxury of surprise.
If our desire is to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan or against our other vital Pacific interests, no solution exists but to quadruple the purchase of the requisite mid-to-long range missiles: Tomahawks, LRASMs, NSMs, JASSMs, and AARGM-ERs. Double the construction of the warships to carry them to battle stations. Start now.
Enough handwringing about the inadequacy of our defense industrial base. The market, with some creativity on the government’s part, will respond, as it repeatedly has, defying the pessimism. From a cold start, private industry developed and produced COVID vaccines and medical supplies in a sliver of the time many expected. The outcome was in keeping with the World War II public-private partnership.
Let’s use tools FDR employed and Congresses of differing parties have sensibly kept in law: Washington buys the plant and equipment. The contractors make them spin. Require as a condition of contracts something fresh: the large defense firms form joint ventures with the new crop of radical aerospace small- and mid-sized businesses. Hundreds have emerged with breathtaking abilities, yet slight access to the ponderous defense budget process. They will bring innovation, per-unit cost-reduction, and competition to an overly consolidated sector.
Whatever one may say about Elon Musk, SpaceX has driven down the price of launch over 85%. When he began, a comfortable, conformist sentiment settled throughout the industry: his rocket wouldn’t reach orbit with any reliability, accuracy, or economy. In fact, SpaceX’s record exceeds anything the incumbents ever achieved in a similar period.
The young Turks engineer differently. They revolutionize products because they are racing up the Schumpeter curve, not standing atop it. They make moonshots, not just respectable earnings per share. They do not bow to stock markets or government administrators, but are funded by founders and VCs risking their own capital and livelihoods.
Putin wrecked the European peace. Xi’s China shows signs of belligerence, ambition, and volatility on our Pacific defense perimeter. Zelensky’s pleas testify to the danger of a nation leaving its defenses undersupplied. We need a mass of what the military calls “fires” and the ships to deliver them. Then we will dampen Chinese temptations. Place the orders, pay on delivery.
Jeffrey Jeb Nadaner is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy and Stability Operations, Director of the USMC Krulak Center, and Lockheed Martin Vice President of Engineering & Technology
4. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 31, 2023
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-31-2023
Key Takeaways
- The introduction of Russian conventional forces to the Bakhmut frontline has offset the culmination of the Wagner Group’s offensive and retained the initiative for Russian operations around the city. ISW's December 27 forecast that the Russian offensive against Bakhmut was culminating was inaccurate.
- ISW does not forecast the imminent fall of Bakhmut, and it is extraordinarily unlikely that Russian forces will be able to conduct a surprise encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut.
- Russian military command is overestimating Russian military capabilities to advance rapidly in Donetsk Oblast and in the theater.
- Russian conventional forces may be replacing expended Wagner PMC forces by relocating them from Bakhmut to the Zaporizhia Oblast front line.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be attempting to fully supplant Wagner forces near Bakhmut to frame the traditional Russian military command structure as the sole victor around Bakhmut, assuming Russian forces take the city.
- Ukrainian officials continue to support ISW’s assessment that an imminent Russian offensive in the coming months is the most likely course of action (MLCOA) and further suggested that Ukrainian forces plan to launch a larger counteroffensive.
- Prominent Russian milbloggers continue to expose Russian military failures in Ukraine through increasingly public and elevated platforms.
- Russia continues to weaponize counterterrorism laws to justify domestic repressions.
- Russian forces continued limited ground attacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on January 31.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Donetsk Oblast front line.
- Russian forces are unlikely to benefit significantly elsewhere in eastern Ukraine from their localized offensive around Vuhledar.
- Russian forces are likely prioritizing sabotage and reconnaissance activities over territorial gains in southern Ukraine.
- Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov acknowledged Russian mobilization failures in an attempt to frame implementation failures and policy violations as resolved.
- Russian occupation authorities continue to use youth engagement and education programs to consolidate social control of occupied territories.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 31, 2023
understandingwar.org
Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan
January 31, 8:15 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
The introduction of Russian conventional forces to the Bakhmut frontline has offset the culmination of the Wagner Group’s offensive and retained the initiative for Russian operations around the city. The ISW December 27 forecast that the Russian offensive against Bakhmut was culminating was inaccurate.[1] The Wagner Group offensive culminated, as ISW assessed on January 28, but the Russian command has committed sufficient conventional Russian forces to the effort to reinvigorate it, thus forestalling the overall culmination of the offensive on Bakhmut, which continues.[2] The commander of a Ukrainian unit operating in Bakhmut, Denys Yarolavskyi, confirmed that "super qualified" Russian conventional military troops are now reinforcing Wagner Group private military company (PMC) assault units in an ongoing effort to encircle Bakhmut.[3] Another Ukrainian Bakhmut frontline commander, Volodymyr Nazarenko, also confirmed ISW’s observations that the Russian military command committed Russian airborne troops to the Bakhmut offensive.[4] Russian forces are continuing to conduct offensive operations northeast and southwest of Bakhmut and have secured limited territorial gains since capturing Soledar on January 12.[5]
ISW does not forecast the imminent fall of Bakhmut to Russian forces, although the Ukrainian command may choose to withdraw rather than risk unacceptable losses. It is extraordinarily unlikely that Russian forces will be able to conduct a surprise encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. Yaroslavskyi noted that the Ukrainian military command would conduct a controlled withdrawal of forces from Bakhmut to save Ukrainian soldiers’ lives, likely if the Ukrainian command assesses that the risk of an encirclement of the city is imminent.[6] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Serhiy Cherevaty stated on January 31 that Ukrainian forces are still able to effectively supply units in Bakhmut and noted that the Ukrainian military command has developed several contingency plans to respond to Russian operations around Bakhmut.[7] Cherevaty added that Russian forces are continuing to suffer heavy casualties and noted that Ukraine’s previous defense and subsequent withdrawal from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk over the summer of 2022 exhausted Russian forces and disrupted their plans for an immediate attack on Bakhmut.
Russian officials are again overestimating Russian military capabilities to advance in Donetsk Oblast and in the theater in a short period of time. Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin stated on January 31 that the Russian capture of Bakhmut will allow Russia to advance to Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, both approximately 40km northwest of Bakhmut.[8] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin previously claimed that the average pace of Russian advance around Bakhmut was about 100 meters per day, and it took Russian forces eight months to advance from occupied Popasna in Luhansk Oblast and Svitlodarsk to their current positions in the vicinity of Bakhmut (distances of 25km and 22km respectively).[9] Pushilin also claimed that the hypothetical Russian capture of Vuhledar would allow Russian forces to launch offensive operations on Kurakhove, Marinka, and Pokrovsk—despite the inability of Russian forces to capture Marinka since March 17, 2022, when the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) falsely claimed to have seized the settlement.[10] Pushilin had also claimed that Russian forces will seize Avdiivka, but has not provided any explanation of how Russian forces will break through almost nine years’ worth of Ukrainian fortifications around the settlement.[11] Pushilin’s expectations for Russia's hypothetical seizure of Bakhmut further demonstrate that Russians are continuing to face challenges in accurately assessing the time and space relationship with the account for Russian military capabilities.
Russian conventional forces may be replacing expended Wagner PMC forces by relocating them from Bakhmut to the frontlines in southern Ukraine.[12] The Head of the Ukrainian Press Center of the Defense Forces of the Tavrisk Direction, Colonel Yevhen Yerin, stated that Russian forces are conducting unspecified force rotations out of Kherson Oblast and that Ukrainian authorities are clarifying reports about Wagner Group forces arriving in the Zaporizhia operational direction.[13] Ukrainian officials first reported on Wagner forces arriving in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on January 15, coinciding with the culmination of the Wagner offensive in Donbas with the capture of Soledar on January 12.[14] Russian forces may be rotating out the culminated and battle-weary Wagner forces in favor of Russian conventional units that have likely been resting and refitting since the Russian withdrawal to the east (left) bank Kherson Oblast in November.[15]
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be attempting to fully supplant Wagner forces near Bakhmut and frame the traditional Russian military command structure as the sole victor around Bakhmut, assuming Russian forces eventually take the city. The Russian MoD and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin have made competing claims over recent Russian gains around Soledar and Bakhmut following the capture of Soledar.[16] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces captured Blahodatne just west of Soledar on January 31 after Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces seized the settlement on January 28.[17] Prigozhin is likely overcompensating for Wagner forces’ reduced combat capabilities and reliance on conventional forces by claiming territorial gains before the MoD can feasibly claim them for Russian conventional forces.[18] The Russian MoD likely aims to undermine the Wagner Group’s influence in Ukraine despite the MoD’s reliance on Wagner forces to sustain the Russian effort around Bakhmut since July and to take horrendous losses for minimal territorial gains.[19]
Ukrainian officials continue to support ISW’s assessment that an imminent Russian offensive in the coming months is the most likely course of action (MLCOA) and further suggested that Ukrainian forces plan to launch a larger counteroffensive. Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov stated in a January 31 interview with Sky News that Russian forces are preparing for a "maximum escalation" in Ukraine within the next two to three months and may do so as soon as the next two to three weeks to coincide with the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[20] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov stated in a January 31 interview with the Washington Post that Russian forces will focus on occupying a larger area of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, supporting ISW’s assessment that Russian forces appear to be preparing for an imminent offensive in eastern Ukraine, particularly in Luhansk Oblast.[21] Budanov stated that there are currently 326,000 Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, excluding the roughly 150,000 mobilized personnel still in training grounds that Russian forces have reportedly not yet committed to hostilities.[22] The Russian military will likely continue to accumulate conventional forces in Luhansk Oblast and increase the deployment of remaining mobilized personnel to eastern Ukraine in support of an imminent decisive strategic effort in western Luhansk Oblast.[23] Danilov suggested that Ukrainian forces have their own plans for operations in the coming months, and Budanov stated that Ukrainian forces must return Crimea to Ukrainian control by the summer of 2023.[24] Budanov has recently stated that Ukrainian forces intend to launch a major counteroffensive throughout Ukraine in the spring of 2023 "from Crimea to Donbas."[25]
Prominent Russian milbloggers continue to expose Russian military failures in Ukraine through increasingly public and elevated platforms. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on live Russian state TV that Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) lost 40-50% of their personnel between the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and September of 2022, although ISW cannot independently confirm the accuracy of the milblogger’s assessment.[26] The public reporting of this significant figure, regardless of its accuracy, notably undermines efforts from the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to minimize Russian causalities reported in the Russian information space. The Kremlin has recently attempted to integrate some select milbloggers, including this one, into its narrative control by offering them platforms on Russian state broadcasters while also attempting to resurrect censorship efforts targeting the wider community of milbloggers that are critical of the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).[27] The Kremlin‘s effort to coopt a select group of milbloggers by giving them more public and elevated platforms may backfire as milboggers may seize the opportunity to appeal to the Russian ultranationalist community that has been increasingly critical of the Kremlin’s conduct of the war.[28]
Russia continues to weaponize counterterrorism laws to justify domestic repressions. Russian sources reported on January 31 that the Central Military District Court found Vladislav Borisenko guilty of a terrorist act and sentenced him to 12 years in prison for his role in a May 2022 Molotov cocktail attack on the Nizhnevartovsk military registration office in Khanty-Mansi Okrug.[29] This is notably the first instance of the perpetrator of an attack on a military registration office being officially charged with committing a terrorist act.[30] The apparent elevation of charges for such incidents from destruction of property and hooliganism indicate that the Russian judicial system is increasingly seeking to impose harsher punishments on acts of domestic dissent as the war in Ukraine continues, as ISW has previously assessed.[31] Russian President Vladimir Putin additionally signed a decree on January 31 that simplifies the process of implementing terror threat alerts in Russia.[32] The decree allows Russian regions to introduce an elevated "terrorist level" for an indefinite period, thus negating the previous 15-day limit.[33] The January 31 decree is an expansion of Putin’s October 19 martial law decree, which introduced varying levels of "martial law readiness" in occupied regions of Ukraine and Russian border regions.[34] The new decree will allow Russian regions operating on a "yellow level" of terrorist threat (as in Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk Oblasts) to stop and search vehicles on administrative borders to weapons and explosives, activities that were previously allowed only in "red level" regions.[35] The continued legislative manipulations of terrorism as a legal concept are allowing Russian authorities greater scope to crack down on domestic dissent and on any activities that are deemed contrary to Russian interests.
Key Takeaways
- The introduction of Russian conventional forces to the Bakhmut frontline has offset the culmination of the Wagner Group’s offensive and retained the initiative for Russian operations around the city. ISW's December 27 forecast that the Russian offensive against Bakhmut was culminating was inaccurate.
- ISW does not forecast the imminent fall of Bakhmut, and it is extraordinarily unlikely that Russian forces will be able to conduct a surprise encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut.
- Russian military command is overestimating Russian military capabilities to advance rapidly in Donetsk Oblast and in the theater.
- Russian conventional forces may be replacing expended Wagner PMC forces by relocating them from Bakhmut to the Zaporizhia Oblast front line.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be attempting to fully supplant Wagner forces near Bakhmut to frame the traditional Russian military command structure as the sole victor around Bakhmut, assuming Russian forces take the city.
- Ukrainian officials continue to support ISW’s assessment that an imminent Russian offensive in the coming months is the most likely course of action (MLCOA) and further suggested that Ukrainian forces plan to launch a larger counteroffensive.
- Prominent Russian milbloggers continue to expose Russian military failures in Ukraine through increasingly public and elevated platforms.
- Russia continues to weaponize counterterrorism laws to justify domestic repressions.
- Russian forces continued limited ground attacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on January 31.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Donetsk Oblast front line.
- Russian forces are unlikely to benefit significantly elsewhere in eastern Ukraine from their localized offensive around Vuhledar.
- Russian forces are likely prioritizing sabotage and reconnaissance activities over territorial gains in southern Ukraine.
- Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov acknowledged Russian mobilization failures in an attempt to frame implementation failures and policy violations as resolved.
- Russian occupation authorities continue to use youth engagement and education programs to consolidate social control of occupied territories.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Eastern Ukraine
- Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and one supporting effort);
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)
Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on January 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Novoselivske (16km northwest of Svatove) and Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna) in Luhansk Oblast and Yampolivka (16km west of Kreminna) in Donetsk Oblast.[36] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated on January 31 that Ukrainian advances on the Svatove-Kreminna line have slowed.[37] Geolocated combat footage posted on January 30 shows Russian artillery striking a Ukrainian position about 8km west of Kreminna, indicating that Ukrainian forces have advanced to within 8km of the settlement.[38]
Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian concentration areas in occupied Luhansk Oblast. Geolocated photos posted on January 31 confirm claims made by the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) that Ukrainian troops struck Kadiivka (48km west of Luhansk City on the T0504 Lysychansk-Luhansk City highway) with HIMARS.[39]
Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on January 31. Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Serhiy Cherevaty reported that there have been 42 engagements between Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Bakhmut area in the past 24 hours.[40] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Bakhmut itself; within 29km northeast of Bakhmut near Spirne, Krasna Hora, and Paraskoviivka; and within 7km southwest of Bakhmut near Ivanivske and Klishchiivka.[41] A Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 105th Rifle Regiment-affiliated source claimed that Russian forces captured Sacco and Vanzetti (17km north of Bakhmut), although ISW has not observed any visual evidence that verifies this claim.[42] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that "volunteers of assault detachments" with support from conventional Russian units captured Blahodatne (11km north of Bakhmut), following Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s January 28 claims that Wagner Group fighters captured the settlement.[43] ISW previously reported that geolocated footage published on January 29 indicates that Russian forces likely captured the settlement.[44] The Russian MoD continues to refer to the Wagner Group as "volunteers of assault detachments" to minimize the Wagner Group’s responsibility for tactical advances in the Bakhmut area while still acknowledging its role.[45] The DNR 105th Rifle Regiment-affiliated source claimed that Russian forces began a massive assault on Bakhmut itself on January 30 and advanced in the eastern outskirts of the city.[46] The source also claimed that Russian forces advanced to positions within 1km of the T0504 Kostyantynivka-Bakhmut highway near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut), although ISW has also not observed visual evidence that supports this claim.[47]
Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Donetsk City-Avdiivka area on January 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Avdiivka, Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[48] A BARS-13 (Russian Combat Reserve of the Country) affiliated source claimed that BARS-14 elements destroyed a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group near Makiivka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[49]
Russian forces continued localized offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on January 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[50] A Russian milblogger published footage on January 29 reportedly of Russian tank units of the 36th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army of the Eastern Military District engaging Ukrainian tank units in the vicinity of Vuhledar.[51] A Ukrainian military officer reported that Russian forces failed to establish control over positions near Vuhledar and that high casualties and poor weather are constraining Russian combat effectiveness in the area.[52] The Ukrainian military officer reported that Ukrainian forces eliminated the most experienced Russian formations during the first days of renewed Russian assaults near Vuhledar and that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet has suffered heavy losses.[53] The Ukrainian military officer reported that Russian forces have accumulated a large number of forces in the area and will likely continue the localized offensive to capture Vuhledar.[54] Russian sources amplified footage on January 30 purporting to show elements of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade entering Vuhledar, with one Russian source claiming that fighting was ongoing in the settlement itself as of January 30.[55] A Russian milblogger claimed on January 31 that Ukrainian forces have deployed a large number of personnel to the Vuhledar area.[56]
Russian forces are unlikely to benefit elsewhere in eastern Ukraine from the localized offensive around Vuhledar. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported that Russian forces likely developed probing attacks near Pavlivka (36km southwest of Donetsk City) and Vuhledar into a more concerted offensive assault with the aim of developing a new axis of advance within Donetsk Oblast.[57] The development of a new axis of Russian advance is unlikely to reinforce other Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine due to the seeming lack of overall operational coordination between these separate offensives and the distances between them, however. ISW has previously assessed that a localized Russian offensive in the Vuhledar area is part of a wider effort to disperse Ukrainian forces along the frontline in Ukraine and set conditions for a decisive Russian offensive in western Luhansk Oblast.[58] Russian forces would likely have to activate a large-scale offensive from the vicinity of Donetsk City to generate operational coherence between offensives around Vuhledar and operations around Bakhmut. ISW has observed no evidence of Russian preparations to launch such an offensive.
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Russian forces are likely prioritizing sabotage and reconnaissance activities over territorial gains in southern Ukraine. Head of the Ukrainian Press Center of the Defense Forces of the Tavrisk Direction Colonel Yevhen Yerin stated that Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups intensified their activity in the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast and along the Zaporizhia Oblast front line and are not attempting to make territorial gains.[59] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on January 31 that Ukrainian forces destroyed at least five Russian sabotage and reconnaissance boats in the Dnipro River on the last day.[60] Russian and Ukrainian sources did not report that Russian forces conducted any ground attacks in Zaporizhia Oblast for the fifth consecutive day on January 31.[61] These reports (or lack thereof) support ISW’s prior assessment that Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov’s claims of an ongoing Russian offensive in Zaporizhia Oblast were most likely exaggerated as part of a Russian information operation.[62]
Ukrainian forces conducted a raid against the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River on January 31. Geolocated imagery from January 31 shows two boats on the Dnipro River near the delta islands southwest of Kherson City.[63] Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces briefly landed near and established positions in a residential area on the riverbank before Russian artillery fire forced Ukrainian forces to leave the east bank.[64] One Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces were reconnoitering Russian positions and may be attempting to fix Russian forces in Kherson Oblast but do not intend to establish a bridgehead on the east bank of the Dnipro River.[65] Intermittent Ukrainian raids against east bank Kherson Oblast continue to demonstrate that Russian forces likely lack full control over the eastern shoreline of the Dnipro River, as ISW has previously reported.[66]
Russian occupation authorities continued efforts to restore the Russian logistics line between Krasnodar Krai and Crimea. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced that authorities restored the fourth and final road bridge span for the Kerch Strait Bridge on January 31.[67] Occupation authorities installed the third road bridge span on January 26.[68] Khusnullin reiterated that Russia plans to reopen the Kerch Strait Bridge to road traffic in March 2023. [69]
Russian forces continued to conduct routine artillery strikes against areas in Zaporizhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on January 31.[70]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov acknowledged Russian mobilization failures in an attempt to claim that issues with mobilization and policy violations have been resolved.[71] Krasnov reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 31 that Russian authorities have returned over 9,000 illegally-mobilized Russians to their homes.[72] Krasnov acknowledged "an array of significant problems" with mobilization but claimed that Russian authorities have solved the majority of issues with body armor and uniforms and disbursed all payments owed to Russian military personnel.[73] ISW has observed increased Russian efforts to professionalize the Russian military over recent weeks, but Krasnov very likely exaggerates the extent to which Russian officials have addressed mobilization issues.[74] The Rostov Oblast Legislative Assembly stated on January 30 that Assembly Chairman Aleksandr Ishchenko proposed that Russian regions standardize payments for mobilized soldiers and establish a minimum payment account.[75] This proposal reflects the continued inconsistency of Russian policy surrounding mobilization as well as a demand to stabilize this policy.
Russian sources continue to spread confusion regarding the official provisioning of, role of, benefits for, and conditions of discharge that apply to different types of Russian soldiers. A Russian milblogger presented on January 31 a series of hypothetical situations left unclear by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s announcement on January 30 that the Russian MoD will take over the provisioning of Russian volunteer units with weapons, equipment, clothing, medical care, and food.[76] Another milblogger questioned why Russian authorities created "these unnecessary battalions" and "incomprehensible military formations" at all instead of replenishing existing units.[77] A Russian nationalist Telegram channel posted on January 30 that Russian authorities expanded the list of veterans’ injuries and illnesses eligible for state compensation without providing specific details or referencing a specific source of information.[78] A prominent Russian milblogger stated on January 30 that he asked the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) why some Russian soldiers cannot quit after their contracts ended.[79] The milblogger stated that the MoD responded that all dismissals were suspended following the declaration of partial mobilization except in certain cases regarding age, health, or legal proceedings.[80]
Some Russians continue limited resistance to Russian mobilization and Russia’s war in Ukraine. A regional Russian news source reported on January 30 that authorities in Vladimir Oblast sentenced a mobilized soldier to one year of prison for desertion "in order to temporarily evade military service duties."[81] Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko on January 30 amplified footage of a Russian woman who accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of taking Russian women’s husbands and children and "[pretending] that nothing is happening" and appealed to Putin to provide Russians with information about the status of their mobilized family members.[82] Russian news outlet Baza stated on January 31 that Russian authorities drew up an administrative report against a resident of Ryazan Oblast for "discrediting the Russian Armed Forces" by leaving anti-war graffiti in a shopping center bathroom.[83]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian occupation authorities continue to use youth engagement and education programs to consolidate social control of occupied territories. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky stated on January 31 that the Russian youth movement "Movement of the First" (Dvizheniye Pervykh) has opened 14 branches throughout occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and is working with youth in Melitopol.[84] Balitsky claimed that this movement was formed on the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the mission of uniting and creating equal self-development opportunities among young people and instilling the "right guidelines" in children.[85] Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyenov similarly met with the head of the Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Aviation, and Navy of the Russian Federation of the Republic of Crimea (DOSAAF) Andrey Popov on January 27 to discuss the "military-patriotic" education of youth in Crimea.[86] DOSAAF is notably a Soviet-era relic.[87] Occupation authorities are likely using youth engagement and educational programs to Russify occupied areas by instilling pro-Russian ideologies and erasing Ukrainian civil society on the local level.
Russian occupation officials continue to use social benefit schemes to strengthen the administrative integration of occupied territories into the Russian system. Zaporizhia occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky announced on January 31 that his administration has clarified the process for issuing birth certificates on occupied territory and that for parents to stamp Russian citizenship to a Ukrainian birth certificate, a Ministry of Internal Affairs migration service employee must provide parents with a certified translation of the Ukrainian certificate in Russian.[88] While the Zaporizhia occupation administration is ostensibly allowing parents to keep Ukrainian birth certificates, they are still compelling Ukrainian citizens to interact with Russian administrative bodies to obtain the required translation. The translation component is a notable form of crypto-Russification, as birth certificates will be registered with the Russian orthography for names and locations as opposed to the Ukrainian. Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik relatedly announced that the LNR has been issuing maternity capital certificates since January 1.[89] Maternity capital programs incentivize families to have more than one child, and while this is not a new concept in Russia or the broader post-Soviet space, occupation authorities may be pushing enrollment in these programs in order to encourage population growth in occupied areas and to encourage families to register with Russian-controlled administrative organs.[90]
Russian occupation officials continue to pursue infrastructure projects in occupied areas, partially enabled through patronages with Russian federal subjects. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin amplified a statement made by occupation head of Khartsyzk (a settlement just east of Donetsk City that has been occupied since 2014) Viktoria Zhukova, who describes how the Russian Nizhny Novgorod administration has aided Khartsyzk in implementing various infrastructure projects.[91] ISW has previously reported on efforts by occupation authorities to secure patronages with Russian regions, which provide material and financial support that strengthens administrative control over occupied areas by fostering dependence on such infrastructure projects.[92] Zhukova additionally reported that Nizhny Novgorod officials have facilitated the removal of 380 children from Khartsyzk to "rehabilitation camps" in Nizhny Novgorod.[93] Russian federal subjects are likely helping occupation officials deport Ukrainian children to Russia under various medical and social guises, as ISW has previously observed.[94]
Russian authorities are likely using imported labor to construct defensive fortifications in occupied areas of Ukraine. A Russian Telegram channel reported that Russian authorities are widely luring workers, predominantly migrants from Central Asian and African nations, to participate in construction projects in occupied territories and failing to provide them with the promised position or payment upon arrival in occupied areas.[95] The post notes that workers are promised that they will work on infrastructure projects and then find themselves digging trenches and defensive fortifications for less than half the promised compensation.[96] Russian authorities may seek to exploit disenfranchised ethnic minorities to sustain construction projects in occupied areas in the absence of willing Russian workers or collaborators in occupied areas.
Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.
ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on January 31 to sign an agreement to establish joint training centers for joint Russian-Belarusian training.[97] Putin is likely seeking to use these Belarusian facilities to train more of his forces to reinforce active frontlines in eastern Ukraine.
Russian and Belarusian forces are continuing joint military exercises in Belarus. Belarusian Security Council Secretary Lieutenant General Alexander Volfovich, Commander of the Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense Forces Colonel Andrey Lukyanovich, and Russian Air Force Commander Lieutenant General Sergey Dronov reportedly cooperated in drawing up practical aviation exercises as part of joint tactical flight exercises.[98] The Belarusian MoD also reported that joint tactical flight exercises continued at the Ruzhansky training ground on January 31.[99] Russian and Belarusian forces also conducted a joint staff training session and will conduct joint decision-making training over the next week in preparation for Union Shield exercises in September 2023.[100]
Independent Belarusian monitoring group The Hajun Project also did not record any large convoys with Russian military equipment in Belarus and noted that large convoys with Belarusian military equipment appeared in Polatsk Raion, near Khodna and Slonim in western Belarus.[101]
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
[7] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/01/31/na-lymanskomu-napryamku-vorog-namagayetsya-perehopyty-inicziatyvu-i-styaguye-rezervy-sergij-cherevatyj/
[13] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/01/31/rosijski-dyversanty-aktyvizuvalysya-na-hersonskomu-napryamku/
[21] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/krym-bude-vidvoiovano.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/31/kyrylo-budanov-ukraine-i... https://isw.pub/UkrWar012523
[24] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/krym-bude-vidvoiovano.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/31/kyrylo-budanov-ukraine-i...
[29] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/01/31/rossiyskiy-sud-vpervye-vynes-za-podzhog-voenkomata-prigovor-po-statie-terakt-zhitelyu-nizhnevartovska-dali-12-let; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/12/26/dvuh-podozrevaemyh-v-podzhoge-voenkomata-v-nizhnevartovske-obvinili-v-terakte; https://t.me/bazabazon/15598; https://t.me/bazabazon/11499
[30] https://t.me/bazabazon/15598; https://t.me/bazabazon/11499; https://me... io/news/2023/01/31/rossiyskiy-sud-vpervye-vynes-za-podzhog-voenkomata-prigovor-po-statie-terakt-zhitelyu-nizhnevartovska-dali-12-let
[32] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/01/31/putin-razreshil-iskat-oruzhie-i-vzryvchatku-v-mashinah-v-ezzhayuschih-v-regiony-s-vysokim-urovnem-terroristicheskoy-opasnosti-to-est-v-oblasti-na-granitse-s-ukrainoy; http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202301310002
[33] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/01/31/putin-razreshil-iskat-oruzhie-i-vzryvchatku-v-mashinah-v-ezzhayuschih-v-regiony-s-vysokim-urovnem-terroristicheskoy-opasnosti-to-est-v-oblasti-na-granitse-s-ukrainoy; http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202301310002
[35] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/01/31/putin-razreshil-iskat-oruzhie-i-vzryvchatku-v-mashinah-v-ezzhayuschih-v-regiony-s-vysokim-urovnem-terroristicheskoy-opasnosti-to-est-v-oblasti-na-granitse-s-ukrainoy; http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202301310002
[37] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/01/31/sergij-cherevatyj-koly-budut-spryyatlyvi-faktory-vijska-neodminno-perejdut-do-rishuchyh-dij/
[40] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/01/31/za-mynulu-dobu-v-rajoni-bahmuta-vidbulosya-42-bojovyh-zitknennya-sergij-cherevatyj/
[59] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/01/31/rosijski-dyversanty-aktyvizuvalysya-na-hersonskomu-napryamku/
[71] https://t.me/readovkanews/51710; https://www.interfax dot ru/russia/883987; https://t.me/bazabazon/15604; https://t.me/readovkanews/51710; https:/... ru/russia/883987
[73] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/01/31/genprokuror-rf-bolee-devyati-tysyach-nezakonno-mobilizovannyh-vozvrascheny-domoy
[75] https://zsro dot ru/press_center/news/1/31561/
[81] https://t.me/dovod3/7833; https://www.dovod dot online/mobilizovannogo-iz-kolchugino-prigovorili-k-godu-kolonii/
[86] https://crimea-news dot com/society/2023/01/27/1014360.html; https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2023/01/31/rosiyany-militaryzuyut-ditej-na-tymchasovo-okupovanyh-terytoriyah/
[87] http://lenta dot ru/news/2009/12/07/dosaaf/
[97] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202301310001; https://www.rbc dot ru/rbcfreenews/63d8f9409a7947770d54f6af
understandingwar.org
5. DOJ Reveals New Iran-backed Assassination Attempt on Iranian American Journalist
DOJ Reveals New Iran-backed Assassination Attempt on Iranian American Journalist
fdd.org · by Danielle Kleinman · February 1, 2023
Latest Developments
The Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed on Friday that the FBI disrupted another plot to assassinate Brooklyn-based Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad. A federal court in New York unsealed murder-for-hire and money laundering charges against Rafat Amirov, 43; Polad Omarov, 38; and Khalid Mehdiyev, 24, all of whom are members of an Eastern European criminal organization known as “Thieves-in-Law.” The attempt on Alinejad’s life is the second effort by an Iran-backed group to kill the longtime Tehran critic and human rights advocate. In 2021, U.S. prosecutors charged four alleged Iranian intelligence operatives with plotting to kidnap Alinejad.
Expert Analysis
“We cannot wish away these acts of war as merely a problem for law enforcement to resolve. We need a fundamental change in U.S. policy when the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism believes it can plot terror attacks on U.S. soil with impunity.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor
Suspects Surveilled Alinejad’s House for Days
According to DOJ, Mehdiyev, a New York resident, staked out Alinejad’s home. From July 24 to 28, he made multiple unsuccessful efforts to assassinate Alinejad and plotted with the other two suspects how to lure her out of the house. Alinejad noticed suspicious activity around her residence on July 28 and left the area. While Mehdiyev drove away, police stopped him for a traffic violation and arrested him after finding weaponry, ammunition, a black ski mask, and $1,100 in cash inside his vehicle.
Law enforcement arrested Omarov in the Czech Republic on January 4, and the United States is seeking extradition. Amirov was arrested outside the United States and arrived in the Southern District of New York on January 26.
Iran Targeted Americans in the United States
Besides targeting Alinejad, Iran has repeatedly backed plots to assassinate its opponents on U.S. soil. Operatives from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have threatened former government officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook.
In August, an attacker inspired by a fatwa — religious edict — by Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and a bounty from an organization closely linked to the clerical regime attempted to assassinate novelist Salman Rushdie while he was giving a lecture in upstate New York. European and Middle Eastern intelligence officials believe the attacker had contacts with IRGC members prior to the attack.
Plots Subverted Throughout the World
According to the State Department, Iran committed as many as 360 targeted assassinations throughout the world between 1979 and 2020. The Israeli prime minister’s office revealed in April that the Mossad thwarted an attempt to assassinate French-Jewish journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy in Paris, a U.S. general in Germany, and an Israeli diplomat in Turkey.
Related Analysis
“UK Preparing to Designate IRGC as a Terrorist Organization,” FDD Flash Brief
“Iran Targets Salman Rushdie,” FDD Flash Brief
“Iran’s Long, Bloody History of Terror and Espionage in Europe,” by Toby Dershowitz and Benjamin Weinthal
fdd.org · by Danielle Kleinman · February 1, 2023
6. Pentagon launches management reform institute to address challenges
Pentagon launches management reform institute to address challenges
Defense News · by Joe Gould · January 31, 2023
WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Defense Department, a mammoth federal agency long criticized even from within as inefficient and overly complex, is embarking on a new step toward improving how it conducts its affairs.
The department on Tuesday launched the Defense Management Institute, an independent research entity aimed at advancing the Pentagon’s management, organization, performance improvement and enterprise business operations. Proponents said the entity, part of the nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses, will have a far-reaching impact as it pools experts and past research for officials and lawmakers to solve problems or retool the department.
“It’s groundbreaking because never before has there been an institute dedicated solely to performance improvement,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at the launch event. “Management reform advances the entire department, including acquisition, technology ― all of which are essential to the department’s mission and to directly support the warfighter.”
The new launch comes amid fresh calls in Congress to cut the Pentagon’s budget. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has signaled his support for some cuts in defense spending amid growing tension within the House GOP ranks over the party’s approach to a coming fight over the debt limit.
The $850 billion national defense budget makes up half of all discretionary federal spending, but cutting it could mean unwinding some of the world’s most complex bureaucracies. The Defense Department not only employs a massive array of troops and civilians, but it operates around the globe with a medical system, a school system, an internal intelligence agency and grocery chain.
Officials say the Defense Management Institute, or DMI, will not only conduct studies and analyses on behalf of the department but also build a public library of past management reform studies and reports spanning the Pentagon’s own boards and commissions, as well as academic institutions and think tanks.
“Future generations of the department should not have to start from scratch. This institute will help them solve problems more quickly and efficiently,” Hicks said.
DMI would also bring together and link defense officials to the loose community of experts in the field, which includes former Pentagon employees, congressional staffers and private sector management consultants.
DMI plans to tackle a major job, right off the bat, when it conducts a review of the effectiveness of defense agencies and field activities, which Congress mandated in the 2023 defense policy bill. These components, among the most complex parts of the department, have periodically been targeted for cuts by lawmakers.
Defense budget expert Todd Harrison said the new organization could fast become a go-to source of ideas and analysis to identify waste and inefficiency in defense, or potentially reassure fiscal conservatives that investments in defense are well spent.
But a key factor in its success will be how well it can establish its intellectual independence from the Institute for Defense Analyses and Pentagon leadership, he added.
“I think it is a significant step in terms of creating the institutional momentum for sustaining a focus on better management and performance across the defense enterprise,” said Harrison, the managing director at Metrea Strategic insights. “This creates an organization and a body of people whose full-time job will be building the intellectual basis for better decision making, [but it] must be willing to speak truth to power to be credible.”
The DMI launch is arguably the most public step in the realm of defense management reform since Congress in 2020 eliminated the Pentagon’s chief management officer job, four years after establishing it as DoD’s No. 3 position.
The department has since dispersed the CMO’s duties and responsibilities among different officials. Hicks is the DoD’s management chief, while the lead for department reform is former Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who is both the department’s current director of administration and management as well as its performance improvement officer.
Donley, who spearheaded the launch of DMI, said one of the key goals is to translate private sector practices and experience to the Pentagon.
Among performance improvement efforts under the Biden administration, Hicks said she and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have expanded the role of the Defense Business Council and pushed the broader use of data analytics to inform decision-making.
To harness big data, the DoD developed an internal application, called Pulse, in less than five months, which Hicks said would set the pace for similar efforts.
“The secretary will have a far better view of implementation of the [National Defense Strategy] than our predecessors were ever afforded,” she said. “This dashboard approach will give us data-driven insights into what’s working and what stuck and what we can do about it.”
About Joe Gould
Joe Gould is the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He served previously as Congress reporter.
7. Is the Ukraine War moving toward a ‘Korea solution’?
So we want to suspend hostility in Ukraine for the next seven decades?
Here is the part that pundits like Mr. Godlstein overlook. The nKPA was destroyed by 1953 and north Korea only held on because of the Chinese People's Volunteers. It took them some years to regenerate combat capable forces. Furthermore the infrastructure in north Korea was nearly completely destroyed. That has not happened in Russia. If the recommended scenario plays out you will still have a capable Russian military and there will have been no significant destruction of Russian infrastructure. Russia will retain the capability to continue hostilities on very short notice. Such a scenario will not provide sufficient security to Ukraine.
We should also keep in mind that in 1953 President Rhee opposed the Armistice. Hewas only coerced by the presence of UN forces and co-opted by the signing of the ROK-US Mutual Defense Treaty. The President tof Ukraine will have to agree to an Armistice and he is unlikely to do so. Of course the US and the West can try to coerce by threatening to cut off aid (which of course would be like cutting off our nose to spite our face).
Is the Ukraine War moving toward a ‘Korea solution’?
Just like 70 years ago on the peninsula, an armistice would immediately freeze fighting along the present line of contact.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/30/is-the-ukraine-war-moving-toward-a-korean-solution/
JANUARY 30, 2023
Written by
Lyle J. Goldstein
The bloodletting in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. The risks of continued casualties, now numbering likely well over half a million, along with the attendant escalation spiral, must be firmly rejected by responsible leaders.
Embracing a “Korean Scenario” may provide the best prospect for both the Ukrainian people and a return to global stability. It would allow both sides to stop fighting with an immediate armistice along the present line of contact, while putting aside most of the complexities of peacemaking.
In autumn, the armed forces of Ukraine (AFU) illustrated that they are capable of large-scale offensive action. However, the Russian Army has not buckled as some had predicted, but has rather returned to the offensive, creeping forward along nearly the whole front.
It remains to be seen whether the Russian capture of towns surrounding Bakhmut, like Soledar and Klishchiivka, indicates the main effort of Russia’s winter offensive.
The use of mostly Wagner Group troops in these battles around Bakhmut may imply that these are merely holding actions, meant to keep the AFU engaged, while larger Russian offensive actions are to be taken on the flanks. Of course, there have been more than a few hints that another Russian offensive could come through Belarus. Another possible vector of Russian attack could be from the south along the Dnepr river and toward Zaporizhzhia.
Yet, it is entirely possible that the Kremlin, humbled by a year of military setbacks, has opted for the more conservative and realistic near-term goal of gradually and methodically securing only the Donbas. To be sure, a major humiliation for the Russian Army has been its inability to dislodge Ukrainian forces from their positions near the main city of Donetsk.
The raging debates in the Western press about tanks being transferred to Ukraine, including the kerfuffle in U.S.-German relations, are likely more important on a symbolic, political level than as a so-called “game-changing” transformation in the Western effort to improve the AFU. It could be many months before American tanks show up in the country, not least due to the intense training that will be required.
There are many reasons for skepticism regarding the transfer of tanks to Ukraine, including the German-made Leopard tanks that could apparently arrive as soon as March, as a means to significantly alter the situation on the battlefield. Many seem to have forgotten that only a year ago the strategic studies community was pondering whether tanks had a real future in any army — given the pervasive and effective employment of drones and shoulder-fired missiles on both sides.
There is actually substantial evidence that the Leopard 2 has not performed well in real combat conditions in Syria, and there is no doubt that Russian strategists have studied this case thoroughly to understand that tank’s various weaknesses.
As one Russian strategist explains, “Some compare sending the Leopard to Ukraine with the appearance of the Tiger … in 1942-45. The Germans tried to shoot Soviet T-34s from long distances. It’s a beautiful story of …Teutonic engineering genius, if not for one thing – the presence of Russian anti-tank systems of various calibers.”
Indeed, the Leopard might outperform Russian tanks in many parameters. Yet, tank-versus-tank duels have been rare, and tanks must fight against an integrated combat system. Russian sources claim they are well-stocked with the necessary anti-tank weapons and that many Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles have already been destroyed.
Meanwhile, Russian artillery fire has not slackened and has become more accurate due to spotting by drones. Kamikaze drones, such as the Russian Lancet, have proved highly effective in this role, and Russian attack helicopters and fixed wing aircraft continue to be active along the front. Moreover, such obvious Russian anti-tank capabilities are being upgraded. Other questions with respect to NATO tanks include their comparative heavy weight, not necessarily an advantage in the spring Ukrainian mud, but especially the complex maintenance and also the considerable fuel challenges they pose.
Western armor in Ukrainian hands quite likely will resemble the evolving role of tanks on the other side of the line as roving artillery rather than the shock formations of the famous Nazi blitzkrieg. However, the latter style of warfare cannot be ruled out entirely given the enormous support Kyiv is getting and also the evident prowess of the Ukrainian military in combat. As I have suggested elsewhere, the AFU successfully employed light armor with innovative and bold tactics during the fall Kharkiv area offensive.
Still, there is the possibility, however remote, that NATO tanks may yet provide a “game-changing” element, administering a decisive defeat against Russian armies. Their efforts would be substantially aided if Ukraine truly had an air force overhead to cover these armored thrusts. As noted recently by Anatol Lieven in these pages, it was only moments after the dam broke on the provision of main battle tanks that negotiations had already begun on a transfer of fighter jets.
Peering into the future when the AFU may wield both substantial forces of tanks and aircraft, it is worth pondering whether these could form ideal targets for Russian tactical nuclear strikes against Ukraine. Indeed, such weapons might not be especially effective against scattered infantry formations distributed over a lengthy front, but concentrations of high-tech weapons at air bases or tank parks could quite significantly increase the temptation for Russian commanders desperate for their own “wonder weapons.”
It should be remembered that only a few months ago President Joe Biden warned that the world was closer to Armageddon than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. When President Vladimir Putin commented in late October that “We see no need for that,” it was positive, to be sure, but also left the door unfortunately quite wide open for a scenario in which he felt the need in the future.
It was reported on January 16 that Russian Duma deputy and former deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district Andrey Gurulyov warned that, “in response to the use of heavy German tanks by Ukraine, the Russian army should launch a nuclear strike…,” he argued. “Should we use nuclear weapons in this case? Why should we be embarrassed?… Who’s stopping [us] from doing it?”
“The appearance of German tanks on Russian territory is [unacceptable],” he went on. As soon as the Leopard comes here, … there is no other option.” Since Gen. Gurulyov is a military expert and once even commanded a tank army, his opinion on how Russia should respond to NATO tanks is not easily dismissed.
A few other nuclear warnings were evident in the Russian military press within days. But a deeper look reveals that such signals have been widespread since the summer. Why these continuing warnings of possible escalation to the nuclear level go unreported in the Western mainstream press remains unclear but are nonetheless extremely concerning to say the least.
Seventy years ago, a similarly pointless and unnecessary bloodbath engulfed the Korean Peninsula. Men died in the tens of thousands in trenches that resembled the Western Front. Heavy bombers and other high-tech weapons were brought in, but the front lines did not move much in the war’s last couple of years. Nuclear threats were made — more than once. The war dragged on in part due to the necessity of convincing the Communist world that aggression does not pay. The West back then also wanted a “rules-based order,” but the world proved far too messy for that strict concept – as it does today as well.
Dwight Eisenhower ran for the presidency in the fall of 1952, demanding that the Korean War be brought to an end. As a man thoroughly acquainted with the carnage and suffering of war, he fundamentally understood the imperative to end the conflict once and for all.
In crisis after crisis of the volatile early Cold War, from Dien Bien Phu to Budapest to Quemoy to Berlin, Eisenhower stood strongly on the side of peace and compromise. He was no ideologue, but rather a peace-oriented pragmatist. Fortunately for the world, many subsequent U.S. presidents followed his admirable example of realism and restraint, at least to some extent.
It is quite likely that the war in Ukraine will end in a similar fashion to the Korean War. With the approach of the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice in July 2023, that important moment could give President Biden an extraordinary opportunity to play peacemaker. In fact, Russian strategists have already put aside their extremist original war aims and are now actively discussing the “Korean Scenario” for Ukraine.
One such discussion earlier this month noted that the Korean War was more bloody than the current Ukraine War, but, “even with this in mind, the war still managed to be stopped — with the mediation of the UN.”
True, a Korean War-style armistice would put many hard issues aside concerning, for example, reparations, as well as trade and travel arrangements impacting many people in both countries. However, the strong virtue of this arrangement is that it puts a premium on an immediate halt to the fighting, while solidifying the line of contact as the new border for the foreseeable future. Another virtue of this approach, as with the well-guarded 38th Parallel on the Korean Peninsula, is that it would incorporate a neutral zone, from which military forces from both sides would have to be withdrawn over a period of months.
Would the leaders of Russia and Ukraine come to the table for such a Korean-style armistice? Putin, as the leader bearing the greatest responsibility for this tragedy, surely realizes that his whole legacy is in grave jeopardy, so that he must end the unpopular war as soon as possible.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected originally to seek peace with Russia, knows that his country has been bled white in this struggle and it is well past time to turn to the arduous task of rebuilding. As there has been most likely well over half a million casualties in the present conflict, humanitarians across the whole world must hope courageous leaders will step forward to mediate and encourage Putin and Zelensky to consider a “Korea solution.”
8. I used to work in a secure facility and here's the ugly truth about how Congress handles classified documents
I used to work in a secure facility and here's the ugly truth about how Congress handles classified documents
foxnews.com · by Chrissy Houlahan | Fox News
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Documents were escaping classified confines ‘much earlier’ than Trump’s presidency: Will Cain
Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall and ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ co-host Will Cain discuss the U.S. government’s system for labeling and tracking classified documents.
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When I served in the military just before the close of the Cold War, my job was primarily in a "SCIF" – a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. This is a space designed to keep classified information out of the hands of people who wish to do the United States harm. It is literally a vault that is secured and monitored for who and what comes in, and perhaps even more importantly, who and what comes out. This level of compartmented information is even withheld from those with the highest levels of clearance without a "need to know."
The SCIF I worked in required a "TS/SCI" clearance, allowing my colleagues and me to work with the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information required to do our jobs. The process for people to obtain this clearance or level of trust is incredibly invasive and often takes over a year.
We would walk into the vault every day for work with nothing in our hands. No briefcases, work materials, newspapers, technology, etc. were allowed. And if something happened to pass through, standard operating procedure was that it was forever stuck there -- in SCIF purgatory -- presumably never to re-emerge.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT CHAIR CALLS FOR REFORM ON HANDLING OF CLASSIFIED DOCS: 'THERE'S A PROBLEM'
Interestingly, one can often read information in the press or in "Open Source" material that is actually classified at some of our government’s highest levels. Those of us who were trained and therefore trusted knew to never speak of this information in unsecured places, even if it was publicly available. It was classified for a reason.
FILE – Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., conducts a news conference with members of the New Democrat Coalition on their 2020 agenda in the Capitol Visitor Center on Friday, February 28, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images))
At one point, one of my officemates deliberately brought in an article he read in (of all things) a Rolling Stone magazine expose. Embedded within the reporter’s story was a sentence that was protected at the TS/SCI level. My colleague highlighted the sentence with "!!!"
WHAT IS A SCIF, WHERE INFORMATION IS KEPT SECURE?
I tell you all of this, by way of background, to set the stage for what I arrived into when I was first elected to Congress and came to Washington four years ago.
The way in which we all access and manage classified information needs to be reformed quickly, both through legislative action and cultural and administrative change.
Upon arriving, I simply had to sign a card that instantly granted me clearance at similar levels to what I had worked so hard to earn decades before. No briefings or training, no nothing.
WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR: TIMELINE OF BIDEN'S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS DEBACLE
Apparently, just by virtue of the fact that I have been elected, I am deemed trustworthy and capable of managing this sensitive information.
I sit regularly in classified briefings, where my colleagues will leave after the briefing, walk out to a gaggle of press, and share the very information that has just been conveyed in the briefing. I assume they think that’s alright because it can largely be found in The New York Times.
Video
I share this because we all have been exposed to the recent news cycle where we have discovered that presidents and vice presidents of more than one administration are in possession of classified information found in their personal residences and in other unsecured spaces.
BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: 57% OF AMERICANS DISAPPROVE OF WHITE HOUSE HANDLING, AS STONEWALLING CONTINUES
I understand that these leaders, and we in Congress, are extremely dutiful, busy people and are undoubtedly working in multiple places with our respective work materials. However, our busy schedules and good intentions don't negate our obligation to protect classified information and its sources with the respect and true weight of power it holds.
Video
Members of the executive branch and of the legislative branch are not bad people -- in fact just the opposite. And we are (largely) extremely trustworthy. But the way in which we all access and manage classified information needs to be reformed quickly, both through legislative action and cultural and administrative change. Our hard work, patriotism, earnestness and "trustworthiness" are no excuse for bad policy and shoddy guardrails.
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This conversation is long overdue, and change must happen now. These recent security breaches are only the stories we know of, and we only know of them for the political wins both parties seemingly score by their breathless exposure of these delicious deviations. This is not a Red issue or a Blue issue, this is an American national security issue.
Video
Those of us who are elected and serve in the executive and legislative branches must be cleared in a manner similar to all others who manage our nation’s most sensitive information. We must be trained in the same way and have similar standards of accountability to which we are held -- breaches of similar magnitude in the military are career-enders.
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I stand ready from my seat on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees here in the House to help, and look forward to a government-wide response to this crisis.
I fear we have only seen the tip of this iceberg, and we must move swiftly to contain the damage and to control future incidents to protect our national security.
Democrat Chrissy Houlahan represents Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional District of the United States House of Representatives. She earned her engineering degree from Stanford with an ROTC scholarship that launched her service in the U.S. Air Force. After graduating from Stanford, Houlahan spent three years on Air Force active duty at Hanscom Air Force Base working on air and space defense technologies. She left active duty in 1991 and served in the Air Force Reserves before separating from the service in 2004 as a captain. Houlahan serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.
foxnews.com · by Chrissy Houlahan | Fox News
9. Over-Classification Undermines Democracy, US Intelligence Director Says
One thing I learned long ago is that if you want to positively influence policy you must be able to produce unclassified arguments and recommendations and minimize the use of classified documents because classified documents limit public and transparent discussion, analysis, and debate.
We often believe that the higher the classification, the more credible is the information and there are some who will discount some things if they are unclassified because they are deemed less important and less credible.
Over-Classification Undermines Democracy, US Intelligence Director Says
The investigations into handling of sensitive documents by former presidents and vice presidents have brought problems with the classification system back into the spotlight.
defenseone.com · by Courtney Bublé
The national intelligence director did not mince words: the government has an over-classification problem.
“Over-classification undermines critical democratic objectives, such as increasing transparency to promote an informed citizenry and greater accountability,” said Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, during a conference at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin last week. It also undercuts “the basic trust that the public has in its government” as well as “negatively impacts national security,” Haines said. This was not the first time she’s spoken on these issues.
“We must keep certain information secret or we will not be able to do our job in the intelligence community,” she continued. “But it does have to meet a national security standard.”
The problem of over-classification has been debated by lawmakers and transparency advocates for decades. Now, with two special counsels looking into the handling of classified documents by presidents Trump and Biden, conversations about over-classification are back in the spotlight. Classified documents were also found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana, and the National Archives asked representatives for former presidents and vice presidents from the last six presidential administrations to re-check their personal records for ones that should have been turned over, CNN reported on January 26.
The discovery of documents at the homes of Trump, Biden and Pence, which in two of the cases went years without notice, are “a reflection of the explosion” of classified documents, said Alissa Starzak, acting chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory committee established by Congress in 2000. The scope of those documents is unknown.
“I think that we can do a better job protecting secrets if we have a smaller number of things that are secrets,” she said. “We can do a better inventory.”
Senators from both parties “have been working for years on the notion that we over-classify,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a joint appearance with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., ranking member of the committee, on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Haines “has been at least acknowledging and long before this issue came up, said we need to work on this issue of declassification, over classification,” Warner said. “Every director says it, and then it kind of gets pushed back, I think. One good thing that may come out of this is that we're going to find a way to resolve this issue.”
“Basic Good Governance”
The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, a longtime advocate for more declassification, said in a 2011 report that while there are various ways to declassify material, “the fact remains that a document, once classified, will likely remain classified—and unreviewed with respect to whether it should be classified—for many years.”
Reforms to the declassification system have been needed for a very long time, said Evan Gottesman, who has been a professional staff member on the Senate Intelligence Committee since 2005, on Thursday at a public meeting for the Public Interest Declassification Board. The issue is “very bipartisan, it's almost nonpartisan,” he said.
With “what is going on now with these classified records [held by former presidents and vice presidents], I don't know whether it will have any impact [on potential reforms], but I hope it doesn’t get in the way of the momentum that we have here or unnecessarily complicate it,” Gottesman continued. “As [acting board chair Starzak] said, this is basic good governance, it's not political…but it has to happen and it has to happen in a bipartisan way.”
One problem is that the Defense and Energy departments and all of the intelligence community agencies are “producing classified records on different systems that don’t talk to each other,” said Ezra Cohen, a board member who recently served as chair and, as Politico reported in September 2021, was praised for his role despite having a controversial stint in the Trump administration. “We need to do a better job knowing what we have.”
Recent efforts to get documents on the President John F. Kennedy assassination declassified provide “a real case study in I think what's wrong with the system,” Cohen said. “After so many years, all that information, which has been withheld–[much] of it just because we simply didn't have the resources to look at it–just think of all the questions that have been created, because we couldn't have more transparency.”
Starzak and other board members noted that there is no longer current data on classification decisions. The Information Security Oversight Office, housed within the National Archives and Records Administration, stopped counting annual classification decisions in 2017 because the numbers being reported were not consistent and did not reflect the classification that occurs in a digital environment.
All presidents going back to President Franklin Roosevelt, with the exception of President Trump, have issued executive orders defining the classification system.
The Public Interest Declassification Board is continuing to work this year on recommendations for reforms to a 2009 executive order from President Obama on the handling of classified information that exists alongside specific laws governing the classification of information on nuclear weapons and intelligence, sources and methods.
In mid-August, intelligence director Haines in mid-August wrote to Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, two lawmakers active on this issue, telling them that federal agencies and departments are taking part in a White House-led process on possible reforms to the executive order.
Hopes for Reform
It’s unclear how the recent findings of classified documents at the homes of former presidents and vice presidents will affect potential reforms to the classification system, said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “I certainly hope that it will not derail [the reforms] because it's too important.”
There are many unknowns about the document discoveries, Goitein acknowledged. “The connection for me is that I think over-classification causes officials to either lose respect for the systems, cut corners or simply make mistakes because the sheer volume of classified information creates a huge challenge in terms of consistent compliance with the rules for protection,” she said.
Observers suggested a range of reforms.
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at The George Washington University, said “computers have enabled the almost-infinite proliferation of classified items.” Having a real, automatic sunset for declassifying documents “would be the biggest reform we could make.”
Blanton said that the Public Interest Declassification Board and Information Security Oversight Office as well as the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel and National Declassification Center each need some degree of additional authority, responsibility, or resources.
Matthew Connelly, Columbia University professor, historian and author of the forthcoming book, The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets, would like to see Congress use its power of the purse to earmark money for declassification as the government spends exorbitantly more on classification as opposed to declassifying material. The courts should also reconsider the precedent from the landmark United States v. Reynolds decision in 1953 that established the modern framework for the state's secret privilege, he said. The over-classification problem has led to a “culture of secrecy” that needs changing.
“I think it's an illusion to think the executive branch is going to reform itself when it comes to secrecy,” Connelly added.
Liz Hempowicz, vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said that while it’s never good to find misplaced documents, the revelations about Biden and now Pence show that there is a “systemic problem” with how records are handled in the government. She added that while over-classification is a big issue, another that needs attention is the retention of government records, especially during presidential transitions.
Ian Sams, special assistant to President Biden and senior advisor to the White House Counsel’s office, declined to comment to Government Executive on whether the president was considering any actions to reduce the number of classified documents, as previous presidents have.
During a briefing on January 24, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if the White House is considering a review of the policy on classified materials given the challenges that members of both parties are seemingly facing. She referred questions to the White House Counsel’s Office, as she has done with the vast majority of questions directly and indirectly related to the Biden documents situation.
When asked if there is an overclassification problem during a briefing on January 25, John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, said, “it's always a balance” and something the intelligence community and NSC works on.
“I wouldn't go so far as to slap a Band-Aid on and say, ‘yeah, everything is over-classified,’ ” he said. “But it's a balance that we try to strike to make sure that everything is appropriately marked and appropriately handled…It varies from document to document and from issue to issue.”
defenseone.com · by Courtney Bublé
10. Why Military Leaders Need to Rethink Battlefield Intelligence in a Smartphone Era
Excerpts:
Part of the solution also requires rapidly detecting and localizing unauthorized transmissions from within friendly ranks while abroad, as well as creating technical frameworks to enforce security policies. Militaries are already monitoring their own troops—Israel has been eavesdropping on its soldiers for over a decade, and the United Kingdom claims to disable personal devices that breach protocol—but capabilities are neither comprehensive nor consistent.
More crucial, however, is educating soldiers that some forms of smartphone use, although seemingly innocuous and important for morale, expose far more than expected. It is insufficient to rely on generic policies and handbooks.Instead, military leaders should make digital hygiene a key component of programs like Advanced Individual Training, where soldiers should be taught the basics of signals intelligence, and how they could avoid the most glaring collection opportunities. This program could be used to build a culture of awareness throughout the military, including through conveying sobering real-world examples that illustrate the potential consequences of unsafe smartphone use. The Israeli Defense Forces' approach of prioritizing both digital technology, as well as appreciation of its dangers, could serve as a potential model.
Despite their troubling vulnerabilities, smartphones on the battlefield do enable immense tactical opportunities. A key challenge for modern militaries lies in maximizing the benefits of the extraordinary communications and computational capacity of current and next-generation smartphones while sufficiently mitigating the equally extraordinary cyber and intelligence risks involved in their use.
Why Military Leaders Need to Rethink Battlefield Intelligence in a Smartphone Era
Ukraine is using data derived from Russian smartphones to target missile strikes. Smartphones, as well as social media, are transforming battlefield intelligence.
Blog Post by Maya Villasenor, Guest Contributor
January 31, 2023 12:12 pm (EST)
cfr.org · by Lindsay Maizland
Ukrainian forces recently leveraged Russian phone signals to strike a temporary base in the occupied city of Makiivka, killing dozens (or more—the toll is highly disputed). The Russian Defense Ministry subsequently issued a rare statement attributing the unprecedented loss to the widespread, albeit unauthorized, use of personal phones. While powered on, the phones had been pinging Ukraine’s cellular network, allowing Ukrainian forces to triangulate precise location information.
Russia is rumored to have similarly exploited roaming signals to track Ukrainians by equipping trucks and drones with cell-site simulators. Between 2014 and 2016, Russian hacking group Fancy Bear (APT 28) purportedly followed Ukrainian artillery movements using Android malware.
The universal adoption of smartphones, as well as social media, has revolutionized the dynamics of surveillance, especially in theater. Social media requires few intermediaries, meaning that members of the armed forces can—and do—use smartphones to participate in online dialogue without oversight. More data—such as locations, and information about habits, health, relationships, religious beliefs, and more—is being generated and shared than ever before. Although militaries often instruct soldiers in the field not to utilize personal phones, the rules are regularly ignored.
Military commanders historically exercised a high degree of control over the information flowing from and to the troops under their supervision. In the pre-digital days, soldiers who wrote letters to send by postal mail understood that their letters were subject to inspection by censors. Today, the sheer volume of digital information that can be conveyed by service members either intentionally (e.g. through social media posts) or inadvertently (e.g. through the use of apps that send data to the cloud) makes it impossible as a practical matter for military leaders to maintain full oversight over the flow of information. Military leaders in turn have little understanding of the information that their subordinates inadvertently make available to adversaries.
The prevalence of smartphones today has drastically shifted the availability of intelligence. However, analyzing the sheer volume of available data is incredibly challenging. Asymmetries therefore emerge not in access, but in discovery capabilities. For instance, states have varying access to advanced artificial intelligence used to extract meaning from large volumes of data.
Unfortunately, securing smartphones against information leakage is difficult (due to the range of signaling protocols, each with their own exploits), and impossible when smartphone owners themselves post on social media or convey sensitive data to third parties (such as Strava). Attempts to curb personal phone use among troops—such as the threat of military jail for Russian soldiers that violate smartphone use and social media policies—have been unsuccessful in preventing their use.
Military leaders have occasionally banned phones altogether: In 2020, U.S. Army paratroopers deploying to the Middle East were prohibited from carrying personal devices, in part because of the cyber capabilities demonstrated by Russia, China, and Iran in the region. However, South Korea, which had once outright banned personal phones (and strictly enforced the rules), eased its policy in 2018 due to dampened morale and widespread frustration.
Militaries need to adapt to the realities of an era in which smartphone and social media use by soldiers is inevitable. Proactively understanding specific vulnerabilities associated with the ecosystem of data collected by apps running on soldier’s smartphones could help identify which apps are particularly good (or particularly bad) at protecting data that might be of interest to military adversaries.
Part of the solution also requires rapidly detecting and localizing unauthorized transmissions from within friendly ranks while abroad, as well as creating technical frameworks to enforce security policies. Militaries are already monitoring their own troops—Israel has been eavesdropping on its soldiers for over a decade, and the United Kingdom claims to disable personal devices that breach protocol—but capabilities are neither comprehensive nor consistent.
More crucial, however, is educating soldiers that some forms of smartphone use, although seemingly innocuous and important for morale, expose far more than expected. It is insufficient to rely on generic policies and handbooks.Instead, military leaders should make digital hygiene a key component of programs like Advanced Individual Training, where soldiers should be taught the basics of signals intelligence, and how they could avoid the most glaring collection opportunities. This program could be used to build a culture of awareness throughout the military, including through conveying sobering real-world examples that illustrate the potential consequences of unsafe smartphone use. The Israeli Defense Forces' approach of prioritizing both digital technology, as well as appreciation of its dangers, could serve as a potential model.
Despite their troubling vulnerabilities, smartphones on the battlefield do enable immense tactical opportunities. A key challenge for modern militaries lies in maximizing the benefits of the extraordinary communications and computational capacity of current and next-generation smartphones while sufficiently mitigating the equally extraordinary cyber and intelligence risks involved in their use.
Maya Villasenor is a computer science student at Columbia University and a former intern in the Digital and Cyberspace Policy program.
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cfr.org · by Lindsay Maizland
11. U.S. funds not misused in Ukraine, U.S. Treasury says amid corruption crackdown
Good news.
U.S. funds not misused in Ukraine, U.S. Treasury says amid corruption crackdown
Reuters · by Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday said it had no indication that U.S. funds had been misused in Ukraine, but would continue to work closely with Ukrainian authorities to ensure appropriate safeguards were in place to avert corruption.
It was the Treasury's first comment on the issue after Ukraine's government last week dismissed a slew of senior officials in the country's biggest political shake-up of the war following corruption allegations.
"We have no indication that U.S. funds have been misused in Ukraine," Treasury spokesperson Megan Apper said in response to a query from Reuters. "We welcome the ongoing efforts by the Ukrainian authorities to work with us to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place so that U.S assistance reaches those for whom it is intended."
Apper said the Treasury would continue to work closely with the World Bank on tracking U.S. disbursements "to confirm that they are used as intended, as well as with Ukraine and other partners to tackle corruption.”
Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers last week praised Ukraine's government on Tuesday for taking swift action against corruption and insisted that U.S. military and humanitarian aid to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's government should continue.
Ukraine has a long history of corruption in state-owned or managed companies. Zelenskiy has repeatedly said there will be no tolerance for fraud or waste.
The World Bank has disbursed over $13 billion to Ukraine through its Public Expenditures for Administrative Capacity Endurance (PEACE) in Ukraine, as of December, much of it coming from the United States.
PEACE funds are disbursed to Ukrainian authorities a month after bank officials have verified that they have paid salaries to teachers and civil servants and pension payments, which helps safeguard against problems.
The bank last month told Reuters it is working with Ukraine to improve its already well-regarded E-Government Procurement System called ProZorro, adding that digital system would help ensure transparency, integrity and ease of access.
Ukraine ranks 116 out of 180 countries on the annual Corruption Perceptions Index released Tuesday by Transparency International, up one ranking from last year.
Its score on the index was 33 on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean.
Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Chizu Nomiyama
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Reuters · by Andrea Shalal
12. How will the Russia-Ukraine war end?
Excerpts:
The effects of the economic rupture with Russia have been felt acutely in Europe, in the form of rising prices, energy shortages, food shortages, lost jobs, the absorption of many millions of Ukrainian refugees, and absorption of still more refugees from food-starved countries that previously relied on Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertiliser. The costs are significant even in the US, where inflation is high and President Biden’s approval ratings fragile.
At some point the US and other western nations will have to abandon any aspirations they may hold for regime change. They will have to push for compromise: Moscow to give up its intention to annex a major part of eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv to settle for less than all its land. Negotiations starting soon in 2023 may avoid more casualties (already in the hundreds of thousands) and more of Ukraine reduced to rubble. The West will have to learn from the past and not treat Russia as a blank canvas on which to engrave western-style capitalism and democracy, as it tried to do after the collapse of the Soviet Union and later in Iraq.
How will the Russia-Ukraine war end?
blogs.lse.ac.uk · January 30, 2023
As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, there is little sign of an end to the hostilities. Robert H. Wade explains how the competing ideologies of Russia and the US took us to this point, and how the interests of each side might be brought together through a compromise that can end the war.
The Ukraine crisis expresses the clash of two mega forces shaping the world order. One is the US’s long-standing assertion of ‘primacy’ or ‘hegemony’ vis-à-vis all other states. Presidents Putin and Xi talk often and pleasurably of the decline of the US and the fracturing of the West, especially since the 2008 financial crisis. Yet what is striking about the US and the West’s response to Russia’s invasion is how forcefully the US has rallied other western states – and western multinational corporations – to isolate a prominent G20 state and former G8 member. This is US ‘hegemony’ in action.
The second long-standing mega force comes from Russia. The tendency of observers to focus on the actions of Putin misses Russia’s long-standing aim to make itself the centre of the Eurasian polity, culture, and economy. This focus on Putin, coupled to the hope of regime change towards democracy, also misses the larger point that Russia has for centuries operated as a ‘patrimonial’ state, the personal domain of the tsar, a structure widely accepted by the Russian population as ‘normal’. The nobility held status and property at the tsar’s discretion. Today’s oligarchs are in the same position, meaning that, as in China, there is no private sector in the western sense; rather, a state and a non-state sector.
Eurasianism in Russia
Ever since the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, a line of Russian thinkers has developed an ideology of Eurasianism. It was suppressed during the Soviet period but burst forth during perestroika in the late 1980s. The ideology posits not just America but the whole Atlantic world as Russia’s ‘clash of civilisations’ opponent, with Russian Orthodoxy harnessed as the glue in the geopolitical war to come. Under Putin, the themes of imperial glory and western victimisation have been elevated to centre stage across the country.
Ukraine figured in Eurasian ideology as an obstacle from the start. Eurasian ideologists in the 1920s were already talking of ‘the Ukraine problem’, presenting Ukraine as excessively ‘individualistic’ and insufficiently Orthodox. Prominent ideologists of the 1990s identified Ukrainian sovereignty as, in the words of one, a ‘huge danger to all of Eurasia’. Russia’s Eurasia project, he said, required, as an ‘absolute imperative’, total control of the whole north coast of the Black Sea (not least to keep the Black Sea as western Russia’s only ice-free access to the sea). Ukraine had to become ‘a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralised state’.
This is the ideology that motivates Putin, which led him to declare Ukraine as ‘a [western] colony with a puppet regime’ on the eve of the invasion on 24 February 2022. This is the ideology which inspires and justifies the brutal war in his eyes.
The US and Nato strategy
The broad US foreign policy towards Russia and China aims to ensure that neither becomes a ‘regional hegemon’, let alone one of sufficient reach to challenge US hegemony. This larger strategy for containing Russia is the context to understand expansion of Nato members all along Russia’s borders, from the Baltics to Bulgaria, and 30,000 Nato-designated troops; and to understand why the Kremlin does not see Nato as a defensive alliance, despite Nato protestations that it is only that.
It is no surprise that Moscow has long read US and Nato actions as deeply hostile, intended to produce ‘regime change’ in the Kremlin and install a ruler accepting of US hegemony, so that the US can block a China-Russia bloc and focus more fully on containing China.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country has been on the receiving end of the harshest sanctions the US and Europe have ever imposed on any nation. As noted, even to those sceptical of claims of ‘the end of the American empire’, it is astonishing how effectively the US has mobilised western nations around the project to isolate one of the world’s biggest economies, one of the top two nuclear powers, and the biggest energy supplier to Europe, as though it was North Korea.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian explained that the aim is ‘asphyxiating Russia’s economy’, even if the West is damaged in the process. Damage to the West is a price worth paying for regime change in Moscow with new leaders respectful of US primacy.
Meanwhile, China is watching and probably recalculating its confidence in the decline of the West. That recalculation has also prompted Beijing to forge closer ties with Moscow – but Beijing also wants to make sure that it does not help Russia to the point where China becomes subject to even more western sanctions and to the point where Russia could win enough in Ukraine to challenge China’s strategy to dominate the Eurasian landmass, which is well underway in the form of the infrastructure alliances created by the giant Belt and Road Initiative.
How does the war end?
In countries that have suffered under Russian imperial rule in the not-distant past, including Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine, the most popular view says: it can only end with the dissolution of the Russian Federation. Ukraine and the West have to keep the Russian army bogged down and the sanctions in place until distress in Russia is sufficient to build enough support – with western help – for separatist movements to split the federation.
Others, including Ukrainian President Zelensky, say the war can end only with the return to Ukraine of all territories annexed by Russia including Crimea, and of course the removal of Putin. This goes with Nato enlargement to include Ukraine and other states along Russia’s western and southern borders.
The third broad position says that the West and the Ukrainian government have to accept an outcome in which Russia does not win, Ukraine does not lose, the war does not broaden beyond Ukraine, both sides agree on something like the Minsk agreement, and there need be no regime change in Moscow. This ‘realist’ scenario is the most likely, especially because the US and the other countries of Nato are themselves under acute economic pressure, quite apart from the financial, military hardware, and personnel demands on them of the war in Ukraine.
The effects of the economic rupture with Russia have been felt acutely in Europe, in the form of rising prices, energy shortages, food shortages, lost jobs, the absorption of many millions of Ukrainian refugees, and absorption of still more refugees from food-starved countries that previously relied on Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertiliser. The costs are significant even in the US, where inflation is high and President Biden’s approval ratings fragile.
At some point the US and other western nations will have to abandon any aspirations they may hold for regime change. They will have to push for compromise: Moscow to give up its intention to annex a major part of eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv to settle for less than all its land. Negotiations starting soon in 2023 may avoid more casualties (already in the hundreds of thousands) and more of Ukraine reduced to rubble. The West will have to learn from the past and not treat Russia as a blank canvas on which to engrave western-style capitalism and democracy, as it tried to do after the collapse of the Soviet Union and later in Iraq.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: European Union
About the author
Robert H. Wade
Robert H. Wade is Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics.
blogs.lse.ac.uk · January 30, 2023
13. How America Would Be Screwed if China Invades Taiwan
You have to love the headline editor at the Daily Beast. He or she can produce a provocative headline.
How America Would Be Screwed if China Invades Taiwan
READY OR NOT
China’s vast fleet of ships is ready to inflict huge losses on the U.S. Navy that would set back the country’s standing for many years.
Sascha Brodsky
Updated Jan. 30, 2023 5:37AM ET / Published Jan. 29, 2023 7:35PM ET
The Daily Beast · January 30, 2023
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
The vaunted fleet of the U.S. Navy may not be ready for a conflict with China.
A recent analysis found that the U.S. would likely lose a vast number of ships in a war with China over Taiwan, thanks to a narrowing technological advantage. And experts say the U.S. fleet of over 490 ships is also losing its edge in numbers compared to China’s fleet of 661 vessels.
“We are nowhere near adequately prepared,” said William Toti, who led the Navy’s anti-submarine China strategy before his retirement. “I fear that we've awakened a sleeping giant. They have more ships than we do. They have more industrial capacity than we do.”
A Dwindling Advantage
A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that the U.S. Navy, which had a budget of about $220 billion last year, would likely suffer heavy losses if the U.S. seeks to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. In the opening days of a conflict, Chinese missiles could destroy U.S. air bases in Japan and Guam and sink two American aircraft carriers and between 10 and 20 destroyers and cruisers.
“Such losses would damage the U.S. global position for many years,” the study’s authors wrote, although they suggested that the U.S. would likely prevail in the end. “While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services.”.”The study found that the U.S. would still win by using its 50 attack submarines in combination with Air Force bombers.
The war games conducted for the study reflect the reality on the seas, said Toti in an interview with The Daily Beast. The U.S. is facing a rapid increase in Chinese military capabilities, including advanced anti-ship missiles. “Anything that floats is vulnerable, and that includes aircraft carriers and surface ships,” Toti said.
Paul van Hooft, an analyst at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, said that China’s military has been successfully trying to catch up with the U.S. fleet by copying American designs for precision weapons. But, he said, China is having a harder time narrowing the gap in areas like stealth fighters and has tried to make up the gap by investing in artificial intelligence. He said that AI could help China in a future naval conflict by assisting its military more accurately target ships.
“You can think of artificial intelligence as improving certain things like jamming and other types of electronic warfare,” he added.
Another area where technology could play a role in a future conflict is the proliferation of precision-guided anti-ship missiles which threatens even the most advanced large naval ships in the U.S. fleet, said Brandon Tseng, a former navy officer. Such missiles are relatively cheap to produce and have the capacity to destroy very expensive warships.
The future of naval warfare may already be playing out in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Tseng, who is now president of the company Shield AI, which develops artificial intelligence-powered drones, aircraft, and software for the military,, pointed to the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva in April of 2022. The $750 million Moskva, which was armed with modern missile defenses, was sunk by two Ukrainian anti-ship missiles that each cost around $1 million.
China will have seen the sinking of the Moskva and is likely using the incident as a lesson for its own navy. Tseng said China’s current approach of investing heavily in smaller missile boats, each armed with eight anti-ship missiles, is an example of its strategy to threaten much more expensive American carrier battle groups with cheaper small ships armed with advanced anti-ship missiles just like those that sunk the Moskva. Advanced technology in satellites, aircraft, and submarines can locate, track, and target large surface ships much more easily and feed target data back to the missile boats.
Technological innovations work for, as well as against, surface ships, including aircraft carriers, pointed out Sam J. Tangredi, a retired Navy captain who now teaches at the U.S. Naval War College. He said that many of the assessments of missiles versus surface ships—such as the claim that China’s new anti-ship ballistic missiles make aircraft carriers obsolete—are inaccurate.
“Warships do not operate individually against an enemy; they operate as mutual-supportive battle groups or as an overall fleet (at least as the U.S. Navy operates). Thus an engagement does not consist of a weapon versus a ship, but a fleet (and joint force) against the enemy’s forces,” he said.
Satellites and advanced radars might detect a fleet at sea, Tangredi said. But the same systems can see the launch of land-based anti-ship missiles to warn the fleet of impending attacks.
“Since warships are (obviously) highly maneuverable, they are much more difficult to target
than land bases—for which one only needs to know the latitude/longitude or grid coordinates and then calculate and control a missile’s burn-time (amount of fuel consumed necessary to land in a particular location),” he added.
Cyber Threats
A war with China might involve keyboard warriors as much as missiles because ships are also vulnerable to cyber threats. Tangredi predicted the initial phase of a future naval battle would be electronic warfare in which both sides would struggle for control over the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace to blind or deceive the opponent’s sensors and targeting systems.
“Surface ships and weapons systems they house are million- and billion-dollar buoyant computers, yet they lack even the most basic digital defenses afforded to the smartphones in our pockets,” said Egon Rinderer, the chief technology officer of the defense company Shift5 and a former naval systems operator. “We are beginning to see the real-time impact of combining kinetic and cyber capabilities on the battlefield. These kinds of integrated tactics could lead to significant implications for the future of naval warfare and for the readiness and lethality of our own U.S. military.”
While the Department of Defense has invested heavily to protect against threats to its IT infrastructure, efforts to defend operational technology (OT) found within surface ships, combat vehicles, and weapon systems fall short, Rinderer said.
“We have relied upon “security through obscurity” to protect onboard OT technology, but its weaknesses result in exposures that, if exploited, allow adversaries to quickly gain asymmetric battlefield advantages,” he added.
Tseng said the Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) struggles with incorporating AI into its acquisition processes and cyber infrastructure and fielding a force ready to develop and employ AI. “As always, technology is the greatest military differentiator and will ultimately determine whether large-scale global conflict can be deterred. We risk falling behind the PLA because of a lack of investment in these technologies,” he added.
To prevail in a future conflict with China, the U.S. needs to build more ships, particularly submarines, Toti said.
“Submarines are the one ship type that can stop the cross-Taiwan Strait invasion because they can get in there with relative impunity and take out the Chinese ships that are out to invade Taiwan. Surface ships are at great risk of being destroyed by Chinese missiles. The submarines don’t suffer that risk.”
Tangredi said that the U.S. fleet needs to be big enough to sustain losses in combat. “Unlike in World War II, we can’t build a destroyer in three months,” he added. “To be prepared, we need more than maintenance and training—we need more ships.”
But building more ships will take time and billions of dollars if it ever happens. In the meantime, some experts say the U.S. Navy may need to face up to its own limitations versus a growing Chinese fleet. “The U.S. complaint is, hey, we can no longer operate with impunity anywhere we want to,” said Erik A. Gartzke, a professor at the University of California San Diego, who studies the impact of information on war. “The easiest solution to this very complicated, expensive problem for the U.S. Navy is just to stop pretending that it can operate with impunity anywhere in the world. There might be certain areas that are no-go areas.”
The Daily Beast · January 30, 2023
14. Getting Serious About Responsible Defense Spending
Moneyball.
Conclusion
There are far more programs and ways for Congress to right-size the Pentagon budget, but the first step is to stop running the same old Swamp playbook and start playing Moneyball. Congress has the chance to show it can walk and chew gum at the same time, keeping our homeland safe while prioritizing Americans first, if it is willing to make the hard decisions necessary to do so.
Conservatives on the Hill must step up and face the challenge head-on, or face the righteous fury of the American people if they vote for business as usual. I am optimistic they’ll make the right choice.
Getting Serious About Responsible Defense Spending - The American Conservative
Congress needs to take a Moneyball approach to our national defense.
The American Conservative · by Kevin Roberts · January 31, 2023
Another Congress, another debt limit showdown. It might seem there is nothing new under the sun.
But something is different this time: In my conversations with members of Congress in recent weeks, conservatives repeatedly mentioned their willingness to tackle the thorny challenge of military spending reforms, in addition to the out-of-control non-defense spending conservatives typically confront. This boldness is a refreshing change from the Washington status quo.
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For too long, Republicans considered it a victory to increase defense and non-defense spending by equal dollar amounts, without cutting a dime from the deficit. Congress accepted the D.C. canard that a bigger budget alone equals a stronger military. But now, facing down a record debt to the tune of $242,000 per household, conservatives are ready to tackle an entrenched problem and confront the political establishment, unaccountable federal bureaucrats, and well-connected defense contractors all at once in order to keep the nation both solvent and secure.
Our national debt stands at over 120 percent of GDP, the largest sum since World War II. Most of this debt is the result of a bloated federal bureaucracy, of domestic programs that Congress allows to run at a deficit, and of bipartisan spending sprees like the “emergency” Covid-19 packages. Republicans owe it to their constituents to use the debt limit as an opportunity to reduce spending and shrink the administrative state.
Most Republicans generally give lip service to the idea of cutting spending, but blink when it comes down to the wire. In the end, Democrats hold defense spending hostage from Republican hawks and Washington plays along, with bigger defense and discretionary spending as the deficit balloons. As lawmakers face an impending debt limit deadline yet again, they can’t behave as they’ve done in the past. Defense and non-defense spending must both be on the table.
Today’s Pentagon is approaching a 13-figure annual budget. Congress needs to put away its kid gloves and put the Department of Defense and other agencies alike under the knife to excise wasteful spending. It is a top priority to save our nation, particularly the next generation, from the yoke of debt and an unaccountable, over-funded federal bureaucracy.
Of course, paramount to the goal of fiscal sanity is the goal of a strong national defense. A robust military deters any would-be attackers and protects American interests around the globe. On our military readiness, however, the sirens are blaring: Heritage’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength rated the state of our nation’s military as “weak” for the first time. Our military is too outdated to fully protect American interests at home and abroad. We need a stronger military overall, and especially a force able to deter the rising threat of communist China and 21st-century threats.
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The task at hand today is to achieve both goals: restore fiscal sanity and ensure our military protects our citizens from today’s threats. Republicans must defund unnecessary programs and unneeded bureaucrats, while also ensuring our military is ready to confront the nation’s threats. It will not be easy, but with enough political will, it can be done.
To get into the right mindset, Congress should refamiliarize itself with Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who was handed a team in 2002 with the third-lowest payroll in the MLB, one-third as much as the Yankees. By defying the prevailing practices of MLB old-timers, who valued the looks of their players ahead of on-base percentage, Beane took a more efficient, data-driven approach and squeezed the most out of every dollar. He took his band of misfits to a 103-59 season and a postseason berth—the same number of wins as the well-funded Yankees.
Congress needs to take a Moneyball approach to our national defense, a much larger contest with life and death consequences if we get it wrong. Instead of engaging in a debate over topline spending numbers and throwing money at old programs and systems, Congress should insist that every dollar is used to advance military lethality and readiness while saving taxpayers as much as possible.
My colleagues at the Heritage Foundation are committed to helping our lawmakers find more savings. In February, we’ll convene top experts in national security and defense to scrutinize the Pentagon’s budget, line by line. Already, we’ve identified some top ways in which Congress can help our military give the taxpayer a square deal. Here’s a sample:
First, Congress and the Pentagon should ruthlessly target wokeness and waste. In the middle of a recruiting crisis, Secretary Lloyd Austin and the Pentagon prioritized onerous vaccine requirements and anti-American “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs. And at a time when the military is increasingly weak, appropriators have jammed about $1.4 billion in non-defense research into the defense budget. Appropriators should immediately slash any program that doesn’t contribute to improved warfighting capabilities.
Second, Congress should go after inefficient and outdated weapons systems and other programs. Individual members of Congress have often insisted on funding programs that serve the wants of their home districts or of defense contractors, putting special interests ahead of overall readiness. For instance, the Army asked to terminate the CH-47 Chinook helicopter for three years running, but Congress keeps adding money back in.
The Pentagon has been telling Congress it has too many bases and facilities for years now. In 2016 the Pentagon estimated they were carrying 22 percent excess infrastructure: unnecessary bases, buildings, and facilities. But since 2005, Congress has been unwilling to consider closing any infrastructure, despite estimated savings of over $2 billion a year. A frustrated Pentagon has now given up on asking for authorization to consider a closure process. It is time for Congress to authorize a new round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), which overcomes parochial interests to close down unneeded bases in a fair and strategic manner, and to apply the same philosophy to the rest of the budget, regardless of how much defense contractors protest.
Third, the United States must insist that its allies do their part, particularly in Europe. Our friends across the Atlantic have for decades enjoyed the protection of the American military and were content to spend less than the NATO goal of 2 percent of their GDP on defense while Uncle Sam protected their backyard, even while countries such as Germany enjoyed budget surpluses. It is time for them to end their free riding, pick up the tab, and meet their NATO obligations. We should use our considerable leverage to insist on it. This doesn’t mean abandoning Europe—far from it. But pushing our allies to take a greater role in defending their own continent will allow the United States to repurpose funds, troops, and programs to counter the larger global threat of communist China.
There are far more programs and ways for Congress to right-size the Pentagon budget, but the first step is to stop running the same old Swamp playbook and start playing Moneyball. Congress has the chance to show it can walk and chew gum at the same time, keeping our homeland safe while prioritizing Americans first, if it is willing to make the hard decisions necessary to do so.
Conservatives on the Hill must step up and face the challenge head-on, or face the righteous fury of the American people if they vote for business as usual. I am optimistic they’ll make the right choice.
The American Conservative · by Kevin Roberts · January 31, 2023
15. The Cod Wars and Lessons for Maritime Counterinsurgency
I struggle to see how this fits into the counterinsurgency context. Certainly a "gray zone" "competition" by today's definition, but COIN? But I guess the author is not really calling this COIN but instead the Iceland-UK conflict has lessons for "maritime COIN." But I am not sure maritime COIN is really that helpful and it would seem to say the Cod Wars provide lessons for maritime operations in the gray zone.
Iceland versus the UK? Perhaps the first part of the US definition (to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region) might stretch to cover this buthe instratate conflict would seem to nullify that (a form of intrastate conflict, and counterinsurgency (COIN) is used to counter it)
NATO definition:
NATO doctrine defines counterinsurgency as comprehensive civilian and military efforts made to defeat an insurgency and to address any core grievances. Insurgents seek to compel or coerce political change on those in power, often through the use or threat of force by irregular forces, groups, or individuals. Counterinsurgents must not only develop short-term solutions to provide security for the targeted population and change disruptive behaviours, they must also determine the sources of the unrest and dissatisfaction fuelling the insurgency. Counterinsurgents conduct longterm operations to eliminate those sources of unrest. This may require improving governance, developing the economy, or restoring essential services. These tasks require the participation of relevant civilian agencies, both indigenous and international.
Oxford reference:
the military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.
Cambridge:
military action taken by a government to prevent attacks by small groups of soldiers or fighters that are opposed to it
US definition (JP 3-24)
Insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region. An insurgency is a form of intrastate conflict, and counterinsurgency (COIN) is used to counter it. The joint force commander (JFC) should understand insurgencies increasingly present threats to the joint force that are increasingly transregional, multi-domain, and multifunctional.
The Cod Wars and Lessons for Maritime Counterinsurgency
By Kevin Bilms
February 2023 Proceedings Vol. 149/2/1,440
usni.org · February 1, 2023
Can a small state successfully defend its maritime claims against a nuclear-armed opponent? Are smaller actors able to win below the threshold of high-intensity war? Or was Thucydides right in saying that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must? While pondering these questions, today’s disputes in the South China Sea or future concerns in the Arctic may come to mind. But this saga has played out before, and David bested Goliath when Iceland defeated the United Kingdom in the so-called Cod Wars. This series of intermittent skirmishes between the late 1950s and mid-1970s provides a helpful case study for maritime campaigning.
In a prolonged gray zone conflict such as the Cod Wars, where neither side want to back down but both consider open war unthinkable, all the activities short of war assume increased value and hold greater weight over the conflict’s outcome. Contemporaries regarded the Cod Wars as “one of the most complicated tangles” between two countries, and Iceland’s ability to leverage its power proved decisive for Reykjavik’s success and London’s political defeat.1
Using Iceland’s Cod Wars success as a guide for maritime counterinsurgency, four mutually reinforcing elements factor prominently throughout the conflict: greater national willpower, demonstrated asymmetry of interests, political risk-taking, and innovative nonlethal tactics. The Cod Wars show how smaller states can create escalation dilemmas by incorporating these elements to incrementally shape conditions on the ground and gain ground in the long-term struggle for legitimacy on the global stage.
Background on the Fish Fights
Alamy
The Cod Wars followed Iceland’s 1952 declaration to increase its territorial waters from three to four nautical miles (nm) after the International Court of Justice recognized similar rights for Norway.2 Disputes over the fishing waters surrounding Iceland go back centuries, but historians generally identify three Cod Wars after 1952: the first, from 1958 to 1961, when Iceland unilaterally extended its fishery limits from 4 to 12 nm; the second, from 1972 to 1973, when Iceland again unilaterally extended its limits to 50 nm; and the third, from 1975 to 1976, when the temporary agreement that had ended the Second Cod War expired and Iceland further extended its limits to 200 nm.
All three conflicts featured sharp political escalation from Reykjavik; passionate rhetoric from all participants; an intense “war of nerves” between Icelandic Coast Guard vessels, British trawlers, and the Royal Navy; and indecision among outside actors on how to respond.3 Substantial economic ties between these two democratic NATO members did not deter conflict, yet only one fatality came from these “wars.”4 Each conflict ended on terms favorable to Iceland, making its victories over the world’s second-most powerful navy all the more intriguing.
National Willpower
Newly independent from Denmark as of 1944, the government in Reykjavik was united and determined to assert its sovereign interests and win its “wars for the territorial waters.”5 It expressed each extension of Iceland’s fishery limits as representing the “common goal of the Icelandic people.”6 Immense national pride and centuries of maritime disputes, coupled with perceptions of neo-imperialism as the Royal Navy sailed into Icelandic waters, pushed Iceland’s population of 300,000 to avoid compromise and resist aggression. Any show of force by London would only validate the grievances from Reykjavik and the population’s determination to extend Iceland’s fishery limits with an “almost religious importance.”7
Despite having its own vocal fishing industry that lobbied for UK escalation in the disputes, London did not have the same national-level captivation with the Cod Wars that Reykjavik commanded. As a result, London lacked the political will to fully leverage its superior naval power and accept the associated political risks.8 Even when the UK won a legal battle, such as a favorable international court ruling shortly before the Second Cod War, London lost the political war of wills.
Fast forward to 2022, and it is clear that questions of national will also extend to maritime disputes or issues related to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The Cod Wars illustrate the importance of influence and information operations in the maritime domain, something planners in countries less attached to the high seas do not always prioritize.9 To outfight and outlast a determined opponent in a protracted conflict, there can be no substitute for sustained willpower.
Asymmetry of Interests
Deep-rooted economic interests added to Iceland’s motivation to prevail in the Cod Wars. By the Third Cod War, the fishing industry represented 80–90 percent of Iceland’s export earnings, while the passionate UK fishing industry contributed only 1 percent to British GDP.10 Iceland could not survive without cod, and although losing the Cod Wars crippled the British long-distance fishing industry, the struggle was not existential for the UK.11
Alamy
While Reykjavik had much more to lose economically, London stood to lose more politically as the Cod Wars dragged on and had greater reason to settle. Iceland was not deterred when NATO members objected to its extensions, but growing domestic and international pressure from the United States and NATO ultimately changed London’s calculations on sustaining the conflict.12 The greater power had more to lose and less to gain, so London eventually relented.13
Institutional factors also allowed Iceland to maneuver in ways that the UK could not. With fewer obligations to the international system, Reykjavik appealed to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea but acted unilaterally when those approaches were unsuccessful. On the other hand, London was limited in escalating militarily because of an array of political considerations and existing norms as a member of the UN Security Council. Although these factors may explain asymmetry to maneuver in some disputes, relying on institutional factors alone faces challenges in accounting for miscalculations or cases in which the larger state harbors revisionist aims.14
Risk-Taking and Cost Imposition
Undergirded with zealous national willpower, Icelandic governments throughout the Cod Wars were emboldened to sharply raise the stakes politically. A complex dynamic arose with Iceland’s entry into a long-term trade agreement with the Soviet Union in 1953, after Iceland first extended its fishery limits to four miles and the UK responded by closing its markets to Icelandic fish imports.15 Reykjavik and Moscow cited the economic benefits as their sole motivation, but Iceland’s status as the first NATO member to have trade ties with Moscow undoubtedly created unease across the alliance. Although both Iceland and the UK were NATO members, Reykjavik used its strategic location and value to NATO as a bargaining chip, threatening frequently to leave the alliance, close the U.S. military base in Keflavik, and jeopardize the alliance’s ability to monitor Soviet submarines and vessels moving south from the Arctic.16
A protest against the British Navy in Reykjavik, Iceland, on 24 May 1973. As a country, Iceland rallied to fight against the British incursion—demonstrating a national unity and will to fight that Britain could not match. Associated Press
Iceland’s brinksmanship took time to produce effects. Its 1975 move to break diplomatic relations with the UK during the Third Cod War after the Royal Navy again entered disputed waters—which created an unprecedented diplomatic crisis for NATO—finally prompted NATO-led mediation, resulting in the UK withdrawing its warships to allow for diplomatic negotiations to begin.17 Big moves by the small state were necessary to set conditions in the dispute and generate urgency among other stakeholders.
Reykjavik demonstrated astute use of international law when advantageous. As historian Valur Ingimundarson observed, London’s legal argument weakened between the Second and Third Cod Wars when the UK was among those supporting the principle of a 200-mile exclusive economic zone at the Law of the Sea Conference in the summer of 1974.18 Iceland’s legal position further benefited from the United States and Canada’s expansion of their exclusive economic zones, and a team of British and Icelandic scientists in 1975 confirmed Reykjavik’s concerns over the environmental impact of dwindling cod stocks in Icelandic waters. With enduring public support at home and shifting international opinion abroad, Iceland was in position to press its advantages once more, which resulted in the Third Cod War.
Innovative NonLethal Tactics
The Icelandic gunboat Ægir sails past the Royal Navy HMS Scylla off the coast of Iceland in 1973. The Icelandic Coast Guard employed creative, nonlethal tactics during the Cod Wars, including net cutting and ramming, inflicting costly damage. IWM
Beyond political brinksmanship, the Icelandic Coast Guard had to win the contest at sea, and it relied on innovative tactics that the Royal Navy failed to counter. Necessity was the mother of invention for Iceland to compete without a navy, and chief among Iceland’s innovations were trawlwire cutters introduced during the Second Cod War.19 After warning a suspected foreign trawler in Icelandic waters, the Icelandic Coast Guard would sail its vessels at right angles to the trawler with net cutters in tow and cut the trawler’s wires, leaving their fishing nets adrift. A cat-and-mouse game ensued, during which UK and West German fishers would conceal their ships’ names and colors, sail in pairs to deny Icelandic Coast Guard ships easy access to their fishing wires, or even ram the Icelandic gunboats to persuade their captains to change course. 20
The net cutters proved highly effective and created dilemmas for UK trawlers and the Royal Navy. As Mark Kurlansky wrote, “A trawler without a trawl had nothing to do but go home.”21 With 35 recorded uses during the Third Cod War, Iceland’s “Lilliputian fleet” developed a solution more fit for the challenge than the Royal Navy’s strategy to amass overwhelming maritime power and compel Iceland’s acquiescence.22 Foreign fishers would leave empty-handed and incur significant time and financial costs as a result. No show of force could recoup or offset those losses and may have invited criticism over a disproportionate use of force.
Iceland’s strategy mirrored what recent commentary suggests is viable for coastal states fighting an expeditionary navy near its shores: not seek to establish command of the sea, but instead deny unimpeded access to opponents.23 Creative approaches with Iceland’s small craft and use of nonexplosive munitions raised costs of business for UK ships through maintenance costs or risks of boarding and impoundment by Icelandic authorities. Even with the Royal Navy deploying as many as 37 ships at the peak of the Cod Wars, they were ill-suited for close-in maneuvering to counter the Icelandic Coast Guard and faced mounting costs as the increased ramming of Icelandic boats took their physical toll.24
The Icelandic Coast Guard demonstrated that the right strategy is more important than relying on lethality, especially for conflicts short of declared war. The UK ultimately lost the battle at sea because the Royal Navy and UK fisheries could not adjust, even when their numbers and conventional capabilities looked superior on paper.
Propaganda also played an important role. Shaping the narrative was crucial to amplify Iceland’s position and wear down London’s opposition in the court of global public opinion. Icelandic diplomats seized on the UK’s use of Nimrod jets to monitor Icelandic gunboats and insinuated that the UK was neglecting its NATO obligations.26 Iceland’s student diaspora similarly worked to influence host governments and organizations to withhold business from British fisheries.27 Accusations of British imperialism played well in Scandinavia and West Germany, giving some legitimacy to Iceland’s grievances while stymying political support for the UK.
Crew members from the USCGC Stratton (WMSL-752) drive alongside a Chinese vessel. Modern-day illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing raises similar questions as those of the Cod Wars. U.S. Coast Guard (Sarah Stegall)
In Cod We Trust
As security experts scrutinize the Russo-Ukrainian war and other hotspots, one common theme is the significance of the will to fight and resist coercion. Without the will to fight, human-centric counterinsurgency approaches on the high seas will be dead in the water. But if willpower is there, Iceland’s example shows that innovative statecraft and operating concepts hold considerable implications for maritime campaigns, and that firepower is not the sole deciding factor. Taken together, these elements of Iceland’s campaign were essential for victory against a larger foe in the Cod Wars and provide lessons for small states facing larger competitors in current and future scenarios.
1. Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson, “Troubled Waters: Cod War, Fishing Disputes, and Britain’s Fight for the Freedom of the High Seas, 1948–1964” (dissertation, University of London, 2007), 13.
2. Fisheries Case (United Kingdom v. Norway), 18 December 1951, ICJ 3.
3. Guðmundur J. Guðmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War,” Scandinavian Journal of History 31, no. 2 (2006).
4. Sverrir Steinsson, “Do Liberal Ties Pacify? A Study of the Cod Wars,” Cooperation and Conflict 53, no. 3 (September 2018).
5. English translation of Landhelgisstríðin, Iceland’s term for the Cod Wars. The contrast in terminology reflects the seriousness with which Iceland’s population viewed the conflict.
6. Guðmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War.”
7. Johannesson, “Troubled Waters,” 197.
8. Walker D. Mills, “The Cod Wars and Lessons from an Almost War,” Center for International Maritime Security, 28 July 2020.
9. Kevin Bilms, “What’s in a Name? Reimagining Irregular Warfare Activities for Competition,” War on the Rocks, 15 January; and Erika De La Parra Gehlen and Frank L. Smith III, “Advantage at Sea Requires Rethinking Influence,” War on the Rocks, 5 March 2021.
10. R. P. Anand, “The ‘Cod War’ Between the UK and Iceland,” India Quarterly 32, no. 2 (April–June 1976).
11. Matthew Jarrett, “The Cod Wars,” Forgotten History, February 2021; “The View from Grimsby,” The Economist, 25 April 2015; and “The Cabinet Papers: The Cod Wars,” The National Archives.
12. Steinsson, “Do Liberal Ties Pacify?”; and Sverrir Steinsson, “Why Did the Cod Wars Occur and Why Did Iceland Win Them? A Test of Four Theories,” (master’s thesis, University of Iceland, June 2015).
13. George Friedman, “War and the Asymmetry of Interests,” Geopolitical Futures, 18 April 2018.
14. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics: New Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); and Lim Kheng Swe, Ju Hailong, and Li Mingjiang, “China’s Revisionist Aspirations in Southeast Asia and the Curse of South China Sea Disputes,” China: An international Journal 15, no. 1 (February 2017).
15. Guðmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War.”
16. R. P. Gibson, “The Infamous Cod Wars,” Medium, 16 November 2020; and Scott Savitz, “Mind the Gap,” The RAND Blog, 15 July 2021.
17. Valur Ingimundarson, The Rebellious Ally: Iceland, the United States, and the Politics of Empire 1945–2006 (London: Republic of Letters, 2011).
18. Valur Ingimundarson, “Fighting the Cod Wars in the Cold War: Iceland’s Challenge to the Western Alliance in the 1970s,” The RUSI Journal 148, no. 3 (2003).
19. Hannes Jónsson, Friends in Conflict: The Anglo-Icelandic War and the Law of the Sea (London: Hurst & Co., 1982).
20. Mark Kurklansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
21. Kurklansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.
22. Ingimundarson, “Fighting the Cod Wars in the Cold War”; and Johannesson, “Troubled Waters,” 164.
23. B. J. Armstrong, “The Russo-Ukrainian War at Sea: Retrospect and Prospect,” War on the Rocks, 21 April 2022.
24. “The Cod Wars,” British Sea Fishing.
25. Guðmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War.”
26. Guðmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War.”
usni.org · February 1, 2023
16. America should reach out to children of Russia’s elites
Excerpt:
America’s post-Cold War fixation on hard power has resulted in downplaying information operations, despite their proven value in the 20th century. But the tools of digital information provide a practical, potentially effective method of further weakening Putin’s hand in Ukraine. As a defender of freedom, America should seize the opportunity to counter Russia’s official narrative.
America should reach out to children of Russia’s elites
BY IVANA STRADNER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 01/31/23 10:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3828407-america-should-reach-out-to-children-of-russias-elites/?utm_source=pocket_saves
As the Russian military expands — to 1.5 million troops, according to the Russian defense ministry, or even 2 million, according to Ukrainian intelligence officials — you can be sure one group of Russians will remain exempt: children of the elite. Indeed, the first 11 months of Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression have exposed more clearly than ever Russia’s extreme class disparities, as poor regions and ethnic minorities are reeling from war casualties while young professionals in Moscow and St. Petersburg escape largely unscathed.
It’s a pattern that is well documented but not sufficiently well known — and one the U.S. should do far more to publicize.
Consider what occurred in September, when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the Kremlin’s plan to mobilize 300,000 reservists. While he promised to recruit only men who previously served in or were affiliated with the military, the mobilization disproportionately targeted inmates and ethnic minorities. Independent journalists in Russia have reported, for example, that Buryatia, a poor region in Siberia, received thousands of draft notices despite its relatively small population. In Crimea, 80 percent of the mobilization draft papers were sent to Crimean Tatars, although this minority group makes up less than 20 percent of Crimea’s population.
These numbers lie in stark contrast to the lack of young elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg participating in war efforts. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s 27-year-old son is only one of many examples of those who have remained untouched. And these young elites appear well aware of their special status. In a viral video last fall, originating from a YouTube channel run by supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a prank caller impersonated a draft official with Nikolai Peskov, son of Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov. Upon hearing that he was “being drafted,” the younger Peskov, with all the conceit of a nobleman’s son, retorted, “You must understand, if you know that I am Mr. Peskov, how wrong it is for me to be there,” and noted that he “will deal with it on another level.”
Inequality in the war is also reflected in casualties, which are now estimated at more than 100,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded. This past April, the BBC’s Russian service compiled a casualty list from officially acknowledged deaths and tracked the regions associated with the deceased. Tellingly, they found no deaths from Moscow. By comparison, five of the 10 regions with the highest per-capita reported casualties were ethnic republics.
Meanwhile, soldiers from poor and rural backgrounds often have their blinders removed regarding the alleged superiority of Russian society. As Yegor Firsov, a medic in the Ukrainian military, wrote last year, “Before this war, these men were encouraged to believe that Ukrainians lived in poverty and were culturally, economically and politically inferior.” Firsov recounted how people in Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv, told him that when Russian troops first entered the town they “asked if they were in Kyiv; they could not believe that such idyllic parks and cottages could exist outside a capital.” One woman taken hostage by Russian soldiers said “they could not get over the fact that she had two bathrooms and kept insisting that she must have more people living with her.”
Not surprisingly, Russian troops retreating from regions across Ukraine looted ordinary household items, including toasters and even underwear.
The Kremlin has targeted poorer regions and minorities for troops because they have less ability to mobilize in opposition than people in wealthy large cities. However, protests have nevertheless erupted in recent months in regions the war has most impacted, such as the ethnic republics of Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Sakha, where protestors shouted messages like “No to War!” and “No to genocide!”
Such anti-war sentiment is Putin’s greatest threat, and the U.S. could reinforce and amplify it by upgrading its information operations targeting Russia, especially on platforms popular with young Russians, such as Instagram, VK, Telegram and Snapchat. Social media campaigns should implement memes and videos that show the risk of conscription, as well as emphasize how men from poorer ethnic regions are exploited as pawns in Putin’s imperialistic war.
U.S. information operations should also target the mothers of soldiers. Radio Free Europe last year highlighted a mother who went from being an avid supporter of the Kremlin to an outspoken opponent following her son’s enlistment in the army. And while groups like the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers have been less outspoken and influential in the present war than they were during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya, they nonetheless have sought to expose the disproportionate impact it has had on regions outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.
America’s post-Cold War fixation on hard power has resulted in downplaying information operations, despite their proven value in the 20th century. But the tools of digital information provide a practical, potentially effective method of further weakening Putin’s hand in Ukraine. As a defender of freedom, America should seize the opportunity to counter Russia’s official narrative.
Ivana Stradner is a research fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Barish Center for Media Integrity, where her research focuses on Russia’s information operations and cybersecurity, particularly Russia’s use of advanced forms of hybrid warfare and the threat they pose to the West. Follow her on Twitter @ivanastradner.
17. Taiwan scrambles fighter jets amid Chinese air and navy manoeuvres
Taiwan scrambles fighter jets amid Chinese air and navy manoeuvres
Taiwan invasion alert: Island scrambles fighter jets, puts navy on standby and activates missile systems in response to 34 Chinese jets and nine warships - as NATO warns of dangerous situation
- Up to 20 Chinese aircraft encroached across the central line of the Taiwan Strait
- The latest escalation of tensions comes after weeks of Chinese military drills
- China's foreign ministry said Tuesday it will not 'renounce use of force' in Taiwan
By DAVID AVERRE
PUBLISHED: 05:44 EST, 1 February 2023 | UPDATED: 06:35 EST, 1 February 2023
Daily Mail · by David Averre · February 1, 2023
Taiwan has scrambled fighter jets, put its navy on alert and activated missile systems in response to large-scale manoeuvres of 34 Chinese military aircraft and nine warships in the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing yesterday instructed its air force and navy to perform a major operation which saw 20 Chinese aircraft cross the central line of the Strait, long seen as a buffer zone between the island nation and mainland China, according to Taiwanese defence officials.
It is the latest escalation of tensions between the two states and comes after weeks of Chinese military drills close to Taiwanese air space, leading Taipei and its US allies to be wary of a potential blockade or outright attack.
China's alarming military manoeuvres came just hours after foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning declared Beijing 'does not promise to renounce the use of force' in its efforts to reunify.
A Taiwan Mirage 2000 jet sits in a hangar surrounded by ordinance during a drill at an airbase in Hsinchu, Taiwan, as the Taiwanese armed forces prepare for a potential conflict
Taiwanese military personnel have for weeks been engaged in preparedness drills as Beijing continues to ramp up threatening behaviour in the Taiwan Strait
Soldiers pose for group photos with a Taiwan flag after a preparedness enhancement drill simulating the defense against Beijing's military intrusions, ahead of the Lunar New Year in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan on Wednesday, Jan 11, 2023
China has for weeks sent warships, bombers, fighter jets and support aircraft into airspace near Taiwan on a near daily basis, hoping to wear down the island's limited defence resources and undercut support for pro-independence President Tsai Ing-wen.
Chinese fighter jets have also confronted military aircraft from the US and allied nations over international airspace in the South China and East China seas, in what Beijing has described as dangerous and threatening manoeuvres.
Taiwan has responded to China's threats by ordering more defensive weaponry from the US, leveraging its democracy and high-tech economy to strengthen foreign relations and revitalising its domestic arms industry.
Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since a 1949 civil war, but President Xi Jinping's Chinese Communist Party claims the island is part of 'One China' and has made no bones about its intention to reclaim the territory.
Beijing has accusing Taiwan of using the US and other Western allies to bolster its efforts to maintain independence, and insists the US is manipulating Taiwan to 'contain' Chinese influence.
Taiwanese support for independence meanwhile is overwhelming. According to a December 2022 poll conducted by the National Chengchi University, less than three percent of Taiwanese citizens wants to reunify with China immediately, and only five percent think Taiwan should unify at some point in the future.
A Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet is recorded flying close to a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. military, in a still image from video taken December 21, 2022
Soldiers rush after alighting from an assault amphibious vehicle during a military drill in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023
Soldiers and tanks are deployed to a preparedness enhancement drill simulating the defense against Beijing's military intrusions, ahead of the Lunar New Year in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan on Wednesday, Jan 11, 2023
China's President Xi Jinping has openly declared that the CCP believes Taiwan is a part of China under its 'One China' policy
A string of visits in recent months by foreign politicians to Taiwan, including by then-US house speaker Nancy Pelosi and numerous politicians from the European Union, spurred displays of military might from both sides.
In response to Ms Pelosi's visit in August, China staged war games surrounding the island and fired missiles over it into the Pacific Ocean.
China has repeatedly threatened retaliation against countries seeking closer ties with Taiwan, but its attempts at intimidation have sparked a backlash in popular sentiment in Europe, Japan, the US and other nations.
In a memo last month, US air force general Mike Minihan instructed his officers to be prepared for a US-China conflict over Taiwan in 2025 as a result of the increasing tensions.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's de-facto ambassador in Washington, Bi-khim Hsiao, said there is a new emphasis on preparing military reservists and civilians for the kind of all-of-society fight that Ukrainians are waging against Russia following the February 24, 2022 invasion.
'Everything we're doing now is to prevent the pain and suffering of the tragedy of Ukraine from being repeated in our scenario in Taiwan,' Ms Hsiao said.
'So ultimately, we seek to deter the use of military force. But in a worst-case scenario, we understand that we have to be better prepared.'
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg answers a question from students at Keio University Tokyo, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. Stoltenberg pointed to China-Taiwan tensions as a reason for NATO to develop its relations in the Indo-Pacific
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (L) shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (R) on January 31, 2023 in Tokyo, Japan
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday highlighted China's threatening behaviour towards Taiwan as a reason why NATO must maintain and develop its working relationships in the Indo-Pacific.
Speaking this morning during a visit to Tokyo, Stoltenberg said: 'Working with partners around the world, especially in the Indo-Pacific, is part of the answer to a more dangerous and unpredictable world.'
Although he said China was not an adversary, the NATO chief said the country was becoming a 'more and more authoritarian power' that was displaying assertive behaviour, threatening Taiwan, and developing military capabilities that could also reach NATO countries.
'We are more than ready to further strengthen and expand the partnership with countries in this region,' he added.
China rejected the claims by Stoltenberg, saying that it has always been a defender of peace and stability.
'On the one hand, NATO claims that its position as a regional defensive alliance remains unchanged, while on the other hand, it continues to break through traditional defense zones and areas, continuously strengthen military security ties with Asia-Pacific countries and exaggerate the threat of China,' Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Ning said in a regular briefing held Wednesday.
'I want to emphasise that the Asia-Pacific is not a battlefield for geopolitical rivalry and confrontation between the camps with Cold War mentality is not welcomed,' she added.
Daily Mail · by David Averre · February 1, 2023
18. Is Washington’s arms control theology finally on the verge of collapse?
Excerpts:
While we consider our post-New START options, we are also, hopefully, witnessing the last throes of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. For any number of compelling reasons, the White House should do far more to support the Iranian opposition and its struggle to overthrow the ayatollahs.
One benefit of regime change in Tehran would likely be a new government that renounces the pursuit of nuclear weapons and opens the files of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other actors in its nuclear-weapons program. We will undoubtedly learn far more about how the mullahs led western governments by the nose during the negotiation and implementation of the 2015 nuclear deal, and especially how Iran repeatedly violated it. This new information might even shake the faith of the arms-control priesthood, but at a minimum it would enlighten those determined to prevent nuclear proliferation.
These are all issues for the 2024 campaign. Chairmen McCaul, Rogers and Turner have done the country a great service by getting us started.
Is Washington’s arms control theology finally on the verge of collapse?
BY JOHN BOLTON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 02/01/23 8:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3838556-is-washingtons-arms-control-theology-finally-on-the-verge-of-collapse/
Three freshly installed Republican House chairmen of key national security committees are raising potentially fatal issues for the New START arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia. In letters to Biden Cabinet officials, the chairmen ask whether Russia is in material breach of the agreement. Along with the administration’s failing, misguided effort to rejoin the flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal, one could ask whether Washington’s arms control theology is finally verging on collapse.
The House chairmen of the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence committees (Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Michael Turner (R-Ohio), respectively) are men to be reckoned with. Although the Senate has constitutional power to ratify treaties, for the next two years, House Republicans can require extensive scrutiny of Russia’s New START performance.
One of President Biden’s first official acts (and a badly mistaken one) was extending the treaty until Feb. 4, 2026, after America’s 2024 presidential election. With no end in sight to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the odds Moscow and Washington can agree on a successor deal under Biden diminish every day, further reason to ensure the White House fully describes Russia’s potential treaty violations.
The House chairmen should also scrutinize White House efforts to make enough concessions to Tehran for Washington to revive the Iran nuclear deal. Despite administration assurances that Iran’s ongoing uprising against the ayatollahs has halted its diplomacy, the obsession to rejoin remains.
New START has always been a bad deal. Its warhead limits and “counting rules” for attributing nuclear devices to delivery vehicles, Cold War-era methodologies, are outdated and ineffective. Moreover, New START’s ceilings, even in their day, failed to reflect the different status of Russia and the United States, as President George W. Bush’s 2002 Treaty of Moscow did, namely that Washington needs different upper limits than Moscow because it faces more threats than just a bipolar face-off with Russia.
Finally, New START’s verification provisions do not afford nearly the level of certainty necessary to satisfy U.S. concerns, given decades of cheating on similar agreements by Russia and other authoritarian states, which all have problems with the truth.
In today’s world, New START is even more dangerous, which is why Biden’s 2021 decision to extend its terms for five years without any modifications leaves America in an ever-more-precarious position.
Added to these pre-existing concerns, the questions raised by Chairmen McCaul, Rogers and Turner underscore legitimate concerns about the treaty even if Russia were fully compliant.
The State Department has reportedly sent Congress a report that finds that Russian violated the treaty’s verification and consultation provisions, which State says are repairable. Desperate to save New START, the more serious violations of concern to the three chairmen are not addressed. Congressional oversight is clearly warranted.
Even beyond the failures of New START itself and the prospect that Russia is violating it, the agreement is fatally outdated for additional reasons. Here, the three Republican chairmen and their Senate counterparts can do important work over the next two years to elaborate on these new issues and to prepare a successor administration to address the dangers ahead.
First, the days of meaningful bilateral U.S.-Russian strategic weapons treaties have ended. During the Cold War, we lived in essentially a bipolar nuclear world, the arsenals of other nuclear states, legitimate or illegitimate, being insignificant for our purposes.
Today, however, China is rapidly manufacturing and deploying nuclear warheads in significant numbers, likely approaching the New START limits applicable to Russia and America imminently. America simply cannot accept bilateral limits on its nuclear stockpiles or delivery systems when it will soon face two peer or near-peer nuclear adversaries, a dramatically dangerous new environment.
Whether Moscow and Beijing combine against Washington, or we face one confrontation with the risk of another following, we are in a tri-polar nuclear world, and must plan and act accordingly. Thus far, China has flatly refused to engage in diplomacy, saying its current warhead stockpile is too low to join U.S.-Russia talks. Beijing is essentially asking for a pass until it comes close to our existing ceilings, and only then talk, an approach in which Russia has acquiesced. We should tell Moscow sooner rather than later that there will be no talks on extending or modifying New START until China sits at our negotiating table.
Second, a basic New START flaw is its failure to limit tactical nuclear weapons, which Moscow possesses in far greater numbers than Washington. With Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to use tactical strikes in Ukraine, there is no longer a serious argument to allow this issue to remain outside the overall nuclear-arms negotiations. If Russia disagrees, we should not resume talks, and should make our own plans at both the strategic and tactical levels accordingly. The potential for substantially broader coverage of nuclear warheads also raises new, difficult verification issues, beyond the existing treaty’s failings.
Third, New START fails to deal satisfactorily with new technologies that have matured since 2010, especially advanced hypersonic capabilities. Biden’s failure to address these new developments before extending the treaty in 2021 was a grave mistake, and it would be diplomatic malpractice to repeat it in discussing a successor deal.
While we consider our post-New START options, we are also, hopefully, witnessing the last throes of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. For any number of compelling reasons, the White House should do far more to support the Iranian opposition and its struggle to overthrow the ayatollahs.
One benefit of regime change in Tehran would likely be a new government that renounces the pursuit of nuclear weapons and opens the files of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other actors in its nuclear-weapons program. We will undoubtedly learn far more about how the mullahs led western governments by the nose during the negotiation and implementation of the 2015 nuclear deal, and especially how Iran repeatedly violated it. This new information might even shake the faith of the arms-control priesthood, but at a minimum it would enlighten those determined to prevent nuclear proliferation.
These are all issues for the 2024 campaign. Chairmen McCaul, Rogers and Turner have done the country a great service by getting us started.
John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened” (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy.
19. Former Wagner commander describes brutality and incompetence on the frontline
Former Wagner commander describes brutality and incompetence on the frontline | CNN
CNN · by Muhammad Darwish,Katharina Krebs,Tara John · January 31, 2023
- Source: CNN
Oslo, Norway CNN —
A former Wagner mercenary says the brutality he witnessed in Ukraine ultimately pushed him to defect, in an exclusive CNN interview on Monday.
Wagner fighters were often sent into battle with little direction, and the company’s treatment of reluctant recruits was ruthless, Andrei Medvedev told CNN’s Anderson Cooper from Norway’s capital Oslo, where he is seeking asylum after crossing that country’s arctic border from Russia.
“They would round up those who did not want to fight and shoot them in front of newcomers,” he alleges. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”
The 26-year-old, who says he previously served in the Russian military, joined Wagner as a volunteer. He crossed into Ukraine less than 10 days after signing his contract in July 2022, serving near Bakhmut, the frontline city in the Donetsk region. The mercenary group has emerged as a key player in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Medvedev said he reported directly to the group’s founders, Dmitry Utkin and Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, whom he describes as “the devil.”
“If (Prigozhin) was a Russian hero, he would have taken a gun and run with the soldiers,” Medvedev said.
Andrei Medvedev, a former Wagner commander, is photographed in Norway.
Darren Bull/CNN
In a statement emailed to CNN on Tuesday, Prigozhin declined to comment on “military issues” and described Wagner as an “exemplary military organization that complies with all the necessary laws and rules of modern wars.” The Wagner boss has previously confirmed that Medvedev had served in his company, and said that he “should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners.”
Medvedev told CNN that he did not want to comment on what he’d done himself while fighting in Ukraine.
‘No real tactics’
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See documents that assess Russian private army success
04:12 - Source: CNN
Medvedev spoke to CNN from Oslo after crossing its border in a daring defection that, he says saw him evade arrest “at least ten times” and dodge bullets from Russian forces. He crossed into Norway over an icy lake using white camouflage to blend in, he said.
He told CNN that he knew by the sixth day of his deployment in Ukraine that he did not want to return for another tour after witnessing troops being turned into cannon fodder.
He started off with 10 men under his command, a number that grew once prisoners were allowed to join, he said. “There were more dead bodies, and more, and more, people coming in. In the end I had a lot of people under my command,” he said. “I couldn’t count how many. They were in constant circulation. Dead bodies, more prisoners, more dead bodies, more prisoners.”
Wagner lacked a tactical strategy, with troops coming up with plans on the fly, Medvedev said.
“There were no real tactics at all. We just got orders about the position of the adversary…There were no definite orders about how we should behave. We just planned how we would go about it, step by step. Who would open fire, what kind of shifts we would have…How it how it how it would turn out that was our problem,” he said.
Graves of Russian Wagner mercenary group fighters are seen in a cemetery near the village of Bakinskaya in the Krasnodar region of Russia on January 22.
Reuters
An off-the-books mercenary army is gaining power in Putin's Russia
Advocacy groups say prisoners who enlisted were told their families would receive a pay-out of five million rubles ($71,000) if they died in the war.
But in reality “nobody wanted to pay that kind of money,” Medvedev said. He alleged that many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine were “just declared missing.”
Prigozhin dismissed the accusation in his response to CNN, saying “to date, not a single case of non-payment of insurance pay-outs has been recorded in the Wagner Group.”
‘I saw courage on both sides’
Medvedev was emotional at times in the interview, telling CNN that he saw courage on both sides of the war.
“You know, I saw courage on both sides, on the Ukrainian side as well, and our boys too… I just want them to know that,” he said.
He added that he wants to now share his story in order to help bring Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin to justice.
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Ukrainian defense intelligence official: Putin's command structure is 'very problematic'
02:32 - Source: CNN
“Sooner or later the propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise up and all our leaders …will be up for grabs and a new leader will emerge.”
Wagner is often described as Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its creation in 2014, and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.
When asked if he fears the fate meted on another Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was murdered on camera with a sledgehammer, Medvedev said Nuzhin’s death emboldened him to leave.
“I would just say that it made me bolder, more determined to leave,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the year in which Medvedev entered Ukraine as a Wagner recruit.
CNN’s Muhammad Darwish and Katharina Krebs reported from Oslo, Norway. CNN’s Tara John wrote from New York.
CNN · by Muhammad Darwish,Katharina Krebs,Tara John · January 31, 2023
20. Psychology wins wars
I do not think there are any models that can really predict the will to fight with any certainty. The only way to assess this characteristic is through long relationships that allow you to gain a deep understanding of the people and culture.
"The moral is to the physical as three is to one" - Bonaparte
Psychology wins wars | Jacob Ware
The importance of morale in warfare
iai.tv · by Jacob Ware · January 27, 2023
How do countries win wars? Better strategy, superior firepower, and leaders’ resolve are obviously all key. However, there is one crucial aspect that is often overlooked/ argues Jacob Ware. Superior morale, whilst seemingly intangible, has been the principal driving force not only behind the Ukrainian success in repelling Russian invasion against all odds, but also a significant amount of war in modern history.
“President. Here.”
Dressed in green fatigues and surrounded by advisers and political leaders, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s message in a video released late on February 25 last year was unequivocal: we are not leaving.
In the early days of Russia’s latest brutal invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin propaganda aimed to break Ukrainian spirit. In one particularly notorious example of Russian disinformation, claims suggested Zelensky was set to flee Kyiv, for safer pastures to the west. Other efforts claimed Ukraine had surrendered. Ukrainians responded by standing shoulder to shoulder and facing the approaching tanks head on. Zelensky stayed, and became a global icon of resilience and resistance.
SUGGESTED READING What victory in Ukraine looks like By Hew Strachan
Other stories of Ukrainian valor spread like wildfire on western social media platforms. In the early hours of the war, a Ukrainian woman confronted Russian soldiers, offering them sunflowers. “Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here,” she taunted. In the Black Sea, Ukrainian sailors responded to a Russian cruiser attacking Snake Island, defiantly declaring, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Offered an American exfiltration, Zelensky responded, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his soldiers to cross the Ukrainian border last February, he fell victim to what international relations scholar Stephen Van Evera has called the cult of the offensive — politicians’ and military strategists’ insatiable belief in their own offensive capabilities and in the opposition’s defensive frailties. Troops were expected to enter Kyiv within hours, but found their vehicles too heavy to move on the Ukrainian roads. Some soldiers were even given parade dress, in preparation for a celebratory march through the streets of Kyiv, the invaders expecting to be welcomed as liberators. Seemingly little consideration or respect was given to actual Ukrainian defenses—despite eight years of hard war in the Donbas. Russian military blunders allowed Ukraine to seize the initiative, repelling attacks on major cities and constructing a near-mythical tale of its own resistance—and henceforth skyrocketing morale both in the military and among the citizenry, and, crucially, among nervous allies to the west.
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When morale is high, militaries can more easily replenish their battalions and warships, and the general public is more willing to undertake the food and energy rationing required to help the war effort
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The underestimation of enemy morale has historically played a central role in battlefield defeats. The United States knows this better than most, having failed to capture local “hearts and minds” during its many recent failed counterinsurgencies, including in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Russia, too, faltered in the latter country, unable to sever the Mujahideen’s links with the Afghan population. In World War I, German planners calculated incorrectly that French soldiers would capitulate under sustained fire at Verdun; French victory in the battle contributed to Allied victory. During the next World War, the British government sought to rally public support and buoy morale with exhortations such as “keep calm and carry on,” while employing strategic bombing and radio propaganda to wear down enthusiasm deep within Germany. Still, morale is an underappreciated factor among prognosticators. In 2018, scholars Ben Connable and Michael McNerney presciently cautioned military analysts against overstating Russia’s capabilities along NATO’s flank. “Many, and arguably most, threat analyses simply assume Russian forces have extraordinary will to fight,” they argued. “Few question Russia’s fighting spirit. There is no question that physical power is essential to military success. Russia’s modern army is increasingly formidable. But for all of Russia’s legitimate physical capabilities, its fundamental strengths and weaknesses lie in the minds of its soldiers and leaders.”
When morale is high, militaries can more easily replenish their battalions and warships, and the general public is more willing to undertake the food and energy rationing required to help the war effort. This winter, Ukrainians have struggled for heating and light, as Russia has strategically targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure in an effort to break their enemy public’s will. Low morale weakens a force’s strength and readiness, possibly leading to defections and even fratricidal violence, while stunting voluntary recruitment. Russia has attempted to build morale among its beleaguered soldiers on the front, including by dispatching opera singers and “creative brigades” to bring cheer through the bitter winter months. It is, however, unclear whether such measures will work. A British Defense Ministry intelligence update issued in December noted “very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war's objectives” as leading reasons behind Russia’s inability to raise spirits among its forces.
SUGGESTED READING Ukraine's sovereignty depends on NATO By Étienne Balibar
Indeed, since the very first day, Russia has failed to convince many of its soldiers of the merits of their sacrifice. As the aggressor, Russia understood it would immediately yield the moral high ground. Seeking to retain some semblance of justification, Russia repeatedly attempted to create a “false flag” incident that would validate their attack on Ukraine. Such efforts were foiled by U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence, as well as online sleuths. Robbed of any justification (whether legitimate or not), Russia ultimately chose to blame Nazis in Ukraine—despite Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky being Jewish. Many initially accepted the justification, only to find a very different reality on Ukrainian soil. One former commander of the notorious mercenary Wagner Group managed to defect to Norway, where he now intends to blow the whistle on Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
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Failure of will has signaled the ending of almost every military conflict in world history
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But perhaps the most substantial blow to Russian morale has simply been battlefield defeats. Through the first 11 months of this latest war in Ukraine, Ukrainians have shown themselves to be a formidable fighting force, capable both of withstanding assaults and also launching counterattacks, and of both engaging the enemy in conventional skirmishes and also deploying a range of irregular means to gain advantages. There is no end to the conflict in sight, but history might offer some indications. As an expansive RAND Corporation report co-authored by Connable and McNerney noted, “Failure of will has signaled the ending of almost every military conflict in world history.” The absolute priority for Ukraine and its supporters, then, is ensuring morale stays high—both in Ukraine and among the publics of its many allies, who must press their governments to continue providing military and financial support to Kyiv.
And, given what appears to be yet another historical failure to correctly predict the will to fight, future scholars of war must devote more time and resources to understanding that most intangible element of a military’s effectiveness—the willingness of its soldiers to fight—assessing how Russian planners so gravely misunderstood morale on both sides of the conflict, and how this factor might affect future major wars.
iai.tv · by Jacob Ware · January 27, 2023
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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