Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."

-John Steinbeck “Once There Was a War”

"Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality."

- Walt Whitman

Characteristics of the American Way of War (5 of 13)

5. Culturally-challenged. Belatedly, it has become fashionable to berate the cultural insensitivity that continues to hamper American strategic performance.68 Bear in mind American public ideology, with its emphasis on political and moral uniqueness, manifest destiny, divine mission even, married to the multidimensional sense of national greatness. Such self-evaluation has not inclined Americans to be especially respectful of the beliefs, habits, and behavior of other cultures. This has been, and continues to be, especially unfortunate in the inexorably competitive field of warfare. From the Indian Wars on the internal frontier, to Iraq and Afghanistan today, the American way of war has suffered from the self-inflicted damage growing out of a failure to understand the enemy of the day. For a state that now accepts, indeed insists upon, a global mandate to act as sheriff, this lack of cultural empathy, including a lack of sufficiently critical self-knowledge, is most serious.

There is no mode of warfare, conducted in any geographical environment, wherein the enemy's strategic culture is of no importance. Even in the most extreme of warfare's technological forms, a large-scale "exchange" of nuclear weapons between super or great powers, the firing and targeting doctrine of the foe will not be innocent of cultural influence. Nuclear doctrines will express calculations of military and geostrategic realities, calculations conducted by encultured strategists. Through much of the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. nuclear strategy carried some promise of damage limitation for America only if Soviet nuclear strategy reciprocated in targeting restraint. Soviet attitudes towards war, including nuclear war, were of vital importance. Since culture was, indeed still is, a significant dimension of warfare with nuclear weapons, how much more salient must it be in irregular conflict. Recall that the battlespace in the fight against insurgents and terrorists is in the minds of the people whose allegiance or acquiescence is the stake in the struggle. In COIN, the Army needs to engage and stay engaged with the people who need protection, not with the irregular enemy. That enemy will face inevitable defeat if the Army is accepted as a friendly guardian, and the people are willing to back the political future promised by the government.

It hardly needs emphasizing that to win the trust of the people at risk requires a measure of comprehension of their beliefs, their hopes and fears, their recent history--in short, their culture. To acquire such cultural empathy is no simple matter. It cannot be achieved from inside "Fort Apache," nor can it be gained by occasional energetic and violent sweeps through "bandit country."

- Colin Gray, 2006

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 10, 2023

2. Saudi Arabia and Iran Agree to Restore Ties, in Talks Hosted by China

3. Disinformation Wars: China, Russia Cooperating On Propaganda More Than Ever, Says Report

4. Incrementalism Is Throttling U.S. Support for Ukraine

5. Outgoing president of Micronesia accuses China of bribery, threats and 'political warfare'

6. Analysis | Georgia Is a New Front in Russia’s Hybrid War

7. China holds ‘military advantage’ over US as Washington prepares for conflict over Taiwan: retired general

8. 5.2% Pay Bump for Troops, Feds in 2024 Budget Proposal

9. What to Do in an Increasingly Bipolar World

10. Lessons From Ukraine Many Don’t Want to Hear

11. Is China’s ‘Straddle’ on Ukraine Coming to an End?

12. Is Australia’s Defense Strategy Based on a Mistaken Assumption?

13. Air Force chief wants to take ‘wrecking ball’ to service’s bureaucracy

14. Deepfakes and Disinformation Pose a Growing Threat in Asia

15. OPINION: Blessed Are the Peacemakers Who Define Their Terms (Ukraine)

16. The United States' China-centered existential crisis – The China Project

17. Inside Indo-Pacific Command’s $87 billion wish list to deter China

18. Irregular Warfare Initiative Launches New Website

19. Blacks in SOF - Panel 2

1 RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 10, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-10-2023

Key Takeaways

US intelligence warned that individuals with ties to Russian intelligence may be planning to attempt to instigate an insurrection in Moldova.
Russian forces continue to establish defensive lines in areas in rear areas far from current frontlines and areas in Russia that will likely never see fighting.
Russian Commissioner on Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, confirmed that the Russian government is using a variety of schemes to deport Ukrainian children to Russia in a comment that was apparently meant to disprove Western allegations of the illegality of these actions.
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group forces entered the built-up AZOM industrial complex, and frontal assaults on the complex will likely be costly for Wagner Group forces.
Russian forces made gains in Bakhmut, are clearing eastern parts of the city, and have advanced to new positions in northwestern Bakhmut within 800 meters of the AZOM metal processing plant.
Russian forces continue reconnaissance activity near islands in the Dnipro River delta.
The Wagner Group continues to expand efforts to recruitment efforts in Russia.
Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to announce new infrastructure projects to increase connectivity between the Russian mainland and occupied territories.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 10, 2023

Mar 10, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 10, 2023

Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Mason Clark

March 10, 5:15pm 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.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

US intelligence warned that individuals with ties to Russian intelligence may be planning to attempt to instigate an insurrection in Moldova. CNN reported on March 10 that White House officials believe that Russian intelligence-linked individuals are planning to stage protests against the Moldovan government with the intent of fomenting a “manufactured insurrection” to install a pro-Russian administration in Moldova.[1] CNN reported that the US believes Russia has been spreading disinformation about Moldova’s purported instability and supporting it with information operations emanating from Russian-occupied Transnistria.[2] ISW has recently reported on several ongoing information operations in Transnistria premised on undermining the Moldovan government and sewing distrust of Ukraine and the West.[3]

Russian forces continue to establish defensive lines in rear areas far from current frontlines and areas in Russia that will likely never see fighting. Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov claimed on March 9 that Russian authorities finished constructing the “zasechnaya line” of fortifications along Belgorod Oblast’s border with Ukraine.[4] Gladkov claimed that Russian forces should dedicate troops to defending this system of fortifications in case of an implausible Ukrainian attack on Belgorod Oblast. Russian forces would significantly misallocate forces that would be better suited supporting active offensive operations elsewhere in Ukraine by manning these fortifications. Gladkov also claimed that Russian officials spent 10 billion rubles (about $132 million) constructing the defensive line, a likely waste of funds amid questions about Russia’s ability to fund its war effort in Ukraine.[5] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported on March 10 that Russian forces continued building fortifications along Kursk Oblast‘s border with Ukraine, another area that will likely never see fighting.[6] Occupied Crimea head Sergey Aksyonov claimed on March 10 that Russian forces are constructing a defensive line in Crimea and implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the construction of the line.[7] These fortifications are far away from the current frontlines in southern Ukraine, and any Russian personnel and equipment deployed to these lines would similarly be better suited elsewhere in Ukraine. Russian officials in Kursk and Belgorod oblasts may be constructing defensive fortifications in support of information operations that aim to portray Ukraine as threatening Russian territory in order to frame the war in Ukraine as existential for Russia. Continued Russian fortifications in Crimea may suggest that Russian forces are unsure of their ability to hold occupied territories in southern Ukraine in the long term. ISW has not observed Russian forces deployed to any of these defensive lines at this time, and the fortifications are therefore currently inconsequential for Russian operations in Ukraine.

Russian Commissioner on Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, confirmed that the Russian government is using a variety of schemes to deport Ukrainian children to Russia in a comment that was apparently meant to disprove Western allegations of the illegality of these actions. In a Telegram post published on March 10, Lvova-Belova accused the West of artificially manufacturing fear regarding the deportation and forced adoption of Ukrainian children and claimed that children came to occupied areas of Ukraine and Russian territory “voluntarily” and can return to their families.[8] Lvova-Belova admitted that Russian authorities have taken children from Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Kharkiv oblasts to “sanatoriums” and health camps in occupied Crimea and Krasnodar Krai for “rest” and protection from hostilities and claimed that 89 “children of Ukrainian citizens” will be reunited with their families from such programs in Crimea and Krasnodar Krai.[9] ISW has previously reported on such schemes to remove children from Ukraine under the guise of rest and relaxation programs and noted that several children in Krasnodar Krai and Crimea have been held for forced adoption into Russian families.[10] An independent investigation by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab found that of likely over 14,700 Ukrainian children deported to Russia, only 126 returned to Ukraine as of January 2023.[11] Lvova-Belova's claim that a certain number of Ukrainian children are being returned to their families does not negate the reality that the vast majority of abducted children do not return to Ukraine. ISW continues to assess that the forced deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children is an apparent violation of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, as well as a component of a wider ethnic cleaning campaign.[12]

Key Takeaways

US intelligence warned that individuals with ties to Russian intelligence may be planning to attempt to instigate an insurrection in Moldova.
Russian forces continue to establish defensive lines in areas in rear areas far from current frontlines and areas in Russia that will likely never see fighting.
Russian Commissioner on Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, confirmed that the Russian government is using a variety of schemes to deport Ukrainian children to Russia in a comment that was apparently meant to disprove Western allegations of the illegality of these actions.
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group forces entered the built-up AZOM industrial complex, and frontal assaults on the complex will likely be costly for Wagner Group forces.
Russian forces made gains in Bakhmut, are clearing eastern parts of the city, and have advanced to new positions in northwestern Bakhmut within 800 meters of the AZOM metal processing plant.
Russian forces continue reconnaissance activity near islands in the Dnipro River delta.
The Wagner Group continues to expand efforts to recruitment efforts in Russia.
Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to announce new infrastructure projects to increase connectivity between the Russian mainland and 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.

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1—Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1— Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and continue offensive operations into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line on March 10. The Ukrainian General Staff did not report ground attacks in the Kupyansk or Lyman directions on March 10, a notable deviation from its normal reporting pattern. A Western Military District soldier claimed in an interview published on March 9 that Russian forces took control of important heights near Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), but ISW has not observed any visual confirmation of Russian gains near Makiivka.[13] A video published on March 9 purportedly showed Luhansk People’s Republic 2nd Army Corps soldiers digging trenches near Kreminna.[14] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian attack on Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[15] Another milblogger claimed that unspecified elements of the BARS (Combat Reserve) unit “Kaskad” and an Airborne Forces (VDV) unit — possibly of the 76th Airborne Division — destroyed a squad of Ukrainian forces attempting to conduct a reconnaissance operation near Kreminna.[16] A milblogger praised Deputy Chief of Staff of the VDV Major General Aleksey Naumets, who purportedly commands Russian forces on the Svatove-Kreminna line, claiming that Naumets is competent at making advances while an unnamed commander (presumably Eastern Military District Commander Colonel General Rustam Muradov) senselessly loses Russian armor in Vuhledar.[17] The commitment of a high-ranking VDV commander to this area suggests that the VDV is prioritizing operations on the Svatove-Kreminna line and attempting to institute more doctrinally sound command-and-control procedures in the area.

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces made gains in Bakhmut and are clearing eastern parts of the city as of March 10. Geolocated footage posted on March 10 indicates that Russian forces have advanced to new positions in northwestern Bakhmut within 800 meters of the AZOM metal processing plant.[18] New drone footage posted on March 10 shows Russian soldiers removing civilians from buildings in eastern Bakhmut to an unknown location at gunpoint, indicating that Russian forces are conducting clearing operations in eastern Bakhmut.[19] Russian milbloggers widely claimed that Wagner Group forces entered the AZOM metal processing plant complex in northwestern Bakhmut and are moving deeper into the plant.[20] The apparent focus on a Russian assault on the AZOM industrial zone (a heavily built-up complex of multiple buildings) indicates that Russian forces are prioritizing a frontal assault on fortified positions in a tactically challenging industrial area instead of opting for a wider encirclement of western Bakhmut via attacks on Khromove. This assault will likely be very costly for the Wagner Group.

The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian troops continued ground attacks on Bakhmut itself; northwest of Bakhmut near Zalizianske (10km northwest), Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest), and Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest); and west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (5km west).[21] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that the combat intensity in Bakhmut is very high and that the Wagner Group has committed its “main part” to the fight, supporting ISW’s assessment that Wagner has increasingly committed high-quality operators to offensives in Bakhmut.[22] A Russian milblogger posted a crowdfunding request for Russian airborne (VDV) elements operating in the Soledar area northeast of Bakhmut, suggesting that VDV elements are likely supporting or supplanting Wagner operations along parts of the front in Bakhmut as ISW assessed in January 2023.[23] Russian sources, including Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed that Ukrainian forces appear to be preparing for a counteroffensive in the Bakhmut area.[24]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline on March 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks on Avdiivka itself; in the Avdiivka area near Kamianka (5km northeast of Avdiivka), Krasnohorivka (9km north of Avdiivka), and Severne (5km west of Avdiivka); on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Vodyane, Pervomaiske, Nevelske, and Krasnohorivka; and on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Marinka, Pobieda, and Novomykhailivka.[25] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian troops attacked Ukrainian fortifications in Avdiivka and Severne and that Russian forces are continuing to fight in Marinka.[26] One milblogger claimed that Russian troops resumed attempts to storm Novomykhailivka.[27]

Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack in western Donetsk Oblast on March 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops carried out unsuccessful offensive actions near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[28] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces resumed offensive operations against Vuhledar on March 10.[29] Russian naval infantry and Eastern Military District elements have suffered continued significant losses in failed offensive operations in this area over the last few weeks and likely are significantly understrength and therefore unable to mount a new wave of successful attacks on Vuhledar in the near future.[30] Russian sources also amplified footage of elements of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) “Kaskad” group operating near Vuhledar.[31]

Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces continue reconnaissance activity near islands in the Dnipro River delta. Ukrainian Southern Operational Command spokesperson Natalia Humenyuk stated on March 10 that Ukrainian forces destroyed seven Russian naval vessels that attempted to reach the islands over the course of three recent unspecified days.[32] Humenyuk stated that neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces control the islands and that it would be dangerous for Ukrainian forces to establish permanent positions on the islands because Russian forces could easily introduce forces from the east (left) bank at any time.[33] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 10 that Ukrainian forces continued to shell Russian forces operating near the Velyki Potemkin, Kruhlik, and Bilohrudy islands south of Kherson City.[34]

Russian forces continued routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts on March 10.[35] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Kherson and Zaporizhzhia cities as well as targets near Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast.[36] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces intentionally shelled Russian-occupied Oleshky on the east (left) bank in Kherson Oblast to accuse Ukrainian forces of shelling the settlement and facilitate “evacuations” of civilians from the east bank.[37]

Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

The Wagner Group continues to expand its recruitment efforts in Russia. Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on March 10 that the Wagner Group currently operates recruitment centers in 42 Russian cities.[38] The Wagner Group has also recently opened recruitments centers at Russian sports clubs and a youth club in Russia.[39] The Wagner Group is likely expanding the number of recruitment centers to augment the Wagner Group’s recruitment base after losing access to prisoner recruits, and to compensate for manpower losses following attritional attacks on Bakhmut.[40]

[Reported Wagner Group Recruiting Centers as of March 10, 2023]

Prigozhin indicated that Russian officials may have temporarily solved the Wagner Group’s issues with artillery ammunition, possibly to the detriment of other conventional Russian forces. Prigozhin thanked Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov and Russian defense firm Technodinamika CEO Igor Nasenkov for an increase in the production of ammunition on March 10 following a March 9 accusation that Russian officials stopped responding to Prigozhin’s inquiries about artillery ammunition shortages for Wagner Group fighters.[41] It is unclear if Russian officials have decided to solve the Wagner Group’s publicized shell shortages, but Prigozhin’s message of gratitude suggests that he believes they have decided to. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 9 that Russian forces have started moving artillery ammunition from other regions in Russia to Ukraine after expending most of Russia's shell supplies in the central regions of Russia.[42] Russian forces are unlikely to solve persistent shell shortages in the short term, and if Russian officials have decided to prioritize shells for the Wagner Group then they will likely have to undersupply artillery ammunition to conventional Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine. Personnel of the 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District, who are reportedly deploying to the Vuhledar area, released a video complaint on March 8 and claimed that Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut use a week’s supply of artillery ammunition in a day while they do not have enough shells to conduct ground assaults.[43]

Some Russian milbloggers criticized Russian officials for planning to demolish an industrial facility that produces artillery ammunition during a widespread shortage of shells. Russian milbloggers amplified reports that Novosibirsk Oblast officials plan to demolish the Sibselmash plant in Novosibirsk Oblast to build a residential complex and technological center, and questioned why Russian officials would demolish a facility that could produce shells.[44] Russian officials reportedly began dismantling and removing equipment from the Sibselmash plant as of October 2021, however.[45] Novosibirsk Oblast Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade, and Entrepreneurship Maxim Ostanin responded to a question about the demolition of the plant during war time by stating that the number of registered defenses enterprises in Novosibirsk Oblast increased from 30 to 98 between 2022 and 2023.[46]

Publicized complaints from Russian servicemembers appear to have increased over the past month. Russian opposition outlet Verstka reviewed video complaints from Russian servicemembers from the past month and reported on March 9 that such videos are increasing due to poor preparation, lack of equipment, and involvement in highly attritional assaults.[47] Formations from 16 Russian federal subjects have released compliant video addresses aimed at Russian officials, the Russian MoD, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in February and March.[48] Russian servicemembers released half of the 16 videos in March alone, the largest increase of such publicized complaints since the chaotic first few weeks of partial mobilization in fall 2022.[49] The Russian MoD has recently punished personnel who have participated in such videos but will likely struggle to punish larger numbers of personnel if the increased trend continues. Persistent supply issues and attritional offensive operations will continue to prompt Russian servicemembers to release these videos.

Ukrainian sources reported that Russian officials plan to form volunteer formations to enforce mobilization efforts in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on March 10 that Russian officials plan to form a Zaporizhia People’s “Druzhina” consisting of volunteers from all of Russia to “maintain order” in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[50] The Resistance Center assessed that Russian officials would likely instruct the volunteers to stop residents on the street and collect information for an upcoming mobilization wave in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[51] Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated on March 10 that Russian occupation authorities are preparing to forcibly mobilize residents in Zaporizhia Oblast.[52]

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 officials and occupation authorities continue to announce new infrastructure projects to connect the Russian mainland and occupied territories. Zaporizhia Oblast Occupation Deputy Vladimir Rogov amplified Russian Federal Road Agency Head Roman Novikov’s statement on March 10 that Russia will soon announce regulatory acts to integrate roads in occupied territories into Russia’s federal highway network.[53] Rogov claimed that Russian authorities plan to construct the “Tavrida-2” four-lane non-expressway road to connect Crimea with Rostov-on Don through Simeropol, Crimea and Henichesk, Kherson Oblast, and the northern shore of the Sea of Azov.[54]

Russian officials continue to establish new checkpoints in Donetsk Oblast’s border areas and the Russian mainland, suggesting that Russia may be struggling with administrative management of occupied territories. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayor Advisor Petro Andryushchenko amplified Rostov Oblast Governor Vasily Golubev’s statement on March 10 that his administration has introduced additional security measures for transit between Rostov Oblast and Donetsk Oblast, including additional searches and filtration measures.[55] Russia’s recent intensification of measures to regulate movement between Russia and occupied territories undermines the Kremlin‘s assurances that occupied territories are part of the Russian Federation and fall under Russian law.[56]

Russian occupation authorities are attempting to maximize the attractiveness of occupied territories as the summer holiday season approaches. Zaporizhia Oblast Occupation Head Yevheny Balitsky claimed on March 10 that the Zaporizhia Oblast occupation administration established an interdepartmental commission in preparation for summer tourism.[57] Balitsky claimed that the interdepartmental commission will create a tourist cluster from Berdyansk to Kyrylivka, Zaporizhia Oblast, emphasizing that the area has more than 1,500 facilities that can accommodate approximately 200,000 people.[58] Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov stated on March 10 that the occupation administration plans to increase the number of passenger trains in Crimea, emphasizing that occupied Crimea maintained a successful tourist season in 2022 despite the ongoing war.[59]

Russian officials and occupation authorities announced further plans to construct new healthcare facilities to treat Russian servicemen as hospitals near the frontlines remain overfilled and understaffed. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Timur Ivanov met with Sevastopol occupation governor Mikhail Razvozhaev in Crimea on March 10 to evaluate the development of civilian and military infrastructure in Crimea. Razvozhaev claimed that military builders are constructing several facilities in Sevastopol, and that construction has begun to build a military hospital with 150 beds.[60] Razvozhaev emphasized that the military hospital will include a modern medical and diagnostic building, an infectious diseases department, a blood transfusion station, and an oxygen station.[61] The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the new military hospital will employ 300 people.[62]

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 and Belarusian forces continue conducting joint exercises in Belarus. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense reported that unspecified Russian and Belarusian elements of the joint Russian-Belarusian Regional Grouping of Forces (RGV) continue joint combat training including unit coordination at night, small arms training, driving military vehicles, tactical medicine, engineering training, and psychological conditioning.[63]

Belarusian maneuver elements continue conducting exercises in Belarus. Airborne companies of the Belarusian 103rd Air Assault Brigade conducted force-on-force company tactical exercises at the Losvido Training Ground in Vitebsk, Belarus, on March 10.[64] Elements of the Belarusian 38thAir Assault Brigade also conducted reconnaissance diving exercises in the Mukhavets River to support a river crossing mission on March 10.[65]

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.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/10/politics/us-russia-moldova-intelligence/i...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/10/politics/us-russia-moldova-intelligence/i...

[3] https://isw.pub/UkrWar030923; https://isw.pub/UkrWar02242023; https://isw.pub/UkrWar022323

[4] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8402; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45957 ; https://vk dot com/gladkov_vv?z=video639631882_456240967%2F70e1668eeb82093fc0%2Fpl_wall_639631882

[5] https://vk dot com/gladkov_vv?z=video639631882_456240967%2F70e1668eeb82093fc0%2Fpl_wall_639631882 ; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/09/gubernator-belgorodskoy-oblasti-ob-yavil-chto-stroitelstvo-zasechnoy-cherty-zaversheno;

[6] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02t4fzio2TdVmMuS8jqQ...

[7] https://ria dot ru/20230310/krym-1856910388.html

[8] https://t.me/malvovabelova/1161

[9] https://t.me/malvovabelova/1161

[10] https://isw.pub/RusCampaignAugust23; https://isw.pub/UkrWar012723

[11] https://hub.conflictobservatory.org/portal/sharing/rest/content/items/97...

[12] https://isw.pub/UkrWar111222;

[13] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80079

[14] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80080

[15] https://t.me/wargonzo/11313

[16] https://t.me/basurin_e/135 ; https://t.me/HersonVestnik/14646

[17] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45966

[18] https://twitter.com/SerDer_Daniels/status/1634207040317845504?s=20; https://twitter.com/blinzka/status/1634218035660697602?s=20

[19] https://twitter.com/slovyanskasil/status/1634130524007481344; https://t...

[20] https://t.me/brussinf/5738; https://t.me/rybar/44474; https://t.me/voe... https://t.me/milchronicles/1648

[21] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02c6a6YAsd4FpMtKFirh...

[22] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/03/10/okupanty-vykorystovuyut-svoyi-novi-tanky-t-90-ale-my-yih-uspishno-znyshhuyemo-sergij-cherevatyj/; https://isw.pub/UkrWar030623

[23] https://t.me/milinfolive/97852; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[24] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/579; https://t.me/kommunist/16300 ;...

[25] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02c6a6YAsd4FpMtKFirh...

[26] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45965; https://t.me/wargonzo/11313; https:...

[27] https://t.me/readovkanews/54393

[28] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02t4fzio2TdVmMuS8jqQ...

[29] https://t.me/wargonzo/11313

[30] https://isw.pub/UkrWar030923; https://isw.pub/UkrWar03012023; https://isw.pub/UkrWar021123

[31] https://t.me/russkiy_opolchenec/36023; https://t.me/TOF_VMF/657; https...

[32] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/03/10/syly-oborony-kilka-dniv-tomu-znyshhyly-7-chovniv-voroga-nataliya-gumenyuk/

[33] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/03/10/syly-oborony-kilka-dniv-tomu-znyshhyly-7-chovniv-voroga-nataliya-gumenyuk/

[34] https://t.me/strelkovii/4168

[35] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02c6a6YAsd4FpMtKFirh... . https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/17333 ; https://t.me/Yevtushenko_E/2858 ; h...

[36] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02c6a6YAsd4FpMtKFirh... . https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/17333 ; https://t.me/Yevtushenko_E/2858 ; h...

[37] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02t4fzio2TdVmMuS8jqQ...

[38] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/574

[39] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[40] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ;

[41] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/571 ; https://t.me/concordgroup_off...

[42] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02y8faMuVZ86t6tTTvAk...

[43] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1633613230382694400%C2%A0%C2%A0

[44] https://t.me/strelkovii/4175 ; https://t.me/m0sc0wcalling/21028

[45] https://vn dot ru/news-proshchay-sibselmash-na-meste-legendarnogo-zavoda-postroyat-administrativno-zhiloy-kompleks-i-tekhnopark/

[46] https://vn dot ru/news-proshchay-sibselmash-na-meste-legendarnogo-zavoda-postroyat-administrativno-zhiloy-kompleks-i-tekhnopark/

[47] https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1566

[48] https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1566

[49] https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1566

[50] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/03/10/gaulyajtery-stvoryuyut-narodni-druzhyny-na-pivdni/

[51] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/03/10/gaulyajtery-stvoryuyut-narodni-druzhyny-na-pivdni/

[52] https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/1490

[53] https://t.me/vrogov/8075

[54] https://t.me/vrogov/8075; https://t.me/vrogov/8077

[55] https://t.me/andriyshTime/7515

[56] https://t.me/andriyshTime/7515

[57] https://t.me/BalitskyEV/855

[58] https://t.me/BalitskyEV/855

[59] https://t.me/Aksenov82/2201

[60] https://t.me/mod_russia/24730; https://t.me/razvozhaev/2218

[61] https://t.me/razvozhaev/2218

[62] https://t.me/mod_russia/24730

[63] https://t.me/modmilby/24339

[64] https://t.me/modmilby/24347

[65] https://t.me/modmilby/24357

Saudi Arabia and Iran Agree to Restore Ties, in Talks Hosted by China

By Vivian Nereim

March 10, 2023

The New York Times · by Vivian Nereim · March 10, 2023

The deal between regional rivals underlines China’s growing economic and political importance in the Middle East, and what some analysts say is waning American influence.

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A photograph released by Saudi Arabia’s press agency on Friday showed Musaad al-Aiban, a Saudi minister of state, left, and Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s secretary of the National Security Council, in Beijing.Credit...Saudi Press Agency, via Reuters

March 10, 2023

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — After years of open hostility and proxy conflicts across the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties, they announced on Friday, in a significant pivot for the two regional rivals that was facilitated by China.

China hosted the talks that led to the breakthrough, highlighting Beijing’s growing role as a global economic and political power, and counterbalance to Washington — particularly in the Middle East, a region that was long shaped by the military and diplomatic involvement of the United States.

Seven years after cutting formal ties, Iran and Saudi Arabia will reopen embassies in each other’s countries within two months, and confirmed their “respect for the sovereignty of states and noninterference in their internal affairs,” they said in a joint statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Iran’s state news media also announced the deal.

The two countries agreed to reactivate a lapsed security cooperation pact — a shift that comes after years of Iranian-backed militias in Yemen targeting Saudi Arabia with missile and drone attacks — as well as older trade, investment and cultural accords.

Whether the shift leads to a deep or lasting détente between governments that have long been in conflict remains unclear, but there have been signs that both nations wanted to find a way to step back from confrontation. Saudi and Iranian officials had engaged in several rounds of talks over the past two years, including in Iraq and Oman, but without significant steps forward.

Protesters outside the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in 2016. Saudi Arabia cut its ties with Iran that year after protesters stormed the embassy over Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.Credit...Reuters

For the United States, the agreement signals that it cannot take for granted the pre-eminent influence it once wielded in Saudi Arabia — an ally that is charting a more independent diplomatic course — and elsewhere, as China, a rising superpower, builds trade and diplomatic relations around the world.

While Washington views Iran as an adversary, Beijing has cultivated close ties to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, and unlike U.S. officials, it does not chastise them about human rights. Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, visited Beijing last month, and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, visited Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in December. Mr. Xi’s state visit was celebrated by Saudi officials, who often complain that their American allies are too critical, and are no longer reliable security partners.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, rejected the notion that the United States had left a void in Middle East affairs, now being filled by China. “I would stridently push back on this idea that we are stepping back in the Middle East,” he said, adding that Saudi Arabia had kept the United States informed of the talks with Iran.

“We support any effort there to de-escalate tensions in the region,” Mr. Kirby said.

China’s most senior foreign policy official, Wang Yi, indicated on Friday in a statement on the Chinese foreign ministry website that Beijing had played an instrumental role in the resumption of diplomatic ties.

Understand Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy

Restoring Ties: Saudi Arabia has reached an agreement with Iran that paves the way for the re-establishment of diplomatic ties, in what would be a major realignment between regional rivals that was facilitated by China.
Naming Its Price: Riyadh has been seeking security guarantees from the United States and help with developing a civilian nuclear program in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel.
Forging New Alliances: In December, Saudi Arabia signed a strategic partnership agreement with China during a visit by China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to the kingdom. The deal underlines the growing ties between Beijing and Riyadh.
Narrowing a Rift: Saudi Arabia and Qatar were split for years in a bitter regional dispute. The glare of attention provided by the World Cup in Doha, the Qatari capital, highlighted their complicated reunion.

“This is a victory for the dialogue, a victory for peace, and is major positive news for the world which is currently so turbulent and restive, and it sends a clear signal,” he said.

Mohammed Alyahya, a Saudi fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, said the agreement was a “reflection of China’s growing strategic clout in the region — the fact that it has a lot of leverage over the Iranians, the fact it has very deep and important economic relations with the Saudis.” He added: “There is a strategic void in the region, and the Chinese seem to have figured out how to capitalize on that.”

After years of tensions, Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran completely in 2016, when protesters stormed the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran after Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric.

The rivalry between the two Islamic nations, which are less than 150 miles away from each other across the Persian Gulf, has long shaped politics and trade in the Middle East. It has a sectarian dimension — Saudi Arabia’s monarchy and a majority of its populace are Sunni, while Iran’s people are overwhelmingly Shiite — but has predominantly played out via proxy conflicts in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, where Iran has supported militias that Saudi officials say have destabilized the region.

Tensions hit a peak in 2019, when a missile and drone assault on a key Saudi oil installation briefly disrupted half of the kingdom’s crude production; the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen claimed responsibility, but U.S. officials said that Iran had directly overseen the attack.

A satellite image of smoke rising from a critical oil plant in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, in 2019.Credit...Planet Labs Inc, via Associated Press

In Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the Houthis since 2015. Saudi officials have also repeatedly expressed fear over Iran’s nuclear program, saying that they would be the foremost target for any attack by the Islamic Republic.

China wants stability in the region, with more than 40 percent of its crude oil imports coming from the Gulf, said Jonathan Fulton, a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council.

“Beijing has adopted a smart approach using its strategic partnership diplomacy, building diplomatic capital on both sides of the Gulf,” he said. “Unlike the United States, which balances one side against the other, and is therefore limited in its diplomatic capacity.”

Ali Shamkhani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Iran’s NourNews Agency that President Raisi’s visit to China in February had helped create the opportunity for the negotiations to move forward.

Mr. Shamkhani described the talks as “unequivocal, transparent, comprehensive and constructive.” He said he was looking forward to relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia that foster “the security and stability of the region.”

Xi Jinping, president of China, with President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran in Beijing last month, in a photo released by the Chinese state news media.Credit...Yan Yan/Xinhua, via Associated Press

For Iran, mending ties with a regional enemy would be a welcome relief after months of internal turmoil marked by antigovernment protests that Iranian officials have blamed in part on Saudi Arabia. The Iranian government spokesman, Ali Bahadori Jahromi, tweeted that “the historic agreement of Saudi-Iran negotiated in China and led entirely by Asian countries will change the dynamics of the region.”

The Israeli foreign ministry declined to immediately comment. But the news complicates the Israeli assumption that shared fears of a nuclear Iran would help Israel forge a formal relationship with Saudi Arabia. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has repeatedly stated in recent months that he hoped to seal diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia for the first time.

Saudi Arabia has pressed the United States to lower restrictions on selling it arms, and to help it build a civilian nuclear program, as its price to normalize relations with Israel, according to people familiar with the exchanges.

The agreement comes as China has been trying to play a more active role in global governance by releasing a political settlement plan for the war in Ukraine and updating what it calls the Global Security Initiative, a bid to supplant Washington’s dominant role in addressing the world’s conflicts and crises.

Political analysts took mixed views of the implications for the United States.

Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research institute, described the renewed Iran-Saudi ties resulting from Chinese mediation as “a lose, lose, lose for American interests.”

He added: “It demonstrates that the Saudis don’t trust Washington to have their back, that Iran sees an opportunity to peel away American allies to end its international isolation and that China is becoming the major-domo of Middle Eastern power politics.”

President Biden meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia last year.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

But Trita Parsi, an executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a Washington research group that advocates U.S. restraint overseas, called the agreement “good news for the Middle East, since Saudi-Iranian tensions have been a driver of instability in the region.”

Saudi officials are not looking to replace the United States with China, said Yasmine Farouk, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington research group.

When it comes to defense and security, “Riyadh still thinks in English,” she said. But after years of feeling that the United States has become a less reliable ally, the Saudis are expanding their alliances wherever they can.

Reporting was contributed by Keith Bradsher, Patrick Kingsley, David Pierson, Christopher Buckley, Michael Crowley, Farnaz Fassihi, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Leily Nikounazar.

The New York Times · by Vivian Nereim · March 10, 2023

3. Disinformation Wars: China, Russia Cooperating On Propaganda More Than Ever, Says Report

The German Marshall Fund report can be access here: https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/a-year-of-disinformation-russia-and-chinas-influence-campaigns-during-the-war-in-ukraine/

Disinformation Wars: China, Russia Cooperating On Propaganda More Than Ever, Says Report

March 06, 2023 17:17 GMT

By Reid Standish

rferl.org · by Reid Standish

After a year of war in Ukraine, China and Russia have grown closer together in the information space, often parroting each other's talking points across state-owned media as part of a wider strategy to undermine the West, a new report finds.

The yearlong study by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy found that messaging by Chinese officials and media evolved following Moscow's February 2022 invasion to provide greater "rhetorical cover for the Kremlin" despite Beijing's official stance as a neutral party in the conflict.

"There has definitely been a pro-Russian convergence, and China has been repeating pro-Russian talking points since the beginning of the war while also downplaying Russian war crimes and giving prominence to Russian voices," Etienne Soula, a research analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy and one of the report's authors, told RFE/RL.

Given that growing overlap, the report, issued on February 24, notes that "China's ability to use its own global influence network to undermine the West" gives it a uniquely powerful role to play moving forward in shaping attitudes among nonaligned countries in the Global South.

A TV screen shows news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, China, on February 25, 2022.

"To weaken Western democracies and their allies, China also has tried to isolate those countries by appealing to the Global South," the report states. "In the context of the war in Ukraine, Chinese messaging has consistently argued that countries supporting Ukraine are hypocrites and indifferent to the rest of the world."

A Year Of War

China's tightly controlled media have refrained from calling the war an invasion and have instead used the Kremlin terminology, referring to it as a "special military operation." At other times, Chinese outlets have pushed disinformation and conspiracy theories popularized on Russian state-led channels such as that the United States has bioweapons labs in Ukraine and that the extrajudicial killings of civilians by Russian forces in the town of Bucha is a hoax, and have suggested Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is controlled by U.S. billionaire George Soros.

Bolstered by nearly a decade of reports propagating against the West and deepening ties that the countries characterized as a "no limits" partnership prior to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Chinese state-controlled outlets have helped spread the Kremlin's narrative of the war to their massive audiences at home and abroad.

SHADOW GOVERNMENT

A front-row seat to the Republicans' debate over foreign policy, including their critique of the Biden administration.

Incrementalism Is Throttling U.S. Support for Ukraine

Ad hoc, one-off decisions and lagging implementation are undermining the strategic effects of U.S. military assistance.

By Nadia Schadlow, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.

Foreign Policy · by Nadia Schadlow · March 9, 2023

The U.S. announcement in January that it would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine has upped the ante with Moscow without achieving tangible operational effects. It will take at least a year before the tanks are delivered, with one U.S. official explaining to the Washington Post that they are “probably not for the near fight.” This will give Moscow time to adapt and plan, degrading the operational benefits of the tanks to Ukraine. Moreover, in a year, the war could be over or look very different.

This decision illustrates the persistent problem of incrementalism, which has characterized the U.S. and allied effort toward Ukraine—with ad hoc, one-off decisions and lagging implementation undermining the strategic effects of this assistance.

A successful military campaign is guided by an overall strategy and by what the U.S. military calls “mission analysis.” Leaders define the desired end state, analyze the opponent and other operational factors, and develop a plan that specifies the forces, weapons systems, materiel, and logistics needed to succeed. Adjustments are made—war is unpredictable—but mission analysis offers a way to provide an answer to the question of what it takes to achieve the end state.

What the United States has done in Ukraine departs from that template. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden has used his presidential drawdown authority—which purportedly allows for the faster delivery of defense equipment and services from the U.S. Defense Department to foreign countries in the event of emergencies—30 times. The fact that the administration has used this authority so many times suggests that the United States could do better in thinking through—up front—the equipment required to achieve its objectives. It also suggests that the administration has no clear and articulable strategic objective.

Incrementalism has plagued Washington’s Ukraine policy for a long time. After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Obama administration refused to provide arms to Ukraine, instead opting to provide nonlethal equipment, such as night vision goggles and training. The Trump administration began to send around 200 Javelin anti-tank weapons to Ukraine in 2018. Although then-U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to hold off on this aid, it was released a few months later.

By June 2021, Russia was massing forces along Ukraine’s border. Yet the Biden administration halted a military aid package to Ukraine that included lethal weapons, such as short-range and anti-tank weapons, purportedly due to an impending meeting between Biden and Putin. It was not until after the war began that Biden authorized the delivery of lethal aid.

Once lethal aid was restarted after the invasion, it was provided in ad hoc, incremental steps rather than in support of a plan based on mission analysis. In just the eight months between August 2021 and April 2022, the United States completed six drawdowns of equipment from Pentagon inventories for Ukraine.

Two months after the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continued to request tanks, missile defenses, and anti-ship weapons. And some eight months after the invasion, by the fall of 2022, Zelensky continued to request more “air and missile defenses from the West.” The United States and its NATO allies staggered their assistance throughout this period, with Javelin missiles, Stinger air defense systems, laser-guided rocket systems, and eventually High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems all arriving at different times in the fall of 2022. By late fall 2022, the United States was at its 25th presidential drawdown package, which committed Hawk surface-to-air missiles and added more Stingers. Yet these missiles had been in U.S. stockpiles all along.

Although some might rationalize the Biden administration’s approach by arguing that it reduces the risk of Russian escalation, the opposite is likely true. Russia, from the outset of the war, was already throwing all available conventional forces at Ukraine. A support program driven by sound mission analysis and campaign planning would checkmate Russia’s attack, giving Moscow a choice between losing or coming to terms with Kyiv. Fears of nuclear escalation were exaggerated, principally because few suitable targets existed in Ukraine for such weapons—the costs of such escalation exceeded potential benefits. Ukrainian military strength and Western resolve decrease, rather than increase, the risk of escalation.

Incrementalism is compounded by the U.S. government’s inability to move fast—a problem that existed well before Biden took office. As former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it in his book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, during the Iraq War, he had to “[wage] war on the Pentagon” to get mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles to troops quickly in Iraq.

“The very size and structure of the [Defense] [D]epartment assured ponderousness, if not paralysis, because so many different organizations had to be involved in even the smallest decisions,” Gates writes. “The idea of speed and agility to support current combat operations was totally foreign to the building.”

The Pentagon has yet to institutionalize the Gates mindset. Despite emergency authorities, the U.S. government is rarely able to act quickly.

Time—and time lag—must be a key input in war planning and in arming allies. The Biden administration needs to engage in an emergency troubleshooting exercise to figure out how to overcome the sclerotic performance that is compromising U.S. support for Ukraine’s war effort and costing Ukrainian lives. This requires doing mission analysis up front and breaking down the barriers to rapid implementation, even if that means tapping U.S. prepositioned stocks, weapons from National Guard units, or emergency ramp-ups of production.

No matter your views on Ukraine, incrementalism increases the chances of escalation and, at the same time, makes strategic defeat more likely.

Foreign Policy · by Nadia Schadlow · March 9, 2023

5. Outgoing president of Micronesia accuses China of bribery, threats and 'political warfare'

At least someone recognizes China's political warfare. Unfortunately this reporting will not make it to even a second news cycle.

Outgoing president of Micronesia accuses China of bribery, threats and 'political warfare' | CNN

CNN · by Angus Watson,Nectar Gan · March 10, 2023

Hong Kong CNN —

The outgoing president of Micronesia has accused China of engaging in “political warfare” in the Pacific, in an explosive letter advocating for the the dissolution of diplomatic ties with Beijing.

In the 13-page letter, which CNN has obtained, David Panuelo alleges China is preparing to invade the self-ruled island of Taiwan, and has engaged in bribery, political interference and even “direct threats” to ensure the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) remains neutral in the event of war.

China dismissed the letter’s contents as “smears and accusations.”

“I would like to emphasize that China has always upheld the equality of all countries – no matter their size – and has always respected how Micronesia chooses its own development, based on its own circumstances,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Friday in a regular press briefing.

Panuelo, who has previously been critical of Beijing’s actions in the Pacific region, revealed he had considered switching diplomatic recognition to Taipei.

“China is seeking to ensure that, in the event of a war in our Blue Pacific continent between themselves and Taiwan, that the FSM is, at best, aligned with the PRC (China) instead of the United States, and, at worst, that the FSM chooses to ‘abstain’ altogether,” he wrote.

The Chinese Communist Party claims the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan as its own territory – despite having never governed it – and has refused to rule out the use of force to “reunify” it with mainland China.

Panuelo also accused China of “political warfare” in his country, which he claimed included overt activities – such as political alliances, economic measures and public propaganda – and clandestine acts such as “bribery, psychological warfare, and blackmail”.

“One of the reasons that China’s political warfare is successful in so many arenas is that we are bribed to be complicit, and bribed to be silent. That’s a heavy word, but it is an accurate description regardless,” he wrote in the letter.

CNN has reached out to Panuelo an Taiwan’s foreign ministry for comment.

Chinese troops attend the opening ceremony of the 'Peace Mission 2021' joint counter-terrorism military exercise held in Russia in September 2021.

Li Chun/China News Service/Getty Images

China and Russia have deep defense sector ties. Putin's war has not changed that, data show

Panuelo, whose term in office is set to expire in two months after losing his seat in the recent general election, has been president of Micronesia since 2019.

He has previously spoken out on China’s growing influence in the South Pacific, including warning against Beijing’s proposal of a sweeping regional security deal with 10 Pacific Island nations.

Last May, in a separate letter to 22 Pacific leaders seen by CNN, Panuelo said the draft proposal was intended to shift Pacific Island nations with diplomatic ties to China “very close into Beijing’s orbit.”

He argued that in addition to impacting the sovereignty of Pacific Island nations, signing such an agreement could bring about a new “Cold War” amid tensions between China and the West.

China ultimately failed in its bid to strike the security pact with Pacific Island nations.

The release of Panuelo’s latest – and most explosive – letter comes amid heightened concern from regional powers over Beijing’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.

The Pacific Islands’ location, largely to the northeast of Australia, means the island nations have long been viewed by military strategists as a vital connecting thread between the US territory of Guam and US-allied Australia.

Both the US and Australia are wary of a China that has grown increasingly assertive in the South China Sea extending its reach further west into Pacific waters, including toward the FSM, an archipelago of more than 600 islands.

Meanwhile, the island nations themselves – typically more concerned about the ravages of climate change than geopolitics – have been wary of being viewed as pawns in a great power struggle.

China’s interest in building rapport with the Pacific Islands countries is not new.

BEIJING, CHINA - OCTOBER 23: Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the podium during the meeting between members of the standing committee of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee and Chinese and foreign journalists at The Great Hall of People on October 23, 2022 in Beijing, China. China's ruling Communist Party today revealed the new Politburo Standing Committee after its 20th congress. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Lintao Zhang/Getty Images/File

Xi Jinping secures unprecedented third term as China's president in ceremonial vote

In the early 2000s, as the US was turning its attention toward perceived threats in the Middle East, a newly outward-looking China was starting on a path to become an economic and diplomatic partner for Pacific island countries.

A focal point of Beijing’s outreach was to win friends away from Taiwan, which is now only formally recognized by four of 14 South Pacific nations, after the Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched allegiance to China in 2019.

In recent years, as Beijing has pursued a more assertive foreign policy and expanded development funding globally in a bid to enhance its international sway, its visibility in the Pacific Islands, too, has grown.

China has backed widely publicized projects in some Pacific Island countries – a national sports stadium to host the Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands, highways in Papua New Guinea, bridges in Fiji – and sent high-level envoys to the region, including two visits from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, once in 2014 and again in 2018.

It’s also become a major trading partner for Pacific Island economies.

CNN · by Angus Watson,Nectar Gan · March 10, 2023

6. Analysis | Georgia Is a New Front in Russia’s Hybrid War

Excerpts:

Georgia isn’t the only part of the strategic South Caucasus that is being destabilized with Russian help or acquiescence. Another democracy and Western ally — Armenia — has been placed in an almost existential state of vulnerability. Some 120,000 Armenians have endured a bitter months-long blockade in Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed Armenian-populated enclave in Azerbaijan, with Russia refusing to intervene despite its security pact with Armenia and a peacekeeping role along the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia.

Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s support, seized much of the land around Nagorno-Karabakh in a 2020 war and now wants to form a route across Armenia connecting Azerbaijan directly to Turkey through the south. While the world is distracted, there are concerns that Azerbaijan will use its growing influence to freeze or push Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and drive further land gains. Georgia is also a vital regional ally and trading partner for Armenia.

As the past two nights of protests show, Georgians have developed a habit of democracy and a taste for free expression that won’t be snuffed out without a fight. But the law has provided a potent indication of the ruling party’s intentions and suggests there will be more to come. Putin will want to ensure that Georgia’s Maidan moment doesn’t end as Ukraine’s did, with the capitulation of a pro-Moscow government.

Analysis | Georgia Is a New Front in Russia’s Hybrid War

The Washington Post · by Therese Raphael | Bloomberg · March 9, 2023

After two nights of violent clashes with riot police in Tbilisi, Georgian protestors won a victory Thursday when the ruling party announced it was withdrawing the proposal cracking down on civil-society groups and the media, which sparked the demonstrations. But the government has refused to renounce the bill, many protestors have been jailed and opposition parties are rightly worried it is just the beginning of a weakening of democratic freedoms.

The scenes in Tbilisi echo those in the 2014 Maidan Uprising, when Kyiv was filled with Ukrainians demonstrating against President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to abandon the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement for closer ties with Russia instead. Georgia’s fragile democracy — one of the few staunch US and European allies in the region until recently — now faces a similarly perilous moment. Georgia’s westward march, like Ukraine’s, is one Putin has been determined to thwart.

The irony of Georgia’s plight today is that Putin’s Ukraine campaign can be said to have started then, when he found a pretext to launch an invasion in 2008 on behalf of separatists in the self-declared republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The war resulted in brutal ethnic cleansing of Georgians in those regions and a strategic victory for Putin, whose forces currently occupy about 20% of the nation’s territory. He also used it as a template for the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the precursor to incursions into Ukraine’s Donbas region and last year’s full-scale invasion.

The recent history of US and European engagement in the strategic south Caucasus region has been one of intermittent attention, lack of clear strategy and waning influence. That has enabled Putin to open new fronts in his hybrid war to consolidate Russian power in the region. Soon after Putin’s invasion of Georgia, Barack Obama came to office promising a Russian “reset,” reinforcing a sense of geostrategic limbo in Georgia that continued through the Trump years.

The small size of the South Caucasus belies its strategic importance. It sits at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, a bridge between the Black and Caspian Seas; a key transit route for natural gas and oil. Strong democracies there can be a bulwark against Islamic radicalism but also Russian revanchism. At the moment, the people the West should most want to prevail there are in trouble.

Georgians have often taken to the streets to defend their democracy and the country’s Western direction in the post-Soviet period; they did so after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine too. The latest protests were triggered by the proposal of a law that requires non-governmental and media organizations with more than 20% foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” with severe penalties for those who refuse. Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili had threatened to veto the bill that was backed by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

The law apes one in Russia that passed in 2012 to severely constrain human rights, media, and civil society organization. Many closed. In Georgia, the law demonstrates the true colors of a government that has often professed to be pro-western while cozying up to Putin.

That Georgia’s government has taken this turn ought to set off alarm bells in the West. Georgia’s post-Soviet trajectory has sometimes zigzagged, but it has broadly been defined by the pro-West direction begun in the early 1990s under the late President Eduard Shevardnadze. George W. Bush called Georgia a “beacon of liberty” (The road leading into Tbilisi from the airport road is named after him).

During the nine-year presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili from 2004, Georgia moved to cement closer ties to the west. The US established a “Strategic Partnership” agreement; the EU concluded an association agreement in 2014, and a free trade agreement. Georgia passed a constitutional amendment requiring it to move toward “full integration” into the EU and NATO (something the foreign agents law brazenly contradicts). Membership was always a long way off, to the frustration of many Georgians, but the direction of travel seemed clear.

While the vast majority of Georgian citizens are staunchly pro-Western, the government has increasingly turned toward Moscow under the guidance of the reclusive billionaire founder of the ruling Georgian Dream Party, Bidzina Ivanishvili. Prime minister for about a year from 2012, Ivanishvili currently has no formal role and has repeatedly denied that he informally runs Georgia; but few in the West doubt his de facto control over key state institutions, the judiciary and security services. In 2020, a caucus of US Congressmen bluntly declared him “a close ally of Putin and involved in destabilizing Georgia on Russia’s behalf.” Meanwhile, the 55-year-old Saakashvili, who spent time in Ukraine as an exile and was jailed in Georgia after his return, is currently on a hunger strike and in failing health, with doctors saying he was tortured in custody.

Georgia isn’t the only part of the strategic South Caucasus that is being destabilized with Russian help or acquiescence. Another democracy and Western ally — Armenia — has been placed in an almost existential state of vulnerability. Some 120,000 Armenians have endured a bitter months-long blockade in Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed Armenian-populated enclave in Azerbaijan, with Russia refusing to intervene despite its security pact with Armenia and a peacekeeping role along the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia.

Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s support, seized much of the land around Nagorno-Karabakh in a 2020 war and now wants to form a route across Armenia connecting Azerbaijan directly to Turkey through the south. While the world is distracted, there are concerns that Azerbaijan will use its growing influence to freeze or push Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and drive further land gains. Georgia is also a vital regional ally and trading partner for Armenia.

As the past two nights of protests show, Georgians have developed a habit of democracy and a taste for free expression that won’t be snuffed out without a fight. But the law has provided a potent indication of the ruling party’s intentions and suggests there will be more to come. Putin will want to ensure that Georgia’s Maidan moment doesn’t end as Ukraine’s did, with the capitulation of a pro-Moscow government.

China holds ‘military advantage’ over US as Washington prepares for conflict over Taiwan: retired general

foxnews.com · by Caitlin McFall | Fox News

Video

White House responds to China: 'We do not want conflict'

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded Tuesday to warnings from China of conflict with the U.S., saying, "We do not want conflict."

Concerns over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan continue to mount with Beijing now suspected of involvement in damaging some of the island nation's undersea internet cables this week in another show of deliberate harassment.

The disruption to Taiwan’s internet was not only a nuisance for the island’s inhabitants and visitors, it also revealed significant implications for Taiwan's national security.

There is no definitive evidence that China purposefully cut the internet lines, but the incident brought renewed attention to what an attack on Taiwan might look like and whether the U.S. would be able to adequately stop it.

Taiwanese soldiers carry shells past armored vehicles during a two-day live-fire drill on Sept. 7, 2022. (Ceng Shou Yi / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

U.S. INTEL COMMUNITY WARNS OF 'COMPLEX' THREATS FROM CHINA, RUSSIA, NORTH KOREA

U.S. war games involving a Chinese takeover of Taiwan generally involve a large-scale amphibious attack that would attempt to quickly and efficiently take the island and its international allies by surprise.

President Biden has said he will send troops to counter a Chinese land invasion, which would likely prompt responses from other regional U.S. allies and could make this form of assault costly and deadly for all parties involved.

But it has also prompted questions over whether the U.S. is capable of engaging with China in a traditional kinetic attack like the ongoing war in Ukraine.

"China does have a military advantage," retired Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News senior strategic analyst, said. "They have more ships, more airplanes, more offensive and defensive missiles than the United States has."

Marines from the U.S. and Philippines hold joint military drills, May 15, 2017. (Dondi Tawatao / Getty Images)

A war game conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) earlier this year simulated what would happen following an amphibious attack on Taiwan by the People's Republic of China, and it revealed that the U.S. likely would run out of long-range precision-guided missiles within a week.

"The only advantage militarily that we have are our nuclear submarines," Keane said, pointing out that even with that advantage, the U.S. still needed more of these specialized subs.

But, Keane argued this form of warfare was unlikely to be how China actually would carry out an assault, which Chinese President Xi Jinping is said to have slated for 2027, according to U.S. defense officials.

CHINA'S XI DEMANDS RAPID MILITARY UPGRADE TO 'WORLD-CLASS STANDARDS'

"A more likely scenario would be a quarantine or a blockade of Taiwan where China would attempt to control the airspace, as well as the sea lanes, and gain control of it without firing a shot," the retired four-star general said.

China regularly has harassed and intimidated Taiwan by sending warplanes and naval ships off the island, which one commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces said this week will play a key role in stopping China if it were to launch a kinetic attack against Taiwan.

Chinese military helicopters fly past Pingtan Island, one of mainland China's closest points from Taiwan, in Fujian province on Aug. 4, 2022, ahead of military drills off Taiwan. (Hector Retamal / AFP via Getty Images)

Speaking to reporters at the Air & Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium in Colorado on Wednesday, Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said, "You saw when Speaker Pelosi went to Taiwan what [China] did with their ships. They put them on the east side of Taiwan … as a sort of blockade.

"We've got to sink the ships," he added, according to Military.com.

How the U.S. would respond to a blockade on Taiwan or the slow takeover of smaller islands connected to Taiwan remains unclear.

"[It puts] the onus on the adversary, in this case Taiwan, the U.S. and our allies," Keane explained, adding that in this scenario, the principle of deterrence would play an immense role.

"We’re in a position here where we have to build up our deterrence capability," he said. "We want that to prevent a war."

Philippine marines take position near U.S. Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicles during an exercise in the San Antonio region of the Philippines on Oct. 6, 2018. (Ted Aljibe / AFP via Getty Images)

WHITE HOUSE RESPONDS TO CHINA, SAYS 'WE DO NOT WANT CONFLICT'

Keane said in order to successfully deter China from prompting a war that would involve two major superpowers, the U.S. would need to drastically ramp up its arms production, weapons stockpiles and the development of advanced missile systems like hypersonic missiles.

But, the U.S. also would need to better arm Taiwan and fill the current backlog of arms that America has owed to the island, he added.

"Taiwan by themselves could never defeat the Chinese military, but they could impose significant costs on China," Keane said. "We’ve got a $19 billion backlog on military equipment that Taiwan has already purchased."

He continued, "Taiwan doesn’t need a handout in terms of military equipment, they can buy it themselves."

The U.S. is not the only nation in the region with a vested interest in making sure Beijing does not take control of the island.

Australia, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, which have endured overt Chinese aggression for years, have thrown their weight behind the U.S. as well.

A U.S. B-52, C-17 and South Korean F-35 fighter jets fly over the Korean Peninsula during a joint air drill in South Korea on Dec. 20, 2022. (South Korean Defense Ministry via AP)

"This is all necessary," Keane said, "because when we bring the aggregate coalition together with the United States, we begin to match China’s capability. Their willingness to engage in this with us is very significant in terms of deterrence."

Some estimates suggest that it could take the U.S. nearly a decade to adequately fill its stockpiles to fend off a Chinese invasion – a time frame that may not be enough to tamper Beijing’s ambitions for Taiwan.

Not only would "reuniting" Taiwan with mainland China give Beijing a geopolitical boost and effectively supersede the U.S.’s influence in the region, it would subject the South China Sea to even more Chinese dominance.

Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane (ret.) speaks on "Fox News Sunday" with Shannon Bream. (FOX NEWS)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"Every one of our allied countries in the region would have to work out some kind of a deal with China," Keane said. "Secondly, Taiwan is a high-tech base. Every country in the world, to include the U.S., is completely dependent on Taiwan."

He continued, "And if China takes control of that, then they take control of the major influence that drives our automobiles, our iPhones, our military capabilities – that gives them enormous economic control."

Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.

foxnews.com · by Caitlin McFall | Fox News

8. 5.2% Pay Bump for Troops, Feds in 2024 Budget Proposal

Some good news for the troops? Will this be enough to significantly assist our junior enlisted families?

Excerpt:

In a statement, American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley suggested that while 5.2% is a good starting point for the administration, federal workers need the more generous 8.7% raise to combat recent high inflation and to make up for years of inadequate pay raises that workers endured during the 2010s.

5.2% Pay Bump for Troops, Feds in 2024 Budget Proposal

The largest proposed pay raise for federal employees since the Carter administration still falls short of the demands of some Democrats and unions.

defenseone.com · by Erich Wagner

President Biden proposed a 5.2% average pay raise for both civilian federal employees and military service members next year as part of his fiscal 2024 budget plan released Thursday.

The figure marks an increase over the 4.6% pay hike feds received in 2023, and would be the highest proposed pay hike federal workers have seen since the Carter administration implemented a 9.1% average pay increase in 1980. The budget documents released Thursday do not specify what portion of the raise will be dedicated to across-the-board increases in basic pay, although traditionally presidents have set aside 0.5% of an overall pay raise figure for average boosts in locality pay.

The White House highlighted the pay raise as part of its effort to ensure the federal government is “equitable, effective and accountable” and betters delivers services to the American people by helping agencies compete for talent.

“Federal agencies are focused on attracting more people to federal service over the long term, while also addressing immediate agency hiring needs to rebuild capacity,” administration officials wrote. “[The] budget provides an average pay increase of 5.2% for civilian and military personnel—and answers the president’s call for agencies to lead by example in supporting federal worker organizing and collective bargaining.”

Despite marking the largest proposed pay increase for federal workers in more than four decades, the proposal still falls short of the 8.7% average pay raise supported by some congressional Democrats and federal employee groups. Both proposals are likely to receive pushback from Republican lawmakers.

In a statement, American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley suggested that while 5.2% is a good starting point for the administration, federal workers need the more generous 8.7% raise to combat recent high inflation and to make up for years of inadequate pay raises that workers endured during the 2010s.

“AFGE applauds President Biden’s reported inclusion of a proposed 5.2% pay adjustment for federal employees in his proposed 2024 budget,” Kelley said. “Not only would this be the largest increase since 1980, it would also be a significant step in the right direction for efforts to recruit and retain the next generation of federal workers . . . While we applaud the president’s proposal, it is not enough. More must be done to make serious progress in closing the double-digit pay gap between federal employees and their private sector counterparts. Congress should pass the FAIR Act’s 8.7% adjustment.”

defenseone.com · by Erich Wagner

9. What to Do in an Increasingly Bipolar World

Respect and protect sovereignty.

Conclusion:

So what should the U.S. do? President Biden has spoken about the contest between democracies and autocracies, attempting to frame great power competition in terms of liberal and illiberal regimes. But the more apt characterization, and one which can help play to the strengths of the West, is to view the current global order in terms of countries that protect and believe in sovereignty, territorial integrity, and international law. Those countries falling outside of that category would be making a deliberate decision to cast their lot with other rogue nations.

What to Do in an Increasingly Bipolar World

Invite countries to stand on the side of territorial sovereignty and international law.

By COLIN P. CLARKE and MOLLIE SALTSKOG

MARCH 10, 2023 01:31 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Colin P. Clarke

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a global food crisis, worldwide energy shortages, and massive refugee flows throughout Europe. But perhaps its most significant consequence has been more subtle. The war in Ukraine has accelerated the shift from a multipolar world to a bipolar international system, and what might have been a three-horse race between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing is now squarely a strategic competition between two powers.

The invasion has weakened Moscow. Russian casualties to date have been estimated at 200,000 or higher. The Russian military has lost thousands of pieces of armored equipment, squadrons worth of fighter jets and helicopters, and depleted significant amounts of precision strike munitions and artillery shells. Moscow’s vaunted mercenary force, the Wagner Group, has grown so desperate for manpower that it felt compelled to recruit from prisons and jails. The Kremlin has been slapped with major sanctions and is now more isolated diplomatically than at any time in recent memory, with the United States formally accusing Russia of committing crimes against humanity.

These military, economic, and diplomatic struggles have intensified Russia’s relationship with China, which has welcomed the opportunity “to further advance our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era,” as one senior Chinese diplomat put it after bilateral meetings in February. China has already supplied Russia with crucial dual-use technology, including smartphones and computer chips, as well as satellite imagery that was used by the Wagner Group. Furthermore, Chinese state-owned defense companies have provided shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology, and jet-fighter parts to sanctioned Russian government-owned defense companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But this is no longer an equal partnership: Russia has been relegated to a junior partner within China’s orbit. Beijing sees strategic opportunities. For example, it can seek oil and gas deals on favorable terms that serve its goal of diversifying energy supply chains for economic and national-security interests.

Yet Russia is growing so weak that even China has qualms. Beijing is increasingly concerned about Moscow turning catastrophically desperate. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is reportedly unnerved by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. And despite the new spirit of cooperation, history tells a story of deep-rooted mistrust between Russia and China. In fact, throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Sino-Russian relations were marred by mistrust, actual physical conflict over borders, and competition over which country would be the leading Communist power. And while Russia and China appear to currently adopt the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality vis-à-vis the United States, some of that mistrust remains today. For example, the Kremlin has instituted several policies in order to encourage Russians to move to the Russian Far East, primarily out of fear of Chinese nationals and companies populating the mineral-rich region.

Russia’s decline as a world power arrives as U.S.-China tensions rise. Their bilateral relationship has been deteriorating for years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s human rights abuses, and disagreements over trade. The recent Chinese surveillance balloon incident demonstrated just how tense relations have become, with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken canceling a planned trip to China in response. Continued tensions in the Taiwan Strait ebb and flow, while China and the United States exist in what foreign policy expert Ali Wyne has called “strained cohabitation,” which suggests perhaps a desire to “decouple” while being forced, begrudgingly, to live under the same roof. But make no mistake, Washington and Beijing are now taking great strides to reduce dependence on one another, moving critical chokepoints of their respective supply chains to minimize the vulnerabilities laid bare by the pandemic and highlighted by the war in Ukraine. Semiconductors, microchips, batteries for electric vehicles, and other emerging technologies are at the top of this list.

The war in Ukraine is exacerbating this split. From Beijing’s point of view, it may be favorable that the war is prolonged, as it keeps European states and the U.S. occupied while delaying the long-heralded pivot to Asia—thus allowing China more freedom of operation in its immediate geographical vicinity. But if China moves further down the path of supporting Russia, especially with lethal military aid, it will jeopardize Beijing’s relations with the U.S. and many European countries. U.S. National Security advisor Jake Sullivan commented recently, “I think it would alienate them from a number of countries, including our European allies, and it would put them square into the center of responsibility for the kinds of war crimes and bombardment of civilians and atrocities that the Russians are committing in Ukraine.” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, went as far as to say that China supplying military aid to Russia “would be a red line,” without elaborating as to what the specific consequences would be if China crossed that threshold.

A Chinese move to arm Russia would result in punitive economic and diplomatic measures from Washington and Brussels. It would also hamper China’s signature foreign policy objective, the Belt and Road Initiative, which requires positive trade relations with regional powers, something that would be called into question in a more divisive international political environment. Perhaps the strongest argument for why China would provide lethal aid to Russia is to test its weapons in a theater of war; however, the authors remain skeptical that Xi is willing to risk China’s economic and diplomatic access to the European market, which has already been hurt by China’s egregious human-rights abuses in Xinjiang.

A fissure of this magnitude would further divide the world into distinct geopolitical blocs, particularly those organized around security and technology. Within the broader dynamic of great power competition, there is a contest for currying favor with nations considered to be fence-sitters. Many of these countries are in the Global South and simply do not have the luxury to choose sides. To date, South Africa has been openly supportive of Russia, while other middle powers such as India and Brazil, have been non-committal in an attempt to hedge their bets. China’s recent position paper on Ukraine, calling for the resumption of peace talks while failing to condemn Russia’s actions, is a good example. While pandering to domestic audiences, the position paper also offers faux credibility to China’s claim to being a “responsible global power,” especially when courting countries outside of the U.S. and European bloc while stoking anti-U.S. and anti-NATO sentiments.

So what should the U.S. do? President Biden has spoken about the contest between democracies and autocracies, attempting to frame great power competition in terms of liberal and illiberal regimes. But the more apt characterization, and one which can help play to the strengths of the West, is to view the current global order in terms of countries that protect and believe in sovereignty, territorial integrity, and international law. Those countries falling outside of that category would be making a deliberate decision to cast their lot with other rogue nations.

Mollie Saltskog is a senior intelligence analyst at The Soufan Group and a research fellow at The Soufan Center.

Colin P. Clarke, Ph.D., is the director of research at The Soufan Group and a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center.

defenseone.com · by Colin P. Clarke

10. Lessons From Ukraine Many Don’t Want to Hear

No lessons about resistance? Subversion, Sabotage? Influence operations?

Lessons From Ukraine Many Don’t Want to Hear

By Matthew Van Wagenen & Arnel P. David

March 11, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/03/11/lessons_from_ukraine_many_dont_want_to_hear_886750.html

U.S. Soldiers, assigned to 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, train with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System and the Enhanced Night Vision Goggles during Project Convergence 2022 (PC22) at Fort Irwin, Calif., Nov. 7, 2022. PC22 brings together members of the All-Service and Multinational force to rigorously test the effectiveness and interoperability of cutting-edge weapons and battle systems. (U.S. Army photo by SGT Thiem Huynh)

There is no shortage of commentary on the lessons to be learned from the war in Ukraine. There is an understandable debate unfolding given the tremendous amount of sacrifice, human loss, and suffering. The stakes are high and learning needs to occur. War is, and has always been, the best teacher. It has been nothing short of incredible what David has been doing to Goliath on the Steppes of Ukraine.

There are indeed valuable lessons to learn from all sides. Yet, for Western militaries, it is more about the lessons they may not want to hear that will prove to be the most valuable in deterring, preparing, and if necessary, fighting the next war. Much of the West has over invested in other domains (e.g., maritime, air) and niche capabilities, at the expense of combat power on land. The war in Ukraine has validated the need for decisive land combat power to win large-scale wars. These types of wars are far from extinction and finding the right balance of capabilities to wage war in appropriate fashion, remains a fundamental security challenge for Western nations.

Historically, military organizations have been known to cling to capabilities long past their ability to offer decisive returns. Put simply, there is a continual sin to fight the way one might wish rather than the way one should, and equally important, one might not know exactly where they might have to fight and in which domains. Conversely, there are continuities in war that do not change, and therefore, an alignment of military concepts and associated capabilities in a dynamic environment remains key.

Ukraine is a harbinger of future warfare, and the world is paying close attention. In the face of adversity came extraordinary innovation. The following five lessons bear consideration for changes that need to occur today, not tomorrow, to create advantage in future war.

1. Mass Matters. Attrition warfare is not dead. This mode of warfare emerges when neither side can achieve a clear asymmetric advantage. Standing armies are the only instrument nations can use to prevent, deter, and fight invading aggressors. Mass is required in a war of attrition. Funding and maintaining land power may seem like an expensive insurance policy but doing the opposite is to risk state collapse. Wars can only be won on the ground where nations exist, and people live. Land power is an indispensable capability, even in the Pacific.

A lack of appreciation for emerging threats over time has eroded land capabilities in the West. Power withers when it proves frail, and a perceived weakness invites aggression. Key capabilities such as armor, artillery, and engineers cannot be replaced by cyber, space, or any other information-related capabilities. The Ukraine conflict proved they were less decisive than expected.

2. Maritime Operations Are Vulnerable. Expensive naval forces are threatened by inexpensive weaponry. Ukrainian attacks have minimized the impact of the Russian Black Sea fleet and little by little the Russian Navy drifted further back toward the mainland.

Naval experts proclaim this is “an unmistakable warning — that today’s run-of-the-mill missiles and commercial data systems can knock even the world’s top warships out of a fight.” China seeks this competitive advantage in the Pacific with “carrier killer” missiles.

3. Deep Attacks by Themselves Are Ineffective. There is a desire to employ rotary attack aircraft – and to some extent, fixed-wing aircraft - deep behind enemy lines for strategic effect. This tactic is practiced routinely in exercises, but it has been proven futile in past wars. In Ukraine, soldiers operating short range anti-aircraft defensive equipment and using small arms fire, have been taking out multi-million-dollar aircraft. Control of the air remains contested and this will be a continual feature of future conflict.

Neither side was able to use aviation in a game-changing role. Russian attack regiments had to change their tactics and use aircraft in a combat support role. Likewise, the Ukrainians had to do the same to preserve combat power and support ground maneuver forces.

Rather than pursuing deep attacks, the West would benefit more from the development of counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) tactics and technologies. Additionally, decades of experience from combat and modern gaming finds “the output of an entire joint force is amplified when synergistic integration across components increases.” Joint capabilities must work together, and in an allied context, strategic lethality can be achieved with the improved integration and interoperability of battle networks.

4. Airborne and Amphibious Warfare Has Been Minimized. These modes of warfare have their place in specialized units but the conduct of these methods at a large-scale, using thousands of soldiers and marines, is resource intensive, high risk, and perhaps even anachronistic.

The Russian’s hesitance to execute an amphibious operation is for good reason. The potential gain from such operations is not worth the cost. This painful lesson was learned by Russia’s elite airborne forces, the VDV, at Hostomel airport last year. Their forces were decimated.

It might not be time to write an obituary for these types of operations but their use on a large-scale in peer warfighting is limited with contested air space and ubiquitous stand-off weaponry. It might be worth Western nations evaluating their efficacy and determining whether it is time to repurpose these types of units for a role that has increased survivability and lethality. This leads to the next lesson.

5. Artificial Intelligence Has Arrived. It has been said that advanced algorithmic warfare systems equate to having a nuclear weapon. Ukrainian forces have compressed their “kill chains,” and used software engineers on the frontlines to calibrate algorithms for devastating effect.

A.I. is not tomorrow’s problem. This enabling technology is being used today and will be more and more prevalent tomorrow. Western nations will need to induce a greater rate of digital transformation to make use of their data and build battle-winning algorithms.

U.S. Army Futures Command is forward thinking in this space. The commander, General Rainey, proposes “formation-based lethality.” The future is about integration. In a past RCD article on Project Convergence, we proposed this could be accelerated through the use of experimental units. The Army could profit from emulating past examples like the 11th Air Assault Division (Test) which gave birth to air assault operations. Could a present day experimental unit do the same with manned and unmanned systems teaming, leveraging A.I.? And by possibly adding software engineers to unit formations, could this spark greater collaboration, integration, and testing of concepts? These are the questions to ponder when examining lessons from Ukraine.

Conclusion

The West can ignore these lessons at their own peril or use them to transform existing capabilities into future war-winning advantages. The danger of dominant military organizations is that, short of lessons learned in the unforgiving crucible of combat, they tend to fall back on comfortable assumptions and ignore any signals of change that contradict their most-cherished strategic beliefs. We can do worse than to listen and learn from the incredible innovation happening in the Ukraine.

Matthew Van Wagenen is a major general in the U.S. Army currently serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCOS OPS) in the NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

Arnel P. David is a colonel in the U.S. Army completing a PhD at King’s College London. He is the cofounder of Fight Club International.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect any entity or organization of the U.S. Government or NATO.

11. Is China’s ‘Straddle’ on Ukraine Coming to an End?

Excerpts:

What is striking here is how China’s perception of the war in Ukraine intersects with its prevailing view of Sino-U.S. relations. One Chinese analyst from the Center for Strategy and Security at Tsinghua University argues in this context that not only has the war in Ukraine “accelerated and intensified” U.S. “strategic deployment” against China but a “system of strategic suppression” has been formed that “binds China and Russia together.” China thus “sees little benefit to be gained from sacrificing its relationship with Moscow in favor of embracing a Washington that has declared China the greatest external threat to the United States and the ‘rules-based order.’”

More importantly, Xi himself has recently expressed similar views.

In a discussion with Chinese commerce and industry representatives on March 3, he was reported to have described China’s international environment as full of “uncertainties and unpredictable factors.” Foremost of these is that “the Western countries led by the United States have carried out all-round containment and suppression of China.” In such an environment, China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang stressed on March 7, “The more unstable the world becomes the more imperative it is for China and Russia to steadily advance their relations.”

In such a context a Chinese decision to arm Russia, then, while lamentable, would demonstrate that the nature of CCP decision-making coupled to Xi’s personal investment in close ties to Moscow have their own dynamic – independent of what we might conceive of as rational geopolitical calculations.

Is China’s ‘Straddle’ on Ukraine Coming to an End?

Xi Jinping’s personal investment in Sino-Russian relations could produce an outcome contradictory to a purely interests-based assessment.

By Michael Clarke and Matthew Sussex

March 11, 2023

thediplomat.com · by Michael Clarke and Matthew Sussex · March 11, 2023

Over the course of the first year of Russia’s war on Ukraine, a consensus view of the calculus behind China’s approach to the conflict has emerged.

This view suggests that Beijing has engaged in a “straddle” on Ukraine where it has sought to balance its desire to maintain the “no limits” partnership with Russia against the collateral damage to its interests that could flow from being too closely associated with an increasingly isolated Moscow. So long as China avoids direct involvement in the conflict, this rationale contends, it will “at most suffer secondary sanctions for its political and economic support,” and Beijing’s continued partnership with Moscow will also remain a useful instrument to dilute U.S. focus and resources from Asia.

Thus far China’s “straddle” has arguably been successful. Its support for Russia – such as repeating Russian disinformation on Ukraine and calling for a “negotiated” resolution to the conflict – has been undertaken “in areas and ways that have incurred minimal cost.” Simultaneously Beijing has also increased its leverage within the Sino-Russian relationship to the extent that some now see Russia as becoming the junior partner. The sanctions and export controls imposed on Moscow, for instance, have undoubtedly left Russia far more dependent on Beijing as a source of technology, like semiconductors, and as a customer for Russian natural resources.

Mounting speculation that Beijing is considering provision of “lethal aid” to Moscow thus raises the question: Why would China shift from this ostensibly successful course?

Based on a purely interests-based assessment, the benefits to China of arming Russia would appear to be outweighed by the risks. As U.S. and European leaders have made clear, such an action would see the floor fall out from beneath already fractious China-U.S. relations and further alienate European capitals at the very moment Beijing has sought to reinvigorate China-Europe ties.

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However external observers should be careful about projecting our own sense of rationality upon the decision-makers in Zhongnanhai, as such leaders operate in a political and ideological environment that conditions available policy options in distinct ways.

Most significant here is how the centralization of foreign and defense policy under the direct leadership of Xi Jinping and Xi’s close personal investment in Sino-Russian relations may converge to produce an outcome contradictory to a purely interests-based assessment of China’s best course of action.

With respect to the former, Xi has placed himself at the heart of the most consequential state and party bodies, serving not only in his roles as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary and president but also chair of the Central Military Commission, the National Security Council, and the most consequential foreign and security policy Small Leading Groups (SLG) of the CCP Central Committee.

Although this has permitted greater capacity for more efficient decision-making, it makes it inherently “stove-piped” as Xi is the only authoritative leader who can coordinate and act on information provided by these various leading foreign-policy-focused state and party bodies. Such “personalist authoritarian regimes,” as Sheena Chestnut Greitens reminds us, “tend to be information-sclerotic and avoid delivering bad news and negative feedback to leaders, even when that information seems obvious to an outside observer.”

Xi’s personal commitment to the Sino-Russian partnership also holds the potential to exacerbate the problems of such “stove-piped” decision-making.

Yun Sun argues that Xi’s admiration for Russia is such that it constitutes a “complex” based on his background as a revolutionary “princeling.” Xi grew up during the high tide of the Sovietization of China’s political, economic, and military systems, and his education was shaped by Soviet/Russian models. This “complex” expresses itself in contemporary Sino-Russian relations in “a leader-level nostalgia for the Sino-Soviet partnership” of the 1950s, an admiration for Putin’s “strongman” rule, and a rare but effusive declaration by Xi that the Russian leader is “my closest foreign colleague and my best confidant.”

Perhaps most troublingly, Xi’s Russia “complex” has resulted in a “selective bias in his judgment about Russia’s national power,” where he is prone to “overestimating Russia’s strengths and reliability, while underestimating its weaknesses and the risks posed to China.”

Some well-connected Chinese analysts have also drawn attention to this “complex.” Feng Yujun – a lead analyst of Sino-Russian relations for Fudan University – for example, has pointedly critiqued the Sino-Russian partnership as based on a fundamentally flawed assessment of what it contributes to China. He argues that “Chinese elites have not yet soberly realized that there has been a historical reversal in the comprehensive national power of China and Russia” and that while “our national power is ten times that of Russia, many people’s minds are still subservient to it.” As a result, China is “basically led by the nose by Russia.”

Such a mindset, Feng continued, has enabled Russia to manipulate China in the U.S.-Russia-China strategic triangle by “mobilizing” Sino-U.S. “contradictions” to persuade China that it needs close alignment with Russia to mitigate worsening ties with the United States. He concludes that, while China should desire “stable and constructive” relations with Russia, enjoying that type of relationship with Washington is actually more important, as that relationship will “determine China’s overall international environment in the future.”

While it may be heartening from an external perspective to see such a critique, we must recognize that Xi does not see things this way. Arguably, he continues to see Russia and China as sharing similar domestic and systemic threats or challenges to their regimes, necessitating close Sino-Russian ties to combat Western (i.e. U.S.) led efforts to constrain them.

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Most important for Beijing is shoring up Russian support for its position on Taiwan. This has been made abundantly clear several times since February 2022. Right at the start of the Russian invasion, for instance, Ming Jinwei – a senior editor at the Xinhua News Agency – wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo that China had to back Russia “with emotional and moral support while refraining from treading on the toes of the United States and European Union” so that in the future China could have “Russia’s understanding and support when wrestling with America to solve the Taiwan issue once and for all.”

Meanwhile, during Xi and Putin’s meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on September 15] 2022, the Chinese readout underlined Russia’s reaffirmation of its commitment to the “One China principle,” condemnation of “provocative moves by individual countries on issues concerning China’s core interests,” and Sino-Russia commitment to “promote” regional security and stability “based on the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.”

China’s assessment of the trajectory of the global security environment too also factors into the perceived need for ongoing Sino-Russian partnership.

What is striking here is how China’s perception of the war in Ukraine intersects with its prevailing view of Sino-U.S. relations. One Chinese analyst from the Center for Strategy and Security at Tsinghua University argues in this context that not only has the war in Ukraine “accelerated and intensified” U.S. “strategic deployment” against China but a “system of strategic suppression” has been formed that “binds China and Russia together.” China thus “sees little benefit to be gained from sacrificing its relationship with Moscow in favor of embracing a Washington that has declared China the greatest external threat to the United States and the ‘rules-based order.’”

More importantly, Xi himself has recently expressed similar views.

In a discussion with Chinese commerce and industry representatives on March 3, he was reported to have described China’s international environment as full of “uncertainties and unpredictable factors.” Foremost of these is that “the Western countries led by the United States have carried out all-round containment and suppression of China.” In such an environment, China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang stressed on March 7, “The more unstable the world becomes the more imperative it is for China and Russia to steadily advance their relations.”

In such a context a Chinese decision to arm Russia, then, while lamentable, would demonstrate that the nature of CCP decision-making coupled to Xi’s personal investment in close ties to Moscow have their own dynamic – independent of what we might conceive of as rational geopolitical calculations.

Michael Clarke and Matthew Sussex

Dr. Michael Clarke and Dr. Matthew Sussex are senior fellows at the Centre for Defence Research, Australian Defence College.

thediplomat.com · by Michael Clarke and Matthew Sussex · March 11, 2023

12. Is Australia’s Defense Strategy Based on a Mistaken Assumption?

Excerpts:

The notion of impactful projection presumes that if conflict were to occur, countries in the region will consent to Australia’s strategic designs. Policymakers in Australia are, again, content in their assumptions regarding the strategic intent of regional counterparts. Whatever the rhetoric, Australia’s big-ticket national security items continue to be driven by looking beyond, not within, the Indo-Pacific. There is little nuanced analysis of strategic calculus across the region, and certainly no discourse on the dynamics of neutrality. Even detailed consideration of the mechanics of acquiescence appears to be missing.

If countries in the region choose a path that ultimately thwarts Australian security designs, it may be, at least in part, self-inflicted. Perhaps Australia would do well to seek impactful engagement before seeking impactful projection.

Is Australia’s Defense Strategy Based on a Mistaken Assumption?

Australia can only achieve “impactful projection” if it can be sure of its neighbors’ responses to any conflict scenario.

By Marigold Black and Austin Wyatt

March 11, 2023

thediplomat.com · by Marigold Black · March 11, 2023

The concept of “impactful projection” – defined as the “ability to hold an adversary at risk, much further from our shores, across the full spectrum of proportionate response” – has become a topic of heightened interest in the Australian strategic discourse, as pundits wait on further information from the Defense Strategic Review. But is the concept underpinned by a fundamentally mistaken assumption?

As Australia seeks to augment its “self-reliance to deploy and deliver combat power through impactful materiel and enhanced strike capability – including over longer distances,” it is worth recognizing that the existing operational concepts for these systems’ use would impinge on the sovereignty of neighbors. Simply assuming that countries in the region will acquiesce with the intrusions inherent in its enhanced strike capability initiatives could be a mistake.

Yet the strategic calculus of countries in the near region does not seem to feature in Australia’s perceptions of future conflict. Policymakers have repeatedly declared Canberra’s commitment to diplomacy and defensive intentions as Australia pursues a strategy based on projection beyond its shores. For example, Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles, has stressed that “the true intent in the development of our military capability is to contribute to the collective security of our region.” But has Australia’s strategy been complemented by a clear and fulsome understanding of the perceptions, concerns, and intent of affected regional partners?

Given repeated proclamations that Australia is a transparent middle power committed to investing in regional partnerships, Canberra should know better than to disregard the sovereignty of these states. It would also be a mistake for Australia’s strategic planning to dismiss them in the pursuit of great power deterrence. However, in recent years, both errors seem to have become part of Australia’s diplomatic and strategic DNA.

For example, the secrecy surrounding AUKUS (the Australia, U.K., U.S. security pact) put regional powers on the back foot. It reflected a continuing lack of trust in neighbors and a violation of the consultative norms that define Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) relations. Although arguably done out of necessity, the decision not to give Indonesia advance notice aggravated the reaction of Indonesian officials, who learned that their largest neighbor had decided to become one of only a handful of nations to possess nuclear powered submarines from press coverage.

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It appears that Australia needs frequent prompts that sovereignty is not only the privilege of the larger and middling powers, but applies to all states regardless of their size or condition. It remains to be seen whether the new government will convert its initial claims about a new approach to the region into meaningful policy changes.

Notwithstanding explicit, repeated declarations to the contrary, there continues to be an assumption – at least in the public debate – that countries in the region will support actions against an aggressor in the event of hostilities. Yet there is very little apparent evidence for this position, despite Marles’ argument that “we want to ensure we are consulting our partners in the region, and around the world, so that there is understanding and no surprises.” If countries in the region invoked neutrality, Australian policymakers would not just be surprised, they would be clueless about the implications.

In effect, there is a danger of Australia walking into the mother of all strategic shocks if the core geopolitical assumptions underpinning its defense planning are suddenly shown to be flawed.

While invocation of neutrality in contemporary armed conflicts is relatively rare, its adoption as a political tool or as a power balancing lever is not. ASEAN has long had a policy of neutrality and non-interference through the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, and the Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (whatever the caveats). At a 2020 conference Singapore’s prime minister stated explicitly that “Asian countries do not want to be forced to choose between the two [China and the United States]. If either [country] attempts to force such a choice … they will begin a course of confrontation that will last decades.” This sentiment has been echoed on many occasions by regional officials, for example in late 2020 by the Indonesian foreign minister.

Australia, however, remains unprepared for the implications of applying impactful projection in a situation where countries in the region, after weighing up their bargaining power and the risks of joining either coalition, decide to transition from peacetime declarations to an active status of neutrality. Indeed, neutrality may cover a broad spectrum of activity, spanning from peace operator to profiteer and everything in between.

Neutrality may be invoked such that it first and foremost serves the neutral state’s external security, and manifests as refusal to become involved in armed or political conflicts between other states. Indeed, Asian states are long-term participants in the non-aligned movement (NAM). Established during the Cold War, the NAM was formed by nations who were determined not to align with or against any major power bloc and to “create an independent path in world politics that would not result in member states becoming pawns in the struggles between the major powers.” In the wake of the war in the Ukraine and the rise of China, there have been renewed calls to reinvigorate the non-aligned movement.

In practical terms, the manifestations of this posture, while proffered on the basis of separation from the dynamics of international conflict, may actually influence them significantly. And for Australia, they may prove unfavorable (even detrimental) to its security designs. A new bloc of Asian or Global South states shifting the balance of power and creating a nuclear-free zone could upset strategic calculations regarding power projection in the region.

This approach is even more concerning when one considers the risk that Southeast Asian neutrality may offer belligerents unequal advantage, either incidentally or as a result of pressure. A state may proclaim its neutrality but be coerced toward tacit support of a particular power. The risks involved in this kind of arrangement are considerable, ranging from perfidy and impacting on intelligence operations and U.N. responses, to limiting access, and the use of countries as staging posts. For China, Southeast Asia offers a similar strategic value, but even a declaration of armed neutrality does not undermine its security. Rather, China is more likely to quietly exploit invocations of neutrality than ignore them.

Given the geography of a China-U.S. conflict (particularly one involving Australia on its southern flank), denial of access or overflight rights in Southeast Asia could seriously compromise the U.S. and Australian capacity to project, supply, and sustain operations in the first island chain. Several historical precedents demonstrate the potential impact; for example, when Turkey and Saudi Arabia closed their airspace to missiles during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Further, given that impactful projection does not necessarily limit assumed Australian Defense Force deployments to Australian territory, refusal at short notice could damage Australia’s ability to project power to a significantly greater degree than Chinese operations.

That is not to say that China would not also be damaged by a fairly implemented strict neutrality position. The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrated that, even if commercial shipping was not actively blocked, maritime insurers may well refuse to indemnify vessels, cutting off trade. The severity of such a threat is highlighted by the fact that by 2016 approximately 20 percent of global maritime trade (including 60 percent of Chinese trade) and over 70 percent of crude oil transited through the Straits of Malacca. For comparison, in the same year the Bosphorus, which is now impacted by the conflict in Ukraine, accounted for only 3 percent of global oil transits.

The notion of impactful projection presumes that if conflict were to occur, countries in the region will consent to Australia’s strategic designs. Policymakers in Australia are, again, content in their assumptions regarding the strategic intent of regional counterparts. Whatever the rhetoric, Australia’s big-ticket national security items continue to be driven by looking beyond, not within, the Indo-Pacific. There is little nuanced analysis of strategic calculus across the region, and certainly no discourse on the dynamics of neutrality. Even detailed consideration of the mechanics of acquiescence appears to be missing.

If countries in the region choose a path that ultimately thwarts Australian security designs, it may be, at least in part, self-inflicted. Perhaps Australia would do well to seek impactful engagement before seeking impactful projection.

GUEST AUTHOR

Marigold Black

Marigold Black is a researcher at RAND Australia

GUEST AUTHOR

Austin Wyatt

Austin Wyatt is an associate researcher at RAND Australia.

thediplomat.com · by Marigold Black · March 11, 2023

13. Air Force chief wants to take ‘wrecking ball’ to service’s bureaucracy

I would be happy with at least a ball peen hammer. (note sarcasm)

Excerpts:

What do you want to do to keep moving forward on the issues that have been a little trickier, such as bureaucracy and future force design?

Let me just talk about bureaucracy first. It’s the collaboration, it’s breaking down barriers. Those of us in senior positions, sometimes our young airmen are afraid to come talk to us because of our rank and position. But we’ve got to set an example, that we want to hear all the ideas. Ideas don’t have rank. And how we were able to break that down and how we’re able to collaborate — one thing that COVID has done for us is, we use Microsoft Teams and other collaboration platforms more so than we have in the past.

Now, it’s still uncomfortable for some people. But we’re able to do more and more of that to bring our airmen in so you can hear all those ideas. You don’t wait until you have a very nicely put together staff package.

On the force design, I think we’ve got the first steps there. The signing of the Air Force Future Operating Concept yesterday sets the foundation for work that Gen. Hinote and [his] team have already started. That kind of change is going to make people uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to have small success to have larger success. But I think we’ve got some momentum going in some of the things we are doing. And now, how do we tie all that together in that future force design? I think we have the right initial building blocks to get us on a good path.

Air Force chief wants to take ‘wrecking ball’ to service’s bureaucracy

Defense News · by Stephen Losey · March 9, 2023

AURORA, Colorado — Gen. CQ Brown took command of the Air Force in August 2020 with a mission: to reshape a service that had spent nearly two decades in uncontested counterinsurgency fights in the Middle East.

Now, Brown said, the Air Force needed to get ready for a future war against a major potential adversary such as China and wouldn’t be able to count on the same military dominance as in the last war.

Within weeks of becoming the Air Force’s 22nd chief of staff, Brown laid out his plan, titled “Accelerate Change or Lose,” which spelled out how the Air Force would adapt. His plan focused on four areas: empowering airmen, shrinking the Air Force’s unwieldy bureaucracy, preparing for global competition, and transitioning to a future force design.

When Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall became the service’s top civilian in 2021, his actions, including establishing a series of operational imperatives, boosted Brown’s efforts, Brown told Defense News in a March 7 interview at the Air and Space Forces Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium here.

“I started a fire — he put gas on it,” Brown said of Kendall.

In his keynote address at the conference earlier that day, Brown announced he had recently signed a new strategic document called the Future Operating Concept to continue pushing the Air Force to change. This document, prepared by deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote, details how the Air Force will “operate, fight and win” jointly with the other services and carry out its core functions, Brown said.

The Future Operating Concept lays out six different but overlapping fights, which Brown said the Air Force must be able to do at the same time: to compete with and deter adversaries, to hold air superiority, to get into the theater, to deny adversary objectives, to get airborne, and to sustain the fight.

Brown spoke with Defense News about the next steps for his Accelerate Change or Lose strategy. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Which of the four key areas of Accelerate Change or Lose have seen the most progress, and which need more work?

The two that I think have made the most progress are on our airmen and on competition. Because they’re intertwined. It’s the aspect of having our airmen better understand the threat and what we’re up against. And moving away from the Middle East mentality … to really have a broader perspective.

The other part on airmen is creating an environment so they can all reach their full potential. It’s the work we’ve done with diversity and inclusion, it’s the work we’ve done on smart talent management perspectives. So that [airmen] can have the ability to cross train much easier than we’ve done in the past.

Some of these may [appear] little, but they’re big. And the reason why I say they’re big is because it’s going to help with our retention. The last thing I’d hit on is my wife Sharene [Brown’s] focus on [the] Five & Thrive [initiative to improve] the key areas that impact our military families: education, childcare, housing, health care, and spouse employment. Because it all helps with retention.

The ones that have slowed down a little bit is the bureaucracy — I kind of knew that one coming in. The future force design and implementation, I’ve seen good progress there. Secretary Kendall has helped us move forward. I saw that [momentum] in the FY23 authorization and [appropriations] bill[s] … and I see the same thing for FY24.

What do you want to do to keep moving forward on the issues that have been a little trickier, such as bureaucracy and future force design?

Let me just talk about bureaucracy first. It’s the collaboration, it’s breaking down barriers. Those of us in senior positions, sometimes our young airmen are afraid to come talk to us because of our rank and position. But we’ve got to set an example, that we want to hear all the ideas. Ideas don’t have rank. And how we were able to break that down and how we’re able to collaborate — one thing that COVID has done for us is, we use Microsoft Teams and other collaboration platforms more so than we have in the past.

Now, it’s still uncomfortable for some people. But we’re able to do more and more of that to bring our airmen in so you can hear all those ideas. You don’t wait until you have a very nicely put together staff package.

On the force design, I think we’ve got the first steps there. The signing of the Air Force Future Operating Concept yesterday sets the foundation for work that Gen. Hinote and [his] team have already started. That kind of change is going to make people uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to have small success to have larger success. But I think we’ve got some momentum going in some of the things we are doing. And now, how do we tie all that together in that future force design? I think we have the right initial building blocks to get us on a good path.

You said you knew coming in that clearing out bureaucracy was going to be a bit of a bear. What’s been the most nagging roadblock to making the changes you feel are necessary?

Maybe I was a bit naïve when I came in and put bureaucracy on the list. I worked in DC last time as a colonel. I saw it, but I probably didn’t see it to the level [it was] because I was working more internal to the Air Force. That’s the reason why, in Accelerate Change or Lose, I put the word collaboration, because I knew I was going to have to work with Congress, [inside] the Air Force, with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], [and] with our industry partners.

We’ve had some progress here. Because of the collaboration, we’re able to break down some of the bureaucracy. But if I could actually take a big bulldozer to it, I really would, [take] a wrecking ball to some of these things.

We have often had policies and processes where collectively, we will sit and go, well, we can’t do that, because of a policy. And the challenge is we talk ourselves out of things. What I ask now is, OK, what office, what individual owns the policy and owns the approval process. And you figure it out, when you start really digging into it, we were probably slowing our own selves down because of our own misperceptions.

And then sometimes we’ve got to get the right person with the policy in the room to understand how they’re impeding progress, because that policy was made, five, 10, 15, 20 years ago, for a very specific purpose. And the facts and assumptions have changed. And we’ve got to actually address those policies and figure out and talk about how they impact not only the operational environment we execute in, but also the capabilities we require as an Air Force and as a military.

About Stephen Losey

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.

14. Deepfakes and Disinformation Pose a Growing Threat in Asia

Excerpts:

In Asia, China prohibits usage of deepfakes, which are deemed harmful to national security and society. New Chinese regulations require deepfakes to be clearly labelled as synthetically generated or edited, and the identity of individuals in the deepfake must be made known to the company. Similar attempts at regulation are also underway in places in the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Taiwan.

A strong focus on public education could also help. People tend to overestimate their ability to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic visual content, and are usually weak in guarding against visual deception. Existing media literacy and fact-checking initiatives can continue to play a role in raising public awareness against shallowfakes and deepfakes while raising the importance of visual literacy.

The public must be trained not only on media literacy skills, but on a comprehensive information literacy skillset, including and emphasizing visual literacy. That can create and enhance public awareness and understanding of deepfakes. Public engagement can help inoculate people to the potential harms of the emerging advancements of deepfake AI technology.

Deepfakes and Disinformation Pose a Growing Threat in Asia

The growing commercialization of deepfakes will bring new challenges to the Asia-Pacific’s information space.

By Dymples Leong

March 11, 2023

thediplomat.com · by Dymples Leong · March 11, 2023

Recent news on the use of computer-generated avatars by a pro-China influence campaign has once again aimed a spotlight at the usage of deepfakes. The influence campaign was first observed by intelligence company Graphika in late 2022. Videos of lifelike AI avatars, portraying news anchors on the fictional Wolf News outlet, promoted the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. The videos commented on topics such as gun violence in the United States and the importance of China-U.S. cooperation for the global economy’s recovery from COVID-19.

Previous investigations by Graphika and other researchers found the use of AI-generated fake faces and edited out-of-context videos aimed to mislead by fabricating an individual’s words or actions. What distinguished this from other previous AI-generated images or media was the involvement of a state-aligned information campaign to generate fake personas using deepfake technologies.

This case brings concerns about deepfakes to the forefront of public discussions, and raises serious questions: What is the impact of deepfakes and disinformation, and what is the significance of deepening commercialization in deepfake technology?

Deepfakes are generated using a specific form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning. Deep learning algorithms can swap faces of a person’s likeness in a video or an image with others. The creation of deepfakes rose to public prominence via face-swapping photos of celebrities online, with deepfake videos of Tom Cruise on TikTok in 2021 captivated the public through the hyper realistic persona of the actor.

Deepfakes are now ubiquitous on social media, with AI features and applications enabling users to generate avatars of themselves, or to create an entirely new persona. The addition of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to the mix enables the creation of novel unique faces not found in the algorithm’s learning data, and not based on existing persons. The popularity of such technologies has led to a boom in the development of apps and features offering AI avatars. Advances in AI technology have made it harder to distinguish between real and deepfake images, further blurring the grey line between fact and fiction.

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This prevalence has led to concerns about privacy erosion and the potential for abuse and exploitation. Generative AI technology has been used for the creation of deepfake pornography, which accounted for a whopping 96 percent of all deepfake videos online in 2019. Ordinary individuals have also been targeted by fake pornography campaigns. Services offering to alter images of women into nude photos have also risen. One such instance involved the generative AI app Lensa, which was criticized for allowing its system to create fully nude images from profile headshots of users. Any woman can be a victim of this synthetic stripping and have their “nude” images shared on multiple platforms online.

The use of deepfake technology in influence operations and disinformation campaigns is not new. Multiple instances of coordinated inauthentic behavior involving the use of deepfakes have been identified. In 2019, Facebook removed a coordinated inauthentic network of 900 pages, with the accounts managed mainly out of Vietnam. The network was linked to the Epoch Media Group, a far-right U.S.-based media grouping known to engage in misinformation tactics. Most accounts identified utilized fake profile photos generated by AI to create inauthentic accounts on Facebook, masquerading as Americans on Facebook groups. Fake profile photos of journalists and consultants – generated by AI technology – were used. These hyper realistic deepfakes were combined with false journalist identities to write articles for conservative publications online.

The potential impacts of deepfakes has raised alarm bells. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned in its March 2021 threat assessment report that the usage of synthetic content for cyber and foreign influence operations could be leveraged by malicious actors. The assessment report further stated that influence operations utilizing AI-generated synthetic profile images were of specific concern, potentially allowing operators to mask their identities behind deepfake-generated personas to spread disinformation online.

Deepfakes in Asia have already been used for political purposes. A notable instance of a deepfake for a political campaign was during the 2020 Legislative Assembly elections in India. Manipulated videos of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Manoj Tiwari were distributed across 5,700 WhatsApp groups in Delhi and the surrounding areas, reaching around 15 million people in India. AI-generated faces have been used in coordinated influence campaigns allegedly originating from Asia. One instance involved the deployment of a cluster of 14 inauthentic Twitter accounts utilizing AI-generated faces as profile pictures promoting Chinese 5G capabilities in Belgium. The usage of AI-generated faces removes the need for using pilfered profile pictures to disguise fake accounts, avoiding risk of detection by traditional investigative techniques.

In the past, pro-China influence campaigns had limited success. In the Wolf News example, the AI-generated avatars were of low quality, with the narration delivered by the anchors in a jerky manner. The English scripts were also filled with grammatical errors. The reach of the campaign was also minimal, as the campaign utilized fake persona accounts to amplify their reach online. Although the impact of the campaign was limited, such campaigns raise the issue of the increasing commercialization of deepfake services.

The rise of deepfakes has seen an increase in the number of companies generating quality-level advanced deepfakes. The services of such companies are predominantly used for entertainment and training purposes, for instance, creating customer and human resource videos. But the rise of commercial services to generate deepfake videos provides easily available resources for influence operations actors, be they state or non-state backed. This raises concerns about the moderation of deepfake technology services.

The commercial application of synthetic media will continue to be a growing trend due to the popularity of such applications on social media and the internet. The generation of high-quality deep fakes made for disinformation or political purposes could occur more frequently in the future. Such commercialized deepfakes could become key tools in the disinformation toolbox for propagandists worldwide, as countries with advanced AI capabilities and access to large data troves can gain advantages in information warfare.

There could also be an increase in companies specializing in deepfake generation for hire, which could provide clients (state-backed or not) wishing to mount disinformation campaigns with a whole suite of tools. Deepfakes could be layered into propaganda campaigns to improve the effectiveness. This could potentially result in a cottage industry of deepfake generation as a service.

The merger of GPT – a deep learning neural network language model trained on large amounts of text – with deepfakes raises further concerns as technological advances run further ahead of regulation. By combining multiple techniques, such tools can amplify the work of malign actors to produce even more convincing media artifacts for hostile intent, further destabilizing societal trust and credibility.

When asked about the pro-China videos created by the services offered by his company, the CEO of Synthesia emphasized the need for regulators to set more definitive rules on how AI tools could be used. The increase in commercialization of synthetic media apps and services, and a lack of clarity by regulators on the usage of AI tools enables disinformation to proliferate online. Regulators have attempted to set parameters and rules under which deepfakes should be regulated. The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act – dubbed as the world’s first AI law, which is likely to be passed in 2023 – requires creators to disclose deepfake content.

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In Asia, China prohibits usage of deepfakes, which are deemed harmful to national security and society. New Chinese regulations require deepfakes to be clearly labelled as synthetically generated or edited, and the identity of individuals in the deepfake must be made known to the company. Similar attempts at regulation are also underway in places in the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Taiwan.

A strong focus on public education could also help. People tend to overestimate their ability to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic visual content, and are usually weak in guarding against visual deception. Existing media literacy and fact-checking initiatives can continue to play a role in raising public awareness against shallowfakes and deepfakes while raising the importance of visual literacy.

The public must be trained not only on media literacy skills, but on a comprehensive information literacy skillset, including and emphasizing visual literacy. That can create and enhance public awareness and understanding of deepfakes. Public engagement can help inoculate people to the potential harms of the emerging advancements of deepfake AI technology.

GUEST AUTHOR

Dymples Leong

Dymples Leong is an associate research fellow with the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

thediplomat.com · by Dymples Leong · March 11, 2023

15. OPINION: Blessed Are the Peacemakers Who Define Their Terms (Ukraine)

Respect for and protection of sovereignty is the foundation of the rules based international order.

Conclusion:

Agreeing on a binding definition of sovereignty is a good place to start. Otherwise, what will all the other countries be talking be about and to what end?

OPINION: Blessed Are the Peacemakers Who Define Their Terms

The UN, China and Ukraine have peace points, not peace plans. But together they do identify step one towards a feasible peace plan for Ukraine: defining sovereignty.

By Lada Roslycky

March 11, 2023, 1:47 pm

https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/14143

China’s peace plan does not identify Russia as the aggressor. Indeed, it uses the aggressor’s preferred terminology by calling the war a “Ukraine crisis.”

Yet despite the questionable veracity of its good will, China’s peace points deserve attention. The Ukrainian and Chinese leaders are scheduling a meeting, most likely to discuss avenues to ending the genocidal war Russia is waging against Ukraine. Zelensky himself announced this in response to the publication of the so-called Chinese “Peace Plan.”

The President of Ukraine also has a version of a “Peace Plan.” It was presented to the G20 in November, 2022 and then to the G7 in December. On Feb. 23, 2023 the UN sweepingly passed the “Resolution on the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations underlying a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.” It calls for the ending of the war in Ukraine and demands Russia’s immediate withdrawal from the country.

In varying degrees, all three documents call for peace through the cessation of hostilities, resuming peace talks and the withdrawal of the Russian Federation’s military from the territory of Ukraine. China’s points were dismissed amid outright refusals to consider; most vociferously by Biden. Russia dismisses Ukraine’s plan in its entirety because Ukraine, justly, does not entertain Moscow’s belligerent usurpation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. The UN’s resolution is well phrased but basically impotent; a result of its continued refusal to implement the General Assembly Resolution that would allow for the circumvention of Russia’s powerful Security Council membership. These painful facts notwithstanding, the three documents do require learned attention.

Not all 12 points presented by China coincide with Ukraine’s 10 points, nor with the 11 points of the UNGA Resolution. For instance, China, in line with its own status of prime global polluter, does not mention environmental security. But, unlike the others, it does mention the cessation of unilateral sanctions and the promotion of post conflict reconstruction. Ukraine’s points skip the economic and reconstruction topic all together. However, they can be found within the Kyiv Security Compact penned by Andriy Yermak and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, respectively President Zelensky’s chief of staff and former General Secretary of NATO.

Who Can Pay for Putin’s War? Step Forward Vladimir

The West invariably plays by the rules while our enemies break them. It’s time to bend them, a little.

Apart from these differences, the three documents do share important commonalities that serve Ukraine as well as global interests. Should their peace points be properly prioritized, they could lead to the creation of a foundation for future peace plans and not only for the war ravaging Ukraine.

<p><ahref="https://www.kyivpost.com/storage/2023/03/08/f3053eef88e1f4add6065c325d41262a.pdf" />See the comparative chart of the three peace documents for Ukraine here</a></p>

From an international security relations perspective, the commonalities of Ukraine and China’s peace points and the General Assembly Resolution can be broken down into the following seven key categories:

1) State sovereignty

2) International law and justice

3) Nuclear security

4) Food security

5) Human security

6) Economic security

7) Energy security

8) Environmental security

In hybrid war, each of these categories is a chessboard. Together, they form a multidimensional chessboard upon which war is being conducted. While all seven categories are of utmost importance, one is strategically pivotal to the creation of a foundation for effective communications that will lead to peace talks aimed at a comprehensive, just and lasting peace. Namely, state sovereignty.

Step one: define sovereignty and territorial integrity

Cultural perceptions of sovereignty differ among states. China’s interpretation of sovereignty, in light of its perceived interests in India, Russia and Taiwan, also begs the question: what does “sovereignty” mean as presented within its Ukraine peace points? Ukraine’s allies have already displayed a certain disregard towards sovereignty in the Black Sea Region, leading to deleterious effects in Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transdniestria, and even Nagorno-Karabakh.

Before we move on with any serious discussions about a peace plan, all parties must agree upon the exact meaning of state sovereignty. With Ukraine’s aggressor denying the very existence of the Ukrainian nation, and captured nations within the Russian Federation wanting to break free from the Kremlin’s yoke, sovereignty must first be defined in a way that leaves no room for interpretation. This is no easy task.

With the wealth and power of top corporations far outweighing that of most UN members, the role of (state-owned) corporations must be revisited within the prism of defining state sovereignty. With the growing function of national-security related sanctions, public private partner partnerships and the design of social media algorithms that consciously disrupt international relations to make a profit, rights and obligations within the future global security structure can no longer be ignored. This is particularly true in light of the massive global (corporate) cooperation which will be needed for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

As for Ukraine and its future, a vision and common understanding of what a sovereign Ukraine is must be developed by vetted Ukrainians serving the interest of their nation-state and not corrupt schemes or foreign assets.

State sovereignty and territorial integrity are the keystones of our international order. Unfortunately, both have been rampantly abused by powerful states during the post-World War II period. That abuse and lack of accountability in the international arena are the main reasons Russia believes it will get away with the brutal expansion of its black matter empire through the elimination of the Ukrainian nation. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk once said, “Sovereignty is not given it is taken.” Centuries before him, St. Augustine asked, “In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?” International justice must prevail.

In December 2022, Zelensky urged the leaders of the G7 nations to support his idea for a global peace summit that would focus on the peace plan “as a whole or some specific points in particular.”

Agreeing on a binding definition of sovereignty is a good place to start. Otherwise, what will all the other countries be talking be about and to what end?

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

Lada Roslycky

Lada L Roslycky LLM, PhD is an international security and defense analyst who has lived and worked in Ukraine, Europe and North America. She is a Senior International Security Correspondent. Her website can be found at www.theblacktrident.com / www.linkedin.com/in/LadaBT

16. The United States' China-centered existential crisis – The China Project

Wow. Are we having a "moral panic" about the CCP?

I still hold to my thesis: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.

But this excerpt is really troubling.

Excerpt:

Kaiser: We’ll keep it to that. And what you’re worried about, what I’m worried about are these very McCarthy-like throwbacks to the 1950s, and props def Fareed Zakaria, I mean, he’s trying his best. He actually wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “to watch Tuesday’s hearing of the New House Select Committee on China was to be transported back to the 1950s.” And you made a reference to that. I mean, maybe he is… He’s not going to be our Edward R. Murrow, although what he said was brave. I mean, when are the Army-McCarthy hearings going to happen? I mean, who’s going to say, “Have you no decency, sir?”

Jude: Maybe a slightly different framing for that is the reason I always hesitate to use McCarthyism is, in the McCarthy era, there were actually Soviet spies at the highest levels of U.S. decision-making. So, McCarthy was a slandering drunk, but he was actually articulating, which we know with the collapse of Soviet Union in Venona papers, there were actually high-level spies in the U.S. government. So, I don’t think we should actually even frame this as McCarthyism because there are not, so far as anyone has ever put out there, high-level Chinese spies within the U.S. government. To me, this is more 1903 in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This strikes me as all the hallmarks of antisemitism with shadowy cabals that have racial implications, that are capable of sophisticated degrees of manipulation of all the levers of financial power.

That’s what struck me about the way that we’re talking about this is, with the Soviet Union, there was a clear moral vision that the Soviet Union articulated that when people were spying for the Soviet Union, it was often because they were fellow travelers. We don’t have an Averell Harriman or others that we know of that have gotten to the top levels of policymaking. There’s no sort of Cambridge here like we had in the UK. This is more the way that we talk about the antisemites talk about Jews. That’s what really troubled me about a lot of the rhetoric here. Because it’s, you’re out of the bounds of reason because you’re framing the Communist Party as sort of… Here’s an example that bothered me. When the protestors came into the hearing and General McMaster began speaking again, and I’ve got the exact comment here so I don’t say it in incorrectly.

Without knowing who these people were, he immediately said, “I think these eruptions are indicative of really the effect that the United Front Work Department has had. The United Front Work Department is both real and both problematic. It is also now taken on a life where it is, and this is where the anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism, xenophobia and violence comes in, you can’t prove you’re not a member of the United Front, right?

The United States' China-centered existential crisis – The China Project

This week on Sinica Jude Blanchett joins to talk about the House Select Committee on United States Competition with the Chinese Communist party, and how its focus on the CCP as an “existential threat” adds up to an embarrassing moral panic that distracts from the serious issues the US confronts when it comes to China.

Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast with Jude Blanchette.

thechinaproject.com · by Kaiser Kuo · March 9, 2023

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get, well, access. Access to, not only our great daily newsletter but to all of the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region, to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.

I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I hadn’t originally intended to do a separate show about the Congressional Select Committee, the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition in between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, to use its full official name, but after it televised its first hearing in prime time on Tuesday night, and after just seeing so little forceful pushback against the hyperbole and the alarmism, I’ve changed my mind. So, thankfully, my good friend Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, was not only able to make time, but willing to share his thoughts. Jude is, of course, familiar to anyone who’s listening to this show, as well as anyone who listens to his terrific podcast, Pekingology, on which he interviews up-and-coming China scholars. and some established ones as well, about their work. He makes it accessible. It’s a fantastic show on a really important set of topics. I think it’s important to make it accessible to people who are adjacent to, but not ensconced in the ivory tower. And I think that’s what you do. Right, Jude?

Jude Blanchette: I hope to. So, yeah, I appreciate the kind words, Kaiser.

Kaiser: So, check that show out if you’re not already listening to it. And Jude, man, thanks again for making time to join me on Sinica.

Jude: Well, thank you, Kaiser. I appreciate the time and look forward to the conversation.

Kaiser: Yeah. So, let me start with this. We’ve talked before about all this is starting to feel a little like 2002 in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. There’s that drum beat that I talked about with Mike Mazarr. Thank you actually for your introduction to him. But there is actually a much more recent year that this current climate reminds me of even more, and that’s 2020 when the Trump administration really pulled out all the stops and basically declared open season on China across all agencies and departments of the U.S. government. This time, though, it feels even maybe more serious but also less serious. That may be in part because this is happening under a presidential administration that is less unhinged than the former guy. But it does feel to me like in these few years, the middle ground has shifted the Overton window on China as the source of global evil and perfidy has somehow widened. Is it just a coincidence, or are all these things cresting right now, things that were set in motion earlier, or do you think something is changing profoundly?

Jude: Yeah, I don’t know if I can take door D, which is all of the above, because I think there’s a, as you say, there’s a confluence of events, and I certainly think things like Balloongate, COVID-19, the visit to Taiwan by Speaker Pelosi, you’ve just had an accumulation of events which have continued to strengthen a narrative about the relationship between U.S. and China as increasingly being Cold War-like, Cold War adjacent, or something of that ilk. And then I also think it’s the fact that a number of events such as the controversy over the NBA and Daryl Morey have made the China discussion really seep into democratic politics, small-d democratic politics, which has I think made this dynamic more complex, but also has put us on this path where we are now, where I think almost everyone at a national level seems to be framing this as a Cold War, or as Mike Gallagher said at the hearing the other day, “An existential crisis.”

Kaiser: Yeah. Let’s talk about his use of that phrase — existential. Is that just rhetoric, or do you think he honestly believes that the Chinese Communist Party is somehow a threat to the very continued existence of the United States?

Jude: Well, one of the challenges, whether he actually believes it or it’s rhetoric, it has an effect, right? To have the initial hearing of this much vaunted and influential select committee on China, start out with the chairman framing this as an existential struggle, and just to read the whole quote, he says, “This is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century, and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.” The stakes don’t get higher than that. Again, even if this is a cynical political ploy, or if he deeply believes it, I think this is a profoundly important debate to be having rather than just something which is asserted and everyone nods their head at, which seemed to be the case at the hearing the other night.

Kaiser: Yeah, I mean, that’s what really worries me. And when I talk about the center having shifted, people seem to accept this pretty extreme framing of it now. I can’t help but feel like our whole national psychology, in all its current manifestations, all the pathologies, are quite clearly on display with this. I mean, for sure, my sense with Balloongate, obviously, the whole balloon episode, the Select Committee, though, really kind of drove it home. I mean, honestly, my main emotion isn’t so much outrage or sadness as it is embarrassment — just like this deep abiding embarrassment. I see you… Yeah.

Jude: Yeah. Just to say, when I tuned into the hearing the other night, I have to say I had no real built-in expectations. If you look at, there’s many serious people on the committee. Again, it’s a bipartisan committee. You’ve got people like Ro Khanna, you’ve got Andy Kim, and I’ll even say, Mike Gallagher, sort of serious people with serious credentials. And there is indeed a very important set of challenges that confront us as we think about the bilateral relationship with China. So, I have no inherent problem with having a select committee focusing on how do we engage in a form of strategic competition that’s smart and re-downs to U.S. interests and strengthens the country. But what I saw was just an absolute and total embarrassment, where within about five minutes, I think I just looked at my wife, and we just both put our heads into our hands.

Because I came away with, if you were an alien and you tuned into this, you would think the United States is a pathetic, weak, scared nation, which is being beset by an omnicompetent, omnipresent enemy of just galactic proportions in terms of its capabilities. I think that was both, analytically, it’s such an untrue framing of the problem. It’s such a vast underestimation of the strength of the United States and such an overestimation of China. And I guess more importantly, and you said this in your introduction, this is a bilateral relationship and the challenges around it which demand utmost seriousness and nuance and comfort with complexity. And there was absolutely none of that in this. And so, even just diagnostically, if we continue to follow the playbook outlined at that committee, it will lead to, I think, tragedy and devastation and extraordinary amounts of waste. Even from a get-tough-on-China positioning, I just think this was an utter embarrassment.

Kaiser: Yeah. So, if that’s how it lands with the aliens, just imagine how it lands in Beijing. I mean, this does not exactly make us look like the mature, confident superpower that we believe ourselves to be in our more sober moments.

Jude: Yeah. I don’t want to make too much of this, but I could imagine a world where Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 looks at this and is thinking, “Damn right. I’ve got the United States, after decades of us being worried about infiltration and the soft power of the United States, and worried about its global influence.” For the ‘80s and the ‘90s, it was China and the Communist Party who were wary of the United States. “And I, Xi Jinping, I’ve now turned the tables.”

Kaiser: Yeah. I’ve heard you describe this as a moral panic, and that’s certainly what I would describe it as. There are all sorts of examples of moral panics in American history. I mean, we’ve had the, what was like satanic child abuse in the ‘80s, and the dirty lyrics and the backmasking in Led Zeppelin in-

Jude: Dungeons and Dragons. You remember that?

Kaiser: Dungeons… Yeah, absolutely.

Jude: That was the thing you were going after in the ‘80s.

Kaiser: Yeah, yeah. Comic books in the ‘50s. It’s just, yeah, it’s crazy. Jude, what’s a moral panic, and, and why would you classify the current American reaction to China as one? And maybe one more question, I mean, what do you think is the best way to understand the kind of psychology that underlies this particular moral panic?

Jude: I would consider this a moral panic in the sense that is the way that we’re framing the problem and the solutions we’re proposing are wildly disproportionate to the actual existing harm or challenge. The reason I think this is different than the Dungeons and Dragons moral panic is I don’t think we could say that there is no challenges presented by the Communist Party of China. To me at least, and not to get into debate with you, but I think, to me, it’s clearly true that there are extraordinary challenges that the United States is confronted with, and there are elements, and, and very important ones, where I think we need to be thinking about how do we confront, compete with the Xi administration. That’s just undoubtedly true.

Kaiser: No, I couldn’t agree more.

Jude: But it is when you begin hyperventilating and framing the problem, not as a serious challenge to U.S. national competitiveness, U.S. power and influence, but as an existential threat to the entirety of the 21st century, and every single value that we hold, now the delta between the actual problem and the way you’re framing it is such that you will begin proposing solutions wildly disproportionate to the problem, where really, if you’re framing this as an existential problem, then all bets are off, right? If you’re saying this is actually live or die for the United States, well, then things like the rule of law, democratic process suddenly need to go out the window, because if we don’t deal with this menace, then the entire country comes collapsing down.

And so, like we’ve seen in previous moral panics where you see witch hunts, you see innocent people slandered, you see the United States whip itself into a frenzy, but most importantly, or as importantly, come up with solutions that don’t actually solve the problem because you’re going after phantoms, that’s what we’re positioning ourselves for here. This is a, as I said previously, I’ll probably say it eight more times, these are profoundly serious challenges we’re confronted with as we think about how do we compete with China? Where are there areas of Chinese power that we feel like we need to push back against? Those are really complex challenges that will require all six cylinders firing. But so long as we’re freaking out about Chinese purchases of agricultural land and we’re thinking about barring all Chinese citizens from being able to purchase land in the United States, that is a moral panic.

Kaiser: Yeah. So, a lot of people frame this in terms of American domestic politics, and there are a couple of ways in which to do this. There was this Washington Post editorial board op-ed piece that said the select committee was off to a promising start. And it’s starting to concern me how this uncritical view is so often just sort of all about the appeal of bipartisanship. That’s how they start, and that’s how so many people do. I mean, are we just chasing the willow wisp of bipartisanship? Can China lead to something substantively bipartisan? Or is the GOP just kind of leading the Democratic Party down the path toward this kind of unfixable and placably hostile relationship with China?

Jude: The comment about bipartisanship is, to me, a sad reflection of just how broken we think our system is, where we’re looking for bipartisanship qua bipartisanship. The recipe is bipartisanship plus serious issue plus finding practical solution to that issue. Looking at the committee, you’re right. What we’re doing is we’re… These are hosannas for bipartisanship. Missing is the next step, though, which is bipartisanship for moral panic, I want nothing to do with, and is a sad indictment on our system. The other thing I should say in fairness, though, is I think there were a few members on the committee who did try to raise some of the more important issues here. I think Andy Kim from New Jersey deserves some plaudits here because with his time and questioning, he did try to, I must admit, make a bit of a political statement by tying it to January 6th.

Although my feelings about January 6th are the same as his. But his point he was making is national unity and domestic resilience and strength are the foundation of any possible policy we would want towards China. So, what do the witnesses think of that? And I think that was a through line with a few of the Democratic members, Krishnamoorthi, who’s the ranking member in the Democrat side, his opening statement made that same point. If I can just quickly reference it, he said, “There’s three metrics by which the success of this committee would be judged. Are we protecting American values, our interests and interests? Are we as the committee finding ways to up our game in terms of workforce improvement, weaknesses in the U.S. economy supply chains, and are we avoiding anti-Chinese or anti-Asian stereotyping?”

So, he led off well, but then I just think the rest of the committee, and most of the members violated all three of those rules by either ignoring them, or, again, as we said, when you frame the Communist Party as this shadowy cabal that is everywhere and nowhere at once, that’s underneath your bed, and that is capable of threatening the very foundations of the United States, you’ve got to imagine that anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism is coming next.

Kaiser: Yeah. I mean, that’s not even in question for me, but let’s zero in on this use of the Communist Party, the name of the select committee itself is sort of a strange sort of asymmetry. The competition is said to be between the United States, a country, and the Chinese Communist Party. Does it strike you as odd that these two actors in competition are not equivalents? You have a Party, on the one hand, and a whole nation on the other. What is that supposed to be about and what is it actually doing?

Jude: I think two things. Here’s what I think, here’s what they would say, which is we’re trying to make it very clear that our beef is not with the Chinese people or the People’s Republic of China. It’s with the ruling Communist Party. That’s what they would say they’re doing. And the reason they would say they’re doing that is precisely so that we’re not broad-brushing the Chinese people as malign actors. That’s their theory of the case. I think the other element that they know is it’s we’re still living in the 1950s and in a Cold War view of the world. And so, anytime you mention communism, that’s going to help clarify the challenge for the American people and simplify it for them. So, the more you say Communist Party, Communist Party, it will trigger all of our muscle memory of the Cold War.

And that’ll help facilitate a speedy conversation that this is a strategic rivalry. That’s what I think they’re doing. I think they’re too clever by half because I just don’t think it works on any level. First of all, imagine that Xi Jinping gave a menacing snarling speech talking about an existential struggle with the United States, and then said, “Don’t worry, Americans. I’m not coming for you. I’m just coming for all of your government.” I’m not sure that would put us at ease that much, right?

Kaiser: No, no, no.

Jude: As a diagnostic point, I’m not sure people on the committee realize just how embedded the Communist Party is in China. It’s 95 million people. It’s roughly one out of every 14 people will be a Communist Party member. And guess what? They all have parents, they’ve got cousins, they’ve got siblings. So, the amount of people who are directly related, I don’t have the data, but I think we could just extrapolate, we’re thinking about something like a quarter of the country would probably be a direct relative of a Communist Party member.

Kaiser: Not so many siblings, Jude, right?

Jude: Not so. Well, nowadays, Kaiser, nowadays, and if you’ve lived in China, you also know a lot of Communist Party members, and virtually none of them are part of the apparatus of the Party-state system, right? Of the 95 million, again, I’d have to look up the data, but I think it’s something like 10 to 14 million are formally a part of what we’d call the Party-state system. The rest of them are hairdressers. I mean, I used to work at a very small firm in Washing–, or excuse me, in Beijing.

Kaiser: That’s a lot of hairdressers.

Jude: Well, they’re farmers. They work at white-collar jobs. These are not people who are involved in labor camps in Xinjiang. They’re not devising ways to invade Taiwan. I think there was just a… In thinking you’re saying, “Oh, it’s just the Communist Party,” you’re still broad-brushing an extraordinarily large part of the Chinese population, which has nothing to do with the problems that you’ve outlined, you’re frustrated about.

Kaiser: The other domestic piece of this is that you’ll hear Biden’s tough-on-China posture is really about protecting his right flank, his vulnerable right flank, which is susceptible to the allegation that he’s soft on China. I wonder if that’s really on their minds at all, and the Democrats who are participating in this, or if they too have just accepted this idea that China is our great adversary.

Jude: I mean, without wanting to psychoanalyze anyone, and I don’t want to make a partisan comment, I think you did see threads of what the Democratic position is in contradistinction to Republicans from some of the comments, which is investments in domestic resiliency capabilities innovation. I didn’t hear really any of that from the Republican side, and I heard that from several of the Democratic members. And indeed, I think, if we’re thinking about the administration’s policy, when they hold up their achievements, it’s the CHIPS Act, it’s closer relations with partners and allies. There are things to critique here, but I would say I do think the administration’s U.S.-China policy is very different from what you would see if you saw Republicans in office, and is much more focused on domestic innovation investments and strengthening allies and partnerships.

I’m not sure I entirely see they’re all the same. That being said, it does feel to me, in Congress at least, that it’s Democrats following Republicans to the right on the China issue. And there was a good political article the other day on why haven’t Democrats found their voice on China? That I thought was…

Kaiser: Right. I saw that.

Jude: I thought it put its finger on a few points of there’s not enough areas where the Democrats have clearly demarcated how they have a distinct approach to China that yes, recognizes the threats or challenges that Beijing poses to the United States and the interests of us and our allies, but also is a uniquely democratic spin on what we do about it that is combining in a more coherent and coherently articulated manner; domestic investments, what we do about partnerships and alliances. And what was missing from all of the select committee’s discussion the other day was, if you want to have global influence, you need to solve global challenges, right?

And when you talk to third countries, if you talk to countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Latin America, Africa, what they’re looking, looking for, for U.S. leadership is we have practical functional challenges around economic development, around climate change, right? Around public health that we’re crying out for global solutions to, and there’s very few powers in a position to do that. That was more or less absent from the discussion. I don’t know how you could have a discussion on competing with China in a global arena where you’re not articulating a strong strategy about leading on solutions to shared global challenges. Again, that’s one I would imagine Democrats in Congress could do a better job of owning, because I think that will be more organic to their own view of what government can do than to many of the Republicans. But so far, you’ve heard some platitudes about that, but if we’re going by the committee and what we heard from some of the Democrats, it wasn’t as present and center as I would hope it could be.

Kaiser: Sure. I mean, just so that we don’t paint too rosy a picture of the Democratic policy or the Biden administration’s policy toward China, there is an awful lot of this sort of Tonya Harding to China’s Nancy Kerrigan as well. There’s a lot of the kneecapping of-

Jude: Trying to figure out how that analogy plays out. Who’s…

Kaiser: Well, the U.S. is Tonya Harding here, and we’re kneecapping…

Jude: Well, this is a different discussion because I think there’s a lot of things-

Kaiser: I’m talking about October 7th, and I’m talking about just this sort of using these alliances and partnerships to help in this, I mean, much in the same way that Tonya Harding hired thugs to

Jude: Well, not to distract the conversation, I guess there’s probably areas of that I would agree with what the administration is doing and areas where they’re not. But then again, that to me is in the ballpark realm of serious discussion about what do you do about serious challenges? That I think the administration is having more of those. I think where I find much more problematic right now is what we’re seeing on the Hill and by the committee.

Kaiser: We’ll keep it to that. And what you’re worried about, what I’m worried about are these very McCarthy-like throwbacks to the 1950s, and props def Fareed Zakaria, I mean, he’s trying his best. He actually wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “to watch Tuesday’s hearing of the New House Select Committee on China was to be transported back to the 1950s.” And you made a reference to that. I mean, maybe he is… He’s not going to be our Edward R. Murrow, although what he said was brave. I mean, when are the Army-McCarthy hearings going to happen? I mean, who’s going to say, “Have you no decency, sir?”

Jude: Maybe a slightly different framing for that is the reason I always hesitate to use McCarthyism is, in the McCarthy era, there were actually Soviet spies at the highest levels of U.S. decision-making. So, McCarthy was a slandering drunk, but he was actually articulating, which we know with the collapse of Soviet Union in Venona papers, there were actually high-level spies in the U.S. government. So, I don’t think we should actually even frame this as McCarthyism because there are not, so far as anyone has ever put out there, high-level Chinese spies within the U.S. government. To me, this is more 1903 in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This strikes me as all the hallmarks of antisemitism with shadowy cabals that have racial implications, that are capable of sophisticated degrees of manipulation of all the levers of financial power.

That’s what struck me about the way that we’re talking about this is, with the Soviet Union, there was a clear moral vision that the Soviet Union articulated that when people were spying for the Soviet Union, it was often because they were fellow travelers. We don’t have an Averell Harriman or others that we know of that have gotten to the top levels of policymaking. There’s no sort of Cambridge here like we had in the UK. This is more the way that we talk about the antisemites talk about Jews. That’s what really troubled me about a lot of the rhetoric here. Because it’s, you’re out of the bounds of reason because you’re framing the Communist Party as sort of… Here’s an example that bothered me. When the protestors came into the hearing and General McMaster began speaking again, and I’ve got the exact comment here so I don’t say it in incorrectly.

Without knowing who these people were, he immediately said, “I think these eruptions are indicative of really the effect that the United Front Work Department has had. The United Front Work Department is both real and both problematic. It is also now taken on a life where it is, and this is where the anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism, xenophobia and violence comes in, you can’t prove you’re not a member of the United Front, right?

Kaiser: Right.

Jude: And we’re seeing what with Dominic Ng right now.

Kaiser: And Judy Chu.

Jude: And Judy Chu, where part of this is the challenge of, and again, I’m not… I know Dominic M. from UC San Diego days. I have no knowledge one way or the other, but extraordinary accusations require clear, extraordinary proof. And if you read the letter that the members the Republicans gave to FBI director Wray, calling for an investigation of Dominic. There’s not extraordinary clear evidence there. It’s innuendo. And I think precisely because the United Front is a problem, and precisely because we have a propensity and clear examples of rising anti-Asian racism and xenophobia, we need to be very careful and clear about how we talk about things like the United Front. And before we ever make an accusation, there needs to be very, very clear, serious proof. Again, that’s why the McCarthyism doesn’t fit for me as much as sort of all the hallmarks of antisemitism.

Kaiser: Right. That makes sense. I’m still going to go on calling it McCarthyism because it just really does just feel like it an awful lot to me, and I am holding out for those Army-McCarthy hearings. You talk about…

Jude: Well, the Dreyfuss affair. We’ve got… This is more-

Kaiser: Sure. It’s just a little more obscure. It’s hard for me to…

Jude: Okay, fair enough.

Kaiser: I mean, people don’t remember their European history classes. I mean, don’t remember-

Jude: Give the masses credit, Kaiser, you snob.

Kaiser: Look, you talk about the need for more seriousness, and I think that part of the problem, part of the root of the problem that I would identify is that for so many Americans, China just simply isn’t real. I mean, it’s just something of the American imaginary, whether Americans impute good fanciful qualities or bad ones, it’s just this fantastic realm. It’s about big numbers, whether those big numbers are addressable markets or the teaming hordes of people taking our jobs, or the miles of high-speed rail. It’s whatever. I mean, what I worry about the way things are going is that with less and less direct connection to China, I mean, look, we’re going to have as much feel for China, for the reality of China as we do right now for Iran. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, this is something that I worry about constantly and I have fretted about for the last three years.

Jude: Yeah. I think, as you say, one of the abstracting China or the “CCP,” in many ways leads to a dehumanization of the people who will suffer the downstream consequences of this on either side, by the way, both in the United States and… If this is a new Cold War, you remember the amount of violence that occurred in proxy wars that led to the death and destruction of millions. So, the Cold War is not a great playbook to rerun. So, I agree, and I think one of the things that should be centered in this discussion is when we’re thinking about China, thinking about the individuality and the dignity of the 1.4 billion people who live there, who are thinking about how do they provide a better life for their kids? And who have as every much of right, as every American does, to prosperity, to freedom, to security. And so, that doesn’t mean kumbaya.

It doesn’t mean hard choices don’t need to be made. And we don’t, nor should we run foreign policy off of the idea that we can’t and never can inflict suffering. That’s one of the tragic elements of international politics. So, I’m not saying hold hands and let’s Woodstock. But I do think it’s imperative that those of us who are out in the public discussion constantly remind people about the ethical dimensions of quote unquote great power competition. And that, look, again, going back to the October 7th export controls, and I don’t want to make it about that, I think there are choices like that, that sometimes will be hard to make; that are tough. But it’s also important to remember that keeping China a generation behind on technology has functional impacts on the livelihoods of Chinese people.

It means, at the margin, your access to advanced healthcare, medical technology will be stunted. All of the downstream effects of technology, which are wonderful, and oftentimes amazing, except in the case of ChatGPT, but can often be wonderful for improving livelihoods. If you read Scott Rozelle’s work about the challenges that China’s facing in rural areas with human capital development, there are things technology can do to improve nutrition, education. So, when we say deny access to advanced semiconductors, I know what we’re talking about is, because we’re worried that those semiconductors go into missiles which will be targeted at Americans. I realize those are hard choices you sometimes need to make, but I think it’s also important that we just make sure our moral aperture is always open to the full effect of some of these choices and what they mean on people who have absolutely nothing to do with labor camps in Xinjiang or invasions of Taiwan.

Kaiser: Well said. Well said. Xinjiang, Taiwan, you mentioned COVID, obviously that was a major factor — the Pelosi visit, all these things that we talked about earlier that seemed to be either converging or we were constantly reminding ourselves of, to whip us into this frenzy. One of the things that seems to have emerged recently, of course, is China’s position in the Ukraine war. What do you think of this recent American strategy of publicizing intelligence or publicizing at least the claim to possess intelligence to try to warn Beijing away from certain behaviors in two cases now? I mean, potentially providing war material to Russia ahead of the meeting that was supposed to take place in, or it did end up taking place in Rome. There was one leak, and then of course, just ahead of Munich, there was this other leak. It wasn’t a leak; it was a deliberate statement.

Jude: I mean, I listened to the great podcast you just did the other day on this. I have a pretty cynical view of Beijing’s relations with Moscow, or insofar as I find that… I actually think there’s a lot more there, there in Beijing’s support and relationship for Moscow than many of us want to admit. I think I wrote in a Washington Post piece about a year ago that I actually think the worse the war got, or the more prolonged it was, the more Beijing would consider it the margin ways to try to support the resolution of the war on Moscow’s terms. I think, by or beware, we’ve heard these leaks before from the administration a year ago that did not pan out. And you could see an element to where just “publicly warning” is a way to position China’s relations with Europe or impose a cost on China without doing it, without… because there’s not much, China’s in a bit of a tricky position there.

Once you’ve been accused of something, it’s hard to sort of walk back the accusation. That being said, I could see areas where China, in its own bounded way, that is trying to support Russia, while doing so below a threshold, would consider things like provision of ammunition, for example, which is very hard to trace, which you could move through third countries, and would be within the bounds of China sort of having some plausible deniability, but trying to tip the war in the favor of Putin. I think the elemental math for me on China’s relationship with Russia is the Putin and Xi relationship has gotten stronger than many could have expected. They’ve met 39 times now, vastly more than any other leadings with a foreign leader. And start from a very basic mathematics of we have a 2,500-mile-long border.

As the Chinese say in their discourse, we now, because of our relationship, can be looking back to back out at the strategic landscape. We don’t have to think about our border. And we just translated a piece for our CSIS translation project by Feng Yujun, who’s at Fudan University and one of the leading Chinese analysts of Russia. And his conclusion was, over the last year, that Chinese-Russian relations remained incredibly strong. Indeed he called it one of the China’s diplomatic “bright spots.” I think you could make too much of this and say that this is a new axis of evil. I’m not saying that at all. It’s a complicated relationship. There are deep divisions and fault lines. I don’t think China wants the war. I don’t think China wants to be dragged down by Russia.

But as we’ve seen with North Korea, China should, in its own interest, be a much better partner on North Korean issues, but its view is regime change would be the worst thing ever. And so, I think we should bound our expectations for how much China will help us. And we saw that with its position paper on Ukraine last Friday. I mean, it was largely a recycling of its traditional talking points there. And you wouldn’t know from reading it that Russia had invaded Ukraine. So, I’ll stop my rant there, but I could totally foresee that in limited ways China would consider a low-level ways that it could support Russian battlefield. The final, final comment, I think some of the warning may have been, not necessarily that Beijing is orchestrating this itself, but as you know, Beijing doesn’t always know what its companies are doing.

This is why I’m always skeptical of the fact that Xi Jinping is in the mothership, turning the dial on every Chinese firm, and moving it around a map. One of Chinese challenges is Beijing just often doesn’t know what companies are doing in profit-maximizing ways out in the world. So, you can imagine some defense contractor that is doing things with the Russians that Beijing doesn’t know about.

Kaiser: I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but when it comes to Russia’s antics, I do make some exceptions. And I can imagine them looking at the U.S. and China a married couple who are very much on the rocks, but still maybe like living together in the same house. So, absolutely, the Russians hate the U.S., they want to hasten the breakup, right? So, what does it want to do? It’s going to leave China a note where America will find it. It says, “Hey, last night was wonderful, can’t wait to see you again. Have you thought about what I asked you about maybe going away together?” I mean, and it leaves these notes, like where I said, where the U.S. is going to find them. I mean, if I can come up with that, surely some devious FSB officer can come up with that. I mean, I seriously think that it’s entirely possible that this was intel that came via Russia deliberately. It forces China into a difficult position, right?

Jude: Yes. We all have a different view of either what the conspiracy is or what Occam’s razor is. Occam’s razor for me is, I’m sure we probably picking this intelligence up on the Russian side, but that’s because we have better access enabled to hear, and we might be hearing Russian companies or cutouts in discussions with Chinese corporate actors talking about this. And so, I just don’t dismiss this as either a PSYOP by the Russians or just bluster by the administration. I can completely see this occurring within the bounds of what I know and think about sort of Chinese calculations and strategic calculations. And the thing is, look, if Xi Jinping is rational, which he is, he’s hearing the discourse in the United States, and his view is, “Yeah, I don’t want to call it a Cold War, because in the actual Cold War, the Soviet Union lost. But yeah, I’m thinking of this as some sort of rivalry because the United States is telling me it is, and that’s my view of the world.” And in that world, Russia, it’s not the best partner in the world, but like we saw with Belarus, like, China’s Russia relationship with Belarus is stronger than I think it should be, given that the war is ongoing.

And Belarus is one of Moscow’s greatest supporters. And yet Xi Jinping chose to meet with Lukashenko, just the other day, basically on the anniversary of the war. So, they’re sending us signals. And Wáng Yì 王毅 was in Moscow meeting with Lavrov, and he met with Putin as well, right? Basically on the anniversary of the war. And what’s so confounding to me is if you want to devise a symbolic trip to create tensions with the Europeans, go to Moscow on the one-year anniversary and meet with Putin.

Kaiser: Right. It hardly supports the theory that China is now launching some sort of charm offensive to try to prise the Europeans away and grant them genuine strategic-

Jude: I think they’re trying to do both. I think what Beijing misses is-

Kaiser: Well, they’re not doing a very good job then.

Jude: No. I think Beijing oftentimes has two conflicting objectives that it doesn’t always understand the trade-off between them. And I think this has been the case with the war in Ukraine. What does Evan call it? The Beijing straddle or something like that. I’m not sure it’s quite a straddle, because one side has sunk, and that is its relationship with Europe. Its foot is in the mud on that part, deeper than it was more than a year ago, but I’m not sure Beijing understands how costly, or how much its efforts, for example, just on the timing, to meet with Belarus and to meet with… and to send Wang Yi to Moscow on the one-year anniversary, how that’s going to land in European capitals. Go two weeks later.

Kaiser: Jude, I’m not sure though that these things aren’t of a piece. I see the warnings about the publication of the intelligence that we supposedly have about China pondering providing war material to Russia, and the energy department coming out, leaking this famously low confidence estimation on the origins of COVID as being sort of related. This is part, maybe I’m being paranoid here, but the same kind of, it’s open season on China thing. And then it was not surprising to me that Christopher Wray came out and talked about the FBI. I mean, he’s probably still smarting from the whole China initiative debacle and hasn’t really backed off from the whole of society threat thing. Yeah, it feels-

Jude: I would disagree insofar as our-

Kaiser: We’re not that coordinated.

Jude: Our government isn’t coordinated that much, just to be honest. And these are separate tracks that these are operating off of.

Kaiser: But there’s signaling still. There’s sort of this, what you declare open season and you don’t need to coordinate, right?

Jude: Well, I don’t want to end the podcast on a sour note, Kaiser. I guess I do not see this administration as an open-season administration. You can disagree with their choices. You could think the rhetoric is at a 12, when it should be at an eight, and we could have that discussion, but I just think this is substantively and qualitatively different than the end of the Trump administration where I completely agree that it was open season. I think in Congress, looking at the select committee, it’s open season. I do not think the administration, State Department, NSC, DoD, again, I interact with these folks a lot. I think they’re wrestling through hard challenges. We may come out on different places, but I think they’re genuinely trying to wrestle with hard challenges.

I agree with you. To me, the issue wasn’t the Department of Energy coming out with this conclusion. It was the reporting on it, which missed the key point, which is low confidence. And also the other headline was not all other ICE entities agree, right?

Kaiser: In fact, four of them simply don’t.

Jude: The headline should be U.S. government not unanimous on origins of COVID. That’s what the headline is.

Kaiser: It should be. Right.

Jude: And those who have come out with a conclusion like Department of Energy said low confidence. So, part of this is just… Some of what’s occurring is just enters into a media ecosystem that I think strips out some of the nuance, which is critical to understanding the reality.

Kaiser: Yeah. Well, don’t worry, we’re far from ending. And one area where we certainly do agree is look, we’ve both lamented the way that the sort of simplistic Manichean messaging that we hear from the Josh Hawleys or from the Mike Gallaghers is just a whole lot easier of a sell than what the messy, heavily context-dependent, caveat laden version that people, like us in camp reasonable, are trying to persuade people of. What’s your idea about how we can be more effective?

Okay. Here’s one thing that I wonder of the efficacy of this because one of the things that we’ve taken to doing is doing that whole obligatory recitation of the whole litany of Chinese perfidy. We do that almost like reflexively now. And lots of people who are our friends have told me privately, they feel like they need to take a shower afterward. They feel like, God, I mean, that wasn’t what I wanted to say, but we feel like we need to, before the thing that we do want to say is taken seriously. But I worry that we are conceding too much, actually undermining everything that we say afterward. How do you feel about that as an approach?

Jude: I guess I don’t have the same initial reaction on the first part of that. I don’t see inherently anything wrong about clarifying areas of Chinese behavior we see problematic. I guess I just think that gets you to the two-yard line. I think we’re beyond that in the conversation. I think that’s all well socialized. I think the debate is what do serious people want to do about it? One thing I would recommend is Mike Mazarr, who we talked about earlier at Rand, came out with a really, I think, impactful report on national competitiveness that looked at all the hallmarks and elements. He did sort of historical case studies at who wins these sort of strategic competitions. And of course, as you and I would probably imagine, the systems that win it are resilient, are dynamic, are liberal, are open.

Kaiser: Sure.

Jude: And so part of this is, I think, getting a good story out there that is simple to understand, and I think we’ve talked more about the importance of strategic narrative insofar as complicated stories don’t sell. I don’t mean that as a… It is hard to capture attention when so much is going on. And I think a existential struggle narrative is easier to grasp than the inverse of it, which is, well, it’s complicated, right? I mean, I think about Mike’s work as being actually a really good blueprint of focusing on what are the pillars of dynamism and resiliency for liberal systems that make us infinitely superior to authoritarian systems, both in terms of brittleness innovation? And really sort of doubling down on those. And that was, if you look at George Kennan’s Long Telegram, I mean, that was basically the last three paragraphs of it was focusing on domestic resiliency, making sure that as you compete against rival systems, you don’t simply mimic or beat them.

Kaiser: Exactly. So, this is the point that I’ve been trying to push and that I’ve always thought was a good and simple one in response to, for example, all this worrying that we have about the United Front Work Department hiding under our beds and trying to infiltrate us. Our strength is we’re supposed to be an open society, and that confers on us a kind of immunity to this. It’s sort of an immune system, if not full immunity at least. By sacrificing that, doing things like banning TikTok, how are we then any better? It’s like this loss of confidence that, just to bring us back to the beginning of our conversation about the select committee, what I see on display is we’re just sort of waving our lack of confidence in everyone’s face. I mean, it’s just like-

Jude: Prima facie, in of itself, my definition of camp reasonable is not someone who agrees with me, but it’s someone who can sit down and have a reasoned conversation, shows their math, can think about prioritization and think about scale. And that’s, to me, camp reasonable. It’s not you’re as hawkish or as dovish a as I am. Take an example, like on TikTok, I don’t actually have a pre-packaged answer on it. I just find… I don’t know. I’m open to a world in which we decide that it’s a problem. To me, it’s just, as I think about the immediate challenges the United States Front faces, like Confucius Institute issue, I was always thinking that was number 8,281 on my list of things to get to. And more troubling for me than the TikTok question is this one about land ownership by Chinese citizens. Because that to me is so deeply…

Kaiser: Un-American.

Jude: Oh, so deeply un-American. And also, by the way, just diagnostically, if China wants to spy on U.S… damage U.S. critical infrastructure or spy on military installations, buying a piece of property next to them is probably not the way you’re going to do it, right? There are probably simpler ways. And again, I looked up the data…

Kaiser: Balloons, Jude. Balloons.

Jude: I looked up the data on this today. So, Department of Agriculture, in its most recent report on foreign ownership of U.S. land, says that less than 1% of foreign held land is held by China. And foreign countries only account for 1.8% of U.S. land. So, China owns 1% of 1.8% of the land in the United… Chinese citizens or Chinese firms, right? So, talk about a moral panic. There’s not a problem of scale, right? If you had a problem with scale, it would be Canada we would be worried about. But just Occam’s razor, if you are the Ministry of State Security and you want to get access to intelligence on a U.S. military base, what would be the way you would do it? Register a purchase by a Chinese national in an adjacent piece of property, and then what? Like launch your balloon from there? Or would you try and infiltrate the base through a human asset, which is a lot cheaper? So, that to me is both un-American, this blanket ban, right? But also just as ineffectual, right? It is a moral panic, insofar it is vastly-

Kaiser: The wrong response.

Jude: It’s both immoral and it’s the wrong response. So, that bothers me more than the TikTok one, because the TikTok one is sort of a technical issue that not all of us have a handle on. This, the land purchase, is just prima facie, I think un-American.

Kaiser: Yeah. So, as you say, as you’ve been quick to point out, China does present real challenges to the United States. You’re not somebody who takes the sort of maximalist version that we cannot except any tweaks to the American-led global order. Anything that we change is revisionism and is totally unacceptable. American power and primacy has to be preserved at all costs in the world. So what then, for you, are the priority issues? What should we really be taking more seriously?

Jude: Number one I think is focusing on domestic resilience, and not in a kind of yada, yada, yada, or make it a socialist grab bag, but actually thinking about the foundations of, of resiliency, thinking about the health of the body politic. That doesn’t have to come at the expense of other objectives, which I’ll mention a moment out in the global arena. But for me, just as a citizen, first and foremost, it’s about the health of the republic and a place… making sure that our economy is resilient, thinking about upgrading and upskilling workforces to compete in these technologies of the 21st century. Again, Ryan Hass and I at Brookings have been doing a project on the role of human capital in U.S.-China…

Kaiser: Immigration.

Jude: Yeah. Immigration. Again, I think you can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I don’t see much point in focusing all our attention on stopping invasions in Taiwan if we’re not giving even more attention to the resiliency and health of the body politic here. Number two is I am not a relativist about what I want the orientation of the international order to look like. I want it to be tolerant, open, and liberal, but I don’t think that always means that the United States has to be the hegemon. And I think indeed, one of the ways that we should be thinking about international order is power is shifting, not because necessarily China is rising, but other countries are rising — Southeast Asia, right? Like all good quarterbacks throw the ball to the receiver, I think we are moving to a multipolar world, and I think we should embrace that shift, and do what we can to build democratic resiliency and participants and stakeholders in the liberal order rather than sort of planting our flag in 1995 and doing everything we can to sort of fix the world in a place where the U.S. leadership is valuable because of U.S. leadership.

I’m comfortable in a world where Sweden is the global leader, so long as we’re all moving towards a goal of a maximally participatory international order that is liberal open and is oriented towards solving functional, practical challenges that we as a globe face in the 21st century. So, that’s where, for the time being, I would like to see the United States playing a more active role in the international order in multilateral institutions. I’m happy to have China participate in those, but I’m also happy to have us push back when we feel like China is participating in illiberal authoritarian ways. If China wants to be more of an AIIB player in the international order, bring it on, right? I welcome it. Where we see China as posing problems, then I think we need to vocally and firmly push back, and especially doing so in organic buyback from other stakeholders in the international system. One final tweak-

Kaiser: And specifically, let’s drill down on that a little bit, so in what international organizations do you think China right now is playing a more nefarious role, it is pushing an agenda that advances or that diminishes openness, tolerance and liberalism?

Jude: Well, one, the challenge with this is, this is also one where we’re abdicating our role and/or we have given up, but is the World Trade Organization, right? I always bow down to Mark Wu’s “China Inc. Challenge of the WTO,” which I think is just a phenomenal paper about some irreconcilably of China’s actual existing political economy. And what I would see is what is a global good, which is a framework and a multilateral institution for promoting global integration and trade. There were problems of integration of China into the WTO. The challenge is the United States is also not a good-faith actor in the WTO. So, this is a twin version of the United States yet again being a leader for liberal international trade

Kaiser: But not leading.

Jude: Well, not playing an actively hostile role, which it did throughout the Trump administration, to the WTO, right? So, there’s an issue of where I’m not sure I want to live in a world where China is setting the rules of global trade because I think the unique components, the sui generis components of party state capitalism in China don’t always mesh well with global trade rules. But the problem now is it’s as much that the United States has left the field on global trade that has made this problematic. And again, we’re seeing discussions on CPTPP that are happening without the United States because we have just decided that domestic politics is going to drive our position on global trading. And guess what? China’s happy to step in there.

Kaiser: Yeah. We have not returned to the field, and we become, in Evan Feigenbaum’s memorable phrase, just a security provider in, for example, in the Western Pacific: We’re just “the Hessians of Asia.”

Jude: One final thing I was going to say is, in the discussion on… I know many people don’t want to have the discussion of where does this all end? If this is a competition, what does the finish line look like? I kind of understand not wanting to firmly narrow down exactly what the finish line looks like, but I think, increasingly, it’s becoming critical that we do articulate some version of coexistence with China that on our part, it has a clear defined view of where we see China integrating. I think that’s one area where I do think Beijing is right to say, “Well, what is it America?” I don’t think we’ve articulated a clear vision of what is the permissible place base for Beijing in the international arena. And I think the end goal of our U.S. policy has to always have a core component of coexistence. There is no alternative. There are biological realities to the world and economic realities that make us intertwined with China. There is no ignoring that. You can’t put China in a corner.

Kaiser: This is why the language of existential threat is simply unacceptable then in our rhetoric,

Jude: Impractical and unacceptable on both. And because, of course, if it is an existential struggle, you know how those end, with defeat of one or the other side, right? I don’t know what that looks like outside of World War III, which to me is unacceptable. So, I think a part of the maturity in the discussion in the U.S. is yes, forceful pushback. And I recommend a piece by Mike Greene, my former boss in Foreign Affairs recently, called The Real China Hands, where at the end of it, he said, “Yeah, pushback against China is early innings, but the end of the match is finding a durable coexistence with China.” That’s the real long game.

Kaiser: That’s right. Absolutely. Hallelujah, and I completely agree with that. Jude, what a pleasure it is talking to you. It’s great to see you so riled up. It makes for a fun conversation. Let’s move on to recommendations. First, a really quick reminder that if you like the work that we do here with the Sinica Podcast or with the other shows in the network, the best way that you can support us is to become an Access subscriber. It’s a buck a month right now for the first month anyway. After that, we get ya. But sign up, check it out. You’ll love the newsletters. You will absolutely love getting Sinica early on Monday. Go to the chinaproject.com/subscribe, and check out China Access — a one-month trial for $1. All right, let’s move on to recommendations. Jude, what do you have for us?

Jude: This is something that I’d recommended to you over a text message a few months ago, but it’s an Audible, sort of, I guess, audiobook or audio production. It’s called It’s a five- or six-hour kind of conversation storybook, co-hosted by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, which in long interviews with Paul Simon, interspersed with clips from songs, and other interviews from other artists. It’s just an exploration of Paul Simon’s sort of songwriting lineage, but I think more importantly, the craft of songwriting. I love Paul Simon, and Graceland remains one of my sort of desert island disc favorite albums. But I think even if you’re not a Paul Simon fan and you just appreciate artistic craft, I think this is so well done. I found it so captivating, and just that it really got my sort of creative juices firing. So, I highly recommend it.

Kaiser: All right. Fantastic recommendation. Yeah, I love Rhymin’ Simon. I listen to a lot of Simon & Garfunkel still, and just because I’ve been fixated with their vocal harmonies and how difficult and, oh my God, they’re just amazing.

I want to recommend something a little closer to home. It’s an interview with Angela Rasmussen, the virologist, who’s really been out there among the bravest and most consistent voices arguing the case for zoonotic origins against the unkillable, and still, as we’ve said, poorly supported lab leak theory. She is not an apologist for China in this interview that she does. The one that I want to recommend is with Slate, the What Next: TBD Podcast with Lizzie O’Leary. She’s very candid about what China did and didn’t do with the Huanan market in Wuhan. It’s very sad that so few virologists are willing to stick their heads above the parapet these days. But I don’t blame them because you just get so viciously attacked out there. Who wants that? I mean, who needs that? I certainly don’t. Anyway, give it a listen. It’s a really good sense-making on the whole debate.

Jude, man, thanks once again. That was just a lot of fun.

Jude: Thank you. Real great to be here.

Kaiser: Yeah. And don’t forget to check out Jude’s excellent podcast, Pekingology. I was just listening to your latest one with Kellee Tsai. She’s terrific. All right, stick around for just one second here, Jude, while I read the outro.

Jude: Sounds good.

Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project. It is a proud part of the Seneca Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts as this really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all the shows in the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.

thechinaproject.com · by Kaiser Kuo · March 9, 2023

17. Inside Indo-Pacific Command’s $87 billion wish list to deter China

Things, things, things. What about people? What about concepts, operations, long term engagement and relationships? Of course none of those are big budget items. They only require budget dust so therefore are either under the radar or off the table.

Event security cooperation will most likely be about providing "things:" Are we executing a strategy or administering programs?

As the Pentagon works to improve alliances in the region as a counterweight to China, Indo-Pacific Command also sees a need for $700 million to “build defense and security capabilities, capacity and cooperation of allies and partners.” The lion’s share of that proposal, roughly $530 million, would go toward Defense Security Cooperation Agency programs.

Inside Indo-Pacific Command’s $87 billion wish list to deter China

Defense News · by Joe Gould · March 9, 2023

WASHINGTON ― U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has outlined new spending requirements to boost deterrence against China, including billions of dollars in new weapons, new construction and closer military-to-military collaboration with America’s allies in the region.

The command’s congressionally-ordered assessment delivered Wednesday calls for more than $87 billion in spending between 2024 and 2028; with $15.4 billion for fiscal year 2024 alone. That represents a significant jump from last year’s $9 billion request for FY23 and five-year projected spend of $77 billion.

With China competition a bipartisan priority on Capitol Hill, the Indo-Pacific Command assessment of its needs offers a blueprint for China hawks to add to President Joe Biden’s $842 billion defense budget for FY24, which requests $9.1 billion for the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

The report drafted by INDOPACOM chief Adm. John Aquilino calls for new space capabilities, missiles and air defenses, radar systems, staging areas, intelligence-sharing centers, supply depots and testing ranges throughout the region, as well as exercises with allies and partners.

“The U.S. must focus our efforts to present persistent, lethal and integrated Joint Force west of the [international date line] that can impose out-of-proportion costs and complicate any adversary’s ability to effectively compete with the U.S. military while simultaneously demonstrating U.S. commitment and resolve to our allies and partners,” reads an unclassified executive summary obtained by Defense News.

The command continues to call for a 360-degree persistent and integrated air defense capability on the U.S. territory Guam by 2026, as Aquilino has said his No. 1 priority is establishing an Aegis Ashore system there. The effort, underway for several years, would help protect U.S. citizens and forces.

Japan to OK new US Marine littoral regiment on Okinawa

Japan on Wednesday will formally approve U.S. plans for a new Marine quick-reaction force on Okinawa.

Amid the Pentagon’s plans for more distributed forces in the Pacific, the largest portion of the assessment ― $10.8 billion ― would be to “improve the posture and presence” in the region. More than $2 billion would build aircraft parking, fuel stores and other facilities on Tinian Island, Pulau ― and Guam, where the Marine Corps is moving 5,000 Marines of III Marine Expeditionary Force, based on Okinawa, Japan.

More than $8 billion would fund research and development efforts across the services, including $1.3 billion for space technology prototyping and more than $400 million for “offensive cyber,” the report says.

A $5.3 billion “persistent battlespace awareness” project, the Space Force’s Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program, would offer an orbiting missile warning system that includes the Arctic. Another $1 billion would fund a network of space-based sensors to cover air, sea and ground-launched missile threats.

A $2.8 billion wedge in the plan for “integrated maritime fires” includes hundreds of millions of dollars for Maritime Strike Tomahawk Missiles for the Navy and Army; sea mines and for the Navy’s long-range anti-ship missile. Also included is $170 million for the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, meant to be used by the new Marine littoral regiments for ship targeting and sea control.

As the Pentagon works to improve alliances in the region as a counterweight to China, Indo-Pacific Command also sees a need for $700 million to “build defense and security capabilities, capacity and cooperation of allies and partners.” The lion’s share of that proposal, roughly $530 million, would go toward Defense Security Cooperation Agency programs.

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.

18. Irregular Warfare Initiative Launches New Website

Irregular Warfare Initiative Launches New Website

Congratulations to the Irregular Warfare Institute.

Access the new IWI website HERE.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/irregular-warfare-initiative-launches-new-website

Bridging the gap between scholars, practitioners, and

policymakers to support the community of irregular warfare professionals

Irregular Warfare Initiative Launches New Website

The Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI) is extremely proud to announce the launch of its new website which will serve as the rally point for professional discourse between scholars, policymakers, and practitioners on contemporary irregular warfare challenges. The website offers you access to original articles, fascinating podcasts with insightful guests, virtual and in-person events, and other resources to help illuminate this complex form of conflict. All IWI content is generated by members from the IW community — like you.

Demand for IWI content has only increased over the past three years since our first podcast released. The new website is one part of a plan to grow IWI as a platform to meet this increased demand and to continue providing valuable resources to the IW professional community. We hope you enjoy the new website, and encourage you to continue helping us build this community. There are many ways to support: submitting an article, joining the team as a volunteer, planning an event in partnership with IWI, donating (even small contributions help!) or making a purchase from the IWI store, or simply continuing to follow IWI content and sharing it with other irregular warfare professionals in your network.

On behalf of the more than 50 volunteers who have worked incredibly hard to make this new website and the content it supports possible, we thank you for your continued support and engagement.

- Doug Livermore & Charles Faint

IWI Communications

19. Blacks in SOF - Panel 2

The second panel from our SF brother, Mike Clark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsjqFV6_IWk&t=125s

Blacks in SOF - Panel 2

Think JSOU

3K subscribers

Blacks in SOF - Panel 2

For Black History Month JSOU has hosted a panel of Black SOF Operators to share their experiences while serving in SOF. The purpose of the panel is to educate, inform and inspire all Americans with stories of these Black SOF Operators.

The views expressed in this video are entirely those of the speaker(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the United States Government, Department of Defense, United States Special Operations Command, or the Joint Special Operations University

For more information follow us on our website and social media platforms.

Website: https://jsou.edu/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thin...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/THINKJSOU

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThinkJSOU/

YouTube://thinkjsou

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE