Quotes of the Day:
From the Wall Street Journal, 2/11/2022:
In 2008, when Barack Obama was running in the Democratic presidential primary, he delivered a celebrated speech rebuking his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for expressing “a profoundly distorted view of this country—a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.”
In other words, Mr. Obama was saying the same thing as the Texas legislature: that racism is a betrayal of America’s authentic principles. Meanwhile, in 2003 President George W. Bush gave a speech in Senegal reflecting on the history of American slavery, in which he declared that “My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over,” and that “African-Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals.”
- Adam Kirsch
"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."
- James Baldwin
“[Free] government…must act by general and equal laws that are previously known to all…In this sense…liberty is the perfection of civil society.”
- David Hume
1. FACT SHEET: Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States
2. Biden’s Indo-Pac Strategy Will Rely On Partnerships To Counter China
3. A retired Russian general's criticism may signal a larger problem for Putin
4. U.S. Still Playing Catch Up in Information Operations
5. Taiwan: China’s Gray Zone Doctrine in Action
6. China’s cultural industry is being co-opted for disinformation operations
7. The American Public Deserves to Know What US Troops Are Doing in Europe
8. Opinion | How the West Gets Ukraine Wrong — and Helps Putin As a Result
9. If Blinken’s visit to Fiji is aimed at curtailing Chinese influence, he has his work cut out for him
10. Disinformation, Radicalization, and Algorithmic Amplification: What Steps Can Congress Take?
11. These are the 4 secretive US special-ops units that JSOC gives its toughest missions
12. Commandant Sees Bigger Role for Marine Raiders in Great Power Competition
13. The Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ is backed by a Bangladeshi marketing firm and right-wing fringe groups
14. In White House's new Indo-Pacific strategy, much seems familiar
15. Opinion | America’s Russia Policy Has a Biden Problem
16. Ukraine’s Civilian Soldiers
17. ‘This Is Their 1776’: US Army Veterans Train Ukraine Civilians in Resistance Warfare
18. Irregular Learning for Irregular Warfare: Radical Urban Planning and its Applications
1. FACT SHEET: Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States
A lot to parse. It is interesting that we have an INDO-PACIFIC strategy before we have a National Security Strategy (and we will have a National Defense Strategy before we have an NSS. In the administration's defense they did issue its internim stragei guaince in March 2021 which has formed the basis for all the subsequent stragtgic planning. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf
Fact sheet text below. Some will complain there is not enough detail while others will say it is too prescriptive.
It is interesting that the strategy acknowledges the last three administrations:
Since then, administrations of both political parties have shared a commitment to the region. The George W. Bush Administration understood Asia’s growing importance and engaged closely with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Japan, and India. The Obama Administration significantly accelerated American prioritization of Asia, investing new diplomatic, economic, and military resources there. And the Trump Administration also recognized the Indo-Pacific as the world’s center of gravity.
One major criticism is does this strategy answer the question of why this is important to the American people? While it makes sense ot foreign policy and national security professionals (read elite) and practitioners take it for granted and as an article of faith that what happens in the INDO-PACIFiC will have a direct effect on all aspects of the US, no case has been sufficiently made to the American people there are only passing references and comments). My recommendation is that the follow-up discussions about the strategy by administration and cabinet officials must include the explanation of this strategy in terms of what it means for the American people.
But I can work with these ends, ways, and means to develop supporting campaign plans. I would have liked to have seen an articulation of the assumptions, constraints, and restraints and allocated resources but I know those must be all in the classified documents.
INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY ELEMENTS
STRATEGIC ENDS: Advance a free and open IndoPacific that is more connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.
STRATEGIC WAYS: Strengthen the U.S. role and build collective capacity with allies and partners and with regional institutions.
STRATEGIC MEANS: Modernized alliances; flexible partnerships, including an empowered ASEAN, a leading India, a strong and reliable Quad, and an engaged Europe; economic partnership; new U.S. defense, diplomatic, development, and foreign-assistance resources; sustained focus on and commitment to the region at all levels of the U.S. government.
Key points:
"Consistent with our broader strategic approach, we will prioritize our single greatest asymmetric strength: our network of security alliances and partnerships."
Across the region, the United States will work with allies and partners to deepen our interoperability and develop and deploy advanced warfighting capabilities as we support them in defending their citizens and their sovereign interests. We will continue to modernize our treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, the ROK, the Philippines, and Thailand; steadily advance our Major Defense Partnership with India and support its role as a net security provider; and build the defense capacity of partners in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
We are deepening our five regional treaty alliances—with Australia, Japan, the ROK, the Philippines, and Thailand—and strengthening relationships with leading regional partners, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Pacific Islands. We will also encourage our allies and partners to strengthen their ties with one another, particularly Japan and the ROK. We will support and empower allies and partners as they take on regional leadership roles themselves, and we will work in flexible groupings that pool our collective strength to face up to the defining issues of our time, particularly through the Quad.
"Integrated deterrence will be the cornerstone of our approach."
"geopolitical competition." (strategic competition and great power competition is not used).
The United States will pursue five objectives in the Indo-Pacific—each in concert with our allies and partners, as well as with regional institutions. We will:
• ADVANCE A FREE AND OPEN INDO-PACIFIC
• BUILD CONNECTIONS WITHIN AND BEYOND THE REGION
• DRIVE REGIONAL PROSPERITY
• BOLSTER INDO-PACIFIC SECURITY
• BUILD REGIONAL RESILIENCE TO TRANSNATIONAL THREATS
INDO-PACIFIC ACTION PLAN (10 lines of effort)
DRIVE NEW RESOURCES TO THE INDO-PACIFIC
LEAD AN INDO-PACIFIC ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK
REINFORCE DETERRENCE
STRENGTHEN AN EMPOWERED AND UNIFIED ASEAN
SUPPORT INDIA’S CONTINUED RISE AND REGIONAL LEADERSHIP
DELIVER ON THE QUAD
EXPAND U.S.-JAPAN-ROK COOPERATION
PARTNER TO BUILD RESILIENCE IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
SUPPORT GOOD GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY
SUPPORT OPEN, RESILIENT, SECURE, AND TRUSTWORTHY TECHNOLOGIES
Taiwan:
We will also work with partners inside and outside of the region to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, including by supporting Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, to ensure an environment in which Taiwan’s future is determined peacefully in accordance with the wishes and best interests of Taiwan’s people. As we do so, our approach remains consistent with our One China policy and our longstanding commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances.
The United States will defend our interests, deter military aggression against our own country and our allies and partners—including across the Taiwan Strait—and promote regional security by developing new capabilities, concepts of operation, military activities, defense industrial initiatives, and a more resilient force posture.
Korea:
As the DPRK continues to develop destabilizing nuclear and missile programs, we will continue to seek serious and sustained dialogue, with the goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and addressing its ongoing human-rights violations and improving the lives and livelihoods of the North Korean people. At the same time, we are strengthening extended deterrence and coordination with the ROK and Japan to respond to DPRK provocations, remaining prepared to deter—and, if necessary, defeat—any aggression to the United States and our allies, while bolstering counter-proliferation efforts throughout the region. While reinforcing extended deterrence against nuclear- and ballistic-missile systems and other emerging threats to strategic stability, the United States will seek to work with a wide set of actors, including our rivals, to prevent and manage crises.
I would have liked to have seen a recognition of the importance of unification. Note the strong emphasis on trilateral cooperation with the ROK, Japan, and US and this is in fact one of the 10 lines of effort.
As I said a lot to analyze. I recall learning from Peter Feaver many years ago when he spoke to our class at the National War College that there are two ways to write a strategy at the national level. The first is to use a small team that writes a tight strategy to meet the President's intent. The second is to write a consensus document with a lot of interagency input (allowing each department to "protect their equities."). The first results in a strategy that really conforms with the President's intent, guidance, and world view. But it risks having less "buy-in" from across the interagency. The second can gain wide buy-in across the interagency but may result in a more watered down less focused strategy. My sense is this strategy was likely developed by Kurt Campbell and a very small team of writers.
The real test will be in execution.
There are 3 messages in the strategy with the obvious internal and external target audiences:
The strategy lays out our values (What we say we stand for)
It provides fairly detailed guidance on what we are going to do (What we say we are doing or going to do).
The real (and most important) message is in execution (What we are actually doing) - what we are really doing is the actual message (actions speak louder than words).
Will this strategy be put into execution? Or will it merely go on the shelf as one of our historical aspirational documents. We should evaluate the actions of all our national instruments of power against this construct - as an example, State's Global Engagement Center should be evaluating this on a daily basis to ensure our actions provide the intended message.
FACT SHEET: Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States
FEBRUARY 11, 2022
•
“We envision an Indo-Pacific that is open, connected, prosperous, resilient, and secure—and we are ready to work together with each of you to achieve it.”
President Joe Biden
East Asia Summit
October 27, 2021
The Biden-Harris Administration has made historic strides to restore American leadership in the Indo-Pacific and adapt its role for the 21st century. In the last year, the United States has modernized its longstanding alliances, strengthened emerging partnerships, and forged innovative links among them to meet urgent challenges, from competition with China to climate change to the pandemic. It has done so at a time when allies and partners around the world are increasingly enhancing their own engagement in the Indo-Pacific; and when there is broad, bipartisan agreement in the U.S. Congress that the United States must, too. This convergence in commitment to the region, across oceans and across political-party lines, reflects an undeniable reality: the Indo-Pacific is the most dynamic region in the world, and its future affects people everywhere.
That reality is the basis of the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States. This strategy outlines President Biden’s vision to more firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen the region in the process. Its central focus is sustained and creative collaboration with allies, partners, and institutions, within the region and beyond it.
The United States will pursue an Indo-Pacific region that is:
- FREE AND OPEN
Our vital interests and those of our closest partners require a free and open Indo-Pacific, and a free and open Indo-Pacific requires that governments can make their own choices and that shared domains are governed lawfully. Our strategy begins with strengthening resilience, both within individual countries, as we have done in the United States, and among them. We will advance a free and open region, including by:
- Investing in democratic institutions, a free press, and a vibrant civil society
- Improving fiscal transparency in the Indo-Pacific to expose corruption and drive reform
- Ensuring the region’s seas and skies are governed and used according to international law
- Advancing common approaches to critical and emerging technologies, the internet, and cyber space
- CONNECTED
A free and open Indo-Pacific can only be achieved if we build collective capacity for a new age. The alliances, organizations, and rules that the United States and its partners have helped to build must be adapted. We will build collective capacity within and beyond the region, including by:
- Deepening our five regional treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), the Philippines, and Thailand
- Strengthening relationships with leading regional partners, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Pacific Islands
- Contributing to an empowered and unified ASEAN
- Strengthening the Quad and delivering on its commitments
- Supporting India’s continued rise and regional leadership
- Partnering to build resilience in the Pacific Islands
- Forging connections between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic
- Expanding U.S. diplomatic presence in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands
- PROSPEROUS
The prosperity of everyday Americans is linked to the Indo-Pacific. That fact requires investments to encourage innovation, strengthen economic competitiveness, produce good-paying jobs, rebuild supply chains, and expand economic opportunities for middle-class families: 1.5 billion people in the Indo-Pacific will join the global middle class this decade. We will drive Indo-Pacific prosperity, including by:
- Proposing an Indo-Pacific economic framework, through which we will:
- Develop new approaches to trade that meet high labor and environmental standards
- Govern our digital economies and cross-border data flows according to open principles, including through a new digital economy framework
- Advance resilient and secure supply chains that are diverse, open, and predictable
- Make shared investments in decarbonization and clean energy
- Promoting free, fair, and open trade and investment through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), including in our 2023 host year
- Closing the region’s infrastructure gap through Build Back Better World with G7 partners
- SECURE
For 75 years, the United States has maintained a strong and consistent defense presence necessary to support regional peace, security, stability, and prosperity. We are extending and modernizing that role and enhancing our capabilities to defend our interests and to deter aggression against U.S. territory and against our allies and partners. We will bolster Indo-Pacific security, drawing on all instruments of power to deter aggression and to counter coercion, including by:
- Advancing integrated deterrence
- Deepening cooperation and enhancing interoperability with allies and partners
- Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait
- Innovating to operate in rapidly evolving threat environments, including space, cyberspace, and critical- and emerging-technology areas
- Strengthening extended deterrence and coordination with our ROK and Japanese allies and pursuing the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
- Continuing to deliver on AUKUS
- Expanding U.S. Coast Guard presence and cooperation against other transnational threats
- Working with Congress to fund the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the Maritime Security Initiative
- RESILIENT
The Indo-Pacific faces major transnational challenges. Climate change is growing ever-more severe as South Asia’s glaciers melt and the Pacific Islands battle existential rises in sea levels. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to inflict a painful human and economic toll across the region. And Indo-Pacific governments grapple with natural disasters, resource scarcity, internal conflict, and governance challenges. Left unchecked, these forces threaten to destabilize the region. We will build regional resilience to 21st-century transnational threats, including by:
- Working with allies and partners to develop 2030 and 2050 targets, strategies, plans, and policies consistent with limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius
- Reducing regional vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation
- Ending the COVID-19 pandemic and bolstering global health security
2. Biden’s Indo-Pac Strategy Will Rely On Partnerships To Counter China
Alliances are key to US national security.
Biden’s Indo-Pac Strategy Will Rely On Partnerships To Counter China
“This is not a China strategy,” a senior administration official said. “This very clearly identifies China as one of the challenges the region faces…but our China strategy is global in scope.”
The Biden administration released a new Indo-Pacific strategy on Friday that details plans to open new embassies in Southeast Asia, increase the Coast Guard’s mission to train local forces in the region, and strengthen alliances with India, Japan, and South Korea.
President Joe Biden’s strategy is the third of its kind, following similar documents from the Obama and Trump administrations, and a senior administration official acknowledged that Biden stuck to the same broad bipartisan efforts as his predecessors.
“There’s been longstanding continuity across administrations and across parties in terms of looking at the basic principles of what we do in the region,” the official said. “That’s not to say they’re identical…but I think we can go back a number of administrations and see a much greater focus on the Indo-Pacific.”
The strategy prioritizes alliances and talks about threats faced by the region, including the rise of China, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and North Korea’s nuclear program.
“In a quickly changing strategic landscape, we recognize that American interests can only be advanced if we firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen the region itself, alongside our closest allies and partners,” the strategy says. “This intensifying American focus is due in part to the fact that the Indo-Pacific faces mounting challenges, particularly from the” People’s Republic of China.
Despite many references to the threat from China, the senior administration official told reporters the document details the White House’s approach to the entire Indo-Pacific region and is not a plan solely focused on countering Beijing.
“This builds on the longstanding U.S. engagement in the region, and builds on the work of previous administrations,” the official said. “However, it’s worth keeping in mind: this is not a China strategy. This very clearly identifies China as one of the challenges the region faces…but our China strategy is global in scope.”
The White House intends to launch a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework partnership early this year to encourage trade, improve the supply chain, and increase connectivity in the region, according to the strategy.
The document lays out plans to send more resources to the region, including boosting the U.S. Coast Guard presence to train and advise local forces. The plan also calls for new embassies and consulates in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, as well as more opportunities for the Peace Corps in the region.
In its first year, the Biden administration consistently talked about the importance of diplomacy and partnerships, and its Indo-Pacific strategy is no different. The strategy mentions the need to strengthen the Quad, as well as increase cooperation with Japan and South Korea, boost collaboration with India, and expand the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
3. A retired Russian general's criticism may signal a larger problem for Putin
I hope our influence professionals are working to exploit this.
A retired Russian general's criticism may signal a larger problem for Putin
The Hill · by Paul Roderick Gregory , opinion contributor · February 11, 2022
Retired Russian Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, the head of the All-Russian Officers Assembly, has gone public with a statement that calls for Russian President Vladimir Putin to resign over the confrontation involving Ukraine. To remove any doubt as to his message, Ivashov, 78, followed the public statement with an interview on a liberal Russian media outlet, Echo Moskvy, insisting that he was speaking in the name of the assembly of retired and reservist Russian officers which he heads.
The collective statement was ironed out in internal discussions, Ivashov said, with some of the retired military men arguing for a softer line on Putin but others demanding even tougher words. Ivashov, speaking in measured language, explained that active officers understandably are not free to speak their minds, and he made note of the fact that he was speaking to the small audience of Echo-Moskvy.
Ivashov is not some Putin critic or Russian dissident in the mold of a Boris Nemtsov or an Alexei Navalny. In the absence of an active marshal of the army — such as Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the celebrated Red Army general of World War II — a colonel-general would be the second-highest rank in the Russian army. Ivashov served as a senior aide to the country’s defense minister and as the ministry’s chief of general affairs before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; he subsequently held other high-ranking military posts and commands before retiring — or, some say, being sacked by Putin — in 2001. Those roles included numerous negotiations with NATO and the U.S. military.
Since then, he has written extensively on Russian military matters and geopolitics, from the perspective of a pro-Soviet, hardline nationalist. He even tried unsuccessfully to file as a presidential candidate in 2011. He has criticized Putin frequently and has called repeatedly over the years for Putin to resign.
His may be the lone military voice speaking out publicly against Putin’s actions regarding Ukraine, but it is a significant voice, nonetheless. As Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted: “This is a big deal. At one time, General Ivashov was one of the most respected (and hawkish) leaders in the Russian [ministry of defense]. Russian generals don’t usually get involved in public policy debates, especially ones like Ivashov.”
To be clear, Ivashov believes that NATO is a hostile power, but his experience has taught him that the NATO/U.S. threat is under control and no external threat is imminent from the Western powers. The massive buildup of Russian troops on the Ukraine and Belarus borders, therefore, is not to deal with a threat from the West. Rather, it is to divert attention from the internal health, demographic challenges, living-standards collapse and pervasive corruption that the Russian citizenry is suffering under the mismanagement of an incompetent Putin regime.
Ivashov points out that the Putin model has in no way demonstrated its superiority to Ukraine, to Crimea, to the two “separatist” Ukrainian republics or to anyone else. Under Putin, Russia has become an international “pariah,” he says. Its annexation of Crimea is not recognized by credible nations, and Russia is widely viewed as a rogue state because of Putin’s “criminal policy of provoking war.”
Ivashov distinguishes between Russia’s highly trained professional officers’ ranks and the Kremlin’s military “elite,” headed by what he considers to be non-entities. If Putin’s policies —designed only to solidify his internal power — indeed push Russia into a “catastrophic war,” he adds, it won’t be Putin’s Kremlin soldiers who pay the price; rather, it will be the professional officers and the tens of thousands of young Russian conscripts who will be killed or crippled in the fighting.
Adding to Ivashov’s concerns is his fear that Turkey could join with Ukraine in a military alliance if war does break out. That, of course, would be an entirely different ball game for the Russians to confront.
Ivashov’s solution: Fire Putin if he can’t be forced to resign and, if necessary, put him in prison for his “criminal policy of provoking war.”
Of course, all of that is highly unlikely to occur.
And yet, according to Ivashov’s account, he is speaking for a significant portion of Russia’s professional military, the one institution most trusted by the Russian people. If his claim is true, then those military men, retired or still in uniform, must feel very strongly or else they would have remained comfortably quiet, enjoying their pensions and privileges, rather than incurring the wrath and inevitable punishment of Putin.
Putin undoubtedly will find a way to punish Ivashov for his outspoken criticism, and perhaps other members of the All-Russian Officers Assembly as well. But he cannot wipe out all those who believe what Ivashov has said. Nor can he afford to alienate his professional military.
It just may be that with all his saber-rattling and gamesmanship over Ukraine, Putin may have created an opposition that he cannot silence so easily.
The Hill · by Paul Roderick Gregory , opinion contributor · February 11, 2022
4. U.S. Still Playing Catch Up in Information Operations
We must learn to lead with influence.
U.S. Still Playing Catch Up in Information Operations
2/11/2022
By
iStock illustration
It has been more than 20 years since 9/11, when the United States acknowledged that it had allowed its once formidable information warfare and strategic messaging capabilities to lapse into a state of decline.
At the time, al-Qaida was proving on a daily basis that it could effectively use modern day tools such as the internet to spread its anti-Western propaganda. The U.S. government had little capacity to counter radical Islam’s messages after allowing its skills to atrophy at the end of the Cold War.
Two decades later, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s point man on cybersecurity and information operations said little progress has been made.
“I’m not sure how much has changed, other than we continue to watch … our adversaries demonstrate tremendous competence in this area,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, director of command, control, communications and computers/cyber and chief information officer, Joint Staff, J6, said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict conference held in Washington, D.C.
The last decade has only seen the problem worsen as social media grew in popularity and was then used by Russia to interfere in U.S. elections.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., said, “We used to do this quite well. This was our mission — winning hearts and minds across the world. That’s how we fought the Cold War. That’s how we fought communism. And the reason we were so effective at it, quite frankly, is because here at home, we understood it. It was very clear to me growing up that living behind the Iron Curtain would be really the worst of all worlds.”
Gavin Sundwall, a career foreign service officer in the office of policy, planning and resources for public diplomacy at the State Department, said, “The competition is fierce. Other actors, China, Russia, Iran are actively competing for control of information environments, and they’re well funded. They’re putting a lot of money into it precisely because — in the big scheme of things — it’s low cost.”
Sundwall, who recently served in Australia as minister counselor for public affairs and leader of strategy and affairs, saw firsthand how China was spreading its message throughout the region.
“This is low cost, high value for them,” he added.
A State Department strategic resource review recently concluded that U.S. global competitors China and Russia combined invested significantly more than the United States in the competition for public influence, Sundwall said.
Russia spends approximately $1.3 billion annually on broadcast media and strategic communications. China’s annual public influence investments exceed $10 billion, “and this is in addition to their robust disinformation and misinformation operations,” he said of the two countries.
The State Department’s total budget for all public diplomacy and public affairs efforts was $1.44 billion in fiscal year 2021, including funding for cultural and educational exchange programs, as well as public diplomacy programs at U.S. missions abroad, a State Department spokeswoman said.
The terms “information warfare,” or “information operations” includes military information support operations that are carried out by special operators.
Sometimes still referred to as “psychological operations,” or psy-ops, these specialists use various means to influence local populations or leaders to help combatant commanders achieve certain results on the battlefield.
Strategically, information operations are used by governments to influence populations or other governments.
“Disinformation campaigns” — normally the realm of intelligence agencies — are covert efforts to intentionally spread false or misleading information, according to a policy brief by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology titled, “AI and the Future of Disinformation Campaigns.”
Whether it is the State Department, Special Operations Command or the Defense Department, no single agency “owns this space,” Sundwall said.
As for the military, Congress mandated that the Defense Department designate a Joint Force provider and Joint Force trainer in the information operations space and build a strategy, Crall said.
“We are grossly late,” he said. “It’s time to do it now, rather than talk about it, and appreciate and think about it. We need to act,” he said.
Combatant commanders too often think of information operations as an afterthought, he said.
“We understand kinetic operations very well. Culturally, we distrust some of the ways that we practice information operations,” he said. The attitude is to “sprinkle some IO on that.”
Information operations need to be used — as commanders do in kinetic operations — to condition a battlefield, he added.
Special Operations Forces are optimally positioned to lead in this space, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a SOF-exclusive activity, Crall said. It should be done with military partners, allies and the intelligence community, he said.
“If I were to pick a place to really be the genesis to move this, I would be looking to our special operators to do that,” Crall said.
Sundwall said Special Operation Command’s psychological operations specialists should be empowered to take on these challenges as part of the government’s interagency information operations.
“We’re not as effective when conversations don’t take place early on to shape the local environment. And then the train has kind of left the station,” he said.
“I’ve seen it work really well. I’ve also seen it work not so well,” he added.
The State Department has “a robust interagency presence in this space. And we’re stronger when we work together,” Sundwall said.
The State Department’s 183 missions overseas, the ambassadors, their country teams and their communication professionals are a strength that the department brings, he said. “And when they work hand in glove with SOCOM, great things can happen,” he added.
Crall said the focus should be on geographical combatant commanders and local experts. Messages shouldn’t be crafted in an office in Washington, D.C.
“Do you understand that environment? Do you speak the native language? Do you speak the number of dialects in that area? Do you understand anthropology, religion, history when it comes to context? Many of our messages that sound righteous to us fail miserably when introduced to very specific populations during different times,” he said.
Who knows that audience better than those in the region — the combatant commanders, the ambassadors who are there and their staffs, and the intelligence community station chiefs, he added.
Meanwhile, Crall has seen a sharp decline in information operations skills in the military. Those who honed their craft at the end of the Cold War have retired.
“I’ve said goodbye to them years ago. They’ve gone on to their second careers, and many of them now are gone. We don’t build information experts who have deployed and have experience in areas like we did even a decade ago,” Crall said.
Both Crall and Sundwall said if the United States is to take on formidable opponents such as China and Russia in the war of ideas, it can’t be done “on the cheap.”
Crall said: “This requires an investment. It requires a purposeful investment with a real stable organization, and structure behind it. If it’s a pickup game … and it’s sporadic and it’s not continuous, I think it is where we run into trouble,” he said.
Sherrill said, “It’s an area where I think we’re lagging a little bit, and we really need to do more.”
It was appropriate to focus on counterterrorism messaging, but that came at a cost, she said. And that was letting major rivals move ahead in the information operations space.
“I think of it twofold,” she said. One is to make sure the American people don’t buy into the disinformation campaigns state actors such as Russia are propagating.
The other is U.S. strategic messaging.
“How can we promote our ideals abroad? And how can we make sure that we are winning the war of ideas, and enforcing what we need to do without going into a hot war? ... How are we going to win those, vis-a-vis Russia and China?” she asked.
Crall said some of the needed investment in information operations can go toward technologies such as artificial intelligence.
“What can help us in this is automation. When it comes to looking at content, scoring content, sentiment, everything that’s happening out in the web, we can really benefit from a thin AI layer on top of this,” he said.
But there are no shortcuts when it comes to cultural expertise. There should always be a human in the loop when making decisions, he added.
Meanwhile, adversaries are beginning to use AI to craft messages, Crall said.
The CSET policy brief said AI and machine learning are poised to amplify disinformation campaigns that are used by state and non-state actors to “shape global opinions, sow chaos and chip away at trust.”
Crall said: “A lot of that works. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t pick the right audience. It’s not always constructed properly. And there are obvious things. But as they go, what they’re doing, unfortunately, is they’re learning. And those machines are learning. And they’re getting smarter.”
Sundwall said: “We can’t do this on the cheap. … We need to get bigger, more robust presence. We need to be able to find ways into conversations with audiences that matter, wherever they’re taking place.”
5. Taiwan: China’s Gray Zone Doctrine in Action
Conclusion:
With Hong Kong and Xinjiang under CPC control, Taiwan is one of the last bastions of ‘unclaimed territory’ for China, indicating that gray zone operations to include influence efforts will continue to increase potentially past the threshold of war. The PLA have enormously modernized over the past 30 years, ‘leapfrogging’ in phases with lessons learned from the United States and other countries regarding the operational level of war, joint operations, network-centric warfare, and influence operations. The country is currently on a trajectory to be a major player if not the most advanced country in the next AI-driven RMA, prioritizing both the creation and integration of AI capabilities in order to gain algorithmic advantage for an operational end state. How this technological drive will change China’s influence operations remains to be seen, but detection of disinformation campaigns will likely become more difficult.
China’s peace-time wartime integration engenders a ‘whole-of-society’ approach towards forwarding national interests. China’s influence operations towards Taiwan include high visibility psychological warfare using military incursions and propaganda, United Front business relationships to create a model of economic dependence and “censorship through capitalism”. Within the information environment, the CPC has embraced social media narrative propagation through official channels like state-sponsored media and CPC officials in addition to more covert methods such as non-attributable content farms, bot networks, state-sponsored commenter brigades, and Three Warfares PLA/Base 311 efforts.
There are key events that will serve as milestones on the conflict spectrum prior to China crossing the gray-zone with Taiwan to force reunification. These include more economic coercion and incentives towards other countries as China seeks to isolate Taiwan, the dissolution of existing China-Taiwan trade, increased propaganda aimed at decreasing Taiwan’s resistance to reunification via economic promises, and renewed efforts to poach Taiwan’s top talent in strategic supply chains like processor chip manufacturing. Legal updates to either the 1992 Consensus or the Anti-Session Law would also be indicators, assisted by media and social media narratives regarding why these laws need to be updated. Taiwan does not have the protected legal status of a sovereign nation, but it does have allies, a military, and the company of other Asian nations that fear Chinese expansionist goals. For this reason, China will prioritize gray zone coercion against Taiwan in order to win without fighting, using its flexible instruments of national power to achieve its goals.
Taiwan: China’s Gray Zone Doctrine in Action | Small Wars Journal
Taiwan: China’s Gray Zone Doctrine in Action
By Charity S. Jacobs and Kathleen M. Carley
Carnegie Mellon University
Tensions between Taiwan and China have been rising rapidly since the 2016 election of Democratic Progressive Party leader Tsai Ing-Wen. Chinese incursions into the Taiwanese air defense identification zone (ADIZ) have drastically increased, from about 20 flights in 2019 to almost 900 in 2021 (Buckley and Qin, 2021). The threat of conflict stems from key differences in how Taiwan and China view the small island on the issue of reunification, with the potential to become a flashpoint between the United States and China. China’s actions towards Taiwan fit within the US Special Operations Command’s definition of the gray zone as the “intense political, economic, informational, and military competition more fervent in nature than normal steady-state diplomacy, yet short of war”, representing the actions between peace and war on the conflict continuum (Votel et. al, 2016). As strategic competition grows in an exponentially connected information environment, understanding how near peer competitors like China are adapting and using this domain is vital to maintaining national interests. China remains the US “pacing threat”, which the US Secretary of Defense Austin Lloyd describes as the “means that China is the only country that can pose a systemic challenge to the United States in the sense of challenging us, economically, technologically, politically and militarily (Garamone, 2021).” It is critical to understand China’s framework for influence operations in order to understand the long-term strategy towards achieving Chinese national goals and interests. Taiwan provides a remarkable opportunity to analyze China’s gray zone operations in exerting influence towards securing Taiwan under a One China principle.
Lessons Learned from the Past RMA
The past thirty years of conflict demonstrate China’s doctrinal ‘leapfrogging’ from other nations’ wars regarding warfare and influence operations. The two US-coalition Gulf Wars played a critical part in modernizing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine. Desert Storm in 1991 would renew international thinking on the notion of revolution in military affairs (RMA) theory and was a significant wake-up call for the PLA that modernization efforts were necessary if China was to become a world power capable of fighting wars of the future. US information superiority enabled the rapid, decisive victory in the Gulf War, connecting sensors, shooters, and decision makers to enable increased combat power that rapidly defeated enemy forces and greatly contributed towards the development of network-centric warfare, a roadmap for warfare within the information age (Alberts et al., 1999). Over the next 15 years, Chinese doctrine responded with the theory of ‘Informatized Warfare’(信息化) with the goal of winning local wars in an information environment (China’s National Defense in 2008). The term ‘High-Technology Local Wars’ was coined to describe the unified combat systems incorporating command and control, ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities, communications, logistics, and network systems necessary for a unity of effort over a large expanse of land. China reformed its doctrine to include an operational level of war based on campaigns, where some sequence of campaigns within a local war could bring strategic outcomes (Cheng, 2011, p. 159).
Although Beijing sharply criticized the legality of US military interventions abroad after the first Gulf War, Chinese Analysts observed with great interest the way US leaders manipulated foreign and domestic public opinion. China maintained a critical view of the US coalition efforts in Operational Iraqi Freedom, which it perceived to be an illegal war due to the lack of a UN Security Council vote (China’s Position on the US War in Iraq). China viewed this as a strategic misfire that lowered the US standing on the world stage and marked the beginning of American power decline (Scobell, 2011, p. 9, 16). However, the PLA did extensive research on the “soft battles” or non-kinetic operations that enabled a rapid collapse of the Iraqi government, to include pre-kinetic operations within the information domain. While the Gulf War was the first to be massively televised, the Iraq War had extensive television coverage for years leading up to and including ground operations. The PLA saw sanctions against the Iraqi government for alleged weapons of mass destruction as a form of financial non-military warfare, much of which was covered by the western media in the years leading up to 2003 (Liang and Wang, 1999). President George W. Bush used increasingly hostile rhetoric, labeling Iraq and its allies as an ‘Axis of Evil’, drawing a line in the sand between the US and Iraq (Bush, 2002). As the US made efforts to garner international consensus via the UN, public opinion and public relations were critical in drumming up internal and external pressure for a US-led coalition. China saw media coverage by CNN and NBC as a key function of US war efforts, and believed these outlets were employed directly by the US government and the Department of Defense (Cheng, 2011, p. 183). The PLA also noted the effectiveness of more overt communication channels, such as the ‘Office of Global Communications’ the White House stood up, designed to plan, coordinate, and manage news and information related to public opinion and press releases (Cheng, 2011, 178). Lastly, the Iraq War reinforced many of the lessons learned from the first Gulf war, specifically the modernization required to fight and win within an information environment in addition to the need for doctrine to capture ‘soft battles’ of non-kinetic functions.
The PLA introduced Three Warfares doctrine in 2003, centered around psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare in response to the effective psychological operations and effective use of media executed in the Iraq War and other recent conflicts. Psychological warfare is the fundamental warfare seeking to influence a target’s beliefs or perceptions by disseminating information through channels to disrupt, support, or weaken an adversary’s beliefs using techniques such as propaganda, coercion, deception, etc. Public Opinion warfare seeks to shape both external and internal opinions in order to gain support towards an end goal. Lastly, Legal Warfare seeks to set a legal framework through which China can legitimize its actions (Kania, 2016). PLA leaders understood non-kinetic operations needed to be integrated into existing military doctrine if the PLA was going to fight in contemporary wars. They observed how effective news coverage of precision-guided missiles hitting targets was in propping up US public opinion but also demoralizing the Iraqi military. They debated how instrumental the broadcast imagery of dead Rangers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu was in demoralizing the American will to continue supporting the 1993 UN Operation in Somalia, in addition to unifying a nation at war against a foreign presence. They criticized conflicts in which they deemed illegitimate and illegal such as the Kosovo and Iraq Wars, but noted the influential media coverage used to gain positive public opinion (Liang and Wang, 1999, p. 12).
Three Warfares is commonly understood to be the foundation for Chinese influence operations in addition to framing political operations within a military context. China’s modernization and integration of joint operations entailed using a ‘system of systems’ framework for capabilities at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Operational Elements are the key capabilities enabled by integrated information systems that are force multipliers in combat effectiveness, such as intelligence and surveillance (ISR), command and control, precision strike, information confrontation, and Three Warfares. Tactical capabilities rely on modular operational units that can easily be scaled up or down depending on the mission requirement. The ground forces operational element is a combined arms battalion, which can be aggregated to form larger tactical formations, joint campaign formations, and an operational system of systems, all enabled by operational elements to include Three Warfares (McCauley, 2013). The PLA integrated non-kinetic operations such as Three Warfares to support kinetic operations and enable more shaping operations within a conflict spectrum. Base 311 or Unit 61716 is China’s premier psychological warfare unit under its Strategic Support Force, the PLA’s branch with cyber, cyber and electronic warfare capabilities (Costello and McReynolds, 2018). This unit is based in the Fujian province directly opposite Taiwan. Its capabilities and campaigns in Taiwan are difficult to attribute, but it has extensive literature on the importance of disinformation emulating a target population, the use of bots and automation, and the need for more advanced natural language processing and other machine learning methods for Three Warfares efforts (Harold et. al, 2021).
China had its modern ' sputnik' moment when Google’s AlphaGo program beat the world’s top Go player, Ke Jie in 2017. This event both inspired and galvanized the Chinese public and China’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Zhonggauancum due to the historical significance of the game in addition to the sheer computational feat of beating Go, which has nearly infinite branching possibilities (Lee, 2018, p. 3-4). The CPC published the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan later that same year with a roadmap to becoming the world’s leader in AI by 2030 (Notice of the State Council, 2017). This drive for AI is aligned to Intelligentized (智能化) Warfare, the CPC’s latest iteration on modernizing informatized warfare. Intelligentized Warfare integrates ideas of informatized war in the age of big data and increasingly connected social networks, media consumption and commerce, where instead of a ‘system-of-systems’ framework, China seeks to have algorithmic advantage in order to achieve an operational advantage (Kania, Testimony, 2019). China is prioritizing artificial intelligence to gain maturity with emerging technologies in order to gain an advantageous position for what China sees as the next RMA (Kania, Chinese Military Innovation, 2019). Intelligentized Warfare can also be understood as a response to the US Third Offset Strategy of 2014-2018, in which the DoD prioritized integrating AI capability into military applications, network autonomous systems, and human-machine collaboration (Hillner, 2019, p. 3). China’s New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan incorporated a ‘Whole-of-Nation’ strategy to create extensive technical talent and capability within the country and invest in disruptive technologies. Technical challenges within this domain include ‘human-out-of-the-loop’ automation, increased 5G connectivity and data as the foundation for the intelligentized battlefield (Kania, Testimony, 2019). Within the context of Three Warfares, autonomous systems capable of information operations without a human operator will likely drastically increase the magnitude if not the effect of influence operations.
Winning Without Fighting (不战而屈 人之兵)1
“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” - Sun Tzu
China’s informatized warfare led to ‘peacetime-wartime integration’, or the blurring of information operations in peacetime and wartime across the conflict spectrum (McReynolds, 2001, p. 199). This integration incorporates the Three Warfares framework in addition to the seminal 1999 book Unrestricted Doctrine by PLA Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Qiao and Wang argued that the lines separating the battlefield from society no longer exist in future war: “When we suddenly realize that all these non-war actions may be the new factors constituting future warfare, we have to come up with a new name for this new form of war: Warfare which transcends all boundaries and limits, in short: unrestricted warfare (Qiao and Wang, 1999).” The authors expanded the Clausetizian concept of war to compel an enemy to submit to one’s will, opening the aperture to include “using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.” Unrestricted warfare deviated from earlier notions of network-centric dominance and provided a framework for shaping operations during peacetime to set winning conditions for wartime, given dynamic and unpredictable adversarial lines (Barno and Bensahel, 2016). Three Warfares demonstrates China’s peacetime methods of warfare within the political realm, and how information dominance enables ‘winning without fighting’, a Mao-ist era saying that draws from Sun Tzu. In a fight over ideas and perception, Three Warfares is effective in shaping the battlefield of world opinion and demonstrates that the “warzone” extends beyond physical conflict zones.
China’s refinement on psychological warfare is evident in PLA literature on “cognitive domain operations” (CDO); the use of information to influence an enemy’s cognitive functions for both peacetime and wartime functions (Beauchamp-Mustafaga, 2019). PLA theorist Zeng Huafeng defined tactics to win mind superiority: 1) “perception manipulation” through propaganda narratives; 2) “cutting off historical memory” so that targets will be open to new values; 3) “changing the paradigm of thinking” by targeting elites to change their ideology; and 4) “deconstructing symbols” to challenge national identity (Kunlun, 2014). Zeng would also be one of the first to underline the role that social media and the internet will have in attaining mind superiority. A framework of different technologies for CDO was later developed in 2018 that incorporated techniques for cognition to affect the ability to think and function, in addition to subliminal cognition or a person’s underlying perception of the world around them (emotions, knowledge, beliefs, values, etc.). CDO appears to be the underlying concept for China’s influence operations involving social media, to include propaganda and disinformation efforts.
Three Warfares is a guiding doctrine for the CPC and is not limited to the PLA. An internal PLA review had concluded that the military did not have the resources or capability to modernize for high intensity localized warfare, to include many of the ‘soft battles’ required for influence operations (Kania, 2016). The CPC utilizes whatever ways and means in order to reach its objectives, including use of other departments and capabilities within its purview. Both the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) and what CPC Chairman Xi Jinping has called “China’s magic weapon” the United Front Work Department (UFWD) play key roles in Three Warfares within a non-military context and form the two pillars for the Chinese disinformation operations.
The United Front is an organization with ‘deniability by design’, focused on influencing the Chinese diaspora, foreign governments, and other actors towards pro-Beijing policies. The UFWD accomplishes this with far-reaching liaison connections that facilitate business relationships, academic oversight and control abroad, influence campaigns for different target regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Xinjiang region, espionage recruitment, and influence of the Chinese diaspora (Bowe, 2018). China has used it to broker ‘shadow diplomacy’ (Diresta et. al) in addition to monitoring Chinese student activities abroad and using student organizations to shut down dissent in western countries (Sakaguchi, 2021).
The CPD in comparison is the CPC’s centralized authority for ideological party propaganda, media licensing, internet regulation, and messaging campaigns. Over the past decade as China has consolidated control and censorship over Chinese media outlets, it has embraced western social media sources in a ‘right to speak’ campaign to the rest of the world. In 2007, the CPC launched the Grand External Propaganda Campaign (大外宣) to create a PRC-controlled media platform Xinhua capable of shaping global narratives about China (Diresta et. al, 2020). The CPD additionally exploits social media networks to shape opinions for the Chinese diaspora and international community. The CPC has embraced western social media in its proliferation of cognitive domain operations and “Three Warfares” efforts to influence public opinion. China is now Facebook’s largest advertising client in Asia (Mozur, 2017), and Chinese Diplomats and Embassies have jumped onto Twitter and Facebook to communicate directly with the public (Schaefer, 2020). The emergence of the “Wolf Warrior”, or Diplomats that aggressively defend Chinese interests signals a turning point in official CPC communication, using confrontational or conspiratorial messaging, amplification of anti-western stories from other countries like Russia and Iran, and viral memes to gain followers. Facebook and Twitter have also found many instances of inauthentic account activity that amplifies these official social media messages (Scobell, 2021). Astroturfing is a known tactic that the CPC has utilized, with state-sponsored commenters posting to sway an opinion under the guise that they are a part of the targeted population. The CPD manages and trains its ‘cyber armies’ or state-sponsored social media commentators who wage more covert influence campaigns on these social networks, the largest and most well-known is the 50 Cent Party (50c). Past research on leaked 50c reimbursement emails have demonstrated coordinated messaging with an impressive throughput of nearly 500 million posts annually (King and Roberts, 2017, p. 494).
Influence Operations in Taiwan
A recent RAND report claimed that Taiwan is China’s test bed for disinformation campaigns on social media (Harold et. al, 2021). Since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, both Taiwan and China have claimed to be the one true China, with China replacing Taiwan’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council in 1971. Although the US does not officially recognize Taiwan as a country, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 which maintained a non-diplomatic relationship and non-committal military support to Taiwan if China were to invade, underlining ‘strategic ambiguity’ and preservation of the status quo (Clark, 2010, p. 3-4). While Taiwan and China have had increased cross-strait relations since the early 90s, tensions have drastically increased since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-Wen won office in 2016. This was a strategically important event for China; the first time in history a pro-independence party has won, signifying a strong anti-Beijing pivot for Taiwan and accompanying Chinese hostility using increasingly visible gray zone operations. China’s ‘peacetime’ unrestricted warfare demonstrates its gray zone strategy, using all instruments of power below the threshold of war, to include the more unattributable efforts that fall within Three Warfares (Layton, 2021).
China’s gray zone operations have increased precipitously close to this threshold of open conflict. In November 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China that an invasion of Taiwan would have ‘terrible consequences’, but did not commit to troops or US intervention, underlining the US policy of strategic ambiguity (Lonas, 2021). China’s strategy in Taiwan demonstrates how flexible its instruments of power are in furthering CPC goals towards reunification by eroding Taiwan’s will to resist. A few years after Three Warfares was published, the CPC passed the 2005 Anti-Secession Law, which threatens non-peaceful actions against Taiwan if there is a declaration of independence (Anti-Secession Law, 2005). This is legal warfare in action, creating what China sees as a legitimate path to coercing Taiwan into not declaring independence, and providing a justification for war in the instance that Taiwan does pursue independence. Additionally, the CPC views the 1992 Consensus, a meeting between the CPC and then ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) as a Taiwanese acceptance of a One-China rule in exchange for increased cross-strait trade and commerce (1992 Consensus). However, Taiwan has never adhered to this policy, with the KMT claiming ‘One China, Different interpretations’, and the DPP not recognizing the 1992 consensus. China has become increasingly aggressive regarding the definition of ‘One China’ with Xi Jinping stating in 2019 that there are no different interpretations for a ‘One China Principle’ (Grossman and Millan, 2020).
China has also wielded its massive leverage to attack Taiwan via diplomatic isolation and reduce Taiwan’s world standing. After the election, China immediately suspended the cross-strait hotline with Taiwan, signaling a complete degradation in official communication. Since 2016, China has poached seven more diplomatic relationships from Taiwan (Templeman, 2020). Panama reported that China had offered access to COVID-19 vaccinations in exchange for recognition (Sands, 2021). Conversely, China recently downgraded relations with Lithuania over a Taiwanese Embassy that opened up and has retaliated by blocking all Lithuanian goods from entry (Bounds, 2021). China will usually offer a carrot vs a stick in poaching these relationships vis-à-vis aid and trade, but it will also use economic coercion as Lithuania demonstrates. These actions all support China’s efforts to force Taiwan into accepting the 1992 consensus of ‘One China’ via diplomatic isolation. While diplomatic isolation promotes psychological warfare against Taiwan in denigrating its claims of being a sovereign nation, this strategy is mostly symbolic as most of Taiwan’s trade is currently conducted with countries that do not diplomatically recognize Taiwan (Shattuck, 2020).
China is increasingly using military incursions assisted with propaganda to conduct psychological warfare against Taiwan, often amplified by state-sponsored media sources. The year prior to the election, the PLA conducted a widely broadcast urban training exercise of tanks, artillery, and infantry forces attacking a mockup of the Taiwanese Presidential Office, likely aimed at Taiwanese voters to make the “right choice” in the election (Cole, 2015). Immediately following the 2016 election, China widely broadcast amphibious and live fire drills across the strait from Taiwan (Denyer, 2016). Over the past couple of years, the uptick in ADIZ incursions is a daily reminder to Taiwan that there is nothing it can do to stop China’s military actions. In October 2021, China sent nearly 200 PLA flights into the ADIZ, most of which were clustered around the National Day of the People’s Republic of China. These incursions have likewise had an uptick in fighter jets (Feng, 2021). While the incursions have not yet violated Taiwanese sovereign airspace, these PLA flights are leading to extreme stress and potentially long-term attrition on Taiwanese fighter jet responses and the Taiwanese public, as these incidents become normalized (Buckley and Qin, 2021).
China’s cross-strait business and trade within Taiwan is the United Front’s business model. China’s media Influence on Taiwanese companies stems from “censorship through capitalism” or influencing private companies towards CPC interests under the threat of economic coercion (Kurlantzick and Link, 2009). Through artful use of ‘United Front’ work using taishang businessmen, the CPC has been successful in influencing the private sector using a model of ‘economic independence’ that leads to political influence. The culture of guanxi or maintaining deeply held personal social connections has historical importance within Chinese and Taiwanese culture (Wu, 2016), but this is also a perfect avenue for political interference. The most famous example is Taiwan’s Want food conglomerate, which enjoyed rapid growth in the 90s from increased trade, earning 90% of its revenue from mainland China. In 2008, the Want Chairman bought up Taiwan’s largest media company China Times, creating the Want Media Group. Over time, the China Times transitioned over to pro-Beijing news coverage and has converged with state-sponsored media on issues like Hong Kong and Xinjiang (Wu, 2016, p. 431; Kurlantzick, 2019). Despite increased tension, China has allowed the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in remain in place, despite Taiwan rejecting the 1992 Consensus. This agreement has the potential to become a significant economic coercion tool that China may use to threaten Taiwan short of war (Grossman, 2021).
China’s disinformation efforts in Taiwan seek to ‘divide and demoralize’ Taiwanese society and promote the inevitability of reunification (Harold et. al, 2021, p. 65). Taiwan is a ripe landscape for Chinese disinformation efforts; it maintains a high internet penetration rate of about 92%, with heavy usage of social media platforms (Asia Internet Stats, 2021). After the 2016 Election, hundreds of thousands of Chinese netizens jumped over ‘the great firewall’ via VPN to spam Tsai Ing-Wen’s Facebook account with anti-Taiwan independence comments, many of which were written in simplified Chinese: a strong indicator of mainland China (Dong, 2016). This brigading effort was coordinated on the Chinese social media site Diba and represents an interesting grass-roots effort that at the very least was sanctioned by the CPC but also demonstrates the aggressive nationalism China holds towards Taiwan.
Disinformation rumors that propagate from Taiwan’s social media platform Professional Technology Temple (PTT) and messaging app LINE have also been successful and demonstrate China’s ‘localized campaign’ methodology. These false narratives have exploited natural fissures and fears in Taiwanese society, such as the Taiwanese government banning traditions (ghost money), draconian pension reform, military leasing of land to the US government, partisan issues, election integrity, and Chinese diplomacy poaching (Harold et. al, 2021). These narratives have at times resulted in real-word consequences, with a 10,000+ person protest for the ghost money campaign, but also decreased Taiwanese trust in media sources and increased socio-political divisions.
Content Farms are another way that the CPD has outsourced content creation. These websites provide a mix of content from clickbait to disinformation and propaganda, designed to generate traffic and ad revenue. These farms are usually corporate or individual entities that either generate original content or ‘launder’ material from state-sponsored sources. Similar to Russia’s outsourced troll farms in Ghana and Nigeria (Hern and Harding, 2020), the CPC has a booming content farm business in Malaysia in addition to China and Taiwan. An investigative report by the Taiwan Gazette demonstrated how content creators in Malaysia work in organized networks with website platform support, content tutorials, money transfer tips, and extensive messaging on profit-earning. These groups also dynamically share tips on how to circumvent emerging inauthentic account detection changes that Twitter and Facebook enact, dynamically changing their methods and content to avoid inauthentic behavior detection (Liu et. al, 2021). There are also Chinese and Taiwanese content farms run by pro-unification Chinese Fujian or Taiwanese citizens that may be more effective due to a deep understanding of Taiwanese hedge issues. Mission is one of the better-known farms that contributed to a disinformation rumor campaign on the Taishang airport in 2019, resulting in one Taiwanese Diploma’s suicide. Mission’s formula is to generate ‘viral’ content, but also exploit search engine optimization techniques that drive user traffic to a website. Mission and other content farms have reinforced top-down messaging from state-sponsored sources like Xinhua by providing bottom-up low-level state-sponsored media with disinformation and propaganda content (Delian et. al, 2020).
Despite China’s increasing disinformation and influence efforts against the Tsai Administration, Tsai Ing-Wen won the 2020 election with a larger margin than the 2016 election. Many believed the negative impact from disinformation efforts seen in the 2018 election would continue, resulting in more lost seats for the DPP party with the government becoming more pro-Beijing and pro-unification over time. Researcher Kharis Templeman attributes this decrease in disinformation impact to a few factors concerning Taiwan’s economy and China’s gray zone approach. Perhaps most importantly, China underestimated the rise in anti-CPC sentiment over the last few years. With the 2019-2020 collapse of democratic efforts and autonomy in Hong Kong, a ‘One-China-Two-System’ framework has become more of a warning for Taiwan of things to come. The CPC’s ‘sharp power’ use of military via ADIZ incursions and psychological warfare propaganda has galvanized the Taiwanese to resist notions of reunification. Additionally, Taiwan’s economy was boosted by some of the US-PRC trade disputes during the Trump Administration, aided by tax and policy incentives to draw Taiwanese businesses back to the island from China in order to lessen its economic dependence (Morgan, 2018). Lastly, the government enacted a series of proactive measures to combat disinformation; an interagency task force working with social media companies and watchdog organizations to shut down disinformation campaigns, increase political financial transparency, and strict prosecution for vote-buying and espionage (Templeman, 2020, p. 83-87).
Conclusion
With Hong Kong and Xinjiang under CPC control, Taiwan is one of the last bastions of ‘unclaimed territory’ for China, indicating that gray zone operations to include influence efforts will continue to increase potentially past the threshold of war. The PLA have enormously modernized over the past 30 years, ‘leapfrogging’ in phases with lessons learned from the United States and other countries regarding the operational level of war, joint operations, network-centric warfare, and influence operations. The country is currently on a trajectory to be a major player if not the most advanced country in the next AI-driven RMA, prioritizing both the creation and integration of AI capabilities in order to gain algorithmic advantage for an operational end state. How this technological drive will change China’s influence operations remains to be seen, but detection of disinformation campaigns will likely become more difficult.
China’s peace-time wartime integration engenders a ‘whole-of-society’ approach towards forwarding national interests. China’s influence operations towards Taiwan include high visibility psychological warfare using military incursions and propaganda, United Front business relationships to create a model of economic dependence and “censorship through capitalism”. Within the information environment, the CPC has embraced social media narrative propagation through official channels like state-sponsored media and CPC officials in addition to more covert methods such as non-attributable content farms, bot networks, state-sponsored commenter brigades, and Three Warfares PLA/Base 311 efforts.
There are key events that will serve as milestones on the conflict spectrum prior to China crossing the gray-zone with Taiwan to force reunification. These include more economic coercion and incentives towards other countries as China seeks to isolate Taiwan, the dissolution of existing China-Taiwan trade, increased propaganda aimed at decreasing Taiwan’s resistance to reunification via economic promises, and renewed efforts to poach Taiwan’s top talent in strategic supply chains like processor chip manufacturing. Legal updates to either the 1992 Consensus or the Anti-Session Law would also be indicators, assisted by media and social media narratives regarding why these laws need to be updated. Taiwan does not have the protected legal status of a sovereign nation, but it does have allies, a military, and the company of other Asian nations that fear Chinese expansionist goals. For this reason, China will prioritize gray zone coercion against Taiwan in order to win without fighting, using its flexible instruments of national power to achieve its goals.
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Kathleen M. Carley
Kathleen M. Carley, PhD, is a professor of societal computing in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, an IEEE Fellow, the director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), and the CEO of Netanomics. She is the 2011 winner of the Simmel Award from the International Network for Social Network Analysis and the 2018 winner of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Academic Award from GEOINT.
Charity Jacobs
Charity Jacobs is a PhD candidate at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, a Data Scientist at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and a Major with the U.S. Army Reserve. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin in political science and an MS from the University of Chicago in computational analysis and public policy. Her research interests include applied machine learning, natural language processing and disinformation detection.
6. China’s cultural industry is being co-opted for disinformation operations
Excerpts:
On whether these operations are effective, adversarial intelligence agencies and propaganda organs of authoritarian governments might be sharing some of the same Western doubts about the impact of foreign interference on social media platforms and experimenting with new tactics.
The Moscow-based AdNow/Fazze public relations firm was operating a social media campaign on Facebook that had low engagement before it reached out to YouTube influencers. As the director of threat disruption at Meta, David Agranovich, points out, platform enforcement ‘forces adversaries to shift to targeting intermediaries like influencers instead of engaging directly. These tactics have a cost: they’re slower, harder, and riskier.’
Unruhe’s ‘Origins of Corona virus’ video, featuring the pre-made white-tailed deer video, received a little over 2,000 views between 28 September 2021 to 24 January 2022 and has not been widely disseminated. Unruhe’s willingness to repost the video (without receiving monetary payment) might indicate that methods used by the CCP (such as the constant barrage of Chinese state media and diplomatic propaganda amplified by fake accounts) may have found a receptive audience among groups and individuals in democracies who are already pro-CCP and anti-US imperialism.
For now, North American white-tailed deer are unlikely to become scapegoats for Covid-origin theories, but the Chinese government may be strategically posturing its domestic cultural industry, grooming certain demographics and creating a global information environment that might be more susceptible to future influence campaigns.
China’s cultural industry is being co-opted for disinformation operations | The Strategist
Beijing’s quest to promote positive images of China overseas blurs the distinction between publicity and propaganda. Government departments contract private companies to funnel disinformation on Western social media and co-opt influencers alongside their legitimate public-relations activities. Consequently, the country’s cultural industry is financially incentivised to follow a broader ideological agenda while being strangled by censorship and regulation on sensitive issues.
On 6 September 2021, a representative from a Hong Kong–based marketing agency, Pear Technology (梨科技), emailed more than 100 English-speaking YouTube influencers, mostly based in the US, offering cash to post promotional videos about Hainan, an island province of the People’s Republic of China. Accidentally, one of the recipients was the shared business email account of YouTube content creators and Chinese Communist Party critics Winston Sterzel and Matthew Tye.
After some initial correspondence, the representative offered Sterzel and Tye a new deal. They had another ‘client’ that could pay US$2,000 to promote a pre-made video insinuating that Covid-19 originated in North America and spread via white-tailed deer.
The emails received by Sterzel and Tye potentially provide new details of how Western content creators or ‘key opinion leaders’ can be approached by private companies to be co-opted into pro-CCP disinformation operations. Key opinion leaders, or ‘influencers’, are individuals who have a significant online following and authority on social media. They typically derive some income from producing social media content and can be leveraged by businesses to build brand awareness or trust in products. In ASPI’s December 2021 report Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang, my colleagues and I explored how the CCP uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally that are aligned with its preferred narratives.
A Pear Technology representative confirmed that the mysterious client was likely affiliated with the Chinese government but said they didn’t ‘really know who [their] client is and which department [they’re] from’. They said Pear Technology was a ‘freshly established start-up company’ and that its ‘development team does not really sample through [their] clients as [they] just want to make money’. Government personnel were also known to ‘email out to various digital marketing agencies with their needs and see if any of them would take this case’.
The Chinese government has an extensive history of persistent—and poor—attempts to spread Covid-19 origin conspiracy theories using their diplomatic corps, hijacked/bought social media accounts and influencers as proxies. In October 2021, the University of Oxford found that Chinese diplomats were claiming Covid-19 could have been imported to Wuhan, China, through a batch of Maine lobsters and that this narrative was amplified by a pro-CCP network on Twitter.
The new theory outlined in the video sent to Sterzel and Tye suggests that Covid-19 may have originated from the US instead of Wuhan because an August 2021 US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) study detected Covid-19 antibodies in samples of white-tailed deer blood that were collected in early 2020. The video cites a Nature article and claims that Covid-19 was possibly already circulating in the US before being reported in China. What the video fails to mention is that the APHIS study also explains that the single Covid-positive sample collected before January 2020 was likely a false positive due to a testing error, and was well within the expected false positive rate of the tests used.
The APHIS study was first reported accurately by Chinese state media on 5 August 2021, but later APHIS’s false-positive clarification was removed and spun by the Global Times, a tabloid newspaper of the People’s Daily, on 13 August 2021 to suggest Covid-19 was circulating in the US before it emerged in China. On the same day, Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted a tweet making the same claim, and other state media outlets have shared similar articles and videos since.
ASPI reviewed the emails sent from Pear Technology and found that the same pre-made Covid-origin video Sterzel and Tye were asked to post has been shared by at least one other YouTube content creator, Jason Unruhe, the producer of Maoist Rebel News. In the emails from Pear Technology, Sterzel and Tye were asked to ‘integrate’ the pre-made video into one of their own videos. Unruhe’s video matches this format, but he denied he was paid or asked to publish the video after we reached out to him for comment. Instead, he said he found the footage on ‘some pro-China’ YouTube channel and ‘decided to go with it’. To be clear, ASPI is not suggesting that Jason Unruhe was paid to share the Covid-19 video.
Pear Technology, also known as PT.MOBI, is described as a subsidiary of a Beijing-based marketing start-up Yifan New Media (一帆新媒) on its website and engages in business outside China. It was founded by some of the same individuals behind Yifan New Media, which was reportedly founded by Tsinghua University graduates Shi Hongfei, Sun Jintao and Gu Qiwei. According to Yifan New Media’s website, it has around 50 video content producers, 70 operational staff and nearly 20 research and development staff. The company advertises multiple positions for overseas influencer recruiters on the Chinese recruitment website Lagou.
Yifan New Media is not likely a disinformation-for-hire firm and appears more likely to be an authentic commercial enterprise that was caught up in a government operation to promote Covid-origin conspiracy videos to key opinion leaders. The company is one of many new cultural production start-ups that are financially supported and incentivised to do party propaganda work without direct oversight. Yifan New Media placed third in the preliminary round of the 2020 Beijing cultural and creative competition, the Gehua Media Cup, which was co-sponsored by the Propaganda Department of the Changping District Party Committee. It was also a beneficiary of the 2019 ‘Rent Pass (房租通)’ program among 900 cultural companies that were subsidised up to 30% of their commercial tenancies. The fund was managed by the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee.
The approach of key opinion leaders or influencers in disinformation operations via third-party organisations is not a new tactic either. In the case of the North American deer Covid-origin theory, the Chinese government client has paralleled a similar tactic used in a 2021 Russian-linked active measure. Two Europe-based YouTube influencers were offered money by Fazze, a public-relations firm apparently based in London, to spread disinformation about the Pfizer–BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Open-source information revealed that in that case the company was likely a front for a Moscow-based company called AdNow reportedly owned by Yulia Serebryanskaya, who had close ties to the ruling United Russia Party. Some of the information in Fazze’s possession was also likely sourced from a cyberattack on the European Medicines Agency by possibly state-backed actors.
Unlike Russian active measures—which prefer to hack and leak information—CCP disinformation operations prefer to amplify or distort news reported in English-speaking countries that is favourable to CCP interests. Chinese government procurement documents show that, in 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Information Department awarded ¥3.38 million (around US$500,000) to Global Times Online (Beijing) Cultural Communication, a subsidiary of the Global Times media organisation, for foreign ‘public opinion’ monitoring services. This capability, combined with Beijing’s pervasive foreign data collection and analysis, could explain some of the repeated attempts by Chinese diplomats—in coordination with international-facing Chinese state media—to manipulate foreign information for propaganda purposes.
Like the Chinese concept of dual-use (military–civilian) technologies, CCP foreign propaganda efforts appear to be making increasing use of hired and volunteer trolls by mobilising public-relation firms and cultural enterprises for both legitimate publicity purposes and disinformation. Maggie Baughman, an analyst at SOS International’s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, analysed hundreds of Chinese public procurement documents and found that ‘government agencies at all levels are increasingly hiring professional companies to take over their social media management and online discourse work’. Some of these contracts may have been for reasonable purposes such as attracting tourism or promoting international events like the Beijing Winter Olympics, but other contracts may have enabled the spread of disinformation.
ASPI previously identified Changyu Culture, a marketing agency that had been contracted to amplify videos on Twitter and YouTube of Uyghurs apparently being supportive of the Chinese government’s policies in Xinjiang and denying claims of genocide using repurposed or inauthentic accounts. Meta has removed 524 accounts, 20 pages and four groups from Facebook and 86 Instagram accounts that were connected to the profile of a fake Swiss biologist who claimed the US was meddling in efforts to find the origins of Covid-19 and had links to employees of an information security firm, Sichuan Silence Information Technology.
On whether these operations are effective, adversarial intelligence agencies and propaganda organs of authoritarian governments might be sharing some of the same Western doubts about the impact of foreign interference on social media platforms and experimenting with new tactics.
The Moscow-based AdNow/Fazze public relations firm was operating a social media campaign on Facebook that had low engagement before it reached out to YouTube influencers. As the director of threat disruption at Meta, David Agranovich, points out, platform enforcement ‘forces adversaries to shift to targeting intermediaries like influencers instead of engaging directly. These tactics have a cost: they’re slower, harder, and riskier.’
Unruhe’s ‘Origins of Corona virus’ video, featuring the pre-made white-tailed deer video, received a little over 2,000 views between 28 September 2021 to 24 January 2022 and has not been widely disseminated. Unruhe’s willingness to repost the video (without receiving monetary payment) might indicate that methods used by the CCP (such as the constant barrage of Chinese state media and diplomatic propaganda amplified by fake accounts) may have found a receptive audience among groups and individuals in democracies who are already pro-CCP and anti-US imperialism.
For now, North American white-tailed deer are unlikely to become scapegoats for Covid-origin theories, but the Chinese government may be strategically posturing its domestic cultural industry, grooming certain demographics and creating a global information environment that might be more susceptible to future influence campaigns.
7. The American Public Deserves to Know What US Troops Are Doing in Europe
I support embedding journalists. I think I only tried once to refuse a journalist embedding. Oliver North came to the Philippines to do one of his "War Stories" episodes. I did not want him coming in and focusing solely on US forces and make it seem as if the US forces were leading operations. I was overruled by higher authorities (military and civilian). When I sat down for a one on one with North I told him frankly that I did not want him here and I explained why. He recognized my concerns and promised to tell the story in a "through, by, and with" way. He spent 10 days with us and in fact kept his word and did a good story that accurately represented the mission and the good work being done by the Armed Forces of the Philippines with US support. I am glad I was overruled.
The American Public Deserves to Know What US Troops Are Doing in Europe
Once again, thousands of families are upending their lives, with America's sons and daughters closer to harm's way as the Biden administration responds to a potential conflict in Europe.
We believe the American public, including those military families, has a right to know how and what their troops are doing and how the Pentagon is spending their tax dollars. Preventing journalists from speaking with these troops flouts the freedom of the press and falls short of President Biden's promise of increased transparency.
As a result, we call on the Pentagon and White House to immediately begin the process of allowing journalists to have access to troops arriving in Europe in response to Russian troop movements near Ukraine. This includes the standard practices of speaking directly with troops and embedding with units. Despite numerous requests from media organizations, no journalist has yet been granted opportunities for traditional reporting with these troops in Europe so that we can bring their stories home.
At his Monday Pentagon press briefing, spokesman John Kirby said the buck stops with him when it comes to allowing reporters access to these troops. Journalists, who collectively reach tens of millions of readers and viewers, join the Pentagon Press Association and Military Reporters and Editors Association in urging the Pentagon to offer improved access and transparency soon.
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8. Opinion | How the West Gets Ukraine Wrong — and Helps Putin As a Result
Know your enemy..... But who knows it best?
Conclusion:
The Soviet Union is now long gone. Today, in corridors of the Kremlin heavy with grievance, Russian chauvinism vis-à-vis Ukraine remains strong. Since 2014 it has led to the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian citizens and to the displacement of hundreds of thousands more.
Now it is making hostages of well over 40 million people. In menacing Ukraine’s borders, Putin is not only betting that the West doesn’t care about Ukraine. He is also betting that the West doesn’t know or even see Ukraine. Our ignorance feeds his aggression.
When we work to study Ukraine on its own terms, when we see Ukraine for what it is — a massive, pivotal, unique country whose people are once again at a front line of democratic freedom — we begin to prove him wrong.
Opinion | How the West Gets Ukraine Wrong — and Helps Putin As a Result
Politico · by Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity.
Magazine
Opinion | How the West Gets Ukraine Wrong — and Helps Putin As a Result
The extraordinary history and culture of the largest country within Europe needs to be taken more seriously in the Kremlin and everywhere else, too.
Pro-Ukraine activists demonstrate in front of the White House last Sunday. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Opinion by Rory Finnin
02/12/2022 07:00 AM EST
Rory Finnin, associate professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, is the author of
It was just a casual, throwaway description. Last September, the New York Times reported on a series of daring operations by Ukrainian special forces to evacuate civilians from Afghanistan. U.S. troops had left Kabul, and the Taliban had taken complete control. “Enter Ukraine,” the article read, “a small but battle-hardened nation.”
Even today, as Russian troops amass along Ukraine’s borders and threaten a dramatic escalation of their undeclared 8-year war, most Americans would pass over that word: small.
This is a big problem. Ukraine is the largest country by territory within the European continent. Its population is roughly the size of Spain’s. Take even a cursory look at any map — Ukraine is anything but small.
But in the West, our mental maps too often assume otherwise. Ukraine, some argue, is a blip on the radar — it pops up on screens and in newsfeeds roughly once every decade, with the fate of Europe hanging in the balance somewhere over the Dnipro river. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Orange Revolution in 2004. The annexation of Crimea in 2014. And now Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical hostage-taking in 2021-22, eliciting anxiety of a new World War in the making.
To contest the Kremlin’s cascading aggression, start by revising your mental map. Ukraine is a large country of persistent strategic and intellectual significance, and not only because of its diverse human capital, abundant economic potential or pivotal position between Russia and the European Union. Beyond the questions of what they have and where they are, Ukrainians are important for what they do and what they have done.
The truth is that Ukraine’s political and cultural agency has helped shape and reshape the map of Europe for generations. Indeed, Ukrainians have played an active part in the demise of not one, or two, or three, but four different empires, including Austria-Hungary and the Soviet Union.
This role has not been incidental. It has been hard won, driven by a modern national identity primarily based not on ethnic or religious affiliation, but on an idea: universal democratic freedom.
This idea may strike some as saccharine or strange. After all, the image of Ukraine in the West is often one of rapacious oligarchs and corrupt, feuding politicians — and not without good reason. But look beyond Ukraine’s recent history of government and elite intrigue, and you will see a vibrant, grassroots civil society that embodies the egalitarian agenda of Ukrainian civic nationalism. Especially since 2014, after hundreds of thousands of protesters fought against corruption and bled for freedom and rule of law in what has become known in Ukraine as the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainian civil society has succeeded in compelling the Ukrainian state to do better.
Putin, meanwhile, has gone to extraordinary lengths to allege that there is no such thing as a freestanding Ukrainian national identity. We need to be wise to the con. One of the many fronts of Russia’s war against Ukraine is informational. Time and again Putin has actively sought to push a narrative about Ukraine and Ukrainians as deeply, historically, spiritually embedded in the so-called Russian world. “Russians and Ukrainians,” he insisted last July, are “one people, a single whole.”
Putin’s assertion vividly illustrates a longstanding practice of refusing to frame Ukrainians as the subjects of their own story, of denying them a distinct historical trajectory and cultural agency of their own. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, of all people, understood this practice. “To ignore the importance of the national question in Ukraine,” he wrote, “means committing a profound and dangerous error.” Lenin spoke of this mistake as a common Russian “sin.”
So what do we see when we take modern Ukrainian nationhood seriously, on its own terms? We see a social and cultural movement with an anticolonial backbone and a suspicion of state institutions led by strongmen. We discover that, in the realm of political values, Ukraine is not Russia’s cousin. It’s Russia’s competitor.
Until the 17th century, nearly all the territory of today’s Ukraine was located within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth — that is, in a Polish “sphere of influence.” Prior to this point, for well over three centuries, the peoples we now call Ukrainians and Russians had traveled in different political orbits altogether.
These orbits intersected in the Treaty of Pereiaslav of 1654 — an event that looms large in the Russian version of Ukrainian history. At this time, Ukraine was a name for the land controlled by the Cossack Hetmanate, an autonomous polity carved from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after a bloody Cossack rebellion against Kraków. The Ukrainian Cossacks and the Russian tsar made a pact in Pereiaslav that marked the start of an uneasy relationship. It was a transaction between parties who needed language interpreters and referred to each other with terms like “foreigner.” Today, however, the Kremlin presents the Treaty of Pereiaslav as a “reunion” (vossoedinenie), a term that conceals the reality of Russian imperial expansion.
A half century later, Tsar Peter I refused to honor what the Cossacks understood as terms of mutual defense in their alliance, prompting the Cossack leader or “hetman” Ivan Mazepa to turn his forces against Russian power. Years before, Mazepa had written a prescient poetic lament about “mother Ukraine” in tension with an untrustworthy Moscow. Mazepa’s dramatic defeat at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 inspired new lamentations. Peter’s soldiers leveled the capital of the Hetmanate, but Ukrainian Cossack political autonomy still persisted in fits and starts throughout most of the 18th century. Rich, colorful European maps at the time show “Ukraine, Land of the Cossacks” holding on to borders similar to those we know today. In 1775, however, Russian Empress Catherine II, seeking to subsume neighboring peoples into an ever-larger Russian Empire, razed the remaining Ukrainian Cossack strongholds and ushered in the institution of serfdom in their place. Note the historical arc: slow-burning imperial conquest, not eternal confederation.
As it was being absorbed into Russian imperial space in the 18th and 19th centuries, Ukraine was often referred to as “Little Russia,” a term that may go some way to explain lingering impressions of Ukraine as somehow “small” today. But the origins of the name, coined by the Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople around the turn of the 14th century, when Muscovy was little more than a fledgling principality to the north, likely have less to do with size than with distance. “Rus” was the historical name for both the people and the wide expanse of territory centered in what is today Ukraine and Belarus. For the patriarch in Constantinople, “Little Russia” — or better translated, “Rus Minor” — had a meaning of the Rus close by. It was juxtaposed to “Great Russia” — or better, “Rus Major” — which connoted the Rus farther away, on the periphery. Think of Asia Minor and Asia Major, or even terms like “Greater New York.”
As geopolitical fortunes changed over time, so too did the understanding of these terms. By 1762 Ukrainian writers like Semen Divovych had come to read “little” and “great” as reflections of political power. But Divovych and his compatriots still had no patience for lazy conflations of Ukrainians and Russians as “one people.” Speaking in the voice of “Little Russia” to “Great Russia,” Divovych wrote, “Do not think that you rule over me… You the Great, and I the Little, live in neighboring countries.”
Ukrainians like Divovych frequently made clear their differences with Russians, but it took a trail-blazing poet in the mid-19th century to invest these differences with a clear ethical and political significance. This poet was Taras Shevchenko, and his passion for freedom, disgust for tyrants and distrust of structures of political authority became the primary source code of modern Ukrainian nationhood. Without him, today’s Ukraine would not exist.
Shevchenko made sense of the history of Ukrainians by centering their identity on one key value above all others: freedom, volia. All grassroots national movements pursue freedom for their people, but Shevchenko, a former serf with intimate personal knowledge of slavery and bondage cutting across ethnic and religious lines, privileged the idea of universal democratic freedom itself. He sought freedom for all oppressed peoples, especially the Muslim communities in the Caucasus warding off the Russian forces that surrounded them in their day. His anticolonial watchwords “Boritesia, poborete” — “Fight, you will prevail” — echoed on the streets of Kyiv during the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14. They resonate throughout the country now.
For Shevchenko, the idea of “mother Ukraine” was an antipode to aristocracy to the west and autocracy to the east. In his poetry he framed Ukrainian identity not primarily as a matter of ethnicity, religion or political allegiance — he had love neither for hetmans nor for tsars — but as a question of cultural authenticity and ethical behavior in the face of twin systems of serfdom and colonialism, which turned human beings into either chattel or canon fodder. “When will Ukraine have its own [George] Washington,” Shevchenko asked, “with a new and righteous law?”
Shevchenko wrote his nation-consolidating poetry in the Ukrainian vernacular, but he also used Russian in his prose. He did not see language politics as a zero-sum game. “Let the Russians write as they like, and let us write as we like,” he declared. “They are a people with a language, and so are we.”
In his verse, Shevchenko privileged Ukrainian, but in his life he practiced what remains today a prominent Ukrainian bilingualism, in which both the Ukrainian and Russian languages can circulate in everyday life. Americans often misread this easy multilingualism, mistaking Ukraine’s linguistic diversity for linguistic adversity — as “Ukrainian speakers” vs. “Russian speakers.” In fact, most Ukrainians can qualify as both, depending on the context, and language use is no clear indicator of political sentiment in Ukraine today in any case. In fact, according to former President Petro Poroshenko, Russian speakers comprise the majority of the thousands of Ukrainian military personnel killed in the ongoing undeclared war with Russia.
Shevchenko’s liberationist message went viral in the Russian Empire. It also resonated with groups of ethnic Russians, Poles, Jews and Crimean Tatars alike, powering a civic nationalist movement that took advantage of the political opening of 1917 to announce the birth of a country: the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The founding declaration was addressed to the people in four languages — Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Yiddish.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks defeated the Ukrainian People’s Republic a few years later, but only after conceding that Ukraine was a nation deserving of a form of statehood, a concession that helped make Soviet victory possible along the non-Russian peripheries of the tsar’s former empire. After all, the Soviet Union was formally a union of national republics, and the Ukrainians were a central reason why.
The Soviet Union is now long gone. Today, in corridors of the Kremlin heavy with grievance, Russian chauvinism vis-à-vis Ukraine remains strong. Since 2014 it has led to the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian citizens and to the displacement of hundreds of thousands more.
Now it is making hostages of well over 40 million people. In menacing Ukraine’s borders, Putin is not only betting that the West doesn’t care about Ukraine. He is also betting that the West doesn’t know or even see Ukraine. Our ignorance feeds his aggression.
When we work to study Ukraine on its own terms, when we see Ukraine for what it is — a massive, pivotal, unique country whose people are once again at a front line of democratic freedom — we begin to prove him wrong.
Politico · by Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity.
9. If Blinken’s visit to Fiji is aimed at curtailing Chinese influence, he has his work cut out for him
I was told that the South Pacific is a political warfare battleground between the PRC and the US but critics think we have ceded the initiative to China. I do not know enough about the region to make an informed assessment but it seems to be that the South Pacific is an important geostrategic region and should be engaged (and our new INDO-PACIFIC strategy recognizes its importance and calls for action. Let's execute a superior form of political warfare to effectively geopolitically compete with China.
Conclusion:
It’s clear that for Fiji and the Pacific, global warming, not China, is the clear and present danger, and US president Trump did not do America in the Pacific any favours by withdrawing from the Paris accord. If his goal is to curtail Chinese influence in Fiji and the region, Blinken has his work cut out. Pacific leaders will want some tangible outcomes from this historic meeting as concrete assurance of the United States’ commitment to the Pacific Islands.
If Blinken’s visit to Fiji is aimed at curtailing Chinese influence, he has his work cut out for him | Shailendra Singh
As the US downsized its Pacific presence, China stepped into the vacuum; a rare visit from the secretary of state won’t convince Fiji to turn on its ally
The US secretary of state’s lightning visit to Fiji may be sudden, but not surprising. That Antony Blinken is the first US secretary of state to visit Fiji in 37 years reflects just how much has changed geopolitically.
It is also an indication of Fiji’s influential role in this part of the world, being a strong, if not the strongest, Pacific ally of China, the arch-rival of the US in the Pacific.
In what is an election year for Fiji, Blinken appeared keen to meet the Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama, who is known to be close to China, but he remains hospitalised in Australia, after a serious operation, so the acting prime minister Aiyaz-Sayed Khaiyum plays host.
Blinken’s team will use the visit to reassure Pacific Island leaders of the Biden administration’s commitment to regional concerns, chief of which is climate change, following America’s return to the Paris Agreement. Maritime security and illegal fishing will also be on the table, according to US officials, which means that China’s shadow looms large in the meeting.
Not for the first time, Blinken raised the spectre speaking this week to The Australian of China’s ambitions to become the “leading military, economic, diplomatic and political power, not just in the region, but in the world” and the need for a united front against Chinese expansionism. This is an old memo with a new sense of urgency, at least for the US and its allies, not the least because of the latest Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has seen China and Russia bonding ever more strongly over a common foe.
The US clearly sees a need to draw its friends closer, even far-flung Pacific friends, but unlike the cold war, communist China is no longer seen as a threat in Fiji and the region. To the contrary, China is regarded more as a friend than a foe and a crucial partner in development, a status China has worked long and hard to achieve.
As the US downsized its presence in the region after the cold war, China quietly stepped into the vacuum, and decades of consistent work on the diplomatic front, topped by dollops of aid, grants and loans, has seen it make major inroads in the region, where it is now firmly ensconced.
According to the Australian thinktank Lowy Institute, Australia is still the chief aid donor in Fiji, but China is committing more and more money in the region, particularly in the form of loans. China’s 10 Pacific allies, including Fiji, have signed on to the US$1tn belt and road initiative.
Unlike the cold war, it will be harder for Fiji and the Pacific to choose between “friends”, if that is the US intention, judging from Blinken’s comments to The Australian this week that “our (liberal) values must be defended against whomever is challenging them.” It was China that firmly backed Fiji after the 2006 military coup, when it was suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum grouping and faced sanctions from Australia and New Zealand.
Chinese Ambassador to Fiji Qian Bo hands over FJ$420,000 (about US$200,000) to Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama, in December 2020, to support rebuilding after tropical cyclone Yasa. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
China’s longstanding foreign policy principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs has endeared it to many Pacific leaders, causing some commentators to question whether western countries have adopted a similar strategy with regards to their apparent silence on human rights issues, lest any criticism drives Pacific leaders further into China’s arms.
Prof Biman Prasad, leader of Fiji’s opposition National Federation party has been vocal about what he sees as a culture of “sycophancy and servility” in the international diplomatic community in the Pacific, warning that traditional partners “pandering to dictatorial governments and ignoring basic human rights will not only serve to impede meaningful development in the Pacific, but also allow countries that do not care about democracy to have a stronger foothold in the region, shifting the geopolitical balance for good”.
Of all the Pacific countries, China certainly has a strong foothold in Fiji, which is now home to a growing Chinese population of about 10,000, a Confucius Centre located at the regional University of the South Pacific, as well as presence of Chinese state media in the capital city, Suva-symbols of Chinese soft power inroads into the island nation.
In his speech at the 2015 China-Fiji 40th Anniversary diplomatic symposium in Suva, Bainimarama lauded China as not only having “a great history but a great present and a great future”, adding that “Fiji looks to China for leadership in the global community on the great issues of our time”.
It’s clear that for Fiji and the Pacific, global warming, not China, is the clear and present danger, and US president Trump did not do America in the Pacific any favours by withdrawing from the Paris accord. If his goal is to curtail Chinese influence in Fiji and the region, Blinken has his work cut out. Pacific leaders will want some tangible outcomes from this historic meeting as concrete assurance of the United States’ commitment to the Pacific Islands.
Shailendra Singh is Associate Professor of Pacific Journalism at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, and the 2022 Pacific Research Fellow at the Australian National University
10. Disinformation, Radicalization, and Algorithmic Amplification: What Steps Can Congress Take?
Conclusion:
There is no silver bullet to address algorithmic radicalization, but this problem is clearly serious enough to warrant a series of steps that would make a difference at the margins, while continuing to respect First Amendment values and requirements.
Disinformation, Radicalization, and Algorithmic Amplification: What Steps Can Congress Take?
February 7, 2022
Editor’s note: This article is part of a series from leading experts with practical solutions to democratic backsliding, polarization, and political violence.
Design features of social media platforms are exploited to promote extremism. The platforms’ after the fact, whack-a-mole approach to content moderation is insufficient. However, Section 230 reform – a popular rallying cry – is a blunt instrument that may lead to unintended suppression of important speech and not address radicalization. Congress or agencies acting on their own should push for transparency, consumer protection (in terms of consistent, transparent enforcement of terms of service), and development of transparent codes of conduct. This approach mirrors elements of Europe’s Digital Services Act and could be endorsed by the United States and European Union (EU).
A Glimpse Inside Online Amplification Engines
When an internal Facebook experiment created a fake account for a fictional user – “Carol Smith,” a 41-year old conservative mother from North Carolina – this account was recommended pages and groups related to QAnon within days of its creation. “Carol” was recommended an account associated with the militia group Three Percenters within three weeks.
This research and other documents released by the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen underscore that the design features of large social media platforms are exploited to promote extremism.
An August 2019 Facebook internal memo admitted that, “the mechanics of our platform are not neutral” and, in fact, that core product mechanics, including virality, recommendations, and optimizing for engagement are key to why hate and misinformation flourish on the platform.
Research shows this is true as to other platforms as well. TikTok’s recommendation algorithm likewise promotes content from QAnon, the Patriot Party, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters. In one example, after users interacted with transphobic videos on TikTok, the recommendation algorithm fed these users videos with hate symbols, white supremacist and anti-Semitic content, as well as coded calls to violence.
The video sharing platform YouTube has 290 extremist channels, according to research by the Anti-Defamation League. When researchers experimentally suggested to the algorithm, through their viewing habits, that they were interested in militant movements, YouTube suggested videos to them with titles like “5 Steps to Organizing a Successful Militia” and “So You Want to Start a Militia?” The platform also recommended videos about weapons, ammunition, and tactical gear to what the researchers at the Tech Transparency Project call “the militia-curious viewer.”
How does incendiary material, including misinformation, get boosted to viral status on social media platforms? Online outlets like Breitbart and Daily Wire cherry pick anecdotes that appear to validate conspiracy theories about vaccines or voter fraud. The material is shared by influencers like the conservative activist Candace Owens and networks of users (or bots) with their audiences of followers. Algorithms designed to keep users online then boost the material into feeds of users like “Carol” because it is popular – whether or not she chose to follow any of the accounts carrying it. Ads further target the material based on detailed profiles about users and the ads themselves are boosted if an algorithm determines they will keep people with a particular profile online so that, in the words of the Facebook whistleblower, “An ad that gets more engagement is a cheaper ad.”
The more incendiary the material, the more it keeps users engaged, the more it is boosted by the algorithm. Haugen relayed that European politicians complained to Facebook that they were being forced to post more extreme messages online – and therefore to adopt more extreme political positions – in order to get their messages heard under the platform’s model of algorithmic amplification. When their messages were substantive, they did not reach as many users as when they attacked each other.
Other social media features were exploited for high-tech organizing of the Stop the Steal groups that culminated in the January 6th insurrection. “Super inviters” create invitation links – in part based on suggestions from the platform or pulled from lists of other groups – that can be shared on or off Facebook and can easily coordinate their invitations. A Facebook internal report on the Stop the Steal movement revealed that 0.3 percent of group members were responsible for 30 percent of invitations to join. Among these 137 “super-inviters” to the largest Stop the Steal group, Facebook reported that 73 were members of other groups designated as harmful conspiracy groups, which fed into high membership overlap with Proud Boy and militia groups and fueled Stop the Steal Groups’ meteoric growth rates. Research shows Facebook even directs users who “like” one militia page toward other militia groups.
The research also makes clear that the companies’ current strategy of post hoc, individual take-downs is grossly insufficient to address this systemic vulnerability. A COVID conspiracy video hosted by Breitbart’s pages and channels on social media, America’s Frontline Doctors, reached over 20 million viewers before all the major platforms took it down for violating their terms of service. Similarly, Stop the Steal, militia movements, and QAnon grew to reach millions of users before the mainstream platforms took concerted action to contain them.
Not Just a Facebook Problem: Extremist Amplification and its National Security Consequences
These design features pose a national security risk when foreign agents and terrorists use them to recruit and harass American citizens. The first volume of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report documents Russians’ “sweeping” and “systemic” social media disinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Russians used government-backed outlets, like RT and Sputnik, as well as fake and conspiratorial sites, and fake pages such as Blacktavist, to spread disinformation, amplifying stories with bots and trolls. They not only attempted to discourage African Americans from voting, inflame fears of immigrants, and spread disinformation about Hillary Clinton, but also organized groups of Americans to take to the streets to protest each other, in one case in front of a mosque. More recently, during the 2020 election, Eastern European troll farms controlled Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content, reaching 140 million U.S. users a month. In September of 2021, a pro-China COVID-19 misinformation campaign spread over 30 social media platforms; analysts believe the primary objective was to physically mobilize protestors in the United States.
But the national security risk arises not only from foreign interference but also when domestic extremists use social media. In fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warns on its website, “[i]nternational and domestic violent extremists have developed an extensive presence on the Internet through messaging platforms and online images, videos, and publications. These facilitate the groups’ ability to radicalize and recruit individuals who are receptive to extremist messaging.” In fact, in the days surrounding the December 2020 election, domestic actors including elected officials actively promoted destabilizing misinformation through their social media channels, leading to threats of violence against elections workers and culminating in the events of January 6. Indeed, the January 6 insurrection was extensively planned by domestic actors on social media platforms – from Facebook and Twitter to more niche sites like “The Donald” and Parler – where extremist messages easily found new audiences, thanks to the engagement-based boosting of the platforms.
Platforms do not seem to be fixing the design defects so easily exploited by extremists. The events of January 6th, congressional hearings, and media exposés have yielded takedowns of QAnon, militia groups, and promoters of vaccine and election conspiracies. Facebook deemphasized political posts and current events in NewsFeed, recommitted to removing Taliban content, and reworked warning labels. Instagram will soon give the option for chronologically-ordered feeds. Twitter rolled out new features intended to make it easier for users to report Tweets. These are important steps, but they remain insufficient and piecemeal. Facebook’s Oversight Board has been stymied in its review the company’s “XCheck,” or cross check, system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules due to a lack of transparency and unsatisfactory answers, according to the board’s co-chair. Across the board, the platforms have not begun fundamental reform. Indeed, the Facebook papers disclosed that the company rejected insightful employee ideas for changing design flaws to reduce the gravest harms from online extremism.
Platforms currently enjoy legal immunity for almost all content posted by or activity engaged in by others on their networks. They also face no requirement to be transparent about what is occurring on their platforms – except to report child pornography and child sexual exploitation. Until government changes social media companies’ incentives, these sites will not change the design features that enable and promote algorithmic radicalization.
Commonsense Steps to Limit Algorithmic Radicalization
The recent debate about fixing social media has focused on Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996, which shields social media platforms from liability for “content provided by another information content provider.” Both Donald Trump, as president, and then-candidate Joe Biden threatened to cut back the law and there are numerous bills in Congress to eliminate or change it.
In fact, carving back Section 230 protections for third party content is far from a panacea. Not only does the First Amendment robustly protect debate on issues of public concern, but even where a crime is alleged to have been committed online, in order for the platform itself to be liable, the underlying statute would also need to bar facilitation of the crime or distribution of the content.
As a result, removing Section 230 protection would only allow cases to proceed where platforms were alleged to have violated statutes that reach conduct of intermediaries (e.g., where the platform is alleged to have provided material aid to a designated international terrorist organization), or to have been negligent in allowing their sites to be used in ways that resulted in serious harm. Negligence could be alleged, for instance, in civil lawsuits against online service providers for failing to act against recruitment and planning for acts of violence that resulted in injury to plaintiffs (e.g., Capitol and DC Police Officers wounded on January 6th).
However, allowing one-off negligence lawsuits is a blunt instrument, opening up liability in a very broad range of cases that would take years to yield clear guidance for online service providers about what constitute appropriate safeguards. In the meantime, online service providers could well decide either to engage in overzealous moderation of nonviolent expressive content or conversely to wait until clarity arrives before implementing safeguards.
For this reason, any targeted Section 230 reform should be paired with positive transparency requirements, consumer protection investigations (e.g., of failure to enforce terms of service or of how violent extremist incidents were organized online), and development of a voluntary code of conduct.
Open the “Black Box”
Obtaining data on how social media sites both promote and moderate illegal and dangerous activity should not require the actions of a whistleblower. Congress and state legislatures can require specific types of data be provided to regulators, researchers, and the general public.
- Just as the National Transportation Safety Board gets access to data on airplane crashes or the Environmental Protection Agency releases data on pollution, regulators should have access to data related to a violent event that may have been organized online, in a way that respects First Amendment concerns.
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Likewise, large platforms should be required to provide information on their enforcement of their terms of service and permit third-party audits of this enforcement. This transparency should extend to their users as well: platforms should consistently inform users of the reasons behind any account or content moderation decision, and provide them a right to appeal. None of this need require disclosure of trade secrets or the details of editorial decisions. Even aggregate statistics would be illuminating. (The bipartisan Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act (PACT) sponsored by Senators Thune (R-SD) and Schatz (D-HI) for example, would require online platforms to provide biannual reports of disaggregated statistics on content that has been removed, demonetized, or deprioritized.)
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Researchers should have access to retrospective data on online activity in a way that removes user identities to protect user privacy. The bipartisan Platform Accountability and Transparency Act bill, sponsored by Senators Coons (D-DE), Portman (R-OH), and Klobuchar (D-MN), would create a process for the National Science Foundation to approve data requests from independent researchers. Social media companies would be required to provide data for approved proposals, subject to enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC would establish appropriate privacy and cybersecurity safeguards.
Advertising Transparency and Know Your Customer
The bipartisan Honest Ads Act would provide the same transparency about ads that is required on broadcast for election ads. It should be supplemented by Know Your Customer rules that prevent dark money or foreign actor ad funding. Platforms would be required to have robust systems for archiving advertisements and information on how those ads were targeted that are searchable and sortable through an Application Programming Interface (API). This requirement could apply to all advertisements, as Phillip Howard, Laura Edelson, and others have proposed. However, it is important to be mindful that much of online organizing of violent acts does not use paid advertising.
Regulatory Investigations
The FTC or a group of State Attorneys General could use their existing consumer protection authorities – which protect against deceptive or unfair trade practices – in order to investigate platforms’ potential material failures to honor commitments in their own terms of service or unfair actions in failing to guard against significant harms to consumers. (Potential examples of such deceptive or unfair practices, revealed by the Facebook papers, include exempting 5.8 million VIP users from content moderation standards, the abysmal rates at which Facebook removes hate speech — less than 5 percent of all hate speech on the platform is taken down — and systematically allowing content that violates terms of use to go viral before taking it down.) In the event that a case yields a settlement, the consent decree or other settlement agreement could require the defendant platform to take steps to mitigate risks of further consumer deception, report compliance, and even require third party audits or assessments of a platform’s harm mitigation program in light of evolving risks.
Indeed, one such regulatory investigation may already be underway. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook revealed in October that it is “subject to government investigations and requests relating to a former employee’s allegations and release of internal company documents concerning, among other things, our algorithms, advertising and user metrics, and content enforcement practices, as well as misinformation and other undesirable activity on our platform, and user well-being.”
Transparent Best Practices
In addition, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) or the FTC could work with platforms to develop a platform code of conduct or best practice guidance for mitigating design features that amplify illegal content or activity. (The PACT Act contains a provision to require NIST to develop a voluntary code.)
Such a framework would work best with legislation to create baseline accountability and transparency. However, in the likely event that Congress is unable to pass legislation, the FTC or State Attorneys General have predicates to pursue consumer protection investigations against platforms. And NIST or the FTC could consult with platforms to develop a voluntary, transparent code of conduct for amplification and content moderation processes.
There is no silver bullet to address algorithmic radicalization, but this problem is clearly serious enough to warrant a series of steps that would make a difference at the margins, while continuing to respect First Amendment values and requirements.
Image: WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 01: Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen (L) listens during a hearing before the Communications and Technology Subcommittee of House Energy and Commerce Committee December 1, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The subcommittee held a hearing on “Holding Big Tech Accountable: Targeted Reforms to Tech’s Legal Immunity.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
11. These are the 4 secretive US special-ops units that JSOC gives its toughest missions
There is no hiding from those on the internet.
These are the 4 secretive US special-ops units that JSOC gives its toughest missions
Delta operators during Operation Desert Storm.
Courtesy photo
- Within US Special Operations Command is a secretive component known as Joint Special Operations Command.
- JSOC's four Tier 1 special-mission units are the cream of the crop in the US special-operations community.
- JSOC is known for some of its high-profile operations, such as the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
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Nowadays, the US special-operations community is a behemoth, with over 70,000 special operators, enablers, and support troops assigned to it.
It is composed of many units, some more known than others. Everyone and their mother have heard about the Navy SEALs, but few know about Air Force Combat Controllers or Army Civil Affairs troops.
Since the 1980s, all these units have roughly fallen under the same organization: US Special Operations Command. SOCOM is composed of five component commands, all but one of them with a service affiliation — such as Naval Special Warfare Command or Air Force Special Operations Command.
The only SOCOM component command without a service affiliation is joint — meaning that it includes units from across the services — and is the most secretive one.
Joint Special Operations Command is America's 9-11 force. Its four Tier 1 special mission units are the cream of the crop in the US special-operations community and are the first ones to get the call for a mission.
JSOC regularly changes the names of these units and keeps other details secret for operational security, meaning information about them is often outdated by the time it reaches the public, but here is a brief, open-source breakdown of what's known about the four units, how they operate, and what missions they've done.
The Army's Delta Force
Delta Force in Latin America weeks before Operation Acid Gambit, the rescue of Kurt Muse.
Courtesy photo
Founded in 1977 by Charlie Beckwith, an enterprising Green Beret officer, Delta Force is the Army's dedicated counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and direct-action special missions unit.
Delta Force has participated in almost every major and minor conflict since it was created, including Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, Somalia in 1993, and, in recent years, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
The "Unit," as Delta Force is nicknamed, was also pivotal in the industrial-scale counterterrorism campaign that dismantled Al Qaeda in Iraq during the counterinsurgency campaign there in the mid-2000s.
Delta Force is open to every member of the armed forces, including National Guard and Reserves troops. However, Delta operators tend to come from the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, which has a reputation as a feeder unit for Delta, and the Army Special Forces Regiment, nicknamed the "Green Berets."
The Navy's Naval Special Warfare Development Group
A SEAL Team 6 close-protection operator at an event with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
US Department of Defense
The Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) — formerly known as SEAL Team 6 — is the Navy's dedicated counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and direct-action special missions unit.
The unit is most well known for Operation Neptune Spear, the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in Pakistan in 2011. DEVGRU has participated in many more operations, including the recent rescue of an American citizen held hostage in Nigeria.
What makes DEVGRU different from Delta Force is that it recruits solely from within the Naval Special Warfare community, meaning that only Navy SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft crewmen can join the unit.
The Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron
US Air Force 24th Special Tactics Squadron during an exercise at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, April 14, 2014.
US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Jodi Martinez
On paper, the 24th Special Tactics Squadron is just another special-operations squadron — there is also a 22nd and a 23rd Special Tactics Squadron.
In reality, the unit is the Air Force special-operations community's elite, recruiting its special operators from the other non-tier-1, or "vanilla," special tactics squadrons.
The unit is composed of Combat Controllers, Pararescuemen, Special Reconnaissance (formerly Special Operations Weather Technicians) operators, and Tactical Air Control Party commandos.
To enter one of these special-operations career fields, one has to pass a grueling selection and training process that takes up to two years. Then, after serving a number of years in a "vanilla" special tactics squadron, one has to pass another selection for the 24th.
The main difference from the rest of special mission units is that the 24th Special Tactics Squadron rarely, if ever, operates on its own. Rather, its special operators are attached to other JSOC units.
For example, during the Battle of the Black Sea in Somalia in 1993 — known as the "Black Hawk Down" incident — a small team of 24th Special Tactics Squadron Pararescuemen and Combat Controllers were attached to and fought alongside the Delta Force squadron involved in the operation.
The Army's Intelligence Support Activity
A US Army Intelligence Support Activity patch with the mottos "Send Me" and Veritas Omnia Vincula Vincit, meaning "Truth Overcomes All Bonds."
US Army
The most secretive unit out of the four, the Intelligence Support Activity was created after the failed Iranian embassy hostage rescue operation in 1980 to provide the then-nascent SOCOM and the wider US military with credible, timely, and actionable human and signals intelligence.
The unit recruits from across the services and has a strategic rather than tactical mission, tasked with informing the decisions of policymakers and senior military and interagency officials. Many of the unit's operations and activities are classified.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
12. Commandant Sees Bigger Role for Marine Raiders in Great Power Competition
It is good to see the Commandant acknowledge the importance of the Raiders.
But I think I see his intent and that is that he would like Raiders to use their exquisite capabilities to support conventional Marine units. But his comments on intelligence may trip the radar of intelligence oversight committees.
Excerpts:
“Their great value,” Berger said “is their persistent presence forward” as well as their deeper cultural understanding and language skills in the places they operate. “Conventional forces don’t normally have any of that. They also don’t have the finer, nuanced, higher level skills that MARSOC Marines have, and I’m not talking about kicking down a door,” he said.
Instead, he meant Raiders’ skills in collecting information and intelligence in a discreet manner while deployed far forward. “If you married that up with a higher performing infantry battalion or conventional force, you will have the best of all worlds,” he said.
Commandant Sees Bigger Role for Marine Raiders in Great Power Competition - Seapower
Marine Raiders rehearse advanced military free fall jumps at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Sept. 1, 2021. Military free fall sustainment training is necessary for a Marine special operations team to stay proficient and ready at all times for future operations. U.S. MARINE CORPS / Cpl. Ethan Green
ARLINGTON, Va. — Like the rest of U.S. Special Operations Command, Marine Raiders will have a bigger role to play in the military’s competition with a rising China and resurgent Russia, the Marine Corps commandant says.
After 20 years with a heavy focus on counter insurgency and counter terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and other flashpoints around the globe, “I do see a bigger role for them and probably an adjusted role,” Gen. David Berger said Feb. 8 at the National Defense Industrial Association’s virtual Expeditionary Warfare Conference.
“Now, how do we use special operations forces in great power competition?” Berger said, adding he thought Marine Special Operations Command would follow a similar path as the rest of the Marine Corps in the near future, “Back to naval roots. How does it support the naval expeditionary forces forward?”
Among their roles, Marine Raider units train, advise and assist friendly host nation forces, including naval and maritime military and paramilitary forces. The aim is to help local forces support their governments’ internal security and stability, counter subversion and reduce the risk of violence from internal and external threats, according to the MARSOC website.
“Their great value,” Berger said “is their persistent presence forward” as well as their deeper cultural understanding and language skills in the places they operate. “Conventional forces don’t normally have any of that. They also don’t have the finer, nuanced, higher level skills that MARSOC Marines have, and I’m not talking about kicking down a door,” he said.
Instead, he meant Raiders’ skills in collecting information and intelligence in a discreet manner while deployed far forward. “If you married that up with a higher performing infantry battalion or conventional force, you will have the best of all worlds,” he said.
In late January, Marines from the 3rd Marine Raider Battalion worked with the 8th Marine Regiment’s 1st Battalion on close-quarters battle training, including hallway and stairwell clearing procedures and sensitive site exploitation. The three-day training session at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, sought to improve cooperation among the conventional Fleet Marine Force and Special Operations Forces.
Going forward, Berger believed MARSOC, like the entire Corps, would have to adjust their focus from 90% counterinsurgency and counter terrorism to “a much better balance of integrated deterrence, campaigning, crisis response, in other words, meeting us somewhere in the littorals, where the Corps’ skillset strength is.”
13. The Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ is backed by a Bangladeshi marketing firm and right-wing fringe groups
I never would have guessed that a Bangladeshi marketing firm would be involved.
The Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ is backed by a Bangladeshi marketing firm and right-wing fringe groups
As American politicians call for stateside convoys, a Grid investigation finds signs that foreign actors, QAnon and hate pervade the movement’s support.
A Bangladeshi firm appears to have played a key role in promoting the Ottawa protest online, and Grid has found increasing evidence of fringe conspiracies and violent extremism throughout the movement.
Online groups on platforms like Facebook and Telegram, together with fundraising campaigns on the GiveSendGo site, have formed digital lifelines for the ongoing Canadian action. They funnel moral support, supplies, manpower and money to the effort, even as they help spread baseless conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric.
Hear more from Steve Reilly and Benjamin Powers about this story:
Grid reviewed the membership and content of those forums, spoke with extremist experts and conducted a comprehensive review of over 80,000 recorded donations to the convoy’s primary online fundraiser. Combined, they show how QAnon adherents and fringe, even supremacist, ideologies pervade the movement.
The ongoing convoy action centered in Ottawa has lasted nearly two weeks and disrupted traffic at three U.S.-Canada border crossings. Canadian authorities Thursday froze millions of dollars in funds from the chief crowdfunding campaign on GiveSendGo, the platform organizers used to raise financial support for truckers protesting covid vaccine mandates in Canada.
A Bangladeshi firm behind pro-trucker Facebook groups
Grid found that a Bangladeshi digital marketing firm was behind two of the largest Facebook groups related to the Canadian Freedom Convoy — at least until Facebook’s parent company, Meta, removed them Thursday following inquiries from Grid. The groups, “Freedom Convoy 2022″ and “Convoy to Ottawa 2022,” attracted a combined membership of more than 170,000 since the firm created them on Jan. 27 and Jan. 30, respectively.
Administrators for these Facebook groups included accounts tied to the Bangladeshi firm, as well as an apparently fraudulent “public figure” page claiming to belong to Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich. The page was among many deactivated by Meta. Lich did not respond to Grid’s requests for comment.
The Facebook groups tied to the Bangladeshi firm promoted calls for donations to the Ottawa organizers’ GiveSendGo campaign and pointed members to convoy-related events in Canada.
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Grid reached a man Thursday who said he was Jakir Saikot, the founder of the firm. Saikot agreed to an interview on the condition the reporter conduct it by video call so Saikot could confirm the reporter’s identity. Saikot did not make himself visible for the call.
He was not involved in the fake Lich page, Saikot said, but confirmed he was behind the “Freedom Convoy 2022″ and “Convoy to Ottawa 2022″ groups.
“It was my own choice because I believe in freedom,” he said. “We have a right to talk freely.”
Saikot said he started the groups because he believes in the mission of the protesters. He said he received no payment to conduct his social media activity supporting a protest on the other side of the world.
“The big reason is freedom, and otherwise nothing,” he said. “No one paid us.”
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For the Ottawa convoy, impostors and fraud in its online organizing appear to recur. Grid reported earlier this week on fraudulent Facebook groups supporting the Canadian convoy, which were administered by a hacked Facebook account belonging to a woman in Missouri.
The Ottawa action is not the only convoy effort that has received purported Bangladeshi support. In Australia, one major Facebook group promoting the “Convoy to Canberra” is reportedly controlled by a single Bangladeshi administrator. The same report found another Aussie convoy group controlled by an account using an AI-generated face as its profile picture.
Follow the money
A Grid analysis of the more than $8 million contributed to the Ottawa organizers’ GiveSendGo convoy campaign as of Thursday revealed most of the tens of thousands of donations were made anonymously and were for amounts of $100 or less. The largest recorded donation, for $215,000, had a note that it was “processed but not recorded.” GiveSendGo did not respond to inquiries from Grid.
Thousands entered pseudonyms, often using names belonging to prominent figures including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or President Joe Biden. Many used phrases mentioning “freedom,” “mandate” or “tyranny.” Hundreds mentioned “Let’s Go, Brandon,” a minced oath used to express displeasure with Biden.
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While most donations were small, several dozen backers gave $1,000 or more. Grid attempted to verify the identity of more than a dozen individuals publicly identified as large-dollar donors on the site. Most did not respond.
One who did is Peter Decker, a welding company owner from Motley, Minnesota. Decker told Grid he donated $3,000 to express his frustration with covid-19 rules that complicate his family’s ability to visit their relatives in Canada. His frustrations include requirements of negative tests and quarantining when the family arrived in Canada.
“It’s a peaceful protest that has and is spreading hope to the world,” he wrote in an email to Grid. “You see all the pain and hurt in just my family for no reason at all!”
Conspiracies, antisemitism and white supremacy are laced throughout
The fringe right, from QAnon to white supremacy, is present throughout the Ottawa action. One of the convoy’s lead organizers is Canadian James Bauder, reportedly a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Another, Lich, was an official for a wildly unpopular western Canadian separatist movement.
Beyond the organizers, the convoy has attracted even more extreme figures. On Thursday, Grid coverage noted in Ottawa the presence of a swastika, Confederate flags, extremist symbols and allegations of violent intolerance tied to convoy supporters.
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Chris Saccoccia, who has livestreamed from Ottawa rallies, is a far-right influencer who goes by the name Chris Sky. The group Canadian Anti-Hate Network has reported on Saccoccia trafficking antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial. At least one member of the white supremacist Diagolon movement has reportedly also been present the protests.
Telegram, a United Arab Emirates-based social media platform that boasts 500 million users worldwide, is home to several pro-convoy channels. An administrator in one convoy channel posted a paragraphs-long conspiracy theory of how elites traffic children internationally using planes, which is why barricading bridges on the U.S.-Canada border was insufficient. The channel claims more than 80,000 subscribers, although such numbers are difficult to verify.
In another channel devoted to the Canadian convoy, a Telegram user posted, “It is not Trudeau’s choice to step down or to attempt to stay. It is the decision of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Frankly, the WEF cannot afford for Trudeau to step down. If he falls, Biden falls, Australia falls, New Zealand falls and all of Europe falls. Then the rest of the world joins in.”
Telegram channels devoted to QAnon and other conspiracy theories are lighting up with convoy discussions.
“The ELITES from the highest government officials have given the orders for MASS ARRESTS AND TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT AND CELL PHONE BLACKOUTS ( NO LIVE BROADCASTING),” reads one post. “~Orders coming from UN, DAVOS GROUP, CIA and world ELITES Who CONTROL the Canadian government~”
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“This is something you frequently find,” said Ethan Porter, who leads the Misinformation/Disinformation Lab at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics. “People who are convinced that covid vaccines are part of the government conspiracy also believe that child abduction, as in child trafficking, is coordinated by global elites.”
“The thing to remember,” Porter said, “is that most people don’t believe this stuff.”
“I hope they clog up cities”
Right-wing U.S. politicians and media outlets have been supportive of the Ottawa convoy and expressed hope the action could be replicated stateside, even as convoy enthusiasts debate actions like disrupting Sunday’s Super Bowl.
“The Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation,” Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said Thursday.
“I hope the truckers do come to America,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told the Daily Signal, a publication of the right-wing Heritage Foundation. “I hope they clog up cities.”
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U.S. convoy organizer Brian Brase has been making the rounds on Fox News, sitting down with Carlson as well as the network’s “Fox and Friends” morning show. Brase says he hopes to organize a cross-country convoy from Indio, California, to Washington, D.C., starting March 4. He did not reply to Grid’s inquiries.
The first Facebook group Brase created for a U.S. convoy attracted more than 130,000 followers — and was deactivated after some reportedly posted QAnon-related content, which violates Facebook’s rules. A second group now has 60,000 followers.
“We’re trying to get the routing completed where they link up at certain meet points,” Brase explained on a radio interview Feb. 4. “And then of course we all converge on D.C. from all directions at the same exact time.” The group’s Telegram channel is soliciting volunteers and donations of items like tents, generators and PA systems.
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security released a bulletin to law enforcement warning that trucker protests traveling from California to the nation’s capital had the potential to “severely disrupt transportation, federal government operations, commercial facilities, and emergency services through gridlock and potential counterprotests.”
Brase’s group is encouraging truckers to keep gas receipts, promising that they will reimburse the expenses upon arrival in Indio.
“We are doing this. Nonprofit bank accounts, lawyers, CPAs — it’s legit,” Brase said in the Feb. 4 interview. He acknowledged that they did not have an online fundraising mechanism yet but were getting to that “shortly.”
Anna Deen contributed to this story.
14. In White House's new Indo-Pacific strategy, much seems familiar
In White House's new Indo-Pacific strategy, much seems familiar - Breaking Defense
“Our objective is not to change China but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share," the strategy states.
Military soldiers stand guard as the Shenzhou VI spacecraft, sitting atop of the LM-2F carrier rocket, is moved towards the launching pad in Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on October 7, 2005 in Jiuquan of Gansu Province, northwest China. (China Photos/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration’s new Indo-Pacific strategy calls for deepening regional security partnerships, closer collaboration with allies on emerging technologies, and expanding American 5G and cyber capabilities across the region, all in order to counter China.
If that all sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
“Our collective efforts over the next decade will determine whether the PRC [People’s Republic of China] succeeds in transforming the rules and norms that have benefitted the Indo-Pacific and the world,” the strategy states.
“Our objective is not to change China but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.”
In a phone call with reporters, a senior administration official noted that the goal of the strategy was not to contribute to an atmosphere that leads to conflict with China or to force nations in the region to “take sides,” but rather to “[blunt] Beijing’s efforts to frustrate US objectives.”
In that sense, the new strategy is not much different than the Trump administration’s own vision for the region, which was released in 2019. At the heart of both documents are concerns about Chinese aggression, including mounting pressure on Taiwan.
The main differences come in the form of the Biden administration’s interest in climate change — an “existential” crisis and one of the areas where the administration expresses a desire to work with China — and its desire to foster economic growth and supply chain resiliency after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Biden administration strategy lays out five lines of effort. Most relevant for those in the defense space is the goal to bolster security in the region.
“Integrated deterrence will be the cornerstone of our approach,” the document states. “We will more tightly integrate our efforts across warfighting domains and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the United States, alongside our allies and partners, can dissuade or defeat aggression in any form or domain. We will drive initiatives that reinforce deterrence and counter coercion, such as opposing efforts to alter territorial boundaries or undermine the rights of sovereign nations at sea.”
The strategy restates the US’s commitment to creating innovative new tech in areas like space and cyber, while also taking steps to make command and control more resilient, allowing troops to operate forward in a contested environment.
It also expresses interest in “finding new opportunities to link our defense industrial bases, integrating our defense supply chains, and co-producing key technologies that will shore up our collective military advantages.”
Another major priority is to increase prosperity in the region. The Biden administration plans to put out an Indo-Pacific economic framework early this year that will facilitate trade, improve supply chain resiliency and build infrastructure and digital connectivity.
Specifically, the administration hopes to expand American infrastructure projects in the region, providing “open, resilient, secure, trustworthy tech” that includes including 5G, Open Radio Access Network and cyber technologies, the administration official said. Those capabilities could provide direct competition to Chinese 5G providers such as Hwawei.
Other lines of effort include:
- Advancing a “free and open Pacific,” ensuring that countries in the region can independently govern themselves without coercion from other actors and that international laws pertaining to the maritime and air domain are respected.
- Forging connections with countries in the region — through mechanisms like that Association of Southeast Asian Nations or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — as well as helping forge relationships between Indo-Pacific nations and outside organizations like NATO and the European Union.
- Building “resilience” in the face of transnational crises such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategy specifically notes that the US will urge China “to commit to and implement actions in line with the level of ambition required to limit [global] warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
For all the Biden administration’s plans for focus on the pacific, however, it is impossible to ignore that this new strategy was rolled out at the same time that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan held a press conference warning that Russia could invade Ukraine at any moment, and telling Americans they need to get out of the country in the next 48 hours.
Whether this strategy will bear success, or become one more symbol of America’s perennial inability to focus on the pacific, remains to be seen.
15. Opinion | America’s Russia Policy Has a Biden Problem
This is quite a critique from Dr. Schake.
Excerpt:
The real problem in administration policy is the president. The insular nature of his decision-making, including his reliance on like-minded advisers, lacks rigorous thinking and fuels a kind of arrogance that can lead to unforced errors. His casual suggestion last month that “a minor incursion” by Russia might not draw a tough response required mopping up by the administration. It also drew a bitter rebuke from Ukraine’s president. Most egregiously, Mr. Biden let Russia know it need not fear the prospect of U.S. troops fighting to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine and postwar order, saying publicly that “there is not going to be any American forces moving into Ukraine.”
Opinion | America’s Russia Policy Has a Biden Problem
Guest Essay
America’s Russia Policy Has a Biden Problem
Feb. 11, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
American soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division boarding a cargo plane last week for deployment to Eastern Europe.Credit...Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer, via Associated Press
By
Ms. Schake, a foreign policy expert who worked for the National Security Council and the State Department during the George W. Bush administration, is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
There are many things the Biden administration has done right in managing the crisis Russia provoked over Ukraine.
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency conveyed our knowledge of military deployment and our opposition to Moscow. The director of national intelligence shared information with NATO allies. The secretary of state warned about Russian disinformation operations. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have projected steadiness and readiness, with the defense secretary emphasizing that “a move on Ukraine will accomplish the very thing Russia says it does not want — a NATO alliance strengthened and resolved on its western flank.” The administration is creatively orchestrating gas supplies to Europe should Russia cut them off.
NATO also responded strongly, reassuring its frontline states by considering the deployment of additional alliance military forces, and reaffirmed its commitment to including potential new members. Keeping 30 countries together is a huge achievement when President Vladimir Putin of Russia has Ukraine in his cross hairs and is threatening to shoot the hostage unless NATO reverses 30 years of European security.
Despite these successes, Russia still looks poised to invade Ukraine. Mr. Putin is still threatening to use military force, whereas President Biden is sending the message that the United States is afraid of confronting Russia militarily. Even if the United States is unwilling to fight alongside Ukrainians, it’s a big bargaining advantage for Russia if it’s telegraphing willingness to go to war and we’re ultimately reassuring it that it doesn’t need to worry about us.
The real problem in administration policy is the president. The insular nature of his decision-making, including his reliance on like-minded advisers, lacks rigorous thinking and fuels a kind of arrogance that can lead to unforced errors. His casual suggestion last month that “a minor incursion” by Russia might not draw a tough response required mopping up by the administration. It also drew a bitter rebuke from Ukraine’s president. Most egregiously, Mr. Biden let Russia know it need not fear the prospect of U.S. troops fighting to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine and postwar order, saying publicly that “there is not going to be any American forces moving into Ukraine.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Biden in the Oval Office last year.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
The most generous interpretation of the president’s actions might be that in a confrontation between two nuclear-armed states, conveying the limits of potential actions could reduce the risk of miscalculation or escalation. And after the humiliating debacle of abandoning Afghanistan, any threat of war made by Mr. Biden would be literally unbelievable — so perhaps the president can console himself that it makes more credible the sanctions and other penalties the West is threatening.
But that’s precisely why the president should instead be re-establishing deterrence damaged by his decisions about Afghanistan. Troop deployments to Poland, Germany and Romania are a good start, but they only convey that the United States will fight to defend existing NATO members, not the rules of order that have stabilized Europe. So Russia knows it won’t confront U.S. forces if it invades Ukraine, and we have effectively conceded to Russia a sphere of influence to prey on countries beyond NATO’s boundary. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 its troops wore no insignia; in 2022 they’re massing in force. This is how an international order crumbles.
Instead of ruling out U.S. military involvement within Ukraine, Mr. Biden could have focused on the fact that the United States and Canada already have forces in Ukraine helping train its military to defend its territory and sovereignty. The United States does not have a large number there — fewer than 200 members of the Florida National Guard — and not a fighting force, nothing that should threaten Russia. Helping countries grow strong enough to defend themselves is in America’s interests. A fundamental principle in Europe since the end of World War II has been that borders change by peaceful negotiation, not force. That has made Europe peaceful and allowed it to grow incredibly prosperous — and helped the United States be safe and prosperous, too.
In addition to undercutting deterrence, the president missed an important opportunity to help Americans understand why we should care about what happens in Ukraine.
Mr. Biden should also be preparing the American people and U.S. allies for the sacrifices that everyone is likely to endure if Russia attacks Ukraine. There would be a greater risk of war spilling over into NATO allies, which the United States has solemn obligations to defend. The United States would most likely have to spend more on defense if Russia shows that the peaceful rules no longer apply. There would probably be millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war who will need refuge. In the United States, we would probably see more expensive gas at the pump because Russia can affect oil prices. We’d most likely see even a higher risk of Russian disinformation campaigns. And we might also have to deal with an even stronger Russia-and-China alliance to thwart American interests around the world. These are all unwelcome developments, which is especially why Mr. Biden needs to bring the public along to support them.
The world is growing more dangerous for American interests. That’s not Mr. Biden’s fault — it’s Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping of China’s fault. They are the ones threatening their neighbors. But Mr. Biden isn’t adequately explaining to Americans what’s happening, why we should care or what we should do about it.
Russian tanks during military exercises in the Rostov region last week.Credit...Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters
The mistakes of the Biden administration on national security policy have not been mistakes of interagency coordination or errant cabinet members. They have largely been mistakes of the president’s own making: loudly proclaiming to “put human rights back at the center of our foreign policy” without actually doing so, linking “foreign policy for the middle class” with trade protectionism, failing to establish an effective international economic policy that helps reduce reliance on China and, most awfully, the decisions about Afghanistan.
My belief is that Mr. Biden’s troubles stem from arrogance that he’s right — has always been right — on issues where his recommended policies were not adopted when he was a senator or the vice president, specifically when it came to decisions over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead of appointing a strong, independent national security team, he has often appointed subordinates as well as officials who were veterans of the Obama administration, people who either agree with his perspective or defer to it. And when the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff attempted to alter his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, they were unsuccessful.
The lack of many new perspectives within the administration not only leaves the president bereft of rigor in internal policy debates; it also means the administration isn’t prepared for inevitable criticism. This was seen when the State Department spokesman was clearly annoyed when a journalist pressed him for more information about its assertions about a Russian false flag operation and when the White House press secretary accused a senator of “parroting Russian talking points.” A better president would appreciate that policies are robust only when you win the political argument, not when you organize your administration to avoid them.
Authoritarian states are brittle because their leaders surround themselves with people who won’t or can’t challenge mistakes. Free societies can be slow to adopt policies but more durable in the conduct of them even when they’re costly because leaders have to win the political argument and gain support. President Biden’s choices are reducing the resilience of U.S. policy by indulging his preferences rather than building broader support for difficult things these times require of us.
We should be grateful President Biden is in office during this crisis rather than President Trump, with his erratic belligerence and admiration for authoritarians that characterized his policies.
And yet, we are likelier to avoid war with Russia by backing up our diplomacy with military might that strengthens deterrence than by telegraphing to our adversary what we are afraid of. President Biden needs to up his game.
Kori Schake (@KoriSchake) worked for the National Security Council and as a deputy director of policy planning at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. She is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
16. Ukraine’s Civilian Soldiers
Ukraine’s Civilian Soldiers
For many Ukrainians, war with Russia is not a possibility, but an ever-present reality.
By Yasmeen Serhan
Photographs by Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni
FEBRUARY 11, 2022, 7 PM ET
As the world anxiously watches Ukraine’s borders, where Russia has amassed as many as 130,000 troops, the question on the minds of many is what Vladimir Putin wants, and what he’s willing to do to get it. The answer has immediate implications for the United States, Europe, and the NATO military alliance, whose potential expansion in Ukraine and the broader post-Soviet space is regarded by Moscow as a threat.
But no one stands to be affected more by the current standoff than the Ukrainian people, for whom the prospect of war with Russia is not a possibility, but an ever-present reality. Ukraine has been at the edge of all-out war for eight years. In 2013, the Maidan revolution toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russian government. The next year, Russia invaded and later annexed the Crimea region and gave crucial backing to armed separatist movements in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists along the two countries’ de facto border ever since. More than 14,000 people, many of them civilians, have died as a result of the conflict. Those who were called up to the Ukrainian front line were not just professional military officers, but also engineers, carpenters, waiters, firefighters, and students. These civilian soldiers, whose portraits were captured by the photographers Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni from 2014 to 2015, show the human cost of Ukraine’s never-ending crisis. “If war flares up again,” Oleksandr Poida, a former soldier who served in Afghanistan, told Caimi and Piccinni last week, “hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk.”
Many of the people pictured said that they are ready to return to their civilian lives. But with the threat of another Russian incursion looming, and with diplomatic talks between the Kremlin and the West still ongoing, it’s not clear that they will be able to leave the battlefield anytime soon. Maksym Kozub, an interpreter turned platoon commander who was wounded in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Donbas region in 2014, told Caimi and Piccinni that he would be prepared to return to war after he completes rehabilitation of his left arm, a bone from which was shattered after he was hit by a sniper’s bullet. The way soldiers like him see it, what’s at stake is not only Ukraine’s sovereignty, which Putin has demonstrated little regard for, but also the future of its democracy.
“We have to strengthen and develop our defense capacity using whatever support our partners provide, but also understanding that nobody will do our job,” Kozub said. “At the same time, we should continue to properly develop Ukraine as a modern democratic country … We should not be thinking only about war.”
If war does come to Ukraine, Kozub is confident that he and his fellow soldiers can win. “I am rather optimistic about our ability to defend Ukraine,” he said. “But I am not very optimistic about the nearest future in many other aspects.”
The Fighters of Maidan
From left: A former carpenter has patrolled the front line at Lobanovskyi Dynamo Stadium, in Kyiv, for months on little sleep; a female student from the Viking Union, who says that she will fight to the end for freedom; a former informatics engineer from Lviv, in Western Ukraine.
From left: A priest of the Orthodox Ukrainian Church; a former employee for the government in Lviv who came to fight in Kyiv in 2013, when the Euromaidan revolt broke out; one of the first fighters in Maidan on December 9, when the riot erupted.
From left: A young supermarket employee from Sarny, in western Ukraine, who has come to fight to the death if necessary; a young railroad employee from Cherkasy who is surprised by his own courage; a former teacher at the International Center of Culture and Arts in Kyiv, where thousands of people sleep.
Training for Battle
Fenix, 26, from Lviv, during a training session in the camp of the fifth volunteer battalion of Right Sector, an ultranationalist group. The Right Sector’s Ukrainian volunteer corps is the only militia involved in the war that is independent from the Ukrainian government. The all-volunteer militia relies on donations and uses old Russian weapons.
The Azov training camp, in Kyiv. The Azov Battalion is an all-volunteer far-right paramilitary militia affiliated with the Ukrainian government and is a member of the National Guard of Ukraine. The battalion's extremist politics and English social-media pages have attracted foreign fighters.
Left: A trainee in a dorm. Many of the fighters are more frightened by the possibility of being kidnapped by separatists than the chances of being injured or dying on the front lines. Right: A group of Ukrainian soldiers from the Right Sector battalion conduct a training session in an abandoned building.
Jaroslav, a young fifth-battalion volunteer who is headed to the front line in Donetsk, in the occupied Donbas region
Marusya and Anya, two Right Sector–battalion volunteers, are training with guns for self-defense. The women are part of the medics group and are prepared to go to the front line in Donetsk to rescue wounded soldiers.
Scars of War
From left: Victor, a former carpenter from the northern Ukrainian city of Chernhiv, fought with the third battalion of tanks from the beginning of the Donbas conflict and lost his leg after a mine-launcher attack. Center: Alexandra, from the city of Horlivka, escaped to a refugee shelter in Kyiv. Right: Yury, a former landscape designer, did reconnaissance with the Dnipro first battalion and was shot by a sniper. He would like to return to fight.
From left: Alexander, a former radio engineer who fought with the 128th brigade of the Ukrainian navy in Debaltseve, was seriously wounded by artillery and is seeking a pension from the government. Center: A refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk with her baby at a shelter in Kyiv. Right: Vitali, a former mechanic, was in the army to work on tanks. During one mission, his tank was shelled. He doesn’t know if he will get a war pension.
From left: Kyryl, a former lawyer who started as a volunteer in Maidan and went on to become a commander of a brigade, says he left the war because he was not paid, which he says is a widespread bureaucratic problem. He now uses his legal experience to run a help desk for veterans. Center: A woman escaping Luhansk at a shelter in Kyiv who left her husband behind to fight the war. Right: Victor, who fought in Luhansk, was shot and imprisoned by separatists for two months. He was sent back to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange. He wants to return to the war.
A graveyard in the Donetsk region with flowers on veterans’ headstones
17. ‘This Is Their 1776’: US Army Veterans Train Ukraine Civilians in Resistance Warfare
‘This Is Their 1776’: US Army Veterans Train Ukraine Civilians in Resistance Warfare
KYIV, Ukraine — During his two tours in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger, Adam never wrote a death letter to his mother. After just two days in Ukraine, he’s finally ready to write that last farewell. Although he’s come to help train civilians in irregular warfare, Adam, who spent four years of his early adulthood fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, says he’s now ready to join a Ukrainian insurgency — should Russian forces attack the capital city of Kyiv.
“I’m just here because the Ukrainians are fighting for their independence and I think I can help that. I figured it would be a better use of my time on this earth to come help them,” says Adam, who asked that his last name not be used due to security concerns.
“This is their 1776,” he adds.
Adam, right, assists Oleg, 13, during a training session at a shooting range outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
A 25-year-old former US Army corporal from South Carolina, Adam served in the 1st Ranger Battalion from 2015 to 2019. On this Tuesday night, Feb. 8, he’s enjoying pizza and beer at a downtown Kyiv restaurant. When he starts to explain what it was like to say goodbye to his mother a few days ago, he pauses, takes a swig of beer, and waits a moment. For a split second, the young man’s eyes reflect the light a little differently. Then he blinks his eyes clear and says, “My mom really didn’t want me to go. It was the hardest goodbye of my life.”
Earlier that afternoon, Adam led a group of Ukrainian civilians through a basic military training course. Among the trainees was a 13-year-old boy named Oleg. Hours later while at dinner, Adam stares into his beer and explains that the sight of Oleg training for war had laid bare the potential human tragedy of a Russian re-invasion of Ukraine.
“He just looked so young,” Adam says. “That kid should be out playing with his friends, not getting ready for a Russian invasion.”
Adam, left, and Paul are two US Army veterans who have volunteered to help train Ukrainian civilians in basic military skills. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
Sitting across from Adam on this night is Paul, a US Army veteran of the 101st Airborne Division who served three tours in Iraq. Along with Adam, he also took part in the day’s civilian training exercise and is similarly prepared to take up arms and fight if Russian forces attack Kyiv. However, the looming threat of a major Russian offensive did not draw Paul to Ukraine. He’s already lived in the country for 15 months and come to see it as his adopted home. Thus, amid the growing threat of a major Russian attack, Paul (he similarly asked that his last name not be published for security reasons) sees it as his moral duty to do what he can to help his newfound neighbors and friends.
“I’m a male with military training and background and I have a moral responsibility to help defend these people. There are women, children, elderly. It would be ethically unacceptable if I were to just run away when the people here needed help,” says Paul, who was an air assault infantry sergeant in the 101st Airborne.
In 2020, Paul was living in Denver and had a steady career in corporate security. When the pandemic lockdowns began, however, he quit his job and began a meandering journey across Eastern Europe. He had no particular destination in mind, and no return ticket. Just a desire to get away. Paul briefly settled in Belarus but was abruptly expelled by government officials during the 2020 protests. After arriving in Ukraine on somewhat of a lark, he soon settled into a new life — he’s since opened a gym in Kyiv and calls the city his home.
Paul, an American Army veteran of Iraq, participates in a military training exercise in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
Paul, who enlisted in the Army in 2003, has been particularly moved by young Ukrainians who took part in the 2014 pro-Western Revolution of Dignity and then spearheaded a grassroots, volunteer war effort to defend their country against Russia’s invasion of the Donbas. In fact, Paul’s deep respect for Ukraine’s veterans led him to take volunteer action well before the current border confrontation caught the world’s attention. For a year he’s been teaching English at a popular veterans center, and this winter he completed a grueling winter ascent of Ukraine’s highest mountain, Hoverla, with a group of Ukrainian combat veterans.
“I’m impressed by how resolute the younger generation is here. I’ve met a lot of really outstanding young people who time and time again have stepped up to defend their country — not for their own self-interest, but for the nation at large,” Paul says. “Ukraine’s only been independent for 30 years, and this younger generation, they are the first independent generation, and I think that they see it as their generational duty to defend their young democracy.”
Russia’s military buildup spurred Paul to retune his combat skills — not only to help train civilians in basic military skills, but to make sure he’s prepared to help defend his adopted hometown should Russia attack.
A Ukrainian civilian trains at a shooting range outside of Kyiv with the Georgian National Legion on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
“I felt like I was a really good soldier in the American military. But after the tours in Iraq, I didn’t feel the motivation to want to take the field again,” Paul says. “But having this military threat come to my new adopted home, it gave me the motivation to want to stay in shape. I’ve been exercising really hard lately. I’ve been refreshing my tactical skill set, and mentally I’ve been getting myself in the mindset of getting ready to devote long periods of time away from my regular civilian lifestyle.”
When he was a US Army soldier, Paul would load onto a transport plane and travel halfway across the world to fight in a foreign land. Now, he’s experiencing war in an entirely new and alien way — from the perspective of civilians whose lives are about to be disrupted or destroyed by it.
“When I was young and in the 101st Airborne, going to Iraq was a great military adventure,” Paul says. “It was for glory and to prove myself as a professional soldier. This time I have nothing to prove; I’m just trying to help my neighbors and friends.”
As the weeks drag on and the situation in Ukraine grows increasingly more dire, it has become harder for Paul to easily enjoy ordinary life without also remembering what may happen here soon. Could all of this — all of the joy of ordinary, peaceful life — simply be a prologue to some great tragedy?
A civilian trainee participates in a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
“I see these kids going to school with their little backpacks and Ukrainian flags. You see constantly, the patriotism, and you have all the people that you meet asking all these nervous questions about what they should do — and they’re asking me, like I should know what they need to do,” Paul says.
He adds: “When I went to war in Iraq, it was, you know, it was for my military unit, for my brothers in arms, for the guys I was training with. Here, it’s a much different motivation than an American being far from his home on some kind of grand operation. This time it’s a basic need to stand up and help defend my neighbors, my friends. My home. It’s surreal. It’s a feeling I don’t think many Americans have ever experienced.”
For his part, Adam is continuing online university classes in pursuit of a bachelor of arts degree with Charleston Southern University. Before coming to Ukraine, he had a lucrative job in the information technology sector. Like many combat veterans, however, Adam found civilian life “monotonous” and longed to rediscover the sense of purpose and tribal belonging he’d possessed while in the military. Yet, his decision to come to Ukraine stemmed from a much deeper, more foundational part of his personality than a simple incompatibility with civilian life. A devout Christian, Adam also considers it his moral duty to help Ukrainians defend themselves.
Adam, right, assists Oleg, 13, during a training session at a shooting range outside of Kyiv on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
“Ukrainians are fighting for their democracy, and their identity outside of Russia,” Adam says. “They have a rich, independent history, and it’s worth fighting for.”
It’s a clear and cold Tuesday morning when Adam and Paul arrive at the Georgian National Legion’s base on the outskirts of Kyiv. Amid the mounting Russian threat, this unit of foreign volunteer soldiers has launched a new military training course for civilians. The drills have lasted about a week, and each day it’s particularly striking to observe dozens of everyday Ukrainians, ranging in age from 13 to 60, sprinting through the snow with training weapons clutched in their hands.
Under the command of a former Georgian military officer named Mamuka Mamulashvili, the Georgian National Legion formerly operated as a front-line unit in the early years of the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Now garrisoned on the outskirts of Kyiv, this all-volunteer unit has become a clearinghouse for foreigners in the application pipeline to sign a three-year, active-duty service contract with Ukraine’s regular armed forces.
For his part, Mamulashvili welcomes the two Americans’ assistance as trainers in his unit’s upstart civilian training program. He says their presence sends a strong message of solidarity to the Ukrainians who attend the drills.
Civilian trainees participate in a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
“These guys who are here now, they are physically defending democracy. They are the real faces of their country. They are showing the will of their nation,” Mamulashvili says. “For me, these guys are heroes.”
Adam and Paul fought against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, these two American combat veterans are training Ukrainian civilians to wage an insurgency of their own against a potential Russian occupation force. Along this line of thinking, Adam says he is trying to adopt his former enemies’ mindset and to not train the Ukrainians to fight like Americans.
“The tactics the Taliban used against us worked,” Adam says. “It’s a war of attrition. So, stay alive. Not every fight is worth your life. Gather equipment, and use surprise and hit-and-run tactics. Kind of like the American Revolution. Just like Afghanistan. Just like any insurgency.”
America’s counterinsurgency experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan offer a trove of trial-and-error lessons that will be useful to a potential Ukrainian resistance movement. As soldiers who were on the receiving end of insurgency warfare, Adam and Paul understand the elements of a successful insurgency. They also understand the essential elements of a prospective Russian counterinsurgency operation.
A civilian trainee participates in a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
“Looking at the American occupation of Iraq and the theoretical Russian occupation of Ukraine, the two nations have very similar levels of military competency,” Paul says. “I understand what assets the Russian forces would be looking for, and how to deny those assets. If they actually had to come into Kyiv, they would sweep block to block. They would take key avenues of approach and key terrain features.”
“Fighting the Taliban you see the things they did wrong, that they could have done to win against you,” Adam says. “And you see how a conventional force fights, and how the unconventional force could have exploited that, and they didn’t. So I want to take those skills and I want to apply them so that we can exploit the weaknesses of a conventional occupying force.”
In Adam’s estimation, a successful insurgency relies on hit-and-run tactics that maintain pressure on an adversary without ever seeking a decisive battle. The key is to survive and “live to fight another day.”
“The Russians will have artillery support, they’ll have [quick reaction forces]. So when the Ukrainians ambush or raid, they only have maybe five minutes to hit the target, do their damage, and leave,” Adam says.
Adam leads a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
Even so, Paul added that Kyiv would be a very different urban environment than Iraq’s cities. And a Ukrainian insurgency would be a more formidable fighting force than what America faced in that war.
“Kyiv is a much more sophisticated and modern setting than Baghdad, and the insurgents here, the Ukrainians, would have much more sophisticated equipment and technology,” Paul says. “I think it’s very unlikely that Russians would come into Kyiv; it would just be an incredibly brutal insurgency here.”
About two dozen Ukrainian civilians line up in formation while a Russian-speaking Georgian National Legion soldier explains the day’s training objectives. Through the help of an interpreter, Adam introduces himself and then uses a whiteboard and multicolored markers to explain, in professional detail, the basics of an ambush. He specifically modifies his lesson for the purposes of the irregular fighters he’s teaching.
“The Ranger doctrine for an ambush would be to gather the enemies’ weapons and equipment and blow it up in place,” Adam says. “But you know, from fighting in Afghanistan, we saw how the Taliban and ISIS would take our weapons and try to secure as much gear as possible. So it’s not really about just following the US doctrine that was taught, but to also learn from what the enemy did to us.”
Yakym Yermak, a civilian trainee, participates in a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
Learning how to set up an ambush is “a good skill to have if you’re fighting a guerrilla war or defending a city,” Paul says. Apart from military action, however, he adds that “general noncompliance” is another way in which Ukrainians could resist a Russian occupation force. Simple acts of resistance — such as not showing up for work — can effectively shut down society and put pressure on a prospective pro-Russian puppet government installed by Moscow in the wake of a major offensive.
“Ukrainians could make it extremely hard for a pro-Russian government to operate here,” Paul says.
Admittedly, something may be lost in translation. And the skill set Adam explains may be a bit beyond the current capabilities of this somewhat ragtag group of citizen soldiers. Even so, the trainees stand in respectful silence and try their best to absorb what they can. When the theoretical discussion is over, Adam then puts the group through multiple trial runs.
The trainees sprint from position to position with the unquestioning commitment of recruits in basic training — even though many are in their 40s or older and past their physical primes. By Adam’s account, they pick up his lessons quickly. Though Adam has spent just two days in Ukraine, the civilians’ commitment to military training makes a powerful impression on the American veteran.
In particular, there is 13-year-old Oleg.
Oleg, 13, holds a training weapon at a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by Nolan Peterson/Coffee or Die Magazine.
When asked why he volunteered for military training, Oleg replies, “I’m afraid that Russia might invade, and I want to be able to protect my friends.”
Two days later, Adam once again leads a group of Ukrainian citizens through an afternoon of military drills. On this day, they’re at a shooting range outside of Kyiv for a day of target practice with Kalashnikovs. Among the trainees, once again, is 13-year-old Oleg.
The boy’s body armor vest appears oversized on his slight frame. His ballistic helmet is way too big and keeps falling down over his eyes as tries to take aim while shooting from the prone position. He’s clearly nervous; his movements are jerky and unsure. Then Adam kneels beside Oleg and puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder and pulls up his helmet so that he can see and take aim.
Oleg fires a few shots and then stands to fire a few more. As Oleg shoots, Adam keeps a hand on the boy’s shoulder the entire time. When Oleg has finished, Adam nods, pats him on the back, and says, “Good job.”
“It’s inspiring but it’s sad at the same time,” Adam later says of the Ukrainians’ will to fight. “I wish they could just live normal lives. But it can’t be that way. So I’m here to help.”
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18. Irregular Learning for Irregular Warfare: Radical Urban Planning and its Applications
Irregular Learning for Irregular Warfare: Radical Urban Planning and its Applications
About the cover photo: Young Austinites photographed in front of the “Tank Farm” industrial site they lived next to for years. Community groups like People Organized for the Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER) waged years-long campaigns against the pollution, eventually causing the shutdown of the Tank Farm and remittance for damages caused by companies like Exxon in 1993. PODER and other Austin groups documented the campaign for historical records: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0d6e3273366041e48625aa05f4e21822 (Photo: Joe Vitone)
By Danny Moriarty
As special operations forces (SOF), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the entire US Government (USG) continue to shift focus to irregular warfare as one of the primary means to deter Chinese and Russian aggression, it has become clear that such strategies will require intimate involvement with the human environment. This human-focused deterrence has been shown to take many forms, from support-to-resistance campaigns currently seen in the Baltics to the capability to conduct unconventional warfare and disrupt competitors’ objectives across the spectrum of conflict.[i][ii]
Of course, for SOF or any DOD entity to perform in such environments, special attention must be paid to understand the human dynamics that drive conflict or prevent it; these experts must have the cultural awareness of local conditions as well as the intuition of how such local contexts fit within a larger framework.[iii] Within the framework of irregular warfare, this will require knowledge and engagement with civilian populations that serve a vital role in the deterrence of or resistance against military aggression. Much has already been written on the role of such civil resistance and its role in unconventional or irregular warfare; the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) explicitly discusses the importance of building resilient civil society networks and dedicates an entire appendix on nonviolent resistance.[iv][v]
But if irregular warfare experts are to truly understand the nuances of resistance and develop innovative approaches to these types of challenges, then we must broaden our sources of information to include those that some may see as unconventional. Radical planning, born from the field of urban planning, serves as an example of a field of study with notable overlap with network development and engagement aspects of IW.
Planning theory, until the mid-to-late twentieth century, was primarily focused on the forward march of urban development and the growth of cities as centers of capital. Prominent scholars discussed competing schools of thought of how best to dictate the growth and expansion of urban centers, often ignoring the plights of many communities living in those cities. In some cases, scholars and practitioners even used planning as a means to subdue minority populations, such as the widely used practice of “redlining.”[vi] However, a shift came about when Marxist scholars began applying a critical lens on planning and its impacts on the different urban populations that urban governance affected. Notably, French sociologist Henri Lefebvre in 1968 coined the term the “right to the city,” advocating for the rights of marginalized groups to be included in decision-making processes, as well as describing the production of social spaces and power relations that dictated urban governance.[vii] John Friedmann’s 1987 Planning in the Public Domain also served as a powerful spark to critical scholars.[viii] Scholars like Friedmann, Lefebvre, and others broke from tradition and pointed to the importance of marginalized groups organizing and developing a robust network of civil society groups in order to stage effective resistance against state forces that, in their view, exercised destructive control over the urban environment. Many also drew inspiration from Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci (1891-1937), advocated for a societal resistance against capitalism, proposed several theories of political warfare that hinged on the positioning of civil society organizations like media, religious, educational, and other institutions.[ix] Radical planning soon developed as a distinct school of thought, focusing on the social, political, and economic factors that drove social cohesion in urban communities struggling for recognition.
Of course, alongside this intellectual evolution of radical planning theory has been a similar evolution of its practice in a diverse array of cities and conflicts. Such examples have been seen in highly publicized conflicts like the civil resistance following Myanmar’s coup and the coalition of civil society groups that brought an end to military dictatorship in Sudan in 2019 and now seek to prevent another coup.[x][xi] But beyond these examples, radical planning is practiced daily in cities within the United States. A wide array of community groups confront issues of economic, environmental, and racial injustice, organizing people and resources in ways that challenge local governments.[xii][xiii] One does not need to go far to find examples of how community organizing goes beyond preconceived notions.
As a tool for irregular warfare practitioners, such planning theories can provide alternative lenses to develop effective resistance campaigns or to counter those developed by adversaries. While existing doctrine and publications like the ROC or those by United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC)’s Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) project dedicate attention to the psychological reasons behind resistance and the factors that affect its organization, it is mostly through the lens of how such organizing or networks of groups impact the “main effort” of an armed resistance/guerrilla/insurgent movement.[xiv] In these approaches, the public component of the traditional Underground/Guerilla/Auxiliary/Public Component model of resistance is often sidelined or minimized, when in fact it has been shown to be more effective than armed resistance campaigns.[xv] As a result, practitioners of irregular warfare like Civil Affairs soldiers must be able to think creatively of how to execute their assigned task of Civil Network Development and Engagement; in environments where social cohesion is low or has been degraded, fostering strong communities is a prerequisite for mobilization.
Opening one’s aperture to include authors and practitioners outside those traditionally seen as in the realm of unconventional warfare can inspire innovative approaches to current and future challenges. For example, in discussing a local union campaign Friedmann illustrates how “the ‘fight back' struggle against plant closings raised people’s consciousness; built a sense of human solidarity in the teeth of profit; tested certain proposed solutions…and build new collaborative networks within civil society.” Similar to writings on social movement theory and its applications to resistance, devoting time to understanding the deeper motivations behind why communities organize and what creates this raised consciousness would enable more effective irregular warfare efforts.[xvi] Within the context of practical applications, radical planning also provides a useful framework for developing shadow governance mechanisms, vital to any effective resistance campaign in IW or UW settings.[xvii]
Beyond more traditional applications like unconventional warfare, radical planning also stands as a potential tool in the US campaign to out-compete its adversaries for influence. While not going so far as to advocate for regime change in proxy conflicts, developing effectively organized and motivated communities can create new dilemmas for adversaries and disrupt zones of economic or political influence.[xviii][xix]
Learning and training on these methods also allow for diverse experiences. As mentioned, many cities across the United States are home to a vibrant community of organizations practicing planning and organizing for counter-hegemonic goals. Engaging with these groups not only provides irregular warfare practitioners with valuable insights but also creates opportunities to bridge civil-military gaps in some of the country's biggest urban centers. Academia, of course, also provides many opportunities for collaboration; urban planning departments across the country dedicate research and resources to understanding many of these problems.[xx] Often, such departments conduct classes with regular field trips to engage with community planners and organizations waging campaigns against gentrification, environmental degradation, and further marginalization of minority groups. These trips not only provide first-hand experience with how theories are turned into practice in the context of resistance, but also helped establish new connections with subject matter experts from diverse backgrounds.
While on a field trip to East Austin, students met with community organizers who waged successful campaigns to stop industrial pollution and altered city government decision- making. (Photo: author)
As SOF and other irregular warfare experts contend with the future of war, we must continue to look for new and innovative ways to strengthen our abilities to analyze conflict and develop effective strategies to secure victory. The lessons learned from the litany of these social movements can offer insights into the motivation, organization, and mobilization of vulnerable populations across a variety of urban settings. Taking a page from radical urban planners should be considered not just for its long scholarship on societal conflict but also the many lived experiences of those organizing and participating in everyday resistance.
About the Author CPT Danny Moriarty is a Civil Affairs officer currently attending graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, researching civil resistance within the Geography & the Environment Department. He previously served in the 83d Civil Affairs Battalion as a Team Leader and Human Network Analysis Chief and has completed deployments to Afghanistan and the Persian
[ii] Flanagan, Stephen, Jan Osburg, Anika Binnendijk, Marta Kepe, and Andrew Radin. Deterring Russian Aggression in the Baltic States Through Resilience and Resistance. RAND Corporation, 2019. https://doi.org/10.7249/RR2779.
[xv] Stephan, Maria, and Erica Chenoweth. “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” International Security 33, no. 1 (2008): 7–44
[xvii]Dawdy, Michael. “Governance as a Weapon: Advising the Shadow Government in Unconventional Warfare | Small Wars Journal,” July 20, 2016, 14.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
