Quotes of the Day:

"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

​- ​Francis Bacon, The Essays

“Without a full understanding of the harm caused by war, it is impossible to understand the most profitable way of conducting it.”

​- ​Sun Tzu, The Art Of War

“The perceptive power of the brain in this undirected mode is so strong that it seems to border on a kind of telepathy. Test subjects can tell winning poker hands, for example, by watching two-second clips of professional players moving their chips to the center of the table to place a bet. Players with winning hands were almost imperceptibly smoother and looser in their body movements. (Their faces were unobservable in the study. A separate study found that facial expression—which is easy to mask—did not help observers judge the strength of a hand at all.) And the same is true of athletes: If you show basketball players a brief video of fellow players taking a free throw, roughly two-thirds of the time they can determine whether or not he will make the shot, based solely on the movement of the arm. There is something about grace that tells athletes what is about to happen. In short, quicker, more efficient movement gives small fighters an advantage over large ones, and unconscious perceptions allow them to see punches before they have been launched. Were either not true, larger fighters would regularly crush small ones, but they don't. This allows humans to confront or disobey the largest male in the group, which is a departure from millions of years of primate evolution.”

​- ​Sebastian Junger, Freedom

​1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 19 (Putin's War)

2. How citizen groups are fighting internet disinformation and racial discord

3. ‘Hackers against conspiracies’: Cyber sleuths take aim at election disinformation

4.  Chinese communist spokesperson goes on tweetstorm asking world to reject US

5. Sensing Russian Stall, US Rushing Arms to Help Retake Ukrainian Territory

6. China will face an economic crisis if it doesn’t end its zero-covid policy: ‘Beijing is racing against time’

7. Crimea sabotage signals Ukraine shift to guerrilla war

8. Bali bomber released after serving just half sentence

9. We’re Still Asking the Wrong Questions About War With China Over Taiwan

10. Chinese leader asked Biden to prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan

11. China must show it's not an 'agent of instability' on Taiwan, US Ambassador to China says

12. Why a Chinese ship's arrival in Sri Lanka has caused alarm in India and the West

13. China pressure deepens Taiwan’s desire for big US weapon systems

14. IntelBrief: The Global Jihadist Movement in a Post-Zawahiri Era

15. US-Taiwan trade deal talks defy China’s warning

16. Russia Increasingly Feeling Sting Of War Behind The Lines

17. Ukrainian Fighter Pilots Are Training On DIY A-10 Warthog Simulators

18. Are extremism and violent crime rising among veterans, or are we just seeing more of it?

19. With ‘bravery’ as its new brand, Ukraine is turning advertising into a weapon of war

20. US political violence is surging, but talk of a civil war is exaggerated – isn’t it?

21. New Tests Prove How Fearsome the MQ-9 Reaper Drone Really Is

22. China Is Preparing To Go To War

23. Russia Has Run Out of Long-Range Missiles to Terrorize Ukraine

24. I'm A Former Member of US Army Special Forces: Russia War in Ukraine Could Be Falling Apart

25. Prof. Pete Pedrozo on “Unpacking the Distinction: One China Principle v. One China Policy”

26. A Duty to Disobey?

27. Why is Michael Hayden trying to validate Trump's 'deep state' conspiracy theory?

28. Demystifying the Art of Assessment & Selection

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 19 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-19

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 19

Aug 19, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

August 19, 7:30 pm ET

Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian military and transportation infrastructure in Crimea and Kherson Oblast are likely reducing Russian confidence in the security of Russian rear areas. Reports from August 18 about Ukrainian strikes are affecting the Russian information space despite the fact that these reports were likely overblown. Available open-source evidence indicates that Ukrainian forces did not conduct a successful kinetic attack against either the Stary Oskol Air Base in Belgorod or Belbek Air Base in Crimea on August 18. Geolocated footage shows that a fire started at a field just south of the Stary Oskol Airfield (rather than at the airfield itself), and satellite imagery shows Russian forces transporting ammunition and military equipment to a forest close to the field.[1] An unspecified Russian Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official reiterated that Russian air defenses near the Kerch Strait Bridge activated against a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) rather than an incoming strike.[2] There is no visual evidence of damage to either air base of as August 19. Geolocated footage shows no explosions or evidence of kinetic activity near the Belbek Air Base overnight on August 18-19, lending credence to claims that footage reportedly showing the explosion is recycled footage misattributed to the Belbek Air Base.[3] As ISW reported on August 18, Russian sources largely reported on and disseminated these false or exaggerated reports, indicating broader Russian panic.[4]

Russian authorities are visibly increasing security measures in Crimea, indicating growing worry among Russian authorities and civilians about the threat of Ukrainian strikes on rear areas previously believed to be secure. Russian authorities installed checkpoints to search Ukrainian cars and identify saboteurs in Sevastopol.[5] Certain Russian milbloggers made dramatic, pessimistic assessments that Ukrainian forces used strikes on the Kerch Strait Bridge and Belbek Air Base to conduct reconnaissance on Russian air and missile defense readiness and make assessments for new attacks, particularly the feasibility of a large strike.[6] Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications (UA StratCom) reported on August 19 that Russian forces are not in control of the situation in Crimea as evidenced by the blocking of the Kerch Strait Bridge and activation of air alarms in Sevastopol for the first time since the start of the invasion.[7] UA StratCom warned that Ukrainian forces have not yet struck the Kerch Strait Bridge with full capabilities and that prior Ukrainian strikes on the bridge demonstrate that the bridge is not as safe as the Russians previously believed.[8]

The situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) remained largely unchanged on August 19, despite the Russian Ministry of Defense’s August 18 claims that Ukrainian forces would stage a provocation at the ZNPP on August 19. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces shelled the ZNPP at night on August 18-19 but did not claim that Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale attack on the facility, contrary to Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) statements on August 18.[9] Zaporizhia Oblast Head Oleksandr Starukh emphasized on August 19 that the situation at the ZNPP remains tense but under control.[10]

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russian authorities are likely preparing to hold show trials for Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol around August 24, notably coinciding with Ukraine’s Independence Day.[11] The GUR warned that Russian authorities intend to hold a show trial of captured fighters from the Azovstal Steel Plant in the Mariupol Philharmonic Theatre and may use the theatre to stage a false-flag attack on August 24.[12] Mariupol Mayor Advisor Petro Andryushchenko confirmed that the Mariupol occupation administration canceled rehearsal schedules at the theatre in order to accommodate the show trials, which ISW previously reported on August 11.[13] As ISW previously reported, these show trials will likely be orchestrated in order to create the impression for Russian domestic audiences that Russian occupation authorities are taking necessary steps to secure occupied areas as well as attempt to demoralize Ukrainian troops.[14] Russian authorities are likely orienting the trials around Ukraine’s Independence Day in order to set further information conditions to exert law enforcement control of occupied areas.

Key Takeaways

• Recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian military and transport infrastructure in Crimea and Kherson Oblast are likely reducing Russian confidence in the security of Russian rear areas.
• The situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) remained relatively unchanged on August 19 despite Russian claims that Ukrainian forces would stage a provocation at the plant.
• Russian authorities are likely preparing show trials of Ukrainian defenders of Azovstal on Ukraine’s Independence Day in order to further consolidate occupational control of occupied areas of Ukraine and set conditions to demoralize Ukrainian troops.
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks north of Kharkiv City, southwest and southeast of Izyum, east of Siversk, and south and east of Bakhmut.
• Russian forces conducted multiple unsuccessful ground assaults on settlements on the Southern Axis.
• Russia continues to generate regional volunteer units and will likely deploy many of them to Kherson and Ukraine’s south as part of the 3rd Army Corps.
• Russian occupation authorities are strengthening their control of educational infrastructure in occupied areas in preparation for the approaching school year and may be sending Ukrainian children to Russia as part of a broader repopulation campaign.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk Oblast
• Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
• Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
• Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks southwest and southeast of Izyum near the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border on August 19. Russian troops attempted to break through Ukrainian defensive lines in the area of Karnaukhivka, Dibrovne, Virnopillya, and Nova Dmytrivka—all within 25 km southwest of Izyum.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces also conducted a ground attack near Dolyna, 25 km southeast of Izyum and along the E40 Izyum-Slovyansk highway.[16] Russian troops also shelled the Kramatorsk Technology and Design College.[17]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks east of Siversk on August 19. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted to advance on Siversk from Ivano-Darivka (10 km southeast of Siversk) and Vyimka (7 km southeast of Siversk).[18] Russian troops shelled Siversk and the surrounding settlements.[19]

Russian forces continued ground assaults to the east and south of Bakhmut on August 19. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted to advance on Soledar (10 km northeast of Bakhmut) from around Stryapivka and Volodymyrivka.[20] Russian troops, including Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) elements, continued to fight in the eastern outskirts of Soledar, likely in order to consolidate control of the nearby section of the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway.[21] Russian troops also continued ground assaults south of Bakhmut around Kodema, Zaitseve, and Klynove, all within 15 km southeast of Bakhmut. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Territorial Defense claimed that DNR troops in the Horlivka area took control of the northern part of Zaitseve (different from the aforementioned Zaitseve and about 20 km southwest of Bakhmut) and Dacha (15 km south of Bakhmut).[22] ISW cannot independently confirm the status of control of these two settlements, but Russian forces in the Horlivka area are likely continuing efforts to gain control of settlements along the T0513 Horlivka-Bakhmut highway in order to increase pressure on Bakhmut from the southwest.

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks to push west of the outskirts of Donetsk City on August 19. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted assault operations in the direction of Pervomaiske (15 km northwest of Donetsk City) and fought around Opytne and Pisky, both on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[23] Russian sources also continued to report that Russian troops control more than two-thirds of Marinka on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City and that attempts to advance through the rest of the settlement are complicated by Ukrainian fortifications.[24] Russian forces continued to target Ukrainian positions along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline with artillery strikes.[25]

Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack southwest of Donetsk City in the direction of the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border on August 19. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted to improve their tactical positions near Novomykhailivka, 25 km southwest of Donetsk City.[26] Russian sources also claimed that Russian troops have reportedly moved to support an encirclement of Vuhledar (45 km southwest of Donetsk City) and taken control of the surrounding settlements of Pavlivka and Vodyane.[27] While ISW cannot independently verify these claims, Russian forces will likely continue operations around Vuhledar to gain access to the road that runs northeast into Marinka in order to support efforts to push west of the Donetsk City area.

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces attempted a limited ground assault north of Kharkiv City near Pytomnyk and shelled Kharkiv City and surrounding settlements on August 19.[28] The UK Defense Ministry (UK MoD) reported that, despite a limited Russian force presence on the Kharkiv City Axis, Russian forces have shelled Kharkiv City consistently since the start of the war and conducted small-scale ground attacks to prevent Ukrainian forces from reallocating personnel from this axis to other axes.[29] The UK MoD’s report confirms ISW’s previous assessments of the limited Russian focus on Kharkiv City and spoiling attacks north of the city.[30] Russian forces conducted airstrikes on Staryi Saltiv and remotely mined both Verkhnii Saltiv and Staryi Saltiv northeast of Kharkiv City on the left bank of the Siverskyi Donets River.[31]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)

Russian forces conducted multiple unsuccessful ground assaults in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts on August 19. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces withdrew to their original positions after launching an unsuccessful ground assault in the Oleksandrivka-Stanislav direction.[32] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to break through Ukrainian defenses near an unspecified village named Kirove (likely referring to Zarichne in Mykolaiv Oblast west of Arkhanhelske because Zarichne used to be called Kirove), approximately 5 km south of the Mykolaiv - Dnipropetrovsk oblast border.[33] Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces continued conducting offensive actions to capture new settlements along the Southern Axis. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces encountered two unspecified Russian airborne units during offensive Ukrainian operations in an unspecified area in Kherson Oblast on August 18.[34]

Russian forces continued focusing on maintaining occupied lines and preventing Ukrainian advances along the Southern Axis on August 19.[35] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted active reconnaissance of Ukrainian anti-aircraft positions in the Zaporizhia direction and continued UAV reconnaissance along the Southern Axis.[36] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces conducted airstrikes near Lozove and Bila Krynytsia, both near the Ukrainian bridgehead across the Inhulets River.[37] Russian forces also conducted airstrikes near Novosilka, near the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border, Shcherbaky (approximately 40 km south of Zaporizhia), and Dorozhnyanka (approximately 112 km southeast of Zaporizhia City).[38] Russian forces continued shelling along the entire line of contact using tank, tube, and rocket artillery.[39]

Russian forces continued to target settlements in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv Oblasts on August 19. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces used tube artillery to strike civilian infrastructure in Nikopol and Marhanets, both located across the Dnipro River from Russian-occupied positions in Zaporizhia Oblast.[40] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces launched eight S-300s missiles on educational and civilian infrastructure in Mykolaiv City at night on August 18-19.[41]

Ukrainian forces again struck the bridge near the Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant at night on August 18-19.[42] Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan confirmed that Ukrainian forces “destroyed” Russian plans to restore and reopen the bridge to transport military equipment in Kherson Oblast.[43]

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

Newly formed Russian volunteer battalions are deploying or preparing to deploy to Ukraine. Local media outlet Amur Press reported that the Khabarovsk Krai “Baron Korf” signals battalion will support the deployment of Russian field posts in Kherson Oblast and provide command and control to the new Russian 3rd Army Corps—a unit still in formation to which many of the newly observed Russian volunteer units are subordinated—indicating the Kremlin will likely deploy many of its new volunteer units to Kherson and Ukraine’s south.[44] Local Kirov media reported that an element of Kirov Oblast’s “Vyatka” battalion deployed to Ukraine, and local media filmed approximately 60-70 men of the “Vyatka” battalion at a pre-deployment ceremony.[45] ISW previously reported that the “Vyatka” battalion had almost finished assembling as of July 9.[46] As ISW has previously assessed, these volunteer units are unlikely to generate significant combat power.[47]

Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing to form volunteer units. The Kabardino-Balkarian Republic Military Commissariat announced on August 18 that the republic is recruiting for the “Kabardino-Balkaria” volunteer regiment that will be an element of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District).[48] The Commissariat announced that it is accepting volunteers aged 18-50 years with salaries of 168,000-200,000 rubles ($2,695-3,368) per month for general military service, and 18-50 years old for salaries of 200,000-300,000 rubles ($3,368-5,053) per month for deploying to Ukraine.[49] The regiment offers contracts for lengths of three months, one year, and three years.[50]

Rostov Oblast State Duma Deputy Viktor Vodolatsky announced on August 18 that Rostov Oblast is forming the Cossack “Don” volunteer brigade, recruiting men aged 18-60 years old and requiring no prior military service.[51] The “Don” volunteer brigade offers 200,000 ruble-per-month salaries, 40,000 rubles ($674) to purchase supplies and equipment, and contracts for three and six months.[52]

Local Russian news outlet New Companion reported on August 16 that Perm Oblast is forming the 2nd “Parma” volunteer battalion, which is currently training before deploying to Ukraine.[53] ISW previously reported on the formation of the 1st “Parma” and “Molot” battalions, and New Companion reported that the “Molot” volunteer tank battalion completed recruitment and is currently training at unspecified training grounds before deploying to Ukraine.[54]

Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov appears concerned about his ability to control Chechen units in Ukraine, possibly impacting his ability to recruit for Chechen military and volunteer units. Kadyrov claimed that the “blood feud” between Chechens is effective at deterring aggression between pro-Russia Chechens and Ichkerian Chechens, who Kadyrov claimed ally themselves against Russia and with Ukraine.[55] Kadyrov claimed that Ichkerian Chechens will answer for their disloyalty and crimes against the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, regardless of the outcome of the war.[56] Kadyrov’s rant indicates a growing concern about the Chechens he cannot control and cannot convince or easily compel to join the Russian military.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian occupation authorities are strengthening control of educational infrastructure in occupied areas of Ukraine in preparation for the approaching school year. DNR Head Denis Pushilin met with a member of the United Russia Party on August 19 to discuss the development of education in Donbas, which reportedly includes the “retraining” of teachers in accordance with Russian curricula.[57] Pushilin stated that United Russia will provide schools in Donbas with all necessary educational materials as part of the ongoing “Books for Donbas” campaign, which is likely an effort to saturate schools in occupied areas with Russian educational materiel and effectively erase Ukrainian curricula. LNR Head Leonid Pasechnik similarly secured the patronage of Russia’s Astrakhan Oblast, which will oversee the reconstruction of educational infrastructure in occupied Luhansk Oblast.[58] Russian-backed head of the Zaporizhia occupation administration, Yevheny Balitsky, signed an education cooperation agreement with the Russian political organization “Russian Society: Knowledge,” which Balitsky claimed intends to facilitate knowledge development and participation in various education platforms.[59] Such measures indicate that Russian occupation officials are taking actions to secure control of the teaching and dissemination of Russian-approved curricula in occupied areas, as well as contributing to the physical reconstruction of schools and other educational institutions in order to integrate occupied areas into the Russian system.

Russian officials, however, are likely encountering widespread resistance from Ukrainian citizens who do not want to participate in the Russian-controlled education system. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian authorities are pressuring Ukrainian parents into sending their children to Russian-run schools in occupied areas by fining families who do not enroll in Russian schools up to 148,000 rubles.[60]

Russian officials may be conducting mass deportation campaigns of Ukrainian children under the guise of taking children to Russia to attend youth camps and extracurricular programs. During a working meeting with the United Russia party, Pushilin stated that children from Donbas will be provided the opportunity to “rest” in Russia and participate in all-Russia youth programs as part of the wider educational cooperation agreement between the DNR and United Russia.[61] Russian-backed head of the Kherson occupation administration Kirill Stremousov stated that his administration has sent 1,500 children from Kherson Oblast to Russian “resorts” as of August 19.[62] Russian occupation authorities may be using the façade of engaging children with Russian youth programs in Russia to conduct forced deportation, potentially as part of an extended population replacement campaign.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[10] https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/11879; https://www dot zoda.gov.ua/news/62424/problemni-pitannya-vasilivskogo-rayonu-virishujutsya-popri-diji-okupantiv.html

[11] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/24-serpnia-okupanty-mozhut-planuvaty-terakt-pid-chas-sudylyshcha-nad-ukrainskymy-heroiamy-v-mariupoli.html; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[12] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/24-serpnia-okupanty-mozhut-planuvaty-terakt-pid-chas-sudylyshcha-nad-ukrainskymy-heroiamy-v-mariupoli.html

[44] http://amurpress dot info/strategy/34550/

[45] http://amurpress dot info/strategy/34550/

[48] http://nalchik-news dot net/other/2022/08/18/26358.html

[49] http://nalchik-news dot net/other/2022/08/18/26358.html

[50] http://nalchik-news dot net/other/2022/08/18/26358.html

[51] https://www.donnews dot ru/v-kazachyu-brigadu-nabirayut-dobrovoltsev-v-vozraste-do-60-let-dlya-uchastiya-v-spetsoperatsii

[52] https://www.donnews dot ru/v-kazachyu-brigadu-nabirayut-dobrovoltsev-v-vozraste-do-60-let-dlya-uchastiya-v-spetsoperatsii

[53] https://www.newsko dot ru/news/nk-7352161.html

[54] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-volunteer-units-an... https://www.newsko dot ru/news/nk-7352161.html

[60] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/08/19/okupanty-pogrozhuyut-konfiskuvaty-majno-batkiv-yaki-ne-viddayut-svoyih-ditej-na-navchannya-do-rosijskyh-shkil-na-tot/

understandingwar.org

2. How citizen groups are fighting internet disinformation and racial discord

It is good that civil society is stepping up. We need more of this and we all need to take individual responsibility.

As a reminder from the 2017 NSS:

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

Access NSS HERE

How citizen groups are fighting internet disinformation and racial discord

thebulletin.org · by Dawn Stover · August 19, 2022

By Angela R. Pashayan | August 19, 2022

Photo by cottonbro/Pexels

What is now classified as disinformation can be traced at least as far back as the fourth century, when various religious groups engaged in ecumenical debates as they vied for unity and power in the early centuries of the Catholic Church. During the 16th century, religious sages led parishioners to believe monarchs were chosen by God to rule in the political and religious realms. And the 20th century was rife with propaganda spread by leaders of communist, fascist, and even sometimes democratic countries.

Today, lies are commonplace in politics and government and often spread and amplified on the internet by private actors. The security risks posed by widespread belief in conspiracy theories and other false or misleading information make it imperative that society find ways to counter mis- and disinformation.

But to date most government attempts to fight back against disinformation have not worked. A global cyberwatch across social media platforms is nearly impossible to institute successfully, given the number of platforms and a user base of people numbered in the billions. Media literacy and counter-propaganda campaigns run by civil society groups seem to offer the most promising alternatives in the fight against disinformation. Among the emerging success stories are groups fighting racial discrimination in the United States and a community of Lithuanian professionals from diverse industries who use AI-driven analytic tools to debunk internet lies.

The racial divide. The US State Department refers to the battle against disinformation as a responsibility to be shared by government leaders and private citizens. President Joe Biden spoke about this battle in his inaugural address: “There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders—leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation—to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.” One of the top five Russian disinformation narratives noted in a State Department fact sheet is the looming “collapse of Western civilization,” a narrative often furthered when disinformation is targeted to stir up racial tension that fosters domestic discord.

Win Black is an organization that was very active in 2020 and 2021 fighting mis- and disinformation in Black communities. Win Black says social media platforms are not doing enough to take down disinformation posts that aim to foster race-related strife. During 2020 and 2021, the organization’s team combed through media content every day to strategically search for disinformation in places where it routinely starts. The group’s methodology included corrective messages shared with Black communities on the internet. At its core, Win Black’s fight against disinformation involved creating attractive but truthful internet content that could “compete with all of the bad information that’s out there.”

RELATED:

US official: Russian invasion of Ukraine risks release of dangerous pathogens

Bots—that is, automated social media accounts—regularly bait people into arguments that drive attention to disinformation content. Among many social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook are known for accounts operated by trolls or bots that engage in an argument for extended periods of time, stirring confusion and spreading false information. Such activity was a significant part of Russia’s efforts to depress the Black vote in the 2020 US presidential election. The National Black Cultural Information Trust, the NAACP, and other groups are fighting back against such disinformation by identifying local influencers whose messages can be trusted. When the bots and trolls start the arguments, local influencers step in with a message of truth and other types of challenges that unveil the reality that people have been arguing with a bot.

To keep the fight against racial disinformation going strong, the Media Democracy Fund helped start the Disinfo Defense League, a group of over 200 grassroots organizations that fight disinformation in Black communities. Meanwhile, some Blacks are organizing to fight disinformation individually. Two Blacks with no tech or security background have created a clever hashtag that plays on Black culture by recognizing the language of non-Black social media users who pretend to be Black and push disinformation. The approach hails from the fact that it is hard to fake African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also known as Ebonics. The duo searches for Twitter accounts owned by “Blacks” who are actually white supremacists spreading disinformation. When the accounts are discovered, the two use the hashtag #yourslipisshowing to indicate that something meant to be concealed is on full display. Twitter has picked up on this tactic and has been able to shut down some of the fake accounts pushing disinformation.

Media literacy is a big part of knowing when “you are being played,” and some Black celebrities are using their status to promote media literacy in the Black community. In 2020, Kevin Hart, Patrick Mahomes, and LeBron James teamed up to create More Than a Vote, a campaign on Twitter to combat dis- and misinformation about voting, and to fight efforts to discourage voters from attempting to vote.

Black scholars are getting involved to counter disinformation through webinars, workshops, and town hall forums. In 2021, a critical-thinking project at the University of Southern California, the Critical Media Project, tested the effectiveness of an educational intervention to improve media literacy as a form of social justice. The project’s methods to fight disinformation were successful in empowering youth with the tools necessary to challenge systems of disinformation. A similar project was undertaken by a collective academic team that promotes the importance of “digital citizenship.”

RELATED:

Russian nuclear and biological disinformation undermines treaties on weapons of mass destruction

A counter-disinformation collective. Meanwhile, in Europe, Debunk EU has made headway against distortion of the truth, using what the group describes as a combination of “‘geeks’ + ‘elves’ + journalists” to counter disinformation and undermine divisive social media posts. This nonprofit hails from Lithuania and is funded by Delfi, the largest online news publisher in the Baltics, and the Digital News Initiative, a European organization created by Google to support high-quality journalism via technological innovation.

The Lithuanian elves—actually, a community of professionals with backgrounds in foreign affairs, security, IT, and related fields—are using analytic tools fueled by artificial intelligence to debunk lies on the net, to calm rational and irrational fears, to reinforce discredited truths, and to emphasize data safety that reduces bribes related to public embarrassment. Although their efforts are mainly focused on national-level issues, they also fight race-related disinformation that breeds civil unrest in the United States.

In July 2022, Debunk EU revealed disinformation narratives promoted by the Kremlin that aimed to sway public opinion about Ukrainian refugees and Kyiv’s efforts to join the European Union. The narratives were found in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania from June 26 to July 4 in state-aligned media and social media. Debunk EU tracked engagement with the posts, including shares and likes. Disinformation articles and posts of this nature received from 154 to 7,122 interactions. “Geeks” from 10 think tanks monitored the propaganda and made efforts to debunk it.

Debunk EU also offers a “crash course” that aims to teach the public how to recognize mis- and disinformation. The eight-hour digital course explains how disinformation can be recognized in three steps. The course includes quizzes geared for students, diplomats, journalists, and average citizens to help them increase their ability to recognize false information being promoted as true.

Digital citizens’ communities, local advocacy groups, geeks-elves-and-journalists, and other like-minded organizations are demonstrating the way forward to effectively fight disinformation. Government policies that aim to counter false internet narratives are needed as well, but the private-sector efforts underway are a breath of fresh air—and a guide to more comprehensive programs to fight against disinformation.

thebulletin.org · by Dawn Stover · August 19, 2022

3. ‘Hackers against conspiracies’: Cyber sleuths take aim at election disinformation

‘Hackers against conspiracies’: Cyber sleuths take aim at election disinformation

By MAGGIE MILLER

08/15/2022 04:18 PM EDT

Politico

The security experts who have spent years exposing flaws in voting technology are still at it — but ongoing election conspiracy theories are forcing them to make changes.

Election auditors Mark Lindeman, left, and Harri Hursti catalog ballot boxes in Pembroke, N.H. after they arrived at the site of a forensic audit of a New Hampshire legislative election. | Josh Reynolds/AP Photo

08/15/2022 04:18 PM EDT

One of the country’s biggest hacking conferences became a test site this year for an urgent political question for the midterms: How to hunt for vulnerabilities in voting machines without fueling election misinformation.

Since 2017, the annual DEF CON conference — which wrapped up Sunday in Las Vegas — has featured a “Voting Machine Village” where attendees attempt to crack voting equipment ranging from registration databases to ballot-casting machines. The hackers at DEF CON — which takes its name from the military term for alert levels — have found vulnerabilities in nearly every machine featured during those years.

But this year, in the wake of a 2020 U.S. presidential election where false claims of election fraud abounded — including everything from disproven allegations that mail-in ballots were tampered with, to unfounded claims that some voting machines were programmed to change votes — the Voting Village got a lot more political — and the organizers worked to control the information coming out of it.

“If there is one theme this year, it’s hackers against conspiracies,” said Harri Hursti, the co-founder of the Voting Machine Village. “2020 and all the side effects have changed everything here.”

It’s a tough battle to fight, and one that offers a taste of the problems that the election security community will be grappling with in the run-up to the November elections and the weeks following — as they try to both make sure voting equipment is as secure as possible and to tamp down false claims that the equipment could be tampered with to change the outcome of the election.

The issue is personal for the hackers who come to the Voting Village, many of whom have spent years both researching election security and pushing election equipment manufacturers to publicly disclose these vulnerabilities — a move many of the companies have opposed.

“All the security improvements [have been] hampered by all the false claims, conspiracies — and fighting those,” Hursti said.

Following the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump tweeted out an NBC News report from DEF CON to allege security flaws in equipment from voting machine company Dominion. Hursti said other 2020 candidates also used clips from DEF CON to cast doubt on the security of elections.

Hursti noted the organizers can’t control how that news footage is used once it gets out in the world.

“When it’s in a digital format, the misuse of clips is inevitable,” Hursti said. “What we try to do is to make certain that the right message gets out.” That “right message,” he said, is that elections are safer because researchers are searching out these vulnerabilities.

At this year’s Voting Village, hundreds of attendees wandered among tables in a cavernous conference room at Caesar’s Forum, inspecting ballot scanners, voter registration devices and computers running voter database software. In some spots, groups of hackers crowded around tables to physically pull apart machines. At others, they whipped out laptops to connect to equipment and digitally scan the devices.

DEF CON attendees have a history of finding shocking weaknesses in the machines. At the 2018 event, an 11-year-old hacked into a fake version of Florida’s state election websites in less than 10 minutes. The 2019 edition exposed vulnerabilities in various machines that participants said could allow vote tallies to be changed, ballots to be displayed incorrectly, and internal software to be altered.

The findings have fueled calls to move back to using paper ballots or machines with paper records to verify votes. But organizers are quick to stress that it would be difficult to exploit the vulnerabilities on a large scale, and in many cases attackers would need to have physical access to the machines. The decentralized nature of how U.S. elections are run — with each state and even county using different voting systems and election protocols — is a further protection.

This year, though, the Voting Village included nearly as much attention to how to combat lies about widespread fraud in elections. A former National Security Council official spoke about how disinformation targets minority voters. Officials from Maricopa County, Ariz., discussed debunked yet ongoing conspiracy theories, often championed by Trump supporters, alleging widespread fraud in the county’s 2020 election results.

The Arizona officials methodically debunked claims including false allegations that Italians had used satellites to infiltrate voting devices in the county and that election officials had flown in thousands of ballots from Asia. (In fact, the officials said, no county machines were equipped with the technology to allow a satellite to have any impact, and these ballots could not have been flown in undetected.) They also noted steps they’ve taken since 2020 to try to prevent these theories from bubbling up in the first place, including putting in place a 24-hour video stream for the public to watch the vote counting and using stringent audit and accuracy counts.

Michael Moore, the information security officer for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, urged attendees during a session on Saturday not to accept claims of election fraud without proof.

“Please demand sources, demand data,” he said.

Maricopa officials said they’re still getting pummeled by misinformation around the county’s election security and voting integrity, along with physical threats for their continued efforts to debunk the claims.

Nate Young, the director of IT for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, described his work to debunk conspiracy theories as “a full-time job,” adding that “when I get to do my actual job, it feels weird.”

And officials are only expecting more of that in the months leading up to the midterm elections. Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, even told reporters before the conference that she is more worried about misinformation and threats against election officials than about cyber threats to the upcoming election.

Ben Hovland, a commissioner on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which tests and certifies voting equipment, said the need to divide their attention is making election officials’ jobs more difficult.

“That’s really the challenge that our state and local officials are facing right now is that they don’t get to take their eye off the cyber ball, that is still a real threat, but they are dealing with…the harassment, they are dealing with weaponized information requests that have grown out of the disinformation, and that’s really challenging,” he said.

Still, even Maricopa County’s Young argued that an event like the Voting Village is important to finding vulnerabilities before they can be exploited on election night.

“I want these vulnerabilities to be found, that way we can identify those vulnerabilities in our own systems and shore them up,” he said.

And while full results have not yet been made public, some vulnerabilities in equipment quickly emerged during this year’s event.

A voting machine from China — which Hursti bought on Alibaba and had shipped over — was breached in five hours through a “slow and methodical” process, he said. If participants had been able to use what Hursti described as “free for all” methods, it likely would have been breached in under a half hour, he added. According to Will Baggett, a former CIA officer and digital forensics specialist who presented at the event, this process was made easier due to the machine coming equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth, a facial recognition scanner and a fingerprint reader. All of these features offer tempting methods for hackers to gain access.

“We don’t know what’s in there, but because we don’t know, we’re being methodical with it,” Baggett told attendees.

POLITICO

Politico

4. Chinese communist spokesperson goes on tweetstorm asking world to reject US

If we had the State Department spokesman go on a "tweetstorm" like this the Chinese Communist Party would be up in arms. Here in America we laugh this off as a rant and we won't react very much to it. But the Chinese Communists are so thin skinned they would not be able to deal with this type of criticism. And of course in America we could have Americans making the same criticism about America and nothing would happen to them. If Chinese citizens made similar critiques of the Chinese Communist Party, well... I think you get the picture.

Chinese communist spokesperson goes on tweetstorm asking world to reject US

americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · August 19, 2022

A spokesperson for the Chinese Community Party-controlled Chinese Foreign Ministry launched a Twitter rant on Friday, calling on nations around the world to reject the U.S., while blaming it for “failing” Afghanistan.

BREAKING: Biden letting Iran’s President into US despite Pompeo assassination plot

“The US has failed in Afghanistan, but still hasn’t changed its habit of meddling in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy and human rights, and stoking division and confrontation around the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin tweeted. “This would only lead the US to new and greater failures.”

“The international community needs to jointly reject the US’s recklessness of creating chaos and turbulence in the name of democracy and human rights, and prevent another tragedy of Afghanistan in our world,” Wang concluded.

The international community needs to jointly reject the US’s recklessness of creating chaos and turbulence in the name of democracy and human rights, and prevent another tragedy of Afghanistan in our world. pic.twitter.com/ZrCHQnIdsv

— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) August 19, 2022

The Chinese Foreign Ministry is controlled by the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The ministry is headed up by Foreign Minister Wang Yi who holds a leadership role in the CCP.

Wenbin’s tweets came one year after the U.S. military-led effort to evacuate of western civilians and Afghan refugees from Afghanistan. The evacuation came as the U.S. military was withdrawing from Afghanistan after a nearly 20-year mission to hunt down Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, and keep their Afghan Taliban allies out of power.

Wenbin also tweeted, “The ‘Kabul moment’ puts the US’s hypocrisy on democracy and human rights and its true colors of relying on power politics and bullying practices on full display.”

The “Kabul moment” puts the US’s hypocrisy on democracy and human rights and its true colors of relying on power politics and bullying practices on full display. pic.twitter.com/pvfH9XF5Xa

— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) August 19, 2022

Wang’s references to continued U.S. “meddling” in other countries comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan earlier this month.

While Taiwan governs itself as a de-facto independent nation, China considers the island a part of its territory and called Pelosi’s Taiwan visit a violation of Chinese sovereignty. Chinese military forces further responded to her visits by surrounding Taiwan with threatening military drills.

As the U.S. evacuation from Kabul was taking place last year, the Chinese state-run Global Times used the moment to taunt Taiwan. The outlet wrote an editorial that said, “From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and US military won’t come to help.”

“Once a cross-Straits war breaks out while the mainland seized the island with forces, the US would have to have a much greater determination than it had for Afghanistan, Syria and Vietnam if it wants to interfere,” Global Times added.

While Wang called for other countries to stop trusting in the U.S., the U.S. has continued to strengthen its partnerships and alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

In 2020, the U.S. State Department launched the “Clean Network” initiative in an effort to get countries around the world to avoid using Huawei and other Chinese telecommunications services that pose surveil their users for China.

Last year, the U.S. also formed a new security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom called AUKUS.

One of the first initiatives under the newly announced security pact was for the U.S. and U.K. to share submarine nuclear-propulsion technology to Australia. A senior Biden administration official said that move “will allow us to sustain and to improve deterrence across the Indo-Pacific,” indicating reinforced counter’s to China’s growing presence in the region.

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americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · August 19, 2022

5. Sensing Russian Stall, US Rushing Arms to Help Retake Ukrainian Territory

What if we had started providing these weapons sooner? From the beginning or before Putin's War began? Where would we be now?

Sensing Russian Stall, US Rushing Arms to Help Retake Ukrainian Territory

The latest weapons package includes MRAPs with special landmine-clearing devices–and brings the total to $10.7 billion.

By MARCUS WEISGERBER and TARA COPP

AUGUST 19, 2022 12:54 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Marcus Weisgerber

Sensing Russia’s momentum has completely stalled, the United States is rushing into Ukraine another $775 million in advanced missiles, armored vehicles, and artillery to help Kyiv’s counteroffensive to retake territory, according to a senior defense official.

There’s “a complete and total lack of progress” by the Russians now, said the official, who briefed Pentagon reporters on Friday.

The latest weapons package includes additional HIMARS rockets, 16 105mm Howitzer artillery systems, ScanEagle surveillance drones, anti-mine MRAP vehicles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and more. It follows a $1 billion arms package announced last week and brings the total aid to Ukraine provided by the Biden administration to $10.7 billion.

“We have seen Ukraine employing HIMARS masterfully on the battlefield,” the official said. “This long-range fire capability has really changed the dynamic on the battlefield. We want to make sure that Ukraine has a steady stream of ammunition to meet its needs.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal has not been formally announced, said the ScanEagle drones would help the Ukrainian military target Russian forces.

Earlier this week after a call with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said more American-made weapons would soon be sent to Ukraine.

The U.S. official disclosed that the United States is sending Ukraine HARM anti-radiation missiles to target Russian radar sites. Ukraine has successfully installed the weapon on its Soviet-made MiG fighter jets, the official said.

In addition, the United States has worked to procure “thousands” of spare parts to keep Ukraine’s MiG fleet flying. The official would not disclose the number of HARM weapons being sent.

The official also said National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS missile interceptors, being sent to Ukraine would come directly from manufacturer Raytheon Technologies in the coming months, rather than from U.S. stockpiles.

The arms package also includes 40 MRAPs special rollers that can detect buried land mines. Fifty armored Humvees will also be sent to Ukraine, the official said.

“This isn't the end,” the officials said. “We will continue to consult with the Ukrainians to make sure that we are providing them what they need when they need it.”

defenseone.com · by Marcus Weisgerber

6. China will face an economic crisis if it doesn’t end its zero-covid policy: ‘Beijing is racing against time’

Excerpts:

But while China remains an economic juggernaut, it’s also facing a whole lot of economic trouble at the moment. There are warning signs on multiple fronts — from covid-related shutdowns to falling housing prices, from rising income inequality to a dearth of jobs for university graduates — and the government is almost certain to miss its target of 5.5 percent GDP for 2022. It may miss that mark badly. As one Bloomberg analysis put it this week, the “data for July suggest confidence is collapsing among China’s businesses and households.” 2022 will also be remembered as the year that China hit a dubious demographic milestone: Its population has begun to shrink. That’s not just a current problem — it could pose all kinds of long-term challenges for China if the decline cannot be slowed.

Beyond the recent data and the economic problems they reveal, there are potential political problems as well — given that China’s Communist Party Congress is to gather in the fall, presumably to anoint Xi Jinping as leader for a third term. All these problems will be on the table then. There have also been pockets of protest related to the economic woes. As an assessment by the Asia Society Policy Institute put it recently, “For a man obsessed with control, 2022 has not gone according to plan for Chinese President Xi Jinping.”​

China will face an economic crisis if it doesn’t end its zero-covid policy: ‘Beijing is racing against time’

This week’s Global Grid conversation looks at a range of troubles for China’s economy — and the implications for the country’s leadership.

Tom Nagorski, Global Editor, and Lili Pike, China ReporterAugust 19, 2022

grid.news

Over the past several decades the economic portrait of China has evolved — in historically rapid fashion — from slow-growing poor nation to fast-rising global economic power. For several years, forecasters have debated not whether, but when the country will overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.

But while China remains an economic juggernaut, it’s also facing a whole lot of economic trouble at the moment. There are warning signs on multiple fronts — from covid-related shutdowns to falling housing prices, from rising income inequality to a dearth of jobs for university graduates — and the government is almost certain to miss its target of 5.5 percent GDP for 2022. It may miss that mark badly. As one Bloomberg analysis put it this week, the “data for July suggest confidence is collapsing among China’s businesses and households.” 2022 will also be remembered as the year that China hit a dubious demographic milestone: Its population has begun to shrink. That’s not just a current problem — it could pose all kinds of long-term challenges for China if the decline cannot be slowed.

Hear more from this conversation between Lili Pike, Tom Nagorski, and Houze Song:

Beyond the recent data and the economic problems they reveal, there are potential political problems as well — given that China’s Communist Party Congress is to gather in the fall, presumably to anoint Xi Jinping as leader for a third term. All these problems will be on the table then. There have also been pockets of protest related to the economic woes. As an assessment by the Asia Society Policy Institute put it recently, “For a man obsessed with control, 2022 has not gone according to plan for Chinese President Xi Jinping.”

Grid has covered several of the underlying issues that have brought China to this difficult moment. In our latest “Global Grid” Twitter Spaces conversation, Global Editor Tom Nagorski spoke with Grid’s China reporter Lili Pike and Houze Song of the Paulson Institute, a leading expert on the Chinese economy.

Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tom Nagorski: Lili Pike, to just frame and set the table for us: What are the data showing us about the current slowdown in China?

Lili Pike: I’ll give a quick snapshot of what the latest numbers show. The GDP growth for this year is far lower than expected. And that’s tied into this ongoing zero-covid problem, where Chinese cities have been going into snap lockdowns. The latest numbers showed that in the second quarter, China’s GDP only grew by 0.4 percent. So that’s a far cry from the five-and-a-half percent target that the government set out at the beginning of the year.

And the latest numbers from July show that things are not turning around. Factory production, investment, consumer spending — all fell for the prior month.

And one striking statistic is that urban youth unemployment is also way up – in the latest data from July, that number rose to 20 percent. Twenty percent of young job seekers in the cities aren’t able to find a job.

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All this reflects that people are just shaken up by these lockdowns. Most people are saving their money instead of spending it at shops and restaurants. And businesses are equally hesitant to invest in the future. And that’s all because these lockdowns are continuing. In late July Wuhan, the city that was locked down at the very beginning of covid, had another one million people stuck at home and then just last week, vacation hot spot Sanya on Hainan — a beautiful spot in southern China — also went to a snap lockdown. Tens of thousands of travelers weren’t able to return home. So you can imagine that would have a lot of people questioning whether they should take another trip in the future, and that leaves a lot of people hesitant to spend, and just worried about the shape of the economy.

TN: Has there been any evidence that in looking at the economic price that they’re paying, the Chinese have any appetite for loosening up on that policy, and easing up because of the economic pain?

LP: You would think after the Shanghai lockdown and after these most recent lockdowns that there would start to be some consideration of shifting toward a new strategy in China. But quite the opposite. The latest Politburo meeting from July showed that government officials were doubling down on the same strategy, committing to zero-covid for the foreseeable future. People have speculated that after the big [Communist] Party Congress in the fall, leaders might consider backing down and at least making the policy a little bit less stringent. But for now, zero-covid is still the core strategy for dealing with the pandemic in China.

TN: Houze Song, you’ve studied the Chinese economy for a long time. Perhaps you can just step back and put this in some perspective for us. How difficult is this relative to previous years — previous decades even — for the Chinese economy?

Houze Song: My opinion is that the current situation [in China] is probably the most challenging since the 2008 global financial crisis. This is because two of the biggest headwinds the Chinese economy currently faces — zero-covid and the property collapse — each individually would be a significant enough shock that it could trigger a recession for the Chinese economy. And right now, we have those two very disruptive shocks happening at the same time.

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TN: You mentioned the 2008 financial crisis. Some of the numbers suggest it may even be worse than that, no?

HS: Of course, yes. In 2008 China, because of the massive stimulus, eventually managed to achieve something like 8 percent growth in the year 2009. But this time it’s not only the growth impact that is concerning, but also the financial implications. Right now we are seeing signs, for example, of Chinese households that cannot get their apartments delivered on time, and people are threatening to suspend mortgage payments, which means that there will be a risk to the banking sector. So right now, in my opinion, what makes the situation concerning has more to do with the potential financial implications rather than the magnitude of the slowdown.

TN: You mentioned mortgages. We have heard for years about real estate and housing issues in China. The real estate bubble. Talk if you would about the severity of the housing issue right now in China.

HS: The current housing crisis is partly policy-made, in the sense that going back to last year Beijing deliberately tried to engineer a soft landing of the property market. But I would say the more recent deterioration of the property sector probably has more to do with zero-covid.

Around this time last year we had Evergrande, which was a top-10 Chinese developer with a balance sheet of about 300 billion U.S. dollars, which basically defaulted on its debt. In the initial aftermath of Evergrande, things were pretty bad, but there was still a chance they might manage to achieve a soft landing for the property sector. But in the last few months, the situation has clearly taken a nose-dive. For the first time in many years, we have seen that except for a few major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, people are reluctant to purchase property. That’s something that has basically never happened on such a large scale previously.

TN: Lili, we are used to — rightly or wrongly — assuming that the Chinese Communist Party is going to guarantee jobs or work for its people, and will tend to do a good job when it comes to a level economic playing field. That may be a naive assumption. You mentioned that youth unemployment is on the rise. But you’ve also done a report for Grid about income inequality, in which you found that it’s as bad or worse than in this country.

LP: That’s right. I’d heard that income inequality in China has been high for decades, but that some measures show it’s actually higher than the U.S. was a surprise to me. Since the reforms and opening back in 1978, the economy was growing rapidly, so everybody was getting richer. And because everything in the economy was expanding — people were getting jobs, new growth was rapid — what experts told me is that people then were actually OK with a level of inequality, or at least they weren’t deeply upset about it. They weren’t protesting. But in recent years, as the economy has slowed down, and particularly during the pandemic, we’ve seen the fortunes of the poorest people in China just really get worse and worse. And this inequality problem is actually being felt in a much sharper way.

I found the data shows that since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been an increase in inequality after a period of stable but high inequality in the 2010s. During the pandemic, the rich have continued to get richer, and billionaire wealth has doubled, which is quite striking. And meanwhile, poor people, particularly migrants in China, have really had a hard time getting by. Because of these lockdowns, migrants who move from rural areas to cities haven’t been able to find work as easily. They get paid job to job, they don’t have any stable income.

One story I looked at was the case of a migrant who was found living in a train station in Shanghai. Her case was kind of emblematic, because she came to Shanghai, right before the lockdown there, to find a job. Then the lockdown happened very suddenly. She was forced to live in a shelter because she couldn’t make any money, in the shelter she got covid, and then once she came out of covid, she was hoping she could find work after the lockdown. But because she’d had covid, employers actually discriminated against her there. There are these provisions and job listings that say anybody who’s had covid need not apply.

I think her case really tells you that the poorest people in China have suffered the most because of this policy. Shanghai has recovered somewhat, and these cities come in and out of lockdowns, but overall it’s been a real hit to the poorest people.

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Xi Jinping came out with this big speech on “common prosperity” in August of last year, and that slogan was meant to be a vision for a more equal China, one that didn’t have such a large disparity in wealth and income, one where there weren’t certain sectors like the tech industry that were profiting so much. But what’s happened in the last six months, especially with these lockdowns, is really driving the country in the opposite direction, toward greater inequality.

TN: Lili used the word “protest,” and of course protest and social unrest, as we all know, are unusual in China. But there have been reports of protests due to the various issues you’ve both raised, be it the mortgage issue, the zero-covid policy, or others. Are these very rare and scattered still? Or are they gaining steam?

LP: My impression really is that protests remain fairly rare. I’ve seen some pop up around the lockdown. In Shanghai a few months ago, there were videos that were going viral of people in tall apartment buildings, banging pots and pans, saying that they wanted the lockdown to end, they wanted to be free of the lockdown.

So that’s a form of protest. Then, rather smaller-scale protests in Shanghai — one group of residents was protesting the conversion of their apartment units into housing for people who had covid. There was going to be a whole wing dedicated as kind of an isolation ward, and they were protesting that. And another case in northern China where people living in a kind of commuter city outside Beijing were upset because they weren’t able to drive into their jobs in the city, or take transit into the city to do their jobs. And we’ve seen a number of isolated incidents on campuses, with students being stuck in their dorm rooms and voicing opposition to that.

But my impression is these remain scattered incidents. And of course when people do try to protest online, through social media, those posts are often censored.

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HS: My sense is that currently, yes, we are seeing an increasing number of protests, but that those protests so far are relatively easy to deal with. For example, the mortgage protests are really those households desperate to just get their apartment — so their demand is pretty simple, they only want the government to help them. And similarly, we have also heard news about some households that deposited money in small rural banks, they’ve organized protests because the rural banks went bankrupt, and their demand is just to give back their money. Right now it seems that local governments are still able to satisfy those protesters.

TN: Let’s get to solutions — either solutions that the Chinese government has put forward, or, Houze, given your expertise, solutions you think they should be putting forward. What are the key things the Chinese government is thinking of doing — or that you think they should be doing to address some of these problems?

HS: The number-one challenge is really zero-covid. My opinion is that as long as the zero-covid [policy] is in place, no other policy matters, regardless of how well it is designed or implemented. They will not be able to offset the impact of zero-covid. So right now, to jump-start the Chinese economy, you have to have some relaxation of the zero-covid policy. But I don’t think we’ll see this any time soon.

TN: This is a real Catch-22, if you will, a real puzzle I would think. Because many people have said what you just said — that the way out of a lot of these problems is, Don’t be so rigid, you can’t lock down a city every time. But the Chinese government has staked out this ground so aggressively. And they thought — for good reason — that they had been successful at the beginning. At what point does the economic reality here compel some relaxation?

HS: I think Beijing is also concerned about the economic cost of the zero-covid [policy]. And yes, I really don’t think that China’s economy can continue in its current shape for another year or so. I think that another year or two of zero-covid will be sufficient to trigger a significant economic crisis. So really, I think Beijing is racing against time. I think they probably need to figure out some solution within basically the next six months, and currently it doesn’t seem to me they have a well-designed plan to achieve this.

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So there’s still high uncertainty but time is really not on their side.

TN: That takes us directly to the political question. We are just a few months away from the Party Congress at which it is widely assumed that Xi Jinping will get a third five-year term as the country’s leader. What, if any, are the political consequences of this?

HS: There have been a lot of reports about near-term consequences, and how it will affect the upcoming Party Congress. Those stories seem plausible. But as we all know, it’s really hard to verify how credible these stories are until the conclusion of the Party Congress.

TN: To be clear, nobody is suggesting that Xi Jinping will not win another term. So what does it actually mean? Just that there may be some behind-the-scenes debate over the policies? What might the political difficulties that arise from this look like?

HS: I think so far, the Chinese leadership has collectively endorsed zero-covid, at least publicly. That’s the only thing that we can say for sure. But I would say for the future Chinese leadership, those who take power after the Party Congress, this is really a dilemma they have to face. On the one hand, they have to end zero-covid; but on the other hand, there will definitely be a lot of criticism. Even if we all know that it’s the right policy, in the immediate months after they end the zero-covid policy, given the scale of China’s population, there will be a large increase in infections and deaths. And that will probably have even larger political ramifications than what we have seen now.

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So my sense is that the bigger political challenges will really come later.

TN: I hate to pile on here with yet more problems, but recent data show that the population in China has begun to shrink, which is a startling thing when you think of all the years of the one-child policy and how hard China struggled to rein in its population. Now it’s going in another direction. Lili, talk a bit about this as a longer-term issue for the Chinese.

LP: It’s a really striking moment. China had the one-child policy for decades, and then in recent years, the government switched to encouraging people to have more kids — first the policy switched to two children and then three children more recently. And that was a reflection of a growing concern that the population was actually going to be hitting this peak that we now see, and concerns about what that means economically.

This U.N. data that we reported on a few months ago, shows that the peak is 2022, and going forward, China’s population is projected to decline very quickly — by the end of the century it could fall by 50 percent, which is just hard to wrap your head around in terms of what that will mean for the country. Already there have been some big changes. As people are having fewer and fewer children, the population structure has gotten older and older. It was actually back in 2012 that the workforce started to shrink in China.

So that labor force is a part of economic growth — and as it continues to shrink, that’s a problem for leaders as they think about how to keep the economy growing, even at a slower rate. And at the same time, you know, experts I’ve spoken with have pointed to this huge burden for the government to take on in taking care of all these old people. There won’t be as many young people to look after grandfathers and grandmothers, and that means that the government will have to pay out more in healthcare, pensions, and social welfare more generally.

So that’s, that’s really the challenge that looms.

TN: We’ve been unrelentingly negative here, but that’s the nature of the subject. Houze, is there any hope on the horizon on these fronts for the Chinese?

HS: I would say yes, there’s definitely hope, especially if they can manage somehow to transition to a living-with-covid model by say, next spring. My sense is if they wait longer than that, there’s a real risk that the situation can get out of control.

Thanks to Dave Tepps for copy editing this article.

grid.news

7. Crimea sabotage signals Ukraine shift to guerrilla war

Resistance, subversion, sabotage​, unconventional warfare, irregular warfare, and political warfare.

Excerpts:

Analysts in Ukraine and the west currently believe that there isn’t any immediate prospect of Russia entering into serious negotiations about ending the war, despite the current Crimean offensive.

This may change if a stalemate develops where neither Russia nor Ukraine see any realistic prospect of improving their positions. Crimea could become a key stumbling block in negotiations.

In time, Ukraine may come under much greater pressure from its allies to end a long war and settle for less than regaining all its former territory. The issue of Crimea remains difficult because it has a majority Russian-speaking population.

The final outcome will not only depend on the military campaign, but also on the attitudes of the population in this piece of disputed land.

Crimea sabotage signals Ukraine shift to guerrilla war

Successful sabotage attacks on Crimea’s Saki airbase are Kiev’s new shadowy ‘answer’ to Russia’s ‘meat-grinder’ tactics

asiatimes.com · by Christoph Bluth · August 20, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly replaced the commander of his Black Sea fleet just three days after an attack on the Russian Saki airbase in Crimea, as Ukraine’s military strategy shifts towards regaining territory in the south, and especially Crimea.

Meanwhile, Russian aircraft are being moved to bases deeper inside the peninsula or to the mainland. Sevastopol, where the Black Sea fleet command is based, is on high alert. Ukraine has threatened to attack and destroy the famous Kerch Strait bridge which links the Russian mainland to Crimea.

There have been two major attacks in one week on military targets in Russian-occupied Crimea, where fires destroyed an ammunition dump and military aircraft. More than 3,000 people had to be evacuated.

Although Ukraine was reluctant at first to acknowledge the attacks, it is now clear that they were the work of Ukrainian special forces.

Crimea was occupied by Russia in 2014, and it has been strategically useful as a base for attacks in the 2022 Ukraine war. Although Ukraine has previously outlined plans to retake all of its territory, a counter-offensive is somewhat unexpected. Ukraine has the means for effective defense, but currently lacks the numbers of troops and equipment for a large-scale offensive.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Oleksii Reznikov explained on August 17 that plans included attacking military targets deep inside territory occupied by Russia (especially Crimea) to weaken the ability of Russian forces to hold the front lines.

The attacks in Crimea were sabotage operations carried out by a resistance force, attacking Russian aircraft and ammunition dumps. Reznikov explained to the Washington Post: “We’re using a strategy to ruin their stocks, to ruin their depots, to ruin their headquarters, commander quarters … “It’s our answer to their meat-grinder tactics.”

Russian authorities have admitted that munitions stored at the Saki airbase on Crimea’s western Black Sea coast had exploded on August 16, 2022, but tried to downplay the event. However, satellite observation by independent companies showed that eight Russian military jets on the base had been destroyed.

Map of the Black Sea region. Map: Peter Hermes Furian / Shutterstock / The Conversation

These attacks are important for several reasons. First, it shows how Ukraine is able to deploy resistance and special forces inside Crimea and possibly other territories to launch guerrilla-type attacks on Russian forces. These cannot be countered with the kind of high-intensity, conventional warfare Russia is using.

Ukraine does not have missiles with the range that can target Russian bases outside Ukrainian-controlled territory, so this is a new tactic. It has potentially far-reaching consequences, as Crimea now becomes an insecure territory drawn into the war, threatening Russia’s domination of eastern Ukraine.

The Russian propaganda machine seeks to downplay Ukrainian attacks on Crimea while at the same time condemning them. However, privately, the Russian leadership is taking a more serious view. They understand that the security of Crimea is no longer guaranteed.

Clearly, Ukraine’s larger goal is to push Russia out of all of its territory, including Crimea. On March 19, 2021, almost a year before the Russian military attack began, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council adopted a strategy to retake Crimea and reintegrate the peninsula with the rest of the country. But at that time there was no prospect of a military campaign to achieve this.

Now that Russia and Ukraine are at war, the Ukrainian government is taking the view that Russia must be completely driven out of all of its territory before there can be an end to the war. Whether this objective is achievable remains to be seen.

For now, it is unclear if Ukraine can muster the military resources from its allies for large-scale offensive operations that could drive Russia out of the Donbas region and Crimea.

Crimea’s significance

The status of Crimea has been a bone of contention between Russia and Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but it has a much deeper history. The Imperial Russian Navy under Peter I identified the natural harbors of Crimea in the Black Sea as an important strategic asset.

During the Soviet period, Crimea was part of Russia until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev assigned the territory to Ukraine in 1954. When the Soviet Union was dissolved, the borders of the new states were identical to those of the former Soviet Republics and therefore Crimea remained part of Ukraine, but from the outset, there was deep dissatisfaction in Russia.

This was especially due to its strategic importance and because 60% of the population of Crimea consisted of ethnic Russians.

However, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum Russia and the United States, among other signatories, guaranteed the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine as it permitted nuclear weapons to be removed from its territory.

Russia sought to control Ukraine indirectly through a close relationship with the then Ukrainian president Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych. But after the widespread Maidan street protests in Kiev during 2013 and the abandonment of plans to move closer to the EU, Yanukovych was deposed by the parliament and had to flee.

In February 2014 Putin decided to annex Crimea after a referendum that was widely seen as fraudulent.

A file photo shows people attending a rally called ‘We are together’ to support the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea to Russia in Red Square in central Moscow on March 18, 2014. Photo: RFERL

Analysts in Ukraine and the west currently believe that there isn’t any immediate prospect of Russia entering into serious negotiations about ending the war, despite the current Crimean offensive.

This may change if a stalemate develops where neither Russia nor Ukraine see any realistic prospect of improving their positions. Crimea could become a key stumbling block in negotiations.

In time, Ukraine may come under much greater pressure from its allies to end a long war and settle for less than regaining all its former territory. The issue of Crimea remains difficult because it has a majority Russian-speaking population.

The final outcome will not only depend on the military campaign, but also on the attitudes of the population in this piece of disputed land.

Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security, University of Bradford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

asiatimes.com · by Christoph Bluth · August 20, 2022

8. Bali bomber released after serving just half sentence

I know this pisses off every member of JSOTF-P/SOCPAC who spent so much time trying to track down this guy while he was in the Philippines.

Go the link and check out the evil looking face of this terrorist. https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/bali-bomber-released-after-serving-just-half-sentence/https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/bali-bomber-released-after-serving-just-half-sentence/

The buried lede is what was he doing in Pakistan when he was captured? What was being planned? What terrorist operation in Southeast Asia was interrupted and hopefully prevented with his arrest in Pakistan.

And of course, how could the Indoensians release him (and why was his sentence so short to begin with)? I wonder what action the Australians will take.

Excerpts:

“This will cause further distress to Australians who were families of the victims of the bombing,” he said, indicating Canberra would continue to make “diplomatic representations” challenging the release of a man he described as “abhorrent.”

Australian tourists have only started to flood back into Bali after the Covid-19 pandemic prevented any travel to a tropical island they began turning into one of the world’s most popular surfing and holiday destinations in the early 1970s.

Bali bomber released after serving just half sentence

Islamic militant Umar Patek granted early release weeks before 20th anniversary of terror attack that killed 202 mostly Australian tourists

Islamic militant Umar Patek granted early release weeks before 20th anniversary of terror attack that killed 202 mostly Australian tourists

asiatimes.com · by John McBeth · August 20, 2022

JAKARTA – Javanese-Arab militant Umar Patek was one of the last of the 2002 Bali bombers to be apprehended, in far-off Pakistan. Now, to the anger of Australians, he stands to be released after serving only half his term and within weeks of the 20th anniversary of their greatest peacetime tragedy.

Patek, 52, received a 20-year jail term in 2012 for helping assemble one of the two bombs, which killed 202 mostly foreign tourists, including 88 Australians, in the worst terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks in the United States the year before.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been informed by Indonesian authorities that Patek would be released on parole after racking up nearly two years of sentence reductions for good behavior at a prison in East Java.

“This will cause further distress to Australians who were families of the victims of the bombing,” he said, indicating Canberra would continue to make “diplomatic representations” challenging the release of a man he described as “abhorrent.”

Australian tourists have only started to flood back into Bali after the Covid-19 pandemic prevented any travel to a tropical island they began turning into one of the world’s most popular surfing and holiday destinations in the early 1970s.

Many will visit or walk past the memorial commemorating the innocent victims of the twin blasts caused by powerful car and backpack bombs which ripped through two packed nightclubs along the Kuta tourist strip on October 12, 2002.

The scene of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror bombings in Bali in 2002. Photo: AFP

Rounded up in a massive manhunt across the length of Java, three of the Jemaah Islamiyah militants – Amrozi Nurhasyim, Huda bin Abdul Haq and Imam Samudra – were executed on the prison island of Nusa Kambangan in November 2008.

According to investigators, their fate had been sealed by two key clues – a carelessly abandoned motorcycle and the threads of a pair of jeans worn by one of the victims, vaporized as he leaned against the van carrying 1,020 kilograms of explosives.

Even then, only one-third of the device parked outside the Sari club actually detonated when the driver flicked a switch from inside the van just 15 seconds after an accomplice triggered a backpack device at Paddy’s bar across the street.

Of the core group of 20 militants and another 25 conspirators implicated in the plot, only Patek and Dulmatin remained at large, following a well-worn terrorist path to a long-established training camp on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Subsequently killed in a shoot-out with Indonesian police in Jakarta in March 2010, Dulmatin had designed and assembled the Bali bomb, allegedly with Patek’s help, though he claimed during his trial that he had only mixed chemicals and had no particular expertise with explosives.

Expert Malaysian bomb-maker, Azahari bin Husin, killed in a 2005 shootout in an East Java hill resort, had to be brought in at the last minute to resolve problems with the electronic sequencing of the 30 detonators used to trigger the massive device.

How Patek got to Pakistan undetected is unclear, but Indonesian police believe he traveled on a commercial flight via Bangkok on a genuine passport he had obtained using a false name and identification card.

An Indonesian man wears a jacket depicting an image of deceased al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Photo: Stock / Getty

Carrying a US$1 million reward on his head, he was captured by security agents in Abbottabad in January 2011, just three months before American special forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during a helicopter raid in the same city.

Officials ruled out reports Patek had met bin Laden, but said he had been picked up after a tip from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before he could travel on to Waziristan on the Afghan border to join the Taliban.

There were claims at the time that Indonesia was open to Patek being sent to Guantanamo Bay, given the Indonesian Constitutional Court’s decision that the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law and its harsh provisions could not be applied retroactively.

The last of the bombers, Arif Sunarso, better known as Zulkarnaen, was finally tracked down in 2020, but he was only sentenced to 15 years jail earlier this year because the statute of limitations had run out on charges related to the bombing itself.

As head of JI’s military wing, the Afghan War veteran had in fact given the final order to carry out the blasts and despite his alleged involvement in subsequent attacks, he was prosecuted on a lesser charge of aiding and abetting terrorism.

News of Patek’s impending release came after Jemaah Islamiyah’s spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, attended this year’s August 17 Independence Day celebrations at his once-notorious Islamic boarding school in President Joko Widodo’s hometown of Solo.

The 84-year-old Ba’asyir and his followers had always refused to celebrate one of Indonesia’s most important days, insisting they would only do so if the Constitution was replaced by the Koran in their fight to turn the country into an Islamic state.

Convicted Indonesian terror leader Abu Bakar Ba’asyir in his prison cell in a file photo. Image: Facebook

Earlier this month, he surprisingly appeared on a video saying he accepted the Pancasila state ideology because Muslim clerics were involved in framing the document in 1945 and also because one of its five principles was belief in one God.

The government responded by dispatching Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Muhadjir Effendy to the ceremony, where he sat next to Ba’asyir and law enforcement officials who had spent years seeking to prosecute the cleric.

First arrested in 1983 for inciting his students to shun Pancasila, which counsels pluralism and religious tolerance, and for telling them that saluting the national flag was a form of apostasy, he went into exile in Malaysia for the remainder of president Suharto’s rule.

Although he was detained in connection with the Bali bombing, police could find no evidence of his direct involvement in the crime and he was only sentenced to 30 months imprisonment for giving his blessing to the conspirators.

In 2011, he received a 15-year jail term after it was discovered he had helped organize a paramilitary training camp for militant recruits in the jungles of Aceh in northern Sumatra. He was released in early 2021 and has lived quietly ever since.

asiatimes.com · by John McBeth · August 20, 2022

9. We’re Still Asking the Wrong Questions About War With China Over Taiwan

Yes, let's win without fighting.

We’re Still Asking the Wrong Questions About War With China Over Taiwan

Foreign Policy · by Howard W. French · August 19, 2022

Argument

An expert's point of view on a current event.

The priority is not who would win a war over Taiwan, but how to prevent one in the first place.

Howard French

Howard W. French

By Howard W. French, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

A Taiwanese military outpost on Shi islet is seen past anti-landing spikes placed along the coast of Lieyu island on Taiwan’s Kinmen islands, which lie just 2 miles from the coast of mainland China, on Aug. 10.

A Taiwanese military outpost on Shi islet is seen past anti-landing spikes placed along the coast of Lieyu island on Taiwan’s Kinmen islands, which lie just 2 miles from the coast of mainland China, on Aug. 10. SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

When a major Washington think tank earlier this month released the details of a sophisticated simulation of a war pitting China against the United States and its allies over Taiwan, some of the media coverage took comfort in what was at best a tentative conclusion: that with U.S. help, that island’s government could successfully defend itself against an attempted armed takeover by Beijing.

In an uncanny bit of coincidental timing, Beijing has been busy lately, in the wake of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent Taiwan visit, trying to send the opposite message. It has done this by running its own war simulation—not of the board game-like variety common to modern wargames but by actually carrying out the largest ever deployment of Chinese forces around Taiwan, hoping to impress observers not just by the quantity and quality of its military means but also by its greatly improved capacity for joint operations among the various branches of its armed forces.

No one knows, of course, who in reality might prevail in a war over Taiwan, nor even how or when such a war might begin and unfold. A proper reading of the details of this and other credible simulations of conflict with China should offer a chilling correction to anyone who clings to conventional definitions of victory, which would go out the window in case of a conflict between the world’s two most powerful nations. Just for starters, the United States could easily lose two aircraft carriers, with 5,000 people aboard each; as many as 500 aircraft, many with their pilots; and, together with its allies, including Taiwan itself, suffer a horrendous rain of Chinese ballistic missiles.

When a major Washington think tank earlier this month released the details of a sophisticated simulation of a war pitting China against the United States and its allies over Taiwan, some of the media coverage took comfort in what was at best a tentative conclusion: that with U.S. help, that island’s government could successfully defend itself against an attempted armed takeover by Beijing.

In an uncanny bit of coincidental timing, Beijing has been busy lately, in the wake of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent Taiwan visit, trying to send the opposite message. It has done this by running its own war simulation—not of the board game-like variety common to modern wargames but by actually carrying out the largest ever deployment of Chinese forces around Taiwan, hoping to impress observers not just by the quantity and quality of its military means but also by its greatly improved capacity for joint operations among the various branches of its armed forces.

No one knows, of course, who in reality might prevail in a war over Taiwan, nor even how or when such a war might begin and unfold. A proper reading of the details of this and other credible simulations of conflict with China should offer a chilling correction to anyone who clings to conventional definitions of victory, which would go out the window in case of a conflict between the world’s two most powerful nations. Just for starters, the United States could easily lose two aircraft carriers, with 5,000 people aboard each; as many as 500 aircraft, many with their pilots; and, together with its allies, including Taiwan itself, suffer a horrendous rain of Chinese ballistic missiles.

China, too, would suffer extraordinary losses, as U.S. submarines and other vessels sink the armadas Beijing could deploy as a screen off the island’s east coast, and sink many (perhaps most) of the troop transport vessels it could deploy to support an invasion across the Taiwan Strait. Both countries would emerge tremendously weakened, both militarily and economically, but that isn’t even the worst of it. The global economy would be devastated, making collateral damage out of people everywhere. Many analysts also believe that for a war like this to end, one side would have to emerge so markedly superior in residual strength that the other would effectively capitulate and accept inferiority in the global pecking order. But the difficulty of imagining either one of them reconciling itself to such an outcome means that ending the conflict could be as hard as fighting it.

This has all prompted me to believe that we are mostly still asking the wrong questions about the future of geopolitics in this part of the world, and of the possibility of war with China. The first priority should be in preventing a war over Taiwan in the first place. But how to accomplish that?

It seems clear that Taiwan cannot ward off China by itself, and yet the surest first step to avoiding a bid to take it over by force would be for Taiwan to work much harder to improve its deterrence capacity. I have written on this before, as have many others, so it is hardly a new idea. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though, many people drew the wrong conclusion about implications for Taiwan, focusing on how much more difficult armed takeovers like these seem to be in today’s world.

The more pressing lesson, though, lies elsewhere and involves moral hazard. Even though the United States provided extraordinarily detailed intelligence to Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion, authorities in Kyiv continued to play down the threat, failed to begin taking necessary measures to bolster their defenses, and never thought at all about the possibility of deterring Russia through preparedness.

The moral hazard piece of this equation concerns the way that hoping or believing that others will step into the breach to preserve you from imminent doom prevents you from taking the necessary measures required for your own defense. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen recently tweeted: “Our military is resolved to defend our country, our sovereignty & our democratic way of life. They stand ready & remain calm in the face of all challenges.” On this, however, there are many doubters, even among many ardent foreign supporters of Taiwanese autonomy.

Most notably, they say that its government and armed forces have been slow to adopt the most promising of what are called asymmetric weaponry and tactics to deter China and continue instead to procure and field big and easily targeted arms systems, including tanks, fighter jets, and ships, that would be lost almost immediately in the case of a conflict. Asymmetric means are far less sexy and often less attractive to defense bureaucracies, which commonly believe bigger and more expensive is better, but the most credible analyses suggest that things like relatively cheap anti-ship mines and missiles, better artillery, and even helicopters to attack landing invaders would be much more effective.

The biggest looming questions are not ones of the battlefield, though. Let us assume that Taiwan, with strong U.S. and allied backing, could frustrate a determined Chinese attempt to take over the island by force. What happens a year later, or even five or 10 years hence? The question is pertinent because the geography doesn’t change according to military outcome. Mainland China and Taiwan will always be 100 miles apart, separated by a strait.

Above all, this should condition the political discussion about Taiwan and its future and discourage more openly and forcefully any whiff of talk or consideration of outright independence for the island. Some people seem to believe that documenting how little China or its Communist Party have exercised effective control over Taiwan during the course of history makes a practical difference. In the case of the latter, it has never ruled the island. But that is immaterial. China has made absorption of the island a national priority that has been accepted, in most cases ardently, by its population, and that is unlikely to change.

The best outcome for Taiwan, therefore, may be postponing a reckoning with Beijing as long as possible, hoping that through the kind of deterrence discussed above and astute politics, it can buy enough time for China’s political culture to begin to change. This is not said with the illusion that such things will be easy. Beijing has done a great deal to discourage belief in such scenarios—most importantly by dismantling the “one country, two systems” arrangement under which Britain ceded imperial control over Hong Kong to China and through the imposition of even harsher measures of social and political control in places such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

Policies like these are as much a product of a lack of faith in one’s own political system and resilience as they are a demonstration of state capacity, though. And although I don’t believe that, in most matters of international affairs, demographics are necessarily destiny, in China’s case, its rapidly changing population dynamics could influence the country’s future politics in profound and unpredictable ways.

As I have written here and elsewhere, the radical aging of the Chinese population over the coming decades will drive the need to shift tremendous resources into social security and health care spending and progressively away from the military. Even China’s enormous buildout of infrastructure may come to represent a fiscal liability in the decades ahead, when the population is far smaller and the user and fee-payer base to support it has correspondingly diminished. Despite the ongoing push for political regimentation under Chinese President Xi Jinping, an older and increasingly middle-class Chinese population might be somewhat more liberal-minded and interested in the benefits of peace rather than those of hard power, and the political system, too, could grow more open, supple, and tolerant.

There are no guarantees in any of this, of course, except that the future of China and Taiwan will keep the world on a knife’s edge. That makes working smartly to avoid a conflict as important as preparing for one.

Howard W. French is a columnist at Foreign Policy, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a longtime foreign correspondent. His latest book is Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. Twitter: @hofrench

Foreign Policy · by Howard W. French · August 19, 2022

10. Chinese leader asked Biden to prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan

Does this indicate how uninformed Xi is? Did he really think Biden could prevent Pelosi's visit?  

Excerpts:

Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, said Pelosi “had wanted to visit Taiwan before her retirement as part of her personal legacy.” Pelosi has said she is running for reelection in November, but she is widely expected to step down soon.

“The outcome of the Pelosi trip, which in my view did not accomplish anything for the United States, ended up being the Chinese working to marginally improve the balance of forces between the West and China over Taiwan in Beijing’s favor and I don’t think anyone wants that,” Bremmer said.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said: “The Speaker’s legacy on China needs no enhancement.”

The rising tensions following her trip, however, have created anxiety for many countries in the region, said a senior Asian diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The uncertainties surrounding the U.S.-China relationship are a significant cause for concern for countries in the region, the diplomat said, pointing to the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministerial meeting in Cambodia, the first in-person meeting of the group in three years, where the agenda was “hijacked” by the escalating tensions between U.S. and China.

“There is a danger, even though I know you do not want to go to war, but there is a danger of accidents and miscalculations,” Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs Vivian Balakrishnan told reporters after the ASEAN meeting. “For what it is worth, we repeat the appeal that for the rest of us in Southeast Asia, we actually want temperatures to come down. It is actually very important for Southeast Asia for China and the United States to get along.”

Chinese leader asked Biden to prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan

The trip exposed tensions between the House Speaker and administration officials, who had warned of China’s potential response. Pelosi felt the trip was an important statement to make.

By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Tyler Pager 

August 20, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Yasmeen Abutaleb · August 20, 2022

Just days before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was expected to visit Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping had a request of President Biden: Find a way to keep Pelosi from visiting.

Xi’s request in a July 28 call with Biden, described by a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation, followed myriad warnings Chinese officials made to U.S. counterparts of what China might do in retaliation for Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing island that Beijing considers part of its territory.

But Biden told Xi he could not oblige, explaining that Congress was an independent branch of government and that Pelosi (D-Calif.), as with other members of Congress, would make her own decisions about foreign trips, the official said. Biden also warned Xi against taking provocative and coercive actions if the House speaker were to travel to Taiwan, the official said.

Even as they defended Pelosi’s right to visit, however, top U.S. officials harbored deep concerns about the trip, according to several senior administration and White House officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. The United States had seen indications over the last several months that China was considering unprecedented military activity across the Taiwan Strait, and officials had seen signs that China would use Pelosi’s visit as a pretext to act, the senior officials said.

U.S. officials also worried about the timing of Pelosi’s visit, which would come shortly before Xi sought to secure his third term in power, and the geopolitical ramifications that could follow.

Despite the Defense Department, the United States Indo-Pacific Command and White House national security officials laying out the risks, Pelosi proceeded with the trip, which prompted an unprecedented military response from China that included firing missiles into the waters around Taiwan and over the island — some missiles landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone — and military drills that crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

Pelosi’s visit, which some analysts criticized as a legacy-burnishing move for her, frustrated administration officials and deepened tensions between the administration and the powerful House speaker responsible for securing the president’s legislative agenda.

Yet Pelosi was unmoved by White House officials’ arguments. Administration officials told her China was likely to escalate its action in the region regardless of whether she visited but could move up the timeline for doing so, two people briefed on the conversations said. Pelosi defended the trip as necessary to demonstrate support for Taiwan, as well as democracy over autocracy, and hit back at critics who said she was focused on her legacy. Taiwanese officials had also made clear they were eager for Pelosi to visit and welcomed her arrival with fanfare.

“The support for preventing Taiwan from being isolated and preserving the status quo is bipartisan and bicameral,” Pelosi said in a statement to The Washington Post. “This respect for Taiwan and rejection of violence is shared by the President as witnessed by his recent statements.”

She added: “Any attack on me personally is not associated with the President but with some smaller anonymous voices within the administration who endangered the security of our visit by leaking the trip even before it was determined that we would indeed visit Taiwan. These small anonymous voices cannot be allowed to indicate any division between the White House and the Congress on Taiwan.”

White House officials denied sharing with the media details about the trip and several officials said they found the pre-trip publicity unhelpful, particularly because they were having private conversations with the speaker at the time about the potential risks and did not want word of her visit to get out before it was finalized.

“Members of Congress have gone to Taiwan for decades and will continue to do so. Speaker Pelosi had every right to go and her visit is consistent with our long-standing one-China policy,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

China’s anticipated reaction to Pelosi’s trip prompted intensive diplomacy by the White House and State Department to reassure allies the United States was not seeking a conflict with China nor changing its longstanding policies. Administration officials assured allies in the region they would not respond in kind to China’s bellicose military exercises and would defend allies in the Indo-Pacific. But the trip has created additional challenges in the U.S.-China relationship, which was already at one of its lowest points in decades, as China said it would cancel or suspend dialogue with the United States on issues including climate change, military relations and anti-drug efforts. U.S. officials have said China is punishing the world by halting climate talks, including vulnerable nations in the Indo-Pacific.

So far, administration officials have successfully aligned partners in the region and elsewhere — including in Europe — in condemning China’s reaction to the trip, which the U.S. and its allies have said was outsize and unprecedented. U.S. officials briefed allies on how they expected China to react and the live-fire exercises it could execute to intimidate Taiwan and how the United States would respond, a White House official said, to ensure the U.S. and its allies were “prepared to speak with one voice” when China did escalate.

Officials said they will engage in “robust diplomatic engagement” in the coming weeks and months “to preserve peace and stability across the Strait and continue our work to align with allies and partners on China,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Chinese officials made clear they saw Pelosi’s visit as an unprecedented provocation and viewed it as a U.S. attempt to erode the one-China policy, a long-standing agreement in which the United States acknowledges — without recognizing — Beijing’s claim that there is only one China. While Biden and other White House officials stressed to Beijing that Congress is a separate branch of government and the trip was not state-sanctioned, Chinese officials viewed Pelosi — a member of Biden’s political party and third in line to the presidency — as a part of Biden’s political apparatus. They also noted she traveled on U.S. military aircraft, which would not have been possible without sign-off from the administration.

“The U.S. claims that China is escalating the situation, China is overreacting, and China is using Pelosi’s visit as a pretext to establish a ‘new normal.’ But a basic fact is, the U.S. side took the first step to provoke China on the Taiwan question,” Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang said in a briefing with reporters this week, noting China officials expressed opposition to the visit through various channels. “We had warned that if Pelosi made the visit, there would be very serious consequences. China would firmly and forcefully respond. To our regret, the United States chose not to listen.”

Separation of powers at play

Pelosi had made clear to White House officials that she was willing to reconsider her trip under two conditions: if the president directly asked the 82-year-old lawmaker not to go or if Taiwan’s president withdrew her invitation. She would consider acquiescing to a request from Biden, she told officials, but Pelosi also made clear she would publicize that she was scuttling her trip to Taiwan at the president’s behest.

That put Biden — who served 36 years in the Senate and believes strongly in the separation of powers — in a difficult position. If it became public that he did not want Pelosi to visit, it would risk making Biden and the United States look weak on China, experts said. In the end, Biden never spoke to Pelosi about her trip despite Xi’s request that he prevent it from happening. In an offhand comment, Biden told reporters shortly before Pelosi’s expected visit that military officials believed the trip was not a good idea.

White House officials declined to elaborate on the specifics of the Biden-Xi conversation, but they pointed to comments John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, made shortly before Pelosi traveled to Taiwan.

“The president, in his conversation with President Xi, made clear that Congress is an independent branch of government and that Speaker Pelosi makes her own decisions, as other members of Congress do, about their overseas travel,” Kirby said.

The last House speaker to visit Taiwan was Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1997, though arguably that took place under different circumstances. China was not the global superpower it is today, and Gingrich was not the same political party as then-President Bill Clinton.

Many members have visited Taiwan in recent years, and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) led a congressional delegation to Taiwan this week.

Even so, Chinese officials made clear they saw Pelosi’s trip as a provocation from the U.S. government.

“She went there with the connivance and arrangement of the U.S. government,” Qin said during his briefing. “This has seriously violated the one-China principle, gravely infringed on China’s sovereignty, greatly interfered in China’s internal affairs, seriously violated the commitments made by the U.S., and severely undermined peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

Yet Biden himself has at times made comments on Taiwan that have put Chinese officials on edge. He has not always struck the delicate balance that the United States’ “strategic ambiguity” requires when it comes to the question of Taiwan’s defense. In May, while making his first presidential trip to Asia, Biden told reporters the United States would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacked.

“The idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate,” Biden said. “It would dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so it’s a burden that’s even stronger.”

White House officials quickly clarified that the U.S. position on Taiwan and the one-China policy had not changed. But Biden’s comments in May were not the first time he suggested the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense if China attacked.

Pelosi’s legacy on China

Pelosi has defended her trip to Taiwan, arguing there is ongoing “struggle between autocracy and democracy in the world,” a favorite phrase of the president, and the trip was “to show the world the success of the people of Taiwan, the courage to change their own country, to become more democratic.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. and Taiwan announced they are set to begin formal trade negotiations, and if the trade talks are a success, it will further bolster ties between the two nations while rankling China.

Pelosi has a long and contentious history with China and has long prided herself on standing up to Beijing. Yet critics of the visit said her trip ended up creating more problems for Taiwan and the United States.

Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, said Pelosi “had wanted to visit Taiwan before her retirement as part of her personal legacy.” Pelosi has said she is running for reelection in November, but she is widely expected to step down soon.

“The outcome of the Pelosi trip, which in my view did not accomplish anything for the United States, ended up being the Chinese working to marginally improve the balance of forces between the West and China over Taiwan in Beijing’s favor and I don’t think anyone wants that,” Bremmer said.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said: “The Speaker’s legacy on China needs no enhancement.”

The rising tensions following her trip, however, have created anxiety for many countries in the region, said a senior Asian diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The uncertainties surrounding the U.S.-China relationship are a significant cause for concern for countries in the region, the diplomat said, pointing to the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministerial meeting in Cambodia, the first in-person meeting of the group in three years, where the agenda was “hijacked” by the escalating tensions between U.S. and China.

“There is a danger, even though I know you do not want to go to war, but there is a danger of accidents and miscalculations,” Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs Vivian Balakrishnan told reporters after the ASEAN meeting. “For what it is worth, we repeat the appeal that for the rest of us in Southeast Asia, we actually want temperatures to come down. It is actually very important for Southeast Asia for China and the United States to get along.”

Marianna Sotomayor and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Yasmeen Abutaleb · August 20, 2022

11. China must show it's not an 'agent of instability' on Taiwan, US Ambassador to China says

Excerpts:

Burns said Beijing’s diplomatic measures in the wake of the Pelosi’s visit could have global effects, adding that China’s suspension of climate talks would impact the Global South and countries that are most susceptible climate change.

“We strongly urge (China) to return to the negotiating table with the United States on climate,” Burns said.

“We should have regular conversations at the senior level about the issues that separate us, because that’s in the best interest of both countries and certainly in the best interest of the world,” he said, adding that while there was official contact via their respective embassies, there was “no substitute” for cabinet-level senior conversations.

When asked whether any lessons Beijing may have learned from observing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be applied to Taiwan, Burns said the US is “watching China very carefully as it conducts its relationship with Russia.”

China has refused to condemn the invasion or refer to it as such.

China must show it's not an 'agent of instability' on Taiwan, US Ambassador to China says | CNN

CNN · by Selina Wang,Sandi Sidhu,Simone McCarthy · August 19, 2022

Beijing CNN —

China needs to convince the rest of the world it is not an “agent of instability” and will act peacefully in the Taiwan Strait, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said in his first TV interview since taking up his post in Beijing six months ago.

Burns spoke candidly about Beijing’s reaction to a visit by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan earlier this month, to which China responded by launching extensive military drills around the self-governing island and suspending key diplomatic communications with the US.

“We do not believe there should be a crisis in US-China relations over the visit – the peaceful visit – of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan … it was a manufactured crisis by the government in Beijing. It was an overreaction,” Burns told CNN Friday from the US Embassy.

It is now “incumbent upon the government here in Beijing to convince the rest of the world that it will act peacefully in the future,” the ambassador said.

“I think there’s a lot of concern around the world that China has now become an agent of instability in the Taiwan Strait and that’s not in anyone’s interest.”

Burns, a career diplomat and former US Ambassador to NATO, arrived in Beijing in March to take up what is arguably the US’ most important diplomatic posting – navigating US-China ties already strained by tensions over a range of issues including China’s human rights record, trade practices and military expansion in the South China Sea.

China’s stringent Covid-19 restrictions have also reduced diplomatic travel into and out of China, placing Burns even more squarely at the front line of handling the increasingly contentious relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

That was clear on the night on August 2, when Burns received a summons for a meeting with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng at what he describes as the exact moment that the plane carrying Pelosi and her congressional delegation landed in Taipei.

Taiwan's Foreign Ministry Department of North American Affairs Director-General Douglas Hsu welcomes U.S. Representatives Alan Lowenthal, John Garamendi, Don Beyer and Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan in this handout image released August 14, 2022. Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES.

Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Handout/Reuters

China conducts fresh military drills around Taiwan as US congressional delegation visits

“We had a very spirited, I would say quite contentious meeting,” Burns said, describing in detail for the first time that discussion, which was confirmed both by Washington and Beijing at the time.

“I defended the speaker. I defended her right to travel to Taiwan. I defended the peace and stability that we’ve had in the Taiwan Strait for nearly six decades,” Burns said, adding that he challenged Xie to ensure that the Chinese government would act in a way that would “promote peace and stability.”

Instead, Burns said, Beijing designed its response, including sending missiles over Taiwan, to “intimidate and coerce the Taiwan authorities” and has “conducted a global campaign” blaming the US for what it sees as undermining stability in the Taiwan Strait.

“We’ve been very, very clear about (maintaining our policy). The issue is – is one government going to react in an aggressive and violent way to disturb the peace? That has to concern everybody in the world,” he said.

Nancy Pelosi received Taiwan's highest civilian honor from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen at the president's office on August 3, 2022.

Handout/Getty Images

Diplomatic fallout

The US upholds a “One China” policy, but has never accepted China’s ruling Communist Party’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. Washington maintains “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

The Communist Party has long vowed to “reunify” the island, which it has never controlled, with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

China decried the Pelosi visit as a violation of its “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” with Burns’ counterpart, Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang earlier this month saying the US must “bear the responsibilities” for the situation it has created.

Beijing’s diplomatic retaliation included the cancellation of future phone calls and meetings between Chinese and US defense leaders and suspending bilateral climate talks between the countries – the world’s two largest carbon emitters.

Those measures, and Pelosi’s visit, came on the heels of a phone call between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in late July, in which both sides had said their teams would keep in touch on cooperation, including – according to the White House – on a potential face-to-face meeting. The two have not met in-person during Biden’s time as president, with Xi conducting the bulk of his Covid-era diplomacy via video link.

Burns said Beijing’s diplomatic measures in the wake of the Pelosi’s visit could have global effects, adding that China’s suspension of climate talks would impact the Global South and countries that are most susceptible climate change.

“We strongly urge (China) to return to the negotiating table with the United States on climate,” Burns said.

“We should have regular conversations at the senior level about the issues that separate us, because that’s in the best interest of both countries and certainly in the best interest of the world,” he said, adding that while there was official contact via their respective embassies, there was “no substitute” for cabinet-level senior conversations.

When asked whether any lessons Beijing may have learned from observing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be applied to Taiwan, Burns said the US is “watching China very carefully as it conducts its relationship with Russia.”

China has refused to condemn the invasion or refer to it as such.

“We have been very clear that there will be consequences if there is systemic Chinese government support for Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine,” he said, adding they had not seen such support.

Building connections

Burns has fielded sensitive briefs in the past. He was a lead official negotiating thorny issues such as Iran’s nuclear program, military assistance to Israel, and the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement. And this time, he says the US’ China mission is trying its “best to connect” with its counterparts.

Making connections with the Chinese public was another “major ambition,” said the ambassador, who has traveled to China multiple times since his first trip in 1988, including a visit for the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China in 1997.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, an air force pilot from the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) looks as they conduct a joint combat training exercises around the Taiwan Island on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. China said Monday it was extending threatening military exercises surrounding Taiwan that have disrupted shipping and air traffic and substantially raised concerns about the potential for conflict in a region crucial to global trade. (Wang Xinchao/Xinhua via AP)

Wang Xinchao/Xinhua/AP

'New normal' across the Taiwan Strait as China threat looms ever closer

But Burns said his work connecting with Chinese people, both in person and via the Embassy’s social media channels, has also been challenged by China’s zero-Covid control measures – which can make domestic travel and in-person meetings difficult – and its regular censorship of the Embassy’s posts on Chinese social media platforms.

“We feel very strongly that it’s our need to get out and visit people and conduct diplomacy with the Chinese people, as well as the Chinese government. So we certainly want to see the day come when zero-Covid ends, but that’s really a decision not for us, that’s for the government of China,” said the ambassador, who has spent more than 30 days in Chinese government-mandated quarantine during his time there.

“Pernicious censorship” by the Chinese authorities has seen Embassy social media posts including those on the US’ China policy, Hong Kong, NATO, and support for LGBTQI Pride censored, Burns said.

At the same time, Burns said, he has been “disturbed” by Chinese government narratives blaming the war in Ukraine on the United States and NATO, and not Russia, which launched the invasion – an issue he said he’s raised with his Chinese counterparts.

Despite these challenges and the US pledge to “compete responsibly” with China, Burns called on China to meet the US “halfway,” both to discuss their differences and the issues where they might be able to work together for the greater good: “You have to show up at the negotiating table to cooperate,” he said.

CNN · by Selina Wang,Sandi Sidhu,Simone McCarthy · August 19, 2022

12. Why a Chinese ship's arrival in Sri Lanka has caused alarm in India and the West

Excerpts:

So Sri Lanka is asking the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. The IMF has said the country's political instability could prolong its delivery.

"Meanwhile, we need money to survive. We need about $800 million per month. Somebody will have to finance it," says W.A. Wijewardena, former deputy governor of Sri Lanka's central bank. "Earlier, that somebody was the European Union, the USA, Japan or India — which has its own problems. So now that somebody? China."

China has deep pockets and is often willing to lend faster than the IMF, with fewer questions asked, Wijewardena says. He predicts his country will take out more Chinese loans and go deeper into debt to Beijing in order to stay afloat until an IMF bailout comes through — likely in January.

Why a Chinese ship's arrival in Sri Lanka has caused alarm in India and the West

NPR · by Lauren Frayer · August 19, 2022

People welcoming China's ship Yuan Wang 5 wave Chinese and Sri Lankan flags at Sri Lanka's Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka, Aug. 16. Ajith Perera/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — It all began 20 years ago, when China loaned Sri Lanka more than $1 billion to build a fancy new port — what would become its second-largest — on its southern coast.

The Hambantota port, with its strategic location near busy Indian Ocean shipping routes, was touted as good for Sri Lankan commerce. But it wasn't profitable, and the government defaulted on those Chinese loans.

Beijing's critics have long offered up Hambantota as the classic example of what they call a Chinese debt trap. Now, with Sri Lanka bankrupt and politically unstable, they're flagging it as a worrying example of how China might use that infrastructure for military purposes.

Their fears grew this week, when a Chinese survey ship docked at Hambantota. Sri Lanka and China call it a scientific research vessel, which will stay through Aug. 22 to resupply. But foreign security experts call it a Chinese naval ship that's been used in the past to track satellites and missiles.

China's vessel, the Yuan Wang 5, arrives at Hambantota port on Aug. 16. Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images

The ship's arrival on Tuesday set off alarm bells in the West and in neighboring India, which has tense relations with Beijing. Critics say whatever China does in Hambantota with this ship may signal what it eventually plans to do with all the ports, highways, bridges and other infrastructure it's built around the world in recent decades — in one of the biggest construction efforts in human history. They fear this colossal network of infrastructure could be converted into an unprecedented network of military bases, occupying parts of countries where China has never had overseas army bases before.

Sri Lanka has been transformed by Chinese construction

Chinese companies, most of them state-owned, have built ports, power stations, an airport — even a giant lotus-shaped tourist tower — across Sri Lanka.

The Lotus Tower in Colombo, Sri Lanka, illuminated in red to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, Jan. 31, 2022. Tang Lu/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

At first, these projects were hailed as symbols of Sri Lanka's development, says Shreen Sarour, a human rights activist. Many of the projects now look like "white elephants," she says — useless to the now-bankrupt Sri Lankan government, but possibly useful to China. They could be used to interfere with or control global trade, or possibly even as launchpads for military aggression, Sarour believes.

Sri Lanka has been one of the countries hardest hit by inflation and rising energy prices this year. In May, the government defaulted on foreign debt payments. By July, inflation had shot up to 60%. There are rolling blackouts, food shortages and fuel rationing.

The economic crisis sparked a political one: Protesters filled the streets, calling for the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Last month, he fled the country and resigned. A new president is now in his place.

Protestors participate in an anti-government demonstration outside the president's office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on July 9. Then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence in Colombo before protesters gathered. AFP via Getty Images

Many Sri Lankans accuse Rajapaksa and his brother, another former president, of running the economy into the ground. Protesters are calling for scrutiny of everything they did. One of the biggest things they did was to sign opaque investment deals with China, including oversight of the Chinese construction at Hambantota.

"This is economic colonialism," says W. Jude Namal Fernando, a Sri Lankan fisherman turned activist who successfully lobbied a Chinese construction company to compensate fishermen whose land was eroded because of Chinese dredging north of Colombo. "China exploits our country, but it's our leaders who let them do it."

China says its ship is on a scientific mission, not a military one

China and Sri Lanka have both sought to allay concerns of those like Fernando and Sarour, as well as foreign governments like India's, who worry this Chinese ship's arrival could signal the start of the militarization of Chinese infrastructure in Sri Lanka.

"I would like to reiterate that the marine scientific research conducted by the research ship Yuan Wang 5 conforms to international law and international common practice, and will not affect the security and economic interests of any country," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said a briefing Monday.

When the ship docked Tuesday, the Chinese Embassy threw a welcome ceremony. Workers stood at attention, waving Chinese and Sri Lankan flags, and the Chinese ambassador extolled the two countries "outstanding friendship."

Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong (front row, third from left) and captain of the Yuan Wang-5 ship, Zhang Hongwang (front row, second from left), attend a ceremony welcoming the Chinese ship to Sri Lanka's Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka, Aug. 16. Che Hongliang//Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

But Indian media reported that some senior Sri Lankan officials boycotted the ceremony.

The Chinese ship's arrival in Hambantota was reportedly delayed amid objections from India, which shares a more than 2,000-mile disputed border with China, where soldiers clashed two years ago.

On Tuesday, a Sri Lankan government spokesperson, Bandula Gunawardana, told reporters that lots of international ships dock in Sri Lanka and insisted this one is no different — but emphasized that the government is working to ensure there's no "friction" with friendly nations.

Worries about the fight for economic influence over Sri Lanka

On Monday, as the Chinese ship neared Hambantota, India donated a maritime reconnaissance aircraft to Sri Lanka.

As relations fray between China and the world's democracies, including India, Sri Lankans feel caught in the middle, says Sarour.

"People are very worried whether we will be the battlefield between and China's and India's tensions — whether Sri Lanka will be the point where the war will start," she says.

If not a war with weapons, Sarour says, then a war for economic influence.

China is one of Sri Lanka's biggest creditors. Most of the country's debt, however, is held by private banks in the United States and Europe.

India has also been a big lender. Over the past decade, it has extended nearly $2 billion in credit lines to its southern neighbor. But India can't afford to do more. It's dealing with its own inflation crisis.

Sri Lankans wait in a queue to buy petrol at a fuel station in Colombo in July, amidst an economic downturn and a fuel shortage. Rafiq Maqbool/AP

So Sri Lanka is asking the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. The IMF has said the country's political instability could prolong its delivery.

"Meanwhile, we need money to survive. We need about $800 million per month. Somebody will have to finance it," says W.A. Wijewardena, former deputy governor of Sri Lanka's central bank. "Earlier, that somebody was the European Union, the USA, Japan or India — which has its own problems. So now that somebody? China."

China has deep pockets and is often willing to lend faster than the IMF, with fewer questions asked, Wijewardena says. He predicts his country will take out more Chinese loans and go deeper into debt to Beijing in order to stay afloat until an IMF bailout comes through — likely in January.

Learning Mandarin in Colombo

Not everyone in Sri Lanka sees China's presence as negative.

"The Chinese market is expanding in Sri Lanka! Like, hugely expanding," says Chamath Geethan Perera, a 27-year-old businessman in Colombo.

Perera is learning Mandarin and received a scholarship from the Chinese government to study for a master's degree in Chongquing. After three years there, he landed a job at a Chinese construction company in Colombo.

Sri Lankans need to learn how to communicate with Chinese officials, Perera says.

"If they develop our country with the port city or [other projects], we need to have a clear mind about what they are going to do," he says, referring to Port City Colombo, a Chinese-built complex in the capital. "So we don't need to blame anyone other than ourselves."

Perera says it's easy to blame China or the Rajapaksa brothers for all of Sri Lanka's current problems. It may be harder, he says, for the country's new leaders to avoid the same mistakes.

A Sri Lankan traditional dancer carries a decorative umbrella as the crew of Chinese ship Yuan Wang 5 wave Chinese flags after arriving at Hambantota International Port in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, on Tuesday. Eranga Jayawardena/AP

Susitha Fernando contributed to this story from Colombo.

NPR · by Lauren Frayer · August 19, 2022

13. China pressure deepens Taiwan’s desire for big US weapon systems

But you have to be willing to employ them and fight. Big weapons are not enough if there is insufficient will to fight.

Given the recent discussion of the intelligence community assessing the will to fight (HERE) (and supposedly getting it wrong in Afghanistan and Ukraine) How do we assess the Taiwan will to fight?

China pressure deepens Taiwan’s desire for big US weapon systems

Call for jets and ships widens gulf on procurement policy between Taipei and its main arms supplier

Financial Times · by Kathrin Hille · August 19, 2022

Intensified military pressure from China has reinforced Taiwan’s desire to acquire large weapons platforms such as warships and fighter aircraft, deepening Taipei’s differences over arms procurement with the US.

China’s People’s Liberation Army this month conducted unprecedented week-long exercises to punish Taipei for hosting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and has since continued daily air and sea manoeuvres close to Taiwan.

Taiwanese government and military officials see this campaign as evidence that Beijing’s preferred strategy is not to invade their country, but to force it to submit to Chinese control through military pressure below the threshold of war.

Officials said this meant Washington should adjust its policy of pushing Taiwan to prioritise cheap, small and mobile weapons such as man-portable Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that are deemed essential to resist a full invasion. The US is Taiwan’s main arms supplier.

A senior Taiwanese government official briefed on national security issues said the PLA Navy had ships “pushing up” against the Taiwan Strait median line every day, as well as a vessel on the western and on the eastern side of the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines and a “regular presence” between Taiwan and the Japanese island of Yonaguni.

“To push back against these 500-tonne ships, medium and large-size warships are really necessary,” the official said.

“In this situation, it is very hard to simply argue we should replace our ageing large platforms with small and mobile boats and missiles,” the official added. “If you just focus on coastal defence, the only thing you can counter is when they’re really storming onshore.”

Recommended

In the light of growing US concerns that China might attack Taiwan within the next five years, Washington is trying to force Taipei to prioritise “asymmetric” weapons — systems that exploit an adversary’s weakness instead of trying to match its strengths. This year, President Joe Biden’s administration began denying Taiwanese requests for large, expensive systems that it argued were not efficient in deterring an invasion.

Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen’s government initially acquiesced to that course over resistance within its own defence establishment. But officials said the country’s most immediate defence needs must be reassessed in the light of what both Taipei and Washington have called a Chinese attempt to change the status quo around Taiwan.

“The PLA’s latest operations show how different Taiwan’s situation is from the Ukraine war,” said Shu Hsiao-huang, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a think-tank backed by the defence ministry. “We need to strengthen both our asymmetric and our traditional defences.”

The Chinese military has said its campaign has “destroyed” the median line, previously an unofficial buffer that its fighter aircraft now cross daily, and that it intended to conduct regular patrols closer to Taiwan.

Taipei is concerned that this “new normal” will help Beijing underpin its claim of sovereignty over the island. “If we do not counter these attempts to constrain us, this could enable them to coerce us into unification at some point,” said one military official.

Tsai’s administration is conducting a review of the recent PLA drills and plans to discuss the results with Washington.

“Without pre-empting the outcome, our and the US’s views do indeed differ on what exactly constitutes asymmetry and how much asymmetry we need,” the senior official said. “The US has experience in the Middle East and Ukraine. But taking into account China’s recent exercises, our needs may be different.”

There is no sign Washington plans to adjust its approach to Taiwan arms sales. China’s latest military pressure campaign “has absolutely reinforced our policy for us,” said a senior US government official. “It reinforces for us the need to make sure that they have enough of these asymmetric capabilities to deter any sort of threat from the PRC.”

Financial Times · by Kathrin Hille · August 19, 2022​

14. IntelBrief: The Global Jihadist Movement in a Post-Zawahiri Era

Excerpt:

Jihadist ideology of the kind propagated by al-Qaeda continues to resonate with many communities globally, fueled by a lack of political and economic progress, structural inequalities, and continuing sectarianism. Furthermore, new technologies offer jihadists additional advantages, including a greater ability to communicate undetected through end-to-end encryption, while sophisticated propaganda successfully radicalizes violent extremists in the West. Zawahiri has left his imprint on global jihad, but the future of this movement could look far different as a result of the decentralization that began under his leadership. This evolution may leave fragile states unprepared to deal with the security challenges posed by increasingly capable regional or local jihadist groups, who will likely benefit from the U.S. and its allies’ preoccupation with the rise of China and a revanchist Russia.

IntelBrief: The Global Jihadist Movement in a Post-Zawahiri Era - The Soufan Center

thesoufancenter.org · by Mohamed · August 19, 2022

August 19, 2022

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IntelBrief: The Global Jihadist Movement in a Post-Zawahiri Era

AP Photo/File

Bottom Line Up Front

• The killing of longtime al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri could accelerate a trend that has been consistently emerging in recent years—the factionalization and regionalization of the global jihadist movement.
• To survive, al-Qaeda adopted a franchising strategy which led it to expand worldwide and establish regional branches in the Levant, North Africa, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula, and Indian subcontinent.
• Relentless U.S. counterterrorism operations have eliminated successive IS leaders, forcing the group to reconsider its options and strategy for future survival as an organization.
• There is a strong argument to be made that sub-Saharan Africa has become the epicenter of jihad, with a drastic increase in both the frequency and sophistication of attacks.

The death of longtime al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul in late July following a U.S. drone strike signaled the end of an era. Zawahiri’s roots in the global jihadist movement stretched back decades to his tenure in Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He was one of the last remaining veteran jihadists who had worked closely with Osama bin Laden. Zawahiri’s death will undoubtedly impact al-Qaeda, though it remains too early to discern exactly how, and whether the impact will be positive or negative. But beyond al-Qaeda itself, the killing of Zawahiri could accelerate a trend that has been consistently emerging in recent years—the factionalization and regionalization of the broader global jihadist movement.

Al-Qaeda, for its part, has faced two decades of relentless and aggressive U.S.-led counterterrorism operations, including drone strikes and special operations forces raids against its leadership. To survive, the group adopted a franchising strategy, which led it to expand worldwide, establishing regional branches and affiliates in the Levant, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, and beyond. While he was criticized widely for lacking charisma and failing to inspire the next generation of would-be jihadists, Zawahiri should be credited for keeping the majority of al-Qaeda’s franchises intact and loyal to al-Qaeda central, and retaining a sense of continuity from the perceived victories of the Afghan jihad which gave al-Qaeda its pedigree. Without his leadership, the organization may have become overshadowed by its offshoots like Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), which pursue more localized agendas. Although some have suggested that al-Shabaab is moving in the opposite direction, increasingly looking to expand its operations outside of Somalia, Zawahiri’s death could impact the trajectory of al-Qaeda franchise groups as affiliates and branches reevaluate their respective strategies to focus more directly on their “near enemies”.

In 2014, Islamic State stormed across much of Iraq and Syria with astonishing efficiency. The lightning operation and the propaganda campaign that amplified its success turned al-Qaeda into an afterthought and IS quickly came to dominate the global jihadist movement. After seizing major cities across Iraq and Syria, its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi consolidated control over a proto-state, declared a caliphate, and attracted tens of thousands of supporters from all over the world in unprecedented numbers. The territorial caliphate has been defeated—IS lost its last territory in Baghouz, Syria in the spring of 2019—but like al-Qaeda, IS has expanded globally through the development of regional franchise groups that swear bayat, or an oath of allegiance, to the organization’s emir. Relentless U.S. counterterrorism operations have eliminated successive IS leaders, forcing the group to reconsider its options and strategy for future growth and survival as an organization. At the same time, some counterterrorism measures have continued to fuel grievances and conditions that create an enabling environment for terrorist groups to recruit and regroup.

Both al-Qaeda and IS have focused resources on strengthening their affiliates throughout Africa and exploit ongoing conflicts or governance deficits to garner local and regional support. The center of gravity for the global jihadist movement was initially in South Asia, where al-Qaeda core was able to set roots thanks to sympathetic regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After the rise of IS, the main theatre of the jihadist movement shifted to the Middle East. But in mid-2022, there is a strong argument to be made that sub-Saharan Africa has become the epicenter of jihad. Despite the best efforts of multiple U.N. stabilization missions (though none have had explicit counterterrorism mandates or resources), and fragmented counterterrorism efforts from a range of international actors, terrorist attacks against government and civilian targets have increased in both frequency and sophistication. IS propaganda now routinely highlights successful operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique, and the Sahel.

With the core leadership of both al-Qaeda and IS at a nadir, jihadist groups throughout Africa could agitate for more autonomy. Competing priorities, limited resources, and fresh opportunities could transform the jihadist landscape throughout Africa. Hyper localized and regional agendas, however, will not necessarily continue in perpetuity. History has shown that group objectives can evolve over time. For example, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria sought to overthrow the Algerian government, but this did not preclude the group from targeting French interests and citizens, including kidnappings, bombings, and attempted hijackings. As French and German forces reconsider their troop commitments in the Sahel, and as Russia and Russian backed private military contractors like the Wagner Group expand their roles, the security environment in the region will remain in flux. The French withdrawal from Mali, which was finalized earlier this week, may create an opportunity for jihadist groups to use the country as a safe haven if Malian forces and their Russian security partners fail to secure the country’s rural areas. If a jihadist group can carve out territory that can be used as a launchpad for regional or transnational terrorism, pressure on Western governments to bolster ongoing counterterrorism operations in the region will mount. This possibility likely impacts the decision making of groups like JNIM and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). At the same time, failure to address the structural conditions which generate support for violent groups could render counterterrorism measures ineffective in the long term. Moreover, as lines between designated terrorist organizations and other nonstate armed groups blur, questions must be raised about the impacts and benefits of imposing international and U.N. sanctions and embargoes on al-Qaeda and ISIL affiliates due to their association with a transnational terrorist group.

More than two decades after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the creation of a complex international framework of institutions and laws to respond to an emergent transnational threat, the policy focus on counterterrorism has been subsumed by conventional conflicts, climate and a number of crises, including the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions and food insecurity. While some governments have portrayed these as mutually exclusive priorities, they have underestimated the extent to which there has been overlap between terrorism and geopolitics. At the same time, the diminished attention to counterterrorism can be seen as one measure of success in eliminating a transnational threat; it remains important however to invest in prevention and mitigation strategies.

Jihadist ideology of the kind propagated by al-Qaeda continues to resonate with many communities globally, fueled by a lack of political and economic progress, structural inequalities, and continuing sectarianism. Furthermore, new technologies offer jihadists additional advantages, including a greater ability to communicate undetected through end-to-end encryption, while sophisticated propaganda successfully radicalizes violent extremists in the West. Zawahiri has left his imprint on global jihad, but the future of this movement could look far different as a result of the decentralization that began under his leadership. This evolution may leave fragile states unprepared to deal with the security challenges posed by increasingly capable regional or local jihadist groups, who will likely benefit from the U.S. and its allies’ preoccupation with the rise of China and a revanchist Russia.

thesoufancenter.org · by Mohamed · August 19, 2022

15. US-Taiwan trade deal talks defy China’s warning

Excerpts:

Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council, said the US wanted to use the Taiwan issue to stop China’s reunification and national rejuvenation but it would not succeed.

Ma said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Taiwan’s ruling political party, would be punished for colluding with foreign powers in the name of forming trade and economic partnerships.

The US should cautiously handle its trade and economic partnership with Taiwan and respect China’s core interests, said China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Yuting.

Du Zhenhua, an adjunct associate professor at the Program of Global Business, College of International Studies and Foreign Languages, Chinese Culture University in Taiwan, criticized the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century trade deal in an article published by Chinatimes.com, a pro-Beijing Taiwanese media, in June.

China suspended the import of Taiwan pineapples on supposed health grounds. Image: Twitter

Du said the trade negotiation would not help cut US tariffs for Taiwanese goods and increase costs for the island’s manufacturers. He said the DPP should avoid doing things that would increase military tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

US-Taiwan trade deal talks defy China’s warning

US maintains its trade war with China while pursuing a new trade deal with Taiwan above the din of Beijing’s protestations

asiatimes.com · by Jeff Pao · August 20, 2022

The United States and Taiwan have announced they will begin trade deal negotiations this fall, the latest move to stoke Bejing’s ire after top-level US congressional visits to the self-governing island.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday (August 18) that China has always been against any country negotiating economic and trade agreements of sovereign implication or official nature with Taiwan. Wang said the US should not repeat its “wrongdoing” and that China would act “resolutely” to defend its sovereignty and integrity.

Wang’s strongly worded comments came after the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced that the US and Taiwan had reached consensus on the negotiating mandate for the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade, which was first announced on June 1 this year. The first round of negotiations will take place early this fall.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said the negotiation would cover different industries ranging from agriculture to digital trade and that a deal would win give foreign investors more confidence in Taiwan, enabling it to attract more capital and technology from the US and other countries.

Tsai said Taiwan would continue to improve its market system and push forward its plan to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade agreement among 11 countries including Japan, Australia, Canada and New Zealand and excluding China.

Academics said in a seminar on July 29 this year that Taiwan could be able to internationalize its financial system and strengthen its role in global supply chains by joining the CPTPP, which it applied to join last September.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen favors closer trade ties with the US. Photo by Ceng Shou Yi / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP)

Since the US-China trade war broke out in mid-2018, the two powers’ relations have remained on a downward trend. In January 2020, then-US president Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed a “phase one” trade deal in which China agreed to purchase an additional US$200 billion worth of US goods in the following two years.

As of early 2022, China purchased only 57% of the US goods it promised under the deal, according to the Peterson Institute For International Economics, a Washington-based think tank. The US has continued to apply sanctions on various Chinese tech and other companies in another plank of the trade war.

In June, Beijing urged the US to cancel all of its additional tariffs on Chinese goods and said such a move would help reduce US inflation and benefit both economies and the wider world. The Joe Biden administration has not yet announced its decisions on the matter.

A two-hour phone call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on July 28 failed to achieve an immediate trade breakthrough and relations have since deteriorated sharply after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan between August 2 and 3.

In response, the People’s Liberation Army then held a three-day military exercise in six locations surrounding Taiwan and banned imports of fruits and frozen fish from the self-governing island.

While US-China and China-Taiwan trade relations deteriorate, the US and Taiwan are seeking to forge stronger ties. On Wednesday evening, the Office of the USTR said the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US (TECRO) would start the negotiation early this fall.

Deputy USTR Sarah Bianchi said: “We plan to pursue an ambitious schedule for achieving high-standard commitments and meaningful outcomes covering the eleven trade areas in the negotiating mandate that will help build a fairer, more prosperous and resilient 21st-century economy.”

Bianchi said the negotiation would focus on trade facilitation, good regulatory practices, strong anti-corruption standards, enhancing trade between our small and medium enterprises, deepening agriculture trade, removing discriminatory barriers to trade, digital trade, robust labor and environmental standards, as well as ways to address distortive practices of state-owned enterprises and non-market policies and practices.

She said the US would continue to consult with Congress and labor, business, environmental groups and others throughout the negotiations.

The Taiwanese Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said in a statement on Thursday that the negotiation would not discuss trade tariffs but focus instead on how to increase Taiwan’s economic power and its bilateral trade and investments with the US, connect Taiwan’s trade system with others and strengthen the island’s market-oriented system.

USTR head Katherine Tai and Taiwanese trade negotiator John Deng in a split photo. Image: Twitter

Taiwan’s top trade negotiator John Deng said the coming negotiation would pave the way for both sides to come up with countermeasures against “economic coercion” by China. Deng said the country was keen to sell pineapples, processed meat and orchids to the US.

Official Chinese coercion soon followed. Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry, said: “The US must not negotiate agreements involving sovereign implication or official nature with China’s Taiwan region or send any wrong signal to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces in the name of trade and economic interactions.

“We ask the US to follow the ‘One China’ principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués with concrete actions, and stop all forms of official interaction with Taiwan.” Wang said the US should not repeat its “wrongdoing” and miscalculate on this issue.

Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council, said the US wanted to use the Taiwan issue to stop China’s reunification and national rejuvenation but it would not succeed.

Ma said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Taiwan’s ruling political party, would be punished for colluding with foreign powers in the name of forming trade and economic partnerships.

The US should cautiously handle its trade and economic partnership with Taiwan and respect China’s core interests, said China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Yuting.

Du Zhenhua, an adjunct associate professor at the Program of Global Business, College of International Studies and Foreign Languages, Chinese Culture University in Taiwan, criticized the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century trade deal in an article published by Chinatimes.com, a pro-Beijing Taiwanese media, in June.

China suspended the import of Taiwan pineapples on supposed health grounds. Image: Twitter

Du said the trade negotiation would not help cut US tariffs for Taiwanese goods and increase costs for the island’s manufacturers. He said the DPP should avoid doing things that would increase military tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

In 2021, 28.2% of Taiwanese goods were exported to mainland China while 14.7% and 14.1% were shipped to the US and Hong Kong, respectively, official statistics show.

In March 2021, mainland China suspended the import of Taiwanese pineapples on claims that it had found “harmful creatures” in shipments of the fruit. Last September, it banned the imports of sugar apples and Java apples from Taiwan as well.

Read: Taiwan’s KMT reaches out in vain to the mainland

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

asiatimes.com · by Jeff Pao · August 20, 2022

​16. Russia Increasingly Feeling Sting Of War Behind The Lines

The ability to operate behind enemy lines remains an important capability across the spectrum of conflict.

Russia Increasingly Feeling Sting Of War Behind The Lines

Every day, new targets inside Russia and Crimea are blowing up and by all indications this is just the beginning.

BY

HOWARD ALTMAN

AUG 18, 2022 10:17 PM

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · August 18, 2022

As Russia continues its all-out invasion of Ukraine, it is increasingly feeling the sting of war inside its own borders and in areas it illegally annexed from its former republic in 2014.

In the latest series of events, a Russian official said an ammo dump in Belgorod Oblast caught fire Thursday and there have been reports of explosions at a Russian military base and a drone attack on the Kerch Bridge in occupied Crimea.

If all or even some of these events prove to be the work of Ukrainian forces or partisans sympathetic to their fight against Moscow, it’s another signal that the six-month-old war’s new phase is well underway.

As social media lit up with videos claiming to show a massive blaze at an ammunition depot in the Russian city of Belgorod Thursday, the governor of that oblast acknowledged that a fire did happen and that local residents were evacuated as a result.

“An ammunition depot caught fire near the village of Timonovo, Valuysky urban district,” Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram account. “According to the latest reports, there were no casualties.”

Residents of the villages of Timonovo and Soloti were evacuated, he said.

Gladkov offered no explanation for what sparked the fire, which is the latest in a string of mysterious fires and explosions to rock Russian ammo dumps within its own borders and in Crimea. Many others have also occurred in areas of Ukraine that Russia has occupied since its most recent invasion began.

“Emergency services are on the scene and the cause of the fire is under investigation.”

Beyond some coyly taunting tweets, Ukraine has not officially acknowledged any role in the Belgorod fire.

Or the latest reports of explosions in Crimea, where, about 400 miles southwest of Belgorod, unconfirmed reports emerged Thursday of explosions near a military base in Belbek and a possible drone shootdown near the Kerch Bridge, which a key advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday suggested should be taken out.

At least four explosions hit an area near Belbek, a major Russian military air base north of Sevastopol, Reuters reported Thursday, citing three local sources, while a pro-Moscow official said there was no damage to the base.

“Air defense systems shot down…an unmanned aerial vehicle in the area of ​​​​the Belbek airfield in Sevastopol, Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said,” according to the Russian TASS news agency. “There were no casualties.”

Russian officials claim another drone was shot down near the Kerch Bridge, about 160 miles to the east.

“An unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down in the Kerch region, Vladimir Rogov, a member of the main council of the military-civilian administration of the Zaporozhye region, said on his Telegram channel,” TASS reported.

Local air defense systems destroyed the drone and “there is no danger to the city and the Crimean bridge, according to an adviser to the head of Crimea.”

Increasingly that bridge is becoming a focal point of interest by Ukraine and concern by Russia.

On Aug. 17, Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak suggested that the prized $3.5B Kerch Strait Bridge be taken out.

For Russia, concern over the bridge being attacked has been building for a while. In May, days after Russian forces were spotted preparing the bridge — which connects mainland Russia to Crimea — for missile attacks, a U.S. official told The War Zone that “Russian forces’ capabilities and logistics nodes within Ukraine are absolutely fair targets.” The War Zone followed up, asking if there were any hesitations about using U.S.-supplied weaponry against the Kerch Bridge. The official responded as follows.

“As I said, there aren't any preclusions that I'm aware of on Ukrainians fighting on their sovereign territory against Russia.”

Exactly what is causing these incidents, as well as previous attacks on Russian installations in Crimea over the past nine days remains unclear.

Russia has confirmed media reports about explosions on Aug. 16 at the Dzhankoi munitions dump and Saki Air Base, the latter of which destroyed numerous aircraft, on Aug. 9. However, Russia blamed the former on sabotage and the latter on accidental detonation of ammunition, without saying it was attacked.

A close-up of the damage to the revetment area. One of the destroyed structures was situated at the bend in the taxiway, where there is now a crater visible in this image, while what's left of the other one, along with a nearby burned-out Su-24, can be seen at the top right corner. PHOTO © 2022 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

While Ukraine has officially only snarked about the incidents, its military officials have anonymously told various media outlets that the attacks were the result of “elite units.”

We covered these incidents in great detail, which you can read more about here.

Unlike Crimea, where the explosions have taken place about 150 miles from the front lines, Belgorod is only about 25 miles from the Ukraine border and within range of M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS and the M270 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) provided to Ukraine.

Both launchers can fire a variety of 227mm rockets, including Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) types made by Lockheed Martin, as well as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. So far, the U.S. has only provided Ukraine with an unpublicized amount of M31 rockets with 200-pound class unitary warheads, which are GPS/INS guided and can hit targets at a distance of around 43 miles (70 kilometers.) The Biden administration has so far refused to provide longer-range and harder-hitting ATACMS. In particular, it could provide a means for Ukraine to execute precision strikes on a large variety of targets well into Russia.

A U.S. HIMARS system in action. DOD

But as with the attacks in Crimea, it is possible that this latest incident in Belgorod could have been carried out by elite Ukrainian units.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Over the course of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine, images of attacks inside Russia have appeared on social media. They've been carried out on a wide array of targets, including an ammunition storage facility, an airbase, and what appeared to be a daring raid by Ukrainian Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters in April that crossed low over the border into Russia and struck an oil storage facility in Belgorod.

In an exclusive interview with The War Zone in June, the head of the eponymously named Shaman Battalion, an elite Ukrainian special operations forces unit, declined to offer details about specific locations of these clandestine missions. But Shaman hinted that the April attack on Belgorod was a sign of things to come.

“You know that that explosion on the refinery in Belgorod is not the end,” he said. “It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Given the lack of specific, verifiable information about what’s been happening behind Russia’s front lines, speculation has run rampant about what has been used in these attacks, running from smaller, locally operated, armed drones, to special operations sabotage raids like the ones carried about by the Shaman Battalion to the possibility that Ukraine has secretly fielded its own ballistic missile system. Ukrainian forces, or those loyal to Ukraine, have used small drones in a high-profile attack in Crimea against the Black Sea Fleet headquarters before all this started, at the time we said this was just a harbinger of things to come.

Ukraine also possesses a shadowy off-the-shelf long-range precision drone attack capability that could be the culprit in Belgorod and other locales. It has been used in attacks within Russia's own borders before. An ammunition dump would be an ideal target for it.

As Russia's frustrations mount with the halting advance of its troops, increasing losses of personnel and equipment, ever more attacks behind his lines, and with Ukraine’s independence day just around the bend on Aug. 24, a major reprisal could be in order. At the same time, it's very unlikely Ukraine will stop what appear to be increasingly successful attempts at bringing the war home to Russia.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · August 18, 2022

17. Ukrainian Fighter Pilots Are Training On DIY A-10 Warthog Simulators

I wonder if we do in fact provide A-10s to Ukraine and they prove effective if it will harden the resolve of Congress and the other services to retain them for the foreseeable future despite the desire fo some to divest them

Ukrainian Fighter Pilots Are Training On DIY A-10 Warthog Simulators

While the U.S. has yet to donate the famed Warthog to Ukraine, an infantry officer is taking preemptive measures just in case that day comes.

BY

EMMA HELFRICH

AUG 19, 2022 8:19 PM

thedrive.com · by Emma Helfrich · August 19, 2022

According to a feature story published by Time Magazine, an entrepreneurial Ukrainian infantryman has managed to crowdfund the development of a secret A-10 Warthog simulation training center. The iconic attack plane has been a sought-after aircraft of the Ukrainian forces since the start of the country’s conflict with Russia, and their keenness to receive western combat jets of any kind is only further exemplified by the creation of this new facility.

For the article, Time spoke with Alexander Gorgan, described as a 46-year-old “low-level infantry officer in the Ukrainian military with high-level connections,” and the brains behind the grassroots A-10 training center project. Throughout the piece, Gorgan emphasizes the relentless shelling that Russians have been employing against Ukrainian forces during the war, explaining that the attacks could be more successfully countered if they just had the right air support. Gorgan firmly believes that the Warthog is the perfect plane for the job, and even though the United States has been tip-toeing around the possibility of offering them to Ukraine, on top of recent pushback from some in Ukraine, he was ready to start taking matters into his own hands.

A pair of A-10 Warthogs from the 104th Fighter Wing. Credit: Master Sgt. Mark Bucher/U.S. Air Force

The lightbulb went off for Gorgan in March, Time wrote, when he was trapped in a trench in Kyiv while being subjected to a barrage of Russian artillery shells. He recalled that all he could think about was how relieving it would be to know that an A-10 was on its way to suppress the attack that now had him trapped belowground in his home country’s capital. Gorgan then decided to dedicate the next six months to working with fellow Ukrainians as well as American A-10 pilots in whatever capacity the war would allow to both urge the United States to donate A-10s and establish the training equipment necessary to prepare Ukrainian pilots for their potential delivery.

Make sure to check out all of Time.com's report here, it is really worth its own read.

Training at the facility began in early May and Ukrainian pilots have been using it ever since. After agreeing to be blindfolded during the trip to and from the location, Time was granted access to the A-10 simulation center and noted that it featured “sophisticated” flight simulators that had been designed using “open source YouTube videos of U.S. military trainers in action and built with off-the-shelf components and guidance by retired U.S. military officials.” The facility now serves as yet another example of the fruits of Ukrainian innovation and fundraising borne solely from necessity.

An A-10 Warthog assigned to the 514th Flight Test Squadron peels away after receiving fuel over Idaho on Nov. 25, 2020. Credit: Senior Airman Danielle Charmichael/U.S. Air Force

“Each station had a realistic throttle, flight stick, and [virtual reality] goggles linked up to a computer tower that gave off a technicolor glow,” read the Time article. “None of the gear was classified, and most of the components came from a niche of the gaming community that builds flight simulators for fun.”

Gorgan noted that the video game-like nature of the facility was directly inspired by U.S. Air Force A-10 pilots of the 355th Training Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona who use the publicly available Digital Combat Simulator World (DCS) computer game to train in virtual reality. In 2021, The War Zone reported that the 355th had been using the DCS paired with commercially available virtual reality headsets and other gaming gear as a low-cost and more accessible way to supplement the more traditional yet expensive simulation training methods used by the A-10 pilots.

A-10 pilots train on DCS and off-the-shelf PCs and VR gear. (USAF photo)

While virtual reality training systems are still in the process of being widely adopted as a way to prepare military and commercial pilots for actual flight, the benefits that they present at a low cost aren’t lost on Ukrainian forces. Training a pilot is a costly and time-consuming process, typically taking years and millions of dollars in government money to do diligently. While the off-the-shelf VR systems and software can't make up for the real thing or for far more advanced and costly simulators, for that matter, they can offer a ton of value for not much money. Everything from procedures to working with cockpit interfaces to getting the right visual cues for basic airmanship can be had in the VR space, and more.

Even though there have been reports that prior military exchange programs allowed a select few Ukrainian pilots the chance to train on the A-10, Gorgan seemed to believe that the number of Ukrainian pilots with the skillset necessary to carry out the aerial attacks that combat operations require is dwindling.

Gorgan explained that this is due in part to both combat losses and access to resources, which has made it so the pilots that are currently defending Ukraine in its war with Russia are quite the hot commodity. So much so, in fact, that it's the pilots themselves that are predominately responsible for the secrecy that shrouds Gorgan’s A-10 training facility.

“‘They are more valuable than generals,’ Gorgan says. Even before the Russian invasion, the identities of many active fighter pilots were a closely guarded secret in Ukraine, and all of them lived with the risk of assassination,” the Time article noted.

Since the start of the conflict, some Ukrainian pilots have been flying less capable Su-25 Frogfoots for their daily operations, which are (very roughly) the Soviet-era counterpart to the A-10. In terms of what the A-10 would bring to the table, the American-made Warthog was designed with a high level of survivability. It’s intended to withstand a significant amount of battle damage, and if needed, undergo speedy repairs to get it back up in the air under a strict timeline. Its armament is also diverse and features AGM-65 Maverick missiles, AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, a wide array of rockets and bombs, and of course, the iconic 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon.

A Sukhoi Su-25 of the Russian Air Force landing at Vladivostok. Credit: Fedor Leukhin/Wikimedia Commons

Another argument in favor of supplying Ukraine with A-10s would be that the United States is already moving to retire the fleet, but it’s important to note that the final retirement date is far from assured. In its most recent budget request for the 2023 Fiscal Year, the Air Force proposed retiring 21 Warthogs with a target of the rest of the fleet being gone in just five years. The service has long raised questions about the aircraft’s ability to perform in future high-end conflicts while others are adamant that it still has a key role to play. For its part, the A-10 community is rapidly adapting to be of better value in a peer-state conflict.

The potential for some A-10s to one day end up in Ukraine was further echoed by Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Frank Kendall in July when he indicated to reporters that the A-10 was on the table for Ukraine and that “older U.S. systems” are being considered to fulfill the country's future air combat needs.

An A-10 Thunderbolt II is refueled over Southern Afghanistan. The most prominent feature of the A-10 Thunderbolt II is the 30-millimeter GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-gun cannon. Credit: Master Sgt. Jeffrey Allen/U.S. Air Force

There are, however, those in opposition to the prospect of sending Ukraine A-10s. In an interview with Air Force Magazine published in July, Yuriy Sak, advisor to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, explained that while the A-10 is certainly a capable air support aircraft, it isn’t what Ukrainians need right now. Instead, Sak proposed that the United States send “fast and versatile” systems, which could point to the F-16 or another multirole fighter jet. This is also an idea that the U.S. Air Force has seemed open to in recent months, but nothing concrete has come from either of these propositions yet.

Although in a press call today centered on details about a new U.S. military aid package for Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official did offer the most recent commentary on this topic in terms of policy:

"This is something where we certainly are looking at the Ukrainian Armed Forces, needs in every domain, in the current and in the future. In the current, our focus has been on capabilities that we can get them quickly that they can use in the current fight in now east and south Ukraine. So, in terms of aviation, we've focused on how we can enhance their existing aircraft fleet. That's where the HARM missiles come into play, giving them that additional advantage. We've also sourced from around the world 1,000s of spare parts for their MiGs. But in the future, we're also looking at other capabilities that we might be able to provide them, and we're doing work now on what the future of the Ukrainian armed forces will look like. And considering all possibilities."

All in all, there continue to be indications that the United States is softening on its general opposition to sending Ukrainian combat aircraft of some kind, which might or might not include A-10s.

Regardless, the relatively humble off-the-shelf simulators that Ukrainian pilots are now training on will provide valuable experience with the basic interfaces and control concepts used on western combat aircraft.

One Ukrainian pilot that goes by his callsign "Juice" who has been in regular contact with The War Zone has noted that using off-the-shelf simulation software and hardware to train virtually on western aircraft, especially on things like radar functions and cockpit layout, could help speed up training on western combat jets once the country is cleared to receive them.

So, if Warthogs do eventually end up in Ukrainian hands, or a 4th generation multirole fighter, the country's pilots would bit more prepared to operate them than they would have been otherwise.

In this war, every little bit counts.

Contact the author: Emma@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Emma Helfrich · August 19, 2022

18. Are extremism and violent crime rising among veterans, or are we just seeing more of it?

​A few points to keep in mind:

The current and former service members who have joined extremist groups represent a tiny percentage of the entire population of troops and veterans. But it’s also true that an increasing number of troops and veterans are taking part in extremist activities.

...

​Veterans and current service members made up about 8% of the American population as of 2018, but they comprised about 15% of all the people charged for the Capitol Hill riots, when a pro-Trump mob tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to the START Center, which is based at the University of Maryland.

​...​

Troops and veterans, by virtue of their service can be powerful social influencers, so extremist groups prey on them to gain credibility with the broader public, said Goldsmith, who added: “Therefore, when our belief system, value system, voting behavior changes, we’re more likely than others to take people with us on that journey.”

​...

​The fact that relatively few current and former service members have been tied to anti-government extremism does not diminish the significance of the problem, said Katherine Kuzminski, director of the military, veterans, and society program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.

​...

​The data shows that most current and former service members do not belong to extremist groups. However, when veterans and troops do commit crimes, media coverage of those events can play an outsized role in shaping public perception of the military and veteran community writ large.

Are extremism and violent crime rising among veterans, or are we just seeing more of it?

More veterans are joining extremist groups, but they are not representative of the overall veterans’ community.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED AUG 17, 2022 11:41 AM

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · August 17, 2022

U.S. service members take an oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, so it raises alarm bells and grabs headlines whenever a veteran commits an act of anti-government extremism.

Most recently, Ricky Walter Shiffer Jr., 42, was killed on Aug. 11 while reportedly attacking an FBI office in Cincinnati. Shiffer was a submariner in the Navy from 1998 to 2003, and then he served as an infantryman with the Florida Army National Guard from 2008 to 2011, during which he deployed to Iraq for a year, defense officials told Task & Purpose.

While an investigation into the Aug. 11 incident is ongoing, Shiffer reportedly posted on social media that he was upset with the FBI’s recent search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Moreover, on May 7, Shiffer’s Twitter account wrote the following reply to a post from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.): “Congresswoman Greene, they got away with fixing elections in plain sight. It’s over. The next step is the one we used in 1775.”

The current and former service members who have joined extremist groups represent a tiny percentage of the entire population of troops and veterans. But it’s also true that an increasing number of troops and veterans are taking part in extremist activities.

Between 1990 and 2021, a total of 461 Americans with military backgrounds committed extremist crimes, according to The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, known as the START Center. Of that number, 120 were charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Congress.

Veterans and current service members made up about 8% of the American population as of 2018, but they comprised about 15% of all the people charged for the Capitol Hill riots, when a pro-Trump mob tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to the START Center, which is based at the University of Maryland.

Michael Jensen leads the domestic radicalization team for the START Center, which maintains a database of people in the United States who have been indicted or arrested for committing crimes inspired by extremist ideologies, including far-right, far-left, and Islamic beliefs. The most recent data shows that the number of Americans with military backgrounds who are committing extremist crimes has increased dramatically in recent years, he said.

“For a lot of years in the data, if you go back into the 1990s or early 2000s, we were adding maybe 10 individuals a year with military backgrounds to the data sets – very, very low numbers,” Jensen told Task & Purpose. “But then 2017 really marks this big change in the data, where all of a sudden we added over 30 individuals to the data that have military backgrounds. We just saw this upward trend: 2020 has nearly 60 individuals now in the data. Then of course, 2021 is massive because of Jan. 6, but even for the first seven-and-a-half months now of 2022, we’re about 30 cases already, so we’re trending for 50 individuals for 2022. So, this upward trend – just the raw number – is not slowing down. It’s not stopping.”

In this photo taken Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, multiple white nationalist groups march with torches through the UVA campus in Charlottesville, Va. (Mykal McEldowney/The Indianapolis Star via AP)

The overall percentage of Americans with military backgrounds committing extremist crimes is holding steady, but that’s only because the total number of people being arrested for such crimes has also increased tremendously, he said. In 2018, the START center added between 80 and 100 people to its database on domestic extremists. That number rose to about 230 in 2019 and more than 300 in 2020. The data for 2021 is still being collected. The START Center is currently debating whether all of the roughly 900 people arrested for the Jan. 6 riots should be counted as extremists, even if they don’t belong to extremist groups. That would push the total number of people entered in the database for 2021 to as high as 1,500.

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It’s difficult to find official statistics on how many actively serving troops and veterans have engaged in extremist activities.

“We don’t track cases that may or may not involve veterans specifically,” Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle told Task & Purpose. “We typically track cases by statute.”

But there’s no doubt that veterans and service members are lucrative targets for groups that threaten American democracy.

Why some veterans and troops are being radicalized

In the absence of definitive data, the scope of the problem is unknown, said Jason Blazakis, senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, an intelligence and security consultancy.

Although the reason why troops and veterans become radicalized varies on a case-by-case basis, one broad reason why they join extremist groups or carry out anti-government activities is that they feel American democracy has stopped abiding by its founding tenants, Blazakis told Task & Purpose.

“It’s because America, somehow, has gotten away from these kinds of core values that you have individuals who’ve lost faith in federal government and are joining organizations that profess to try to put America back on the right path, like the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys,” Blazakis said. (The Three Percenters are a militia movement that advocates overthrowing the government; the Proud Boys are a white supremacst group that has brawled with far-left protesters; and the Oath Keepers are a far-right militia group led by an Army veteran with a logo designed to look like the Army’s Ranger tab.)

This sort of disenchantment with democracy is often driven by a lack of faith in America’s institutions, such as Congress, Blazakis said. That dissatisfaction with the legislative branch contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

“This is an area where [defense] secretary Austin has made a lot of efforts to try to ensure that radicalization and extremist symbols and extremism doesn’t percolate within the ranks,” Blazakis said. “This is a very new initiative. Until Austin really stepped forward, at very senior levels I think people were trying to ignore this challenge that’s been around for a really long time. It’s not specific to the 2020s. It’s an old phenomenon. You can go back to 1995 to see who the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City attack was – he had a military background.”

Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of carrying out the Oklahoma City terrorist attack that left 168 people dead, served in the Army from 1988 to 1991, during which he fought in the Gulf War. He was executed in June 2001.

Members of the Oath Keepers, including Marine veteran, Donovan Crowl (foreground, wearing helmet and goggles) are seen among supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol during a protest against the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2021. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

Shortly after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was appointed in 2021, he ordered the entire military to hold stand-downs for troops to talk about racism and extremism within the ranks. The move was widely criticized by Republican lawmakers, who have accused the Pentagon of trying to indoctrinate troops with “Critical Race Theory.”

In December, the Pentagon announced that it had expanded its definition of “extremist activities” that U.S. troops are not allowed to engage in, finally closing a loophole that had allowed troops to belong to extremist groups so long as they were not actively participating in extremist activities. At the time, the Defense Department had identified about 100 active-duty and reserve component service members who had participated in extremist activities.

Based on its results so far, Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee along with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) have called on the Defense Department to cease all efforts to identify extremists who are serving in the military. The Republicans and King have added a report of the Senate version of the proposed fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that argues, “Spending additional time and resources to combat exceptionally rare instances of extremism in the military is an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds, and should be discontinued by the Department of Defense immediately.”

This type of action is typical for Congress, and that is a major reason why there still is no definitive data on how widespread extremism really is within the military and in the veterans’ community, said Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and CEO of Sparverius, a firm that tracks disinformation and domestic extremism.

“Congress is caught in this cycle of denial and a lack of willingness to fund studies of the problem,” Goldsmith told Task & Purpose. “So, there is no clean answer of how many white supremacists are in the military; how many people in the military don’t believe that Joe Biden is their commander in chief; how many service members have been radicalized by anti-vaccine rhetoric; how many service members believe that the attack on the Capitol was Americans acting as patriots; and how many service members believe in QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theories; how many service members are affiliated with the Three Percenters or Oath Keepers or other extremist organizations?”

Troops and veterans, by virtue of their service can be powerful social influencers, so extremist groups prey on them to gain credibility with the broader public, said Goldsmith, who added: “Therefore, when our belief system, value system, voting behavior changes, we’re more likely than others to take people with us on that journey.”

Former Marine Maj. Kyleanne Hunter, who has conducted research into veterans’ roles in local politics, has found that most people tend to trust veterans more than non-veterans on just about every issue.

Given the gravitas that veterans enjoy in society, they can help to legitimize fringe causes when they join extremist groups, said Hunter, who is now a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation.

“Even if they are the minority in number, they are more prominent in the public eye and lend a sense of credibility to these positions,” Hunter told Task & Purpose.

The fact that relatively few current and former service members have been tied to anti-government extremism does not diminish the significance of the problem, said Katherine Kuzminski, director of the military, veterans, and society program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.

“I think the initiative behind the stand down last year was a recognition that this isn’t a widespread sentiment, but that it’s damaging enough to unit cohesion, to recruitment efforts,” Kuzminski told Task & Purpose. “So, I think some of the debate that we’re seeing on the congressional side is: How many resources do you put behind rooting out a very small number [of troops] with a very large impact.”

Members of the far-right group Proud Boys gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building to protest against the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2021. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

One reason why more people with military backgrounds are turning to extremism could be service members’ objections to the Defense Department mandate that all troops be vaccinated for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Kuzminski said. Top defense officials have repeatedly said the vaccine mandate is tied to readiness, but some service members have felt it is an attack on their political or religious beliefs.

Kuzminski said her research includes looking into whether service members who have been separated for refusing to get vaccinated will join extremist groups.

“It may have actually weeded out anti-government sentiment within the services, but it may increase their representation in the veterans’ population,” Kuzminski said.

Is military extremism a growing threat, or are we just seeing it in the news more?

The data shows that most current and former service members do not belong to extremist groups. However, when veterans and troops do commit crimes, media coverage of those events can play an outsized role in shaping public perception of the military and veteran community writ large.

“Veterans are among our nation’s finest and most loyal patriots,” said Terrence Hayes, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Like any group of Americans, the Veteran community is not a monolith. The overwhelming majority of veterans neither commit nor condone extremism-related violence. In fact, many veterans have fought and sacrificed to protect our nation against exactly this type of behavior.”

Zack Baddorf, executive director of Military Veterans in Journalism, a group that helps veterans get jobs in the media, noted that early media reports about the Jan. 6 riots focused on the veterans and service members who had breached the capital, creating the impression that extremism was rampant within the ranks.

Although many of the people who were initially arrested for taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection had ties to the military, current and former service members now represent a much smaller percentage of the suspects accused of breaching the Capitol because many more people have since been prosecuted for the riot, Baddorf told Task & Purpose.

Sailors hold the national ensign as they march during the NYC Veterans Day Parade. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Martin L. Carey/U.S. Navy)

“My advice for reporters is to not over-generalize,” Baddorf said. “Sadly, these extremist groups are targeting veterans to exploit the honor and prestige of the military and veteran community, bolstering these groups’ perceived patriotism and professionalism. But it’s important to understand that some of the veterans in these groups may exaggerate their otherwise lackluster service in the armed forces. Reporters should take the time to request the military records and dig deeper. Journalists should also turn to other military veterans who can explain the terminology and nuance of military service.”

Whenever veterans or currently serving troops are arrested for extremist or other violent crimes, media outlets have a tendency to inflate their service record. After Bryan James Riley was arrested for allegedly killing four people in Florida, some media outlets reported he had been a “sharpshooter” in the Marine Corps, implying he was some sort of sniper. Actually, he had just qualified as a sharpshooter on the rifle range, which meant he scored in between the lowest and highest scoring ranges.

These types of exaggerations eventually led to the Associated Press to advise journalists not to use the term “military training” too broadly to avoid painting all veterans as experts on combat. One example the AP provided was: “Police said the suspect was a cook at Eglin Air Force Base, not police said the suspect had military training.”

Jeremy Butler, Chief Executive Officer of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said he understands that it is important for media outlets to report on veterans tied to extremism, but the media also needs to include an explanation about why extremists seek out veterans in the first place.

“What I’m trying to say is there’s a reason for identifying a veteran as caught up in extremism, not because they are representative of veterans overall – in fact, we know that they are a very, very small percentage of the veteran community – but we do know that they’re targeted, that they they’re recruited, and when they are sought out, it has an increasingly and larger-than-life negative effect on the rest of us.”

Retired Marine Col. David Lapan, who has worked extensively with reporters at the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security, said it is important for the media to put incidents of veterans involved with extremism into perspective.

Soldiers from Task Force Stalwart, which is compromised of Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, pose for a group photo, March 28, 2018, in a post in the outskirts of Afghanistan. (Sgt. 1st Class Jasmine L. Flowers/U.S. Army)

Just like military aircraft crashes, suicide deaths, and cases of sexual harassment and assult, the media need to put the issue of extremism into perspective and show how each incident fits into the larger picture, Lapan told Task & Purpose.

“Extremism in the ranks is harder to quantify however so it’s a challenge to provide comparative data or perspective,” Lapan said. “But you can report on the data that is available, note that it’s likely underreported (like sexual assault/sexual harassment), and explain the impacts extremist views have on military life, unit cohesion, and interpersonal relationship. Explain why data or facts on extremism is challenging to obtain.”

When it comes to extremism in the veterans’ community, Lapan urged media outlets to report what is known, such as the numbers of veterans involved in the Jan. 6 riot.

“Explain that even without definitive data on veterans with extremist views or membership in extremist organizations, the existence of extremists among veterans is dangerous – both for the damage it does to the reputation of the military and for the application of the skills for which they are recruited, of which they bring to the world of domestic extremists.”

Chaps McNealy, a Marine veteran and co-host of the Zero Blog Thirty podcast said he believes the AP’s guidance to reporters is a good first step toward covering troops and veterans better.

McNealy also cautioned people at large to avoid generalizing about veterans, just as they shouldn’t assume that one particular person is representative of ethnic groups, LGBTQ people, or other communities.

“When you make that assumption that just because someone is a part of that group that their ideologies, their actions, the way they cope with stressors, the way they cope with any day-to-day activity is going to be the same, I think that leads us down a path that’s not true,” McNealy said. “As a veterans group, we are as diverse as the population that we protect.”

Media coverage aside, the data shows that an increasing number of current and former service members are being drawn to extremism, even if the overall number of troops and vets committing extremist crimes is relatively low.

Service members and veterans who join extremist groups or take part in anti-government activities are not representative of all men and women who have worn their nation’s uniform, but they do undermine the military’s proud tradition of being an apolitical force dedicated to defending the Constitution.

“Although extremism in the ranks is hard to quantify, its existence is pernicious for many reasons, and whatever DoD and the services can do to identify, train individuals to recognize signs, and take action to keep service members and families away from extremist views and organizations, the better for the functioning of the military and for its reputation with the American people,” Lapan said. “The military’s allegiance to the country and Constitution must be paramount. Service members cannot have allegiances to organizations that promulgate and practice hate, prejudice and unlawful violence against others. Or to hold those ideas and values even if they don’t belong to or associate with known groups.”

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taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · August 17, 2022

19. With ‘bravery’ as its new brand, Ukraine is turning advertising into a weapon of war

That is a helluva good brand.

Influence operations. Influence effects take time to realize.

We can learn a lot. (though we already know a lot - we just must be willing to apply what we know - let slip the PSYOP/influence dogs of war).

Excerpts:

Finally, the best brand messages connect with consumers by inviting them to imagine better versions of themselves. Famous ad slogans like Nike’s “Just do it” or Apple’s “Think different” illustrate this idea. So does Ukraine’s call to people around the world to “Be brave like Ukraine.”

It is notoriously difficult to measure the effectiveness of nation branding campaigns, as brand consultants point out. The process is costly and time-consuming, and results are often contested.

The direct impact of the Brave Campaign may not be clear for months to come. It is also not clear how long its message will continue to resonate. But it is clear that Ukraine is transforming nation branding into a new propaganda weapon, adapted for the age of consumer culture and constant media stimulation.

With ‘bravery’ as its new brand, Ukraine is turning advertising into a weapon of war

theconversation.com · by Nadia Kaneva

When a preview of Vogue’s October 2022 cover story on Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska hit Twitter on July 26, 2022, reactions on social media were swift and polarized. Some critics said that a photo shoot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz for a fashion magazine was a “bad idea” and glamorized war.

Others lauded the magazine and Ukraine’s first lady for bringing awareness to the suffering of Ukrainians, five months after Russia first invaded its neighboring country.

In the cover photo, 44-year-old Zelenska wears a cream-colored blouse with rolled up sleeves, black trousers and flats. She sits on the stairs of the Ukrainian Parliament, leaning forward with hands intertwined between her knees. Her makeup is minimal, her hair casually tossed as she looks directly at the camera. Within hours Ukrainian women started using the hashtag #sitlikeagirl to share photos of themselves in the same pose as a show of solidarity.

Vogue’s profile of Zelenska, headlined “A Portrait of Bravery” and written by journalist Rachel Donadio, fits into a larger communication strategy, mounted by Ukraine’s government, that’s intended to keep the world focused on the country’s fight against Russian aggression. As part of that effort, Ukraine also initiated a nation branding campaign in April with the tagline “Bravery. To be Ukraine.”

As a communications scholar, I have studied how former communist countries like Ukraine have used marketing strategies to burnish their international reputations over the past two decades – a practice known as nation branding.

Ukraine, however, is the first country to launch an official nation branding campaign in the midst of war. For the first time, brand communication is a key part of a country’s response to a military invasion.

Nation branding and the end of communism

The idea that nations can be branded emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. This kind of work uses advertising, public relations and marketing techniques to boost countries’ international reputations. Campaigns are often timed to coincide with major sporting, cultural or political events – like the Olympics.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, formerly communist Eastern European countries were particularly eager to rebrand themselves and get an updated international image.

When Estonian musicians won the international singing competition Eurovision in 2001, Estonia became the first post-Soviet country to hold this prize. Subsequently, the country’s government hired an international advertising company to design a modern national brand for Estonia as it prepared to host Eurovision the following year.

Research has shown, however, that former communist countries’ nation branding efforts were not meant just for international consumption. They also provided a new way to talk about national identities at home, and re-imagine national values and goals, via marketing terms.

But until 2022, no country had used nation branding to fight a war.

A Ukrainian woman who is saving abandoned pets is featured in a campaign billboard. Be Brave Like Ukraine campaign/Banda

‘Bravery is our brand’

Executives from the Ukrainian advertising agency Banda first pitched the idea for Ukraine’s Bravery Campaign to the government shortly after Russia invaded in February 2022. Based in Kyiv and Los Angeles, the agency had already worked before the war on government-sponsored campaigns, marketing Ukraine as a tourism and investment destination.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy endorsed the wartime branding campaign and publicly announced its launch on April 7, 2022, in a video address. “Bravery is our brand,” he stated. “This is what it means to be us. To be Ukrainians. To be brave.”

In the following months, Banda produced numerous messages in formats ranging from billboards, posters and online videos, to social media posts, T-shirts and stickers. A campaign website offers downloadable logos and photographs and asks visitors to share the message of bravery and donate to Ukraine.

Some billboards feature images of courageous, ordinary Ukrainians and soldiers. Other billboards are emblazoned with bold slogans in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. They urge audiences to “Be brave like Ukraine” and say that “Bravery lives forever.”

Inside Ukraine, the campaign’s messages appear on everything from juice bottles to 500 billboards in 21 cities. The campaign is also running in the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada and 17 countries in Europe, including Germany, Spain and Sweden, according to AdAge.

This massive communication effort is happening at a minimal cost to Ukraine. Banda is donating its services, and the Ukrainian government pays only for production costs. Media space, including high-profile billboards in Times Square and other major cities, was donated by several global media companies.

Ukraine’s bravery media campaign is displayed on billboards in Times Square, New York City. Be Brave Like Ukraine campaign/Banda

Branding as a weapon of war

Banda’s co-founder, Pavel Vrzheshch, has said the campaign aims to strengthen Ukrainians’ morale as they continue to fight Russia. But the focus on bravery is also about Ukraine’s future, he says.

“The whole world admires the Ukrainian bravery now, we must consolidate this notion and have it represent Ukraine forever,” Vrzheshch said in a media interview.

At its core, the campaign attempts to transform an intangible value, like bravery, into an asset that can be converted into real military, economic and moral support. In other words, it aims to cultivate positive public opinion in the West that will support further aid to Ukraine in order to help fight the war.

This way of using brand communication in a war is unprecedented in at least three ways.

First, rather than relying only on diplomatic channels to seek international support, Ukraine is harnessing popular media and social media networks to speak directly to citizens of other countries. It gives ordinary people around the world a chance to show solidarity through donations or by sharing campaign messages and pressuring their government to support Ukraine.

A formal brand campaign also allows Ukraine to extend the visibility of the war beyond news coverage. As the conflict continues, it is likely to fade from news headlines in international media. But billboards, social media posts and the strategic use of entertainment publications like Vogue can keep it in front of audiences.

Finally, the best brand messages connect with consumers by inviting them to imagine better versions of themselves. Famous ad slogans like Nike’s “Just do it” or Apple’s “Think different” illustrate this idea. So does Ukraine’s call to people around the world to “Be brave like Ukraine.”

It is notoriously difficult to measure the effectiveness of nation branding campaigns, as brand consultants point out. The process is costly and time-consuming, and results are often contested.

The direct impact of the Brave Campaign may not be clear for months to come. It is also not clear how long its message will continue to resonate. But it is clear that Ukraine is transforming nation branding into a new propaganda weapon, adapted for the age of consumer culture and constant media stimulation.

theconversation.com · by Nadia Kaneva

20. US political violence is surging, but talk of a civil war is exaggerated – isn’t it?

I have been seeing more and more irresponsible talk about political violence and civil war on social media. I wonder who the extremists on the left and right think how this will play out and end well. I fear they envision the Army of the Potomac versus the Army of Northern Virginia.

US political violence is surging, but talk of a civil war is exaggerated – isn’t it?

The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago unleashed the latest barrage of threats of violence, on top of a wave of threats against election workers and rising weapons sales

The Guardian · by Chris McGreal · August 20, 2022

Dr Garen Wintemute used to laugh off warnings of a civil war coming to America as “crazy talk”. Then the emergency room doctor in California saw the figures for gun sales.

Wintemute, who founded a centre to research firearms violence after years of treating gunshot wounds, had long observed that the rush to buy weapons came in waves, often around a presidential election. Always it fell back again.

How a wild week in Washington changed the game for Biden and Trump

Read more

“Then in January of 2020 gun sales took off. Just an unprecedented surge in purchasing and that surge continued,” he said. “We were aware that, contrary to prior surges, this one wasn’t ending. People are still buying guns like crazy.”

Many were buying a weapon for the first time.

Wintemute wanted answers and they stunned him. A survey for his California Firearm Violence Research Center released last month showed that half of Americans expect a civil war in the United States in the next few years. One in five thought political violence was justified in some circumstances. In addition, while almost everyone said it was important for the US to remain a democracy, about 40% said that having a strong leader was more important.

“Coupled with prior research, these findings suggest a continuing alienation from and mistrust of American democratic society and its institutions. Substantial minorities of the population endorse violence, including lethal violence, to obtain political objectives,” the report concluded.

Suddenly Wintemute didn’t think talk of a violent civil conflict was so crazy any more.

The doctor is quick to note that large numbers of those people expecting a civil war say it is only “somewhat likely”. But half of the population even considering such a possibility reflects the failing confidence of large numbers of Americans in a system of government under assault by Donald Trump and a good part of the Republican party.

The FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this month for classified documents removed from the White House unleashed the latest barrage of threats of violence, this time directed at an institution widely regarded as a bastion of establishment conservatism.

The Florida senator Rick Scott likened the FBI to the Gestapo. In Ohio, the police killed an armed US navy veteran who attacked an FBI office. In Pennsylvania, a man with a history of vaccine denial was charged with threatening to “slaughter” federal agents he described as “police state scum”, and compared to the Nazi SS and the Soviet secret police.

In the days after the search of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned of a surge in threats of violence against federal agents, their families and the judge who issued the search warrant. The FBI said these included calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion”.

The FBI headquarters, seen behind security fencing, in Washington DC. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

That comes on top of a wave of threats against election workers since Trump alleged he was robbed of victory by fraud in 2020, and a sharp increase in intimidation of others in public service from school board members to librarians as well as elected politicians.

Wintemute said that the surge in violent threats is made more potent by rising weapons sales. “What happens when you take a society that is increasingly fearful for its future, increasingly polarised, increasingly angry at itself, and throw a bunch of guns into the mix?” he said.

‘Willing to harm other Americans for their political beliefs’

Many Americans flinch at talk of civil war because it recalls the bloodiest conflict in their history. The threat of violent conflict in the US also looks very different from the wars once fought by guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, or during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

But Rachel Kleinfeld, a specialist in civil conflict at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that does not mean it cannot happen. “Countries with democracies and governments as strong as America’s do not fall into civil war. But if our institutions weaken, the story could be different,” she said.

“What most worries me right now is polling that suggests somewhere between 20% and 40% of Americans would like a strongman leader who doesn’t have to follow the democratic rules. That would allow institutions to weaken and an insurgency like the Troubles in Northern Ireland could break out.”

The parallel with Northern Ireland may jar but recent polling suggests it is not unwarranted. In 1973, in the midst of some of the worst years of the Troubles, one in five people in Northern Ireland agreed that “violence is a legitimate way to achieve one’s goals”. Half a century later, a similar proportion of Republican voters in the US say that it is “justified to use political violence to accomplish political goals”.

A more complex picture emerges when the numbers are broken down, including over whether such violence is targeted against people or property. But even then Kleinfeld said the results are disturbing. “You’re looking at 3 to 5 million Americans willing to harm other Americans for their political beliefs,” she said.

‘Politicians’ attacks on the system’

The US has a long history of political violence and killings, including bombing campaigns by radical leftwing organisations in the 1970s and more recent attacks from the right by anti-abortion groups and white nationalists. The country’s deadliest domestic terrorist attack, the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, was perpetrated by members of an anti-government militia.

But now the greatest threat to political stability comes from within the power structure including Republican politicians subverting the electoral system and further eroding trust in democracy.

Trump’s allegation that the 2020 presidential election was stolen unleashed actual and threatened violence from the storming of the Capitol to the barrage of threats to kill election workers. The justice department set up a special taskforce to protect election officials after more than 1,000 were directly threatened over their unwillingness to declare Trump the winner in 2020. Many have quit or intend to do so before the 2024 presidential election because of “politicians’ attacks on the system and stress”.

Trump supporters rally near Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Photograph: Karla Coté/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Wintemute said that with the attack on election workers has come a parallel effort by Republican leaders to weight the electoral system in their favour through gerrymandering and obstacles to voting in swing states that further undermines confidence in democracy.

“One of the great ironies is that there is the false narrative that the election was rigged which is being used in order to set up a rigged election in the future,” he said.

“Democrats see democracy is under threat because of authoritarianism from the right and the prospect of stolen midterms and the infrastructure that’s been setting up for a stolen presidential election in 2024. For the right, it already happened. Many people in our survey say 2020 was stolen. So their point of view is that the threat has been realised. It’s hard to see a good way out.”

To Kleinfeld that in part explains the significant numbers of Democrats also prepared to justify political violence in certain circumstances – 13% compared with 20% of Republicans. She said that, nonetheless, actual acts of violence are almost entirely from one side.

“What that suggests is that the American people are very frustrated with our democracy, and don’t think it’s working. But Republicans think they can get away with violence, and it’s being normalised by their leaders, whereas Democratic leaders are keeping a check on their side. But that’s not to say that will be forever,” she said.

Underpinning all of this are America’s changing demographics and the diminishing of white political power.

Wintemute’s survey showed that one in three people buys into the far right “great replacement” conspiracy theory that white Americans are being supplanted by minorities – cited by the murderers of dozens of people in recent massacres from Texas to New York state. The “great replacement” theory is also regularly aired on Fox News.

Lilliana Mason, the author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, said the election of the US’s first black president, Barack Obama, in 2008 made race “a really salient issue” for many white voters.

“Then Trump said the quiet part out loud. He started using overtly racist and misogynistic language and creating a permission structure for his supporters to become much more aggressive and intentionally offensive in their rhetoric. That really encouraged not just uncivil behaviour but broke all of these social norms that we had previously considered to be sacred,” she said.

Donald Trump departs Trump Tower in New York City two days after FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters

Trump’s embrace of white nationalist groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, also brought armed militias into mainstream politics, helping them to infiltrate local police forces and the military.

In December, three retired US generals said that Trumpism has infected parts of the armed forces and noted the “disturbing number of veterans and active-duty members of the military” who took part in the attack on the Capitol. They warned of the “potential for lethal chaos inside our military” if the result of 2024 presidential election is disputed.

“The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines – from the top of the chain to squad level – is significant should another insurrection occur. The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the ‘rightful’ commander in chief cannot be dismissed,” they wrote

“It really does feel a pivotal moment in in American democracy,” says Mason. “We’re probably going to see more violence. I don’t think we’ll see less in the immediate future. But, ultimately, the way Americans respond to that violence will determine whether it can be calmed down or whether it spirals out of control.”

Kleinfeld said she is not optimistic.

“We’re getting to a point where if the Trumpist faction wins, I think we’ll see sustained extremely high levels of violence for the foreseeable future. And if they lose, I think it’ll be worse,” she said.

The Guardian · by Chris McGreal · August 20, 2022

21. New Tests Prove How Fearsome the MQ-9 Reaper Drone Really Is

​

New Tests Prove How Fearsome the MQ-9 Reaper Drone Really Is

19fortyfive.com · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · August 18, 2022

Here Comes the MQ-9: The U.S. Air Force recently put one of its most important aircraft through a series of tests in the Indo-Pacific as it prepares for a potential conflict with China.

A Plethora of Tests for the MQ-9 Reaper

The U.S. military recently held the Valiant Shield 22 Exercise in the Indo-Pacific, with several maritime and air units participating.

During the exercise, the primary focus of the MQ-9 Reaper operational test team was to test the unmanned aerial system in Agile Combat Employment (ACE)—which is the ability to quickly forward-deploy throughout an area of operations with little or no notice in order to conduct operations against a near-peer adversary.

“The ability for the plane to land itself lost-link was validated upon initial arrival to Andersen AFB with the crew on the RAMTS passively monitoring. Throughout the exercise, the RAMTS was the only equipment used to generate all sorties. No traditional Launch and Recovery equipment was used,” Lieutenant Col. Michael Chmielewski, the commanding officer of the 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron, said in a press release.

An additional objective of the MQ-9 Reaper operational test team was to test the drone’s utility in the “Killchain acceleration effort” that the Pentagon has been testing recently. The accelerated Killchain aims to integrate a variety of platforms and weapon systems together in order to take out targets more quickly and efficiently. Mastery of this “any-sensor, any-shooter” concept will prove crucial in a potential conflict with a near-peer adversary with advanced combat capabilities, such as China.

“The ESM pod and integration with a C2 Common Operating Picture are emerging capabilities that were assessed for MQ-9 utility in Valiant Shield. The ESM pod proved its ability to give the MQ-9 an all-weather, long-range sensor capable of finding, fixing, and tracking targets of interest to enhance situational awareness and provide actionable targeting solutions as part of the Joint killchain,” Col. Chmielewski added.

Moreover, the MQ-9 Reaper operational test team tested the maritime capabilities of the unmanned aerial system, the long-range firing capabilities of the MQ-9 Reaper combined with the AGM-114 Hellfire missile, and the capabilities of the Electronic Support Measures (ESM) pod that is designed to allow the unmanned aerial system to operate in contested electronic warfare environment.

“Future capabilities, with continued development, show promise for automated features on the leading edge that will feed the battlespace picture, accelerate the killchain, and increase the targeting process lethality,” Col. Chmielewski stated.

A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper, assigned to the 62nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, armed with four GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition, parks on a flightline before a mission on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan Feb. 22, 2018. The 62nd ERS provides close air support, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in Afghanistan.(U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Paul Labbe)

A Hot Theater

Lately, the Indo-Pacific has been raging hot. The visit of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan angered China on an almost unprecedented level. Beijing sent warships and aircraft very close to Taiwan and conducted live-fire exercises all around the small island nation.

“The first-ever landing and departure of an MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle sends a clear message about our ability to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific. USINDOPACOM’s Valiant Shield 2022 exercise was a huge success, demonstrating America’s commitment and capability to defend Palau,” Ambassador John Hennessey-Niland, the U.S. ambassador to Palau, stated.

Expert Biography and Realworld Experience: 1945’s Defense and National Security Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned 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. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

19fortyfive.com · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · August 18, 2022

22. China Is Preparing To Go To War

Excerpts:

“Be ready for battle.” That’s how Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post summarized Chinese ruler Xi Jinping’s first order to the military of 2019. In January of that year, he gave a major speech to the CMC on making preparations for war, and the address was then broadcast nationwide.

Foreign analysts debate whether China is going to war anytime soon. The Chinese political system has become less transparent over time, so it is not clear what senior leaders are thinking.

Yet it is clear what senior leaders are in fact doing. They are getting troops ready for another advance below the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, preparing to seize more Indian territory in the Himalayas. They renewed, in November of last year and this June, attempts to block the resupply of a Philippine outpost at Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea. They ordered four vessels to enter Japan’s sovereign water around the disputed but Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in late July. They are directing continual provocations around Taiwan, including a violation of the island’s sovereign airspace in early February.

And there is something else that is unmistakable: Xi and senior leaders are getting China’s citizens ready for war.

China Is Preparing To Go To War

China expert Gordon Chang makes the case that China is preparing for armed conflict – and could happen quite soon.​

​

19fortyfive.com · by Gordon Chang · August 19, 2022

Last month, a Chinese entrepreneur making medical equipment for consumers told me that local officials had demanded he convert his production lines in China so that they could turn out items for the military. Communist Party cadres, he said, were issuing similar orders to other manufacturers.

Moreover, Chinese academics privately say the ongoing expulsion of foreign colleagues from China’s universities appears to be a preparation for hostilities.

The People’s Republic of China is preparing to go to war, and it is not trying to hide its efforts. Amendments to the National Defense Law, effective the first day of last year, transfer powers from civilian to military officials.

In general, the amendments reduce the role of the central government’s State Council by shifting power to the CMC, the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. Specifically, the State Council will no longer supervise the mobilization of the People’s Liberation Army.

As Zeng Zhiping of Soochow University told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post,

“The CMC is now formally in charge of making national defense policy and principles, while the State Council becomes a mere implementing agency to provide support for the military.”

In one sense, these amendments were window dressing. “Recent changes to China’s National Defense Law that diminish the power of the State Council are largely political posturing,” Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told me soon after the amendments went into effect. “The Chinese Communist Party and particularly its subordinate CMC have always held supreme power over decisions regarding war and peace.”

Why then do we care about the National Defense Law amendments?

The amendments, Fisher tells us, “point to China’s ambition to achieve ‘whole nation’ levels of military mobilization to fight wars and give the CMC formal power to control the future Chinese capabilities for global military intervention.”

“The revised National Defense Law also embodies the concept that everyone should be involved in national defense,” reports the Communist Party’s Global Times, summarizing the words of an unnamed CMC official. “All national organizations, armed forces, political parties, civil groups, enterprises, social organizations, and other organizations should support and take part in the development of national defense, fulfill national defense duties, and carry out national defense missions according to the law.”

As Fisher told 19FortyFive this month, “For the past 40 years, China’s Communist Party has been preparing for brutal war, and now the ruling organization is accelerating its plans.”

The Party, as it readies itself for combat, is leaving nothing to chance. In March, its Central Organization Department issued an internal directive prohibiting the spouses and children of ministerial-level officials from owning foreign real estate or shares registered offshore. The ban also appears to apply to such officials themselves as there are reports of their selling foreign assets. Moreover, such officials and immediate families are not, except in limited circumstances, allowed to open accounts overseas with financial institutions.

The directive, issued soon after the imposition of sanctions on Russian officials for the “special military operation” in Ukraine, appears designed to sanction-proof Chinese officials.

J-10 Fighter.

Moreover, the central government is trying to sanctions-proof itself. On April 22, officials from the finance ministry and central bank met with representatives of dozens of banks, including HSBC, to discuss what Beijing could do in the event of the imposition of punitive measures on China.

The holding of the “emergency meeting,” reported by the Financial Times, is ominous. “The officials and attendees did not mention specific scenarios, but one possible trigger for such sanctions is thought to be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” the FT noted. The fact that Chinese officials held the meeting is a clear indication that Beijing is planning belligerent acts.

“Be ready for battle.” That’s how Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post summarized Chinese ruler Xi Jinping’s first order to the military of 2019. In January of that year, he gave a major speech to the CMC on making preparations for war, and the address was then broadcast nationwide.

Foreign analysts debate whether China is going to war anytime soon. The Chinese political system has become less transparent over time, so it is not clear what senior leaders are thinking.

Image of J-20 fighter. Image Credit: Chinese Internet.

Yet it is clear what senior leaders are in fact doing. They are getting troops ready for another advance below the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, preparing to seize more Indian territory in the Himalayas. They renewed, in November of last year and this June, attempts to block the resupply of a Philippine outpost at Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea. They ordered four vessels to enter Japan’s sovereign water around the disputed but Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in late July. They are directing continual provocations around Taiwan, including a violation of the island’s sovereign airspace in early February.

And there is something else that is unmistakable: Xi and senior leaders are getting China’s citizens ready for war.

A 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and The Great U.S.-China Tech War. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.

19fortyfive.com · by Gordon Chang · August 19, 2022

23. Russia Has Run Out of Long-Range Missiles to Terrorize Ukraine

Excerpts:

Ironically, Ukraine has proven more capable of carrying out a missile campaign that delivers militarily impactful results with accurate strikes on Russian ammunition depots, headquarters, bridges, airbases, and air-defense sites well behind the frontline.

These have caused heavy casualties, drastically reduced the volume of Russian artillery fire, and forced Russia to relocate its supply hubs and warplanes even further from the frontline, significantly decreasing logistical efficiency.

Of course, Ukraine’s standoff-strike campaign has been enabled by GPS-guided rockets/missiles and extensive intelligence assistance for target acquisition supplied by the United States and its NATO allies.

Nonetheless, Russia has burned through over 3,000 expensive long-range missiles with relatively limited results for the effort besides the many Ukrainians angered by death and devastation visited more often than not on civilians in commercial and residential areas as plausible military targets—whether due to inaccuracy or out of a deliberate strategy to shock and terrorize.

Russia Has Run Out of Long-Range Missiles to Terrorize Ukraine​

Russia has fired what seems like countless and expensive missiles at Ukraine. What happens if Moscow can’t replace them? A well-respected military expert walks us through what could happen next.​

19fortyfive.com · by Sebastien Roblin · August 20, 2022

Russia has leveraged its diverse array of long-range missile weapons to bombard targets beyond the frontlines in Ukraine for nearly six months now. By August 8, that reportedly totaled 3,650 missiles launched at Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, implying an average of nearly 22 missiles daily.

But a steep decline in attacks in August suggests the bottom may be falling out of Russia’s missile campaign as it runs out of hi-tech weapons, which it can only replace very slowly.

Since early in the war, Tu-22M and Tu-160 bombers approaching from different vectors have daily lobbed new Kh-101 and older Kh-555 cruise missiles while safely outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses. They were supplemented by Kalibr cruise missiles fired by ships, and submarines. Russia also had in its arsenal truck-launched Iskander-M ballistic missiles, Iskander-K cruise missiles, and even old Tochka ballistic missiles Moscow claimed to have retired.

Earlier in the war, these attacks occasionally achieved militarily relevant results by knocking out fuel depots, weapons factories, hangars with non-operational aircraft, or barracks full of sleeping Ukrainian personnel.

But just as often, and seemingly with increasing frequency, the attacks went astray – or were deliberately targeted against the civilian population – and demolished apartment buildings and shopping malls, performance halls, and civic centers, killing between them hundreds of civilians.

Strikes also sporadically targeted Ukraine’s agricultural sector – on which many impoverished countries depend to avoid starvation – with two missiles striking port facilities in Odesa on July 23, the day after Moscow agreed to a deal giving Ukrainian ships laden with grain free passage. Then at night on July 30-31, eight Kalibr missiles plastered the Odesa home of Ukrainian agro-export tycoon Oleksiy Vadatursky. One precisely struck his bedroom, killing him and his wife Raisa.

But Russia’s missile campaign always had a major sustainability problem: cruise and ballistic missiles are expensive weapons and Russia’s inventory only ran so deep, particularly given Moscow’s need to set aside a reserve in case of a war with NATO.

U.S. intelligence officials also alleged in March they had observed a failure rate varying daily between 20 percent and 60 percent for Russian air-launched cruise missiles, an unverified claim which may relate to severe accuracy problems earlier observed in Russian missile strikes in Syria.

Russia began using weapons not primarily designed to attack land targets, including brand new Bastion anti-ship missiles, old Soviet-era Kh-22 carrier killers cruise missiles, and even S-300 air defense missiles. This rendered the attacks even less accurate and more prone to inflict collateral damage than before.

Now in August, the once-furious missile campaign seems to have petered out, with missiles hurled at Ukraine more sporadically and in smaller numbers. Russia may have finally exhausted most of the missiles not held in its war-with-NATO reserve.

Aviation historian Tom Cooper writes “Russians have run their stocks of ballistic- and cruise missiles ‘dry’. That is: they’ve had much less than [the Kremlin] were claiming, and have spent nearly everything … Net result: they’re down to using whatever their factories manage to assemble.”

Cooper concedes that shorter-range Kh-31 and Kh-59M missiles are still being used effectively for tactical strikes and that Russia also carried out its second-ever strike with the Kh-47 Kinzhal ballistic missiles, air-launched by a MiG-31 fighter on August 7 targeting a factory in Vinnytsia following an initial attack in March. Though the Kinzhal is highly difficult to intercept, it’s only available in pre-production quantities, and therefore can only be employed on a limited basis.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defenses have become more effective at shooting down the incoming missiles, forcing Russia to launch larger salvoes to guarantee some make it through the gauntlet. Cooper notes that Ukrainian air defenses destroyed all four Kalibr missiles launched at Odesa on August 8 (including one shot down by a fighter), and three out of four on July 24.

Rocket science: not as easy as you’ve been told

Can’t Russia just spend the money needed to increase missile production to compensate?

According to analysts, the answer is basically, no—even though Moscow is trying to.

A June article by Maxim Starchak spells out how slowly Russia will be able to replace its exhausted cruise and ballistic missiles despite attempts to increase the pace of production by working three shifts and hiring more workers. Shortages of skilled workers, inability to purchase Western microelectronics and failure to develop domestic components are all culprits.

Based on his figures, monthly missile production rates are as follows:

– Novator plant: 8-10 Kalibr naval cruise missiles* per month

– Novator plant: 3-6 Iskander-K cruise missiles per month (“several dozen [annually]”) per month

– Votkinsk plant: 5 Iskander-M ballistic missiles per month (increased from 4)

[from other sources] 2-4 Oniks anti-ship missiles per month (“several dozen annually”) or 4.5 per month (55 annually) used in Bastion coastal defense system and Russian ships

*The Kalibr comes in faster, shorter-range anti-ship variants; and slower, longer-range land-attack models. Depending on how production is allocated, not all may be built in the land-attack configuration.

According to Starchak, Moscow’s measures will not increase output beyond 20 percent due to a lack of skilled workers. And by June those measures had yet to be implemented at the Tactical Missiles Corporation, a manufacturer of air-launched cruise missiles – which he believes are built at a similar rate as the Kalibr or Iskander missiles.

Furthermore, as Russia scrambles to source alternatives to Western components, the changes will require costly testing and likely reduce reliability and accuracy. Meanwhile, stocks of old Kh-555, Kh-22, and Tochka missiles liberally will of course not be replaced at all as they are obsolete and out of production.

Some believe Russia’s productive capacity may be even more limited. An article by Pavel Luzvin estimates ponderous production by United Engine Corporation of the two variants of TRDD-50 turbojet engines used in missiles will limit annual output to just 45-50 Iskander-K and Kh-59 cruise missiles; and 45-50 Kh-101 and Kalibr cruise missiles.

He more broadly concludes that Russian production of all land-attack cruise and ballistic missiles caps out to 225 annually or about 19 per month. That said, Luzvin’s calculations are in part extrapolated from labor productivity statistics, not directly reported production rates.

He concludes: “In these circumstances, Russia may be limited to carrying out singular but regular missile strikes designed mostly to have a psychological effect, while every few months or so, firing off salvos of tens of missiles against industrial and/or infrastructure objects.”

However, improvements to Ukrainian air defenses (such as Ukraine’s eventual deployment of Western NASAMS and IRIS-T air defense batteries) could render even that limited strategy ineffective, requiring large volleys to over-saturate air defenses.

Ironically, Ukraine has proven more capable of carrying out a missile campaign that delivers militarily impactful results with accurate strikes on Russian ammunition depots, headquarters, bridges, airbases, and air-defense sites well behind the frontline.

These have caused heavy casualties, drastically reduced the volume of Russian artillery fire, and forced Russia to relocate its supply hubs and warplanes even further from the frontline, significantly decreasing logistical efficiency.

Of course, Ukraine’s standoff-strike campaign has been enabled by GPS-guided rockets/missiles and extensive intelligence assistance for target acquisition supplied by the United States and its NATO allies.

Nonetheless, Russia has burned through over 3,000 expensive long-range missiles with relatively limited results for the effort besides the many Ukrainians angered by death and devastation visited more often than not on civilians in commercial and residential areas as plausible military targets—whether due to inaccuracy or out of a deliberate strategy to shock and terrorize.

Expert Biography: Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical, and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National Interest, NBC News, Forbes.com, War is Boring and 19FortyFive, where he is Defense-in-Depth editor. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.

19fortyfive.com · by Sebastien Roblin · August 20, 2022

24. I'm A Former Member of US Army Special Forces: Russia War in Ukraine Could Be Falling Apart

I'm A Former Member of US Army Special Forces: Russia War in Ukraine Could Be Falling Apart

Putin’s war in Ukraine is not going well no matter how you look at it. We asked a former member of U.S. special forces to explain and analyze what is happening right now.

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · August 20, 2022

Ukrainian Attacks In Crimea Having Profound Impact On Russia – The war in Ukraine has reached the point of being a stalemate with very little movement on either side in terms of taking or retaking territory. But recent events have already changed Russia’s actions and, as Western military officials told media members, are having a profound psychological impact.

Attacks in Crimea by Ukrainian forces have expanded the fighting zone deep into Russian-occupied Crimea, where they have previously operated with impunity. Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 and has been used to stage the invasion of southern Ukraine in its attempts to seize all of Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.

Ukraine’s head of the national security council, Oleksiy Danilov, said on Friday that Kyiv would continue to target sites in Crimea as part of a “step-by-step demilitarization of the peninsula with its subsequent de-occupation.”

Ukraine Latest: Black Sea Fleet Reduced to Coastal Defense:

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has suffered setbacks throughout the invasion campaign.

In April, the flagship of the fleet, the cruiser Moskva, was sunk after being hit by anti-ship missiles causing the ammunition to explode. The Russians attempted to tow the cruiser to Sevastopol, but she rolled over and sank during the journey.

Later in June, the Russians were forced to withdraw from the small but strategic outpost of Snake Island, off the southern coast of Ukraine. Russian troops seized the island during the early hours of the war, where a Ukrainian radio operator, after receiving the Moskva’s demand for surrender, responded with, “Russian warship, Go F**k Yourself! The Russian defense ministry framed the withdrawal of the island as a “Goodwill gesture.”

Last month, Russia’s Navy Day parade in Crimea was canceled after a small, homemade drone landed in Russia’s Black Sea headquarters courtyard. Damage was slight, but it had a significant impact. Then came the attack on the Russian airbase at Saki that destroyed eight aircraft and damaged others. It effectively took out half of Russia’s Black Sea aviation assets.

On Monday, Ukrainian partisans acting with Special Forces personnel blew up a large ammunition depot near the coast. On Friday night, explosions were heard near another Russian airbase, and the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters was hit with another explosion.

“Moskva” (“Moscow”) (ex-“Slava”, which means “Glory”) is the lead ship of the Project 1164 Atlant class of guided missile cruisers in the Russian Navy. This warship was used in the 2008 Russia-Georgia War. The Black Sea. Sevastopol bay. This photo was taken from a boat.

Thousands of Russian Citizens on the Black Sea Flee After Attack

The attack on the ammunition depot this week was seen by thousands of Russian citizens on the Black Sea coast, a favorite vacation spot. But the attack profoundly affected those vacationers, as satellite imagery showed a long queue of vehicles leaving Crimea for Russia just after the attack.

For a country that has carefully orchestrated what news is available to Russian citizens and any negative reporting on the invasion can result in long jail terms, this development is important.

Russia thought that this area of the Black Sea was immune from any Ukrainian attacks. The attack has struck home both with the citizens fleeing and the government in Moscow. There seemed to be genuine panic among the civilians, and any government spin can’t hide the fact or stop those fleeing from relaying what happened.

Putin’s Ukraine Problems: Black Sea Fleet Commander Fired

Russia’s Black Sea fleet commander, Igor Osipov, has been replaced after several setbacks by his command were suffered, and its power projection was severely impacted.

Osipov was replaced by Vice Admiral Viktor Sokolov, who vowed that the defensive posture would soon be replaced with further operations that would see control of the entire Black Sea. Russian government-controlled news TASS quoted him as saying that the fleet has been “successfully completing all the tasks set for it” during the “special military operation.”

Service members of pro-Russian troops fire from a tank during fighting in Ukraine-Russia conflict near the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine May 5, 2022. Picture taken May 5, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Sokolov told a group of young officers that he’d been appointed as the acting commander of the Black Sea Fleet, and the fleet will receive 12 new vessels and additional aviation and land-based vehicles later this year. Sokolov had previously been the head of the Admiral Kuznetsov Naval Academy, a post he held since 2020.

Steve Balestrieri is a 1945 National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer, mainly in the 7th SFG. In addition to writing for 19fortyfive.com and other military news organizations, he has covered the NFL for PatsFans.com for over 11 years. His work was regularly featured in the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and Grafton News newspapers in Massachusetts.

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · August 20, 2022

​25. Prof. Pete Pedrozo on “Unpacking the Distinction: One China Principle v. One China Policy”

Excerpts:

Concluding thoughts

Clearly, if either party should reassess its commitments under the Joint Communiqués, it is China. The CCP has obviously not lived up to its commitment to settle the Taiwan issue by peaceful means and its bellicose reactions to the Pelosi visit reaffirm that they have no intentions of settling the issue peacefully.

Based on China’s actions, the United States is justified in walking away from its previous commitments and abandoning the One China Policy. On this basis, the United States should increase arm sales to Taiwan.

That does not mean that the United States needs to recognize Taiwan’s independence. But it does mean that, consistent with Points 5 and 6 of the Six Assurances, the United States will continue to guarantee that Taiwan’s future will be decided by the Taiwanese people, not by the CCP.

Prof. Pete Pedrozo on “Unpacking the Distinction: One China Principle v. One China Policy”

sites.duke.edu · by Charlie Dunlap, J.D. · August 19, 2022

China’s bellicose reaction to U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has significantly increased tensions in the area. Earlier this week China’s ambassador to the U.S. complained that Amercian military activities in the Taiwan Strait had “gone too far”, and called upon the U.S. to “reflect on the true meaning of the One China Principle.”

This raises some obvious questions: What does international law permit U.S. forces to do in the Taiwan Straits? What is the “One China Principle”? How does it differ from the “One China Policy”? What exactly is the U.S.’s policy towards Taiwan? Given China’s aggression, should the U.S. increase arms sales to Taiwan?

To answer those questions and more, we have one of the world’s foremost experts on naval law as well as the Pacific region to help us: my friend Professor Raul (Pete) Pedrozo.

Pete, who is writing here in his personal capacity, is a retired U.S. Navy officer who currently holds the Howard S. Levie Chair on the Law of Armed Conflict, and serves as a professor of international law at the Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College.

So if you’d like to get a better understanding as to why tensions are rising in the Pacific, read on!

Unpacking the Distinction: One China Principle v. One China Policy

By Raul (Pete) Pedrozo

On August 16, 2022, China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, met with a small group of journalists in Washington, D.C. Citing “more than 100 navigations [per year] through the Taiwan Strait and Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Ambassador Qin indicated that U.S. military and political activities in the region had “gone too far” in the region.

He alleged that these activities were designed to embolden separatists in Taiwan and weaken the One China Policy and warned that America should “not underestimate the strong resolve…and capability of the Chinese government and people to defend its territorial integrity.”

In particular, he complained that Pelosi’s visit violated previous U.S. commitments to respect China’s sovereignty and cautioned that the United States must reflect on the true meaning of the One China Principle and refrain from further activities that might escalate tensions between Washington and Beijing.

He concluded the session by saying that he was not “telling lies” or “spreading disinformation,” but was “just telling the truth and the facts.”

The ambassador’s comments should be taken for what they are—Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda. Despite the ambassador’s assurances that he is not “telling lies,” his claim that U.S. warships have transited the Taiwan Strait over 100 times in the last year is simply incorrect.

International law and U.S. activities in the Taiwan Strait

Over the past couple of years, U.S. warships have only transited the strait about once a month—29 total from 2020 to 2022. The USS Benfold transit on July 19, 2022, marks the seventh Taiwan Strait transit in 2022 (six ships and one aircraft).

But, even if U.S. warships and aircraft were to transit the strait 100 times a year, those transits would be permitted under international law as an exercise of high seas freedoms beyond the territorial sea of China and Taiwan.

China recently asserted that it exercises sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the waters of the Taiwan Strait consistent with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and that the term “international waters” does not appear in the international law of the sea.

While these assertions may be true, China does not have the legal authority to restrict transits through the strait beyond 12 nautical miles. The width of the Taiwan Strait ranges from 70 nautical miles to 220 nautical miles, and U.S. warships and aircraft only operate in this area. Accordingly, there is an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) corridor through the strait.

Thus, consistent with Article 36 of UNCLOS, all ships and aircraft enjoy high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight through the EEZ corridor. Regarding “international waters,” while the term does not appear in UNCLOS, it is used for operational purposes (see NWP 1-14M, ¶1.6) as a shorthand way of identifying all waters seaward of the territorial sea where high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight are preserved for the international community.

The term is not used or intended to describe a new maritime zone but rather to accurately depict the lawful navigational regime that applies. China’s obsession with the term is a clear use of legal warfare by the CCP to deflect attention from its attempt to enforce illegal maritime claims that diminish the right of all nations to freedom of navigation.

U.S. and the “One China Principle”

Qin Gang’s admonition that Washington should “reflect on the true meaning of the One China Principle” is also misplaced. Perhaps he should “reflect” on what the United States agreed to in the three Joint Communiqués to better understand the American position.

The One China Principle was first articulated in the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué and it states that there is one China, and that Taiwan is part of China. However, a careful reading of the three Joint Communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the Six Assurances clearly indicates that the United States has never subscribed to the One China Principle.

In the Shanghai Communiqué, the United States simply “acknowledged” China’s position, but did not subscribe to the One China Principle. The United States did, however, “reaffirm its interests in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.”

Similarly, in the 1979 Joint Communiqué establishing diplomatic relations, the United States “recognized” that the People’s Republic of China [PRC] as the sole legal government of China, but stated that it would “maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with…Taiwan.”

U.S. recognition of the PRC as the sole legal government of China was consistent with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 (1971), which recognized the PRC as the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations. Both sides additionally reaffirmed the principles of the Shanghai Communiqué and the United States, once again, “acknowledged” (but did not accept) China’s position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.

Finally, in the 1982 Joint Communiqué, both sides “reaffirmed” the principles agreed to in the 1972 and 1979 Joint Communiqués. The United States also “reaffirmed” its understanding regarding China’s policy to strive for a “peaceful resolution” of the Taiwan question as indicated in China’s Message to Compatriots in Taiwan of January 1, 1979, and the Nine-Point Proposal put forward by China on September 30, 1981.

Regarding arms sales, the United States indicated that it did “not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan.”

In short, none of the Joint Communiqués confirmed that the United States agreed with China’s One China Principle that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China. The parties did agree, however, that the Taiwan issue would be resolved by “peaceful” means.

The Taiwan Relations Act

The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) was adopted several months after the United States established diplomatic relations with China to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific and promote U.S. foreign policy by authorizing the continuation of commercial, cultural, and other relations between the United States and Taiwan (§3301(a)).

Among other things, the TRA reiterates the agreement between the United States and China in the Joint Communiqués on the importance of a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue.

Specifically, the TRA emphasizes that peace and stability in the Western Pacific area are in the political, security, and economic interests of the United States, and are matters of international concern (§3301(b)(2)). Moreover, the TRA makes clear that the U.S. decision to establish diplomatic relations with the PRC rests upon the “expectation” that the future of Taiwan will be determined by “peaceful means” (§3301(b)(3)).

The TRA also cautions that any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by “other than peaceful means,” including by boycotts or embargoes, would be considered a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of “grave concern” to the United States (§3301(b)(4)).

To ameliorate these concerns, the United States will continue to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capability. (§3301(b)(5), §3302(a)).

In the event of any PRC threats to Taiwan and dangers to U.S. interests arising therefrom, the TRA directs the President to inform Congress of any threat to the security or the social or economic system of Taiwan so that the President and Congress can determine, in accordance with constitutional processes, appropriate action to be taken in response to any dangers to U.S. interests arising therefrom (§3302(c)).

The Six Assurances

It is also important to note that, during the negotiations of the third Joint Communiqué, the United States provided Six Assurances to Taiwan.

• First, the United States would not set a date for termination of arms sales to Taiwan.
• Second, the United States would not alter the terms of the TRA.
• Third, the United States would not consult with China in advance before making decisions about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
• Fourth, the United States would not mediate between Taiwan and China.
• Fifth, the United States would not alter its position about the sovereignty of Taiwan which was, that the question was one to be decided peacefully by the Chinese themselves and would not pressure Taiwan to negotiate with China.
• Sixth, and most importantly, the United States would not formally recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

The historical context of the three Joint Communiqués and the TRA makes clear that the United States has never agreed to China’s assertion of a One China Principle.

Moreover, continued adherence to the One China Policy and reduction in the provision of defense articles and services to Taiwan is contingent on the agreed understanding that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.

However, as evidenced by China’s increasingly aggressive behavior and threats towards Taiwan, Beijing has not lived up to its end of the bargain. For example, in 2018, there were no Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) incursions by the PRC.

Yet, between 2019 and August 2022, there have been nearly 2,200 incursions, primarily by PLA fighters (957), but also by H-6K nuclear-capable bombers. In 2021, there were 972 incursions; during the first eight months of 2022, there have already been 827.

As Chinese aggression accelerates, so must U.S. arms sales to ensure Taiwan can defend itself.

Reaction to Speaker Pelosi’s visit

China’s irrational and intense response to Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022 has also been disproportionate and highly antagonistic. Between August 3 to 15, PLA aircraft entered the Taiwan ADIZ on 252 occasions, 185 of which crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

Although China does not officially recognize the existence of the de facto center line, both sides have traditionally respected the unofficial boundary line—between 1954 and 2020 there were only four reported PLA incursions across the line.

The center line would also serve as the point of departure for any future negotiated boundary settlement. In addition to these provocative intrusions across the median line, PLA naval and air forces conduct large-scale military drills and live-fire exercises in six areas around Taiwan, raising speculations that China was practicing for an invasion of the island.

The PLA also launched 11 short-range ballistic missiles that landed in waters northeast, east, and southeast of Taiwan, one of which flew directly over Taiwan. Five of the missiles landed in a highly provocative act which sends an apparent warning to Japan not to interfere in the Taiwan issue.

In addition to continued economic coercion by the PRC, the PLA Eastern Theater Commander stated on August 10 that regular combat patrols and military exercise in the sea and airspace around Taiwan will be the new normal, essentially strangling the democratic stronghold.

Concluding thoughts

Clearly, if either party should reassess its commitments under the Joint Communiqués, it is China. The CCP has obviously not lived up to its commitment to settle the Taiwan issue by peaceful means and its bellicose reactions to the Pelosi visit reaffirm that they have no intentions of settling the issue peacefully.

Based on China’s actions, the United States is justified in walking away from its previous commitments and abandoning the One China Policy. On this basis, the United States should increase arm sales to Taiwan.

That does not mean that the United States needs to recognize Taiwan’s independence. But it does mean that, consistent with Points 5 and 6 of the Six Assurances, the United States will continue to guarantee that Taiwan’s future will be decided by the Taiwanese people, not by the CCP.

About the author:

Captain Raul (Pete) Pedrozo, U.S. Navy (Retired), is the Howard S. Levie Chair on the Law of Armed Conflict and professor of international law at the Stockton Center for International Law, U.S. Naval War College. Prof. Pedrozo was the former senior legal adviser at U.S. Pacific Command and served as special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Disclaimers:

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Naval War College, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect my those of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, or Duke University. (See also here).

Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!

sites.duke.edu · by Charlie Dunlap, J.D. · August 19, 2022

26. A Duty to Disobey?

Excerpts:

Samuel Huntington, in his influential book “The Soldier and the State,” wrote that “loyalty and obedience are the highest military virtues.” In her book, “On Obedience,” philosopher Pauline Shanks-Kaurin qualifies this somewhat: “[U]nreflective obedience is not a virtue and may in fact be a vice and counterproductive to the military function.” How ought Milley’s efforts to serve as a guardrail against what he perceived as Trump’s dangerous impulses be judged in this context?

This question has at least four parts: How far ought the senior military officer go to shape a president’s policy choices? What should the officer do if given an unlawful order? How should the officer respond if given an order that is “lawful but awful”? What other options were available to Milley, and what circumstances might have justified his acting on his own authority to stymie the actions of the president?

...

Walzer’s “Just and Unjust Wars” is a modern classic of moral philosophy, widely admired and cited. In addition to his clear and concise “war convention,” Walzer introduces a controversial concept in the book: supreme emergency. There may be circumstances, Walzer argues, where the continued existence of a political community is in grave peril, and the only way for the community to survive is to commit an act that is ethically wrong. The example Walzer uses is the choice by British leaders during World War II to bomb German cities in order to avoid a Nazi takeover.

It’s possible to consider Milley’s actions in a similar light: The threat posed to the republic by Trump and the apparent unwillingness to act on the part of those constitutionally charged with checks on the presidency left him no other option. Whether or not this reading is accurate is a matter for debate. What Walzer says should follow supreme emergency, however, is not.

“What are we to say about those military commanders (or political leaders) who override the rules of war and kill innocent people in a ‘supreme emergency’? … They have killed unjustly, let us say, for the sake of justice itself, but justice itself requires that unjust killing be condemned.” In other words, an action itself can be unjust—and should be condemned—even if it is part of a broader military effort that is just.

A similar argument might be made regarding Milley’s deliberate choice to undermine the norms of civilian control by choosing to “fight” the elected president. The circumstances were extraordinary. The stakes were high. His choice, at least on the account provided by the New Yorker article, appears to have been made from honorable motives. But the damage to norms of civilian control is real and serious. If the norms of civilian control of the military and military professionalism are to survive, such damage demands condemnation in some form.

A Duty to Disobey?

By Doyle Hodges Friday, August 19, 2022, 9:34 AM

lawfareblog.com · August 19, 2022

Among the many revelations in Susan Glasser and Peter Baker’s recent article in the New Yorker about the last days of Trump’s presidency was that Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, resolved to thwart any orders he received from then-President Donald Trump to deploy troops domestically or to attack Iran without sufficient provocation. As the article details, “[Milley] settled on four goals: First, make sure Trump did not start an unnecessary war overseas. Second, make sure the military was not used in the streets against the American people for the purpose of keeping Trump in power. Third, maintain the military’s integrity. And, fourth, maintain his own integrity.”

As Trump’s presidency drew to a close, according to the article, Milley spoke by phone each morning with the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the White House chief of staff. He frequently called the White House counsel, as well. The goal of these phone calls was to “land the plane,” that is, to ensure that Trump’s presidency concluded with a peaceful transition of power, thereby achieving the four goals Milley had set for himself.

While the article portrayed Milley sympathetically, his actions to frustrate the policy desires of the president are problematic from a civil-military relations perspective. That isn’t to say that the policy goals in question were ethical, legal, moral, or appropriate. Efforts to overturn a free and fair election are none of those things; neither would be orders to start an unprovoked foreign war. The problem is that the military is not the constitutionally prescribed mechanism to keep these things from happening.

Samuel Huntington, in his influential book “The Soldier and the State,” wrote that “loyalty and obedience are the highest military virtues.” In her book, “On Obedience,” philosopher Pauline Shanks-Kaurin qualifies this somewhat: “[U]nreflective obedience is not a virtue and may in fact be a vice and counterproductive to the military function.” How ought Milley’s efforts to serve as a guardrail against what he perceived as Trump’s dangerous impulses be judged in this context?

This question has at least four parts: How far ought the senior military officer go to shape a president’s policy choices? What should the officer do if given an unlawful order? How should the officer respond if given an order that is “lawful but awful”? What other options were available to Milley, and what circumstances might have justified his acting on his own authority to stymie the actions of the president?

The Role of the Chairman in Policy Formulation

The Goldwater-Nichols Act defines the modern role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as “the principal military advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense.” As such, the chairman is authorized (and required) to provide “the range of military advice and opinion” to those officials. The secretary of state, the attorney general, and the White House chief of staff are regular attendees of National Security Council (NSC) meetings, and thus Milley’s advice to them on military matters would have been within the scope of his responsibility as chairman—if the discussions were held under the auspices of the NSC. The fact that other NSC members were not included in the discussions with these officials, however, casts doubt on whether Milley’s daily conversations with them were legitimately part of his advisory responsibility to the NSC.

Whether the discussions related to military advice is also a thorny question. While the New Yorker article did not provide specifics, the implication is that the discussions had to do with a fundamentally political, rather than military, question: Would then-President Donald Trump acknowledge the validity of the 2020 election and peacefully turn over his office to President-elect Joe Biden? Even if the discussions were strictly related to the military’s role in such matters, if conversations were focused on the question of how to keep a president from pursuing a particular course of action, that is a political question.

Such behavior would certainly fall into the category of what civil-military relations scholar Peter Feaver has called “shirking”—working to slow-roll or frustrate the known desires of the decision-maker. The chairman’s role is to present his assessment of the merits and wisdom of possible military responses, as well as to convey any dissenting views from other members of the joint chiefs. That responsibility may, at times, extend to advocating with a senior official for or against a particular course of military action, but discussions with NSC members of how to steer the president away from certain military policy choices is different from working with the president’s high-level advisers outside of the NSC context on political issues—which Milley was apparently at least prepared to do.

Without specific knowledge of the content of the conversations, it’s difficult to conclude definitively whether Milley exceeded his statutory mandate in conferring daily with Mike Pompeo, William Barr, and Mark Meadows. But if the conversations didn’t veer into topics well beyond his opinion on military matters, it’s puzzling why Milley felt it was important to tell reporters about them, and difficult to understand why these conversations would have continued daily during the postelection period.

Actually, Superior Orders Usually Are a Defense.

Supposing Milley had failed to dissuade the president from ordering a rash military action, might he have had a legal or ethical responsibility to disobey the orders as unlawful? Not necessarily—and, in fact, it seems unlikely.

Many people believe that the trials of Nazi leaders after World War II forever precluded superior orders as a defense against charges of illegal action. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg did reject the defense of superior orders, but only in the narrowest terms. In the High Command Cases, the tribunal wrote:

Orders are the basis upon which any army operates. It is basic to the discipline of an army that orders are issued to be carried out. Its discipline is built upon this principle. Without it, no army can be effective and it is certainly not incumbent upon a soldier in a subordinate position to screen the orders of superiors for questionable points of legality. Within certain limitations, he has the right to assume that the orders of his superiors and the State which he serves and which are issued to him are in conformity with International Law.

In practical terms, this guidance from the military tribunal and related dictates are generally understood globally to mean that members of the military must disobey an order that is “manifestly unlawful.” But the standard for manifest unlawfulness is extraordinarily high. The Department of Defense Law of War Manual cites as an example an order to “machine gun” shipwreck survivors. Trump’s threats to strike Iranian cultural sites, kill terrorists’ families, or bring back “waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse” are other examples (although, as I have noted, this last example could be clouded by executive action changing U.S. interrogation guidance). Though these examples illustrate some of the limits imposed by law, a U.S. president can do a lot of mischief without ever issuing an order that is manifestly unlawful.

Milley’s first goal, to “make sure Trump did not start an unnecessary war overseas,” illustrates the challenge. The operative word is “unnecessary.” On the one hand, Milley’s grave concern that Trump would seek to distract from domestic issues and rally support by launching an attack on Iran or another country seems well founded. On the other hand, the president’s war powers are broad and sweeping, and the determination of whether or not a military action is “necessary” is ultimately a determination of the elected president. While not directly comparable, this is similar to the position affirmed by the Court in Gillette v. United States that a person subject to military service claiming conscientious objector status must oppose all war on religious grounds, rather than limiting their objection to one particular war. The military doesn’t get to choose which wars it fights—that responsibility is left to civilians. As such, even the senior military officer doesn’t get to determine whether or not a war is “necessary.”

An order to deploy troops domestically under the Insurrection Act runs into a similar problem: 10 U.S.C. § 332 states, “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may … use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion” (emphasis added). While Trump’s desire to have troops “shoot protesters in the legs” almost certainly does rise to the level of manifest unlawfulness, as would an order to use force against peaceful political opponents, he clearly has a great deal of discretion in determining when the conditions allowing for the domestic deployment of troops have been met. In an environment such as that immediately following the election, when many Americans feared (or rooted for) a coup, the mere deployment of troops into the streets would have crossed a fateful line even if they were strictly constrained in their use of force. Gen. Milley could have strongly advised against such an order, and would have had a responsibility to craft the mission and rules governing the use of force in such a way that they did not violate domestic or international law, but it’s not clear he would have had a legal basis to disobey.

The military’s oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” raises another possible source of legal objection to justify Milley’s efforts to stymie Trump. But the Constitution and federal law charge other offices and institutions—including the Supreme Court, the Office of Legal Counsel, the Department of Defense general counsel, and the legal adviser to the chairman—with determining the legality and constitutionality of orders. Milley’s expertise is in military matters, not constitutional law. If Milley consulted with any of these officials, it was not mentioned in the New Yorker story. None of these individuals or offices are mentioned as participants in the daily phone calls, or listed among those to whom Milley turned for advice and counsel. It is possible this omission reflects that his consultation was so routine that he didn’t think it worth mentioning, but it is unusual that Milley cited no legal opinions from any of these sources in addressing a challenge with significant legal elements and implications.

Disobeying unlawful orders is a critical element of military professionalism and the rule of law. But the nature of presidential powers and authority surrounding the use of force makes it unclear when a hypothetical order by President Trump to attack a foreign power or deploy troops into the streets would rise to the standard of manifest unlawfulness required to trigger disobedience. And, in fact, a large part of the chairman’s role (and that of the officials charged with ensuring the legality of executive action) would be to tailor the implementation of such an order to ensure that it complied with all relevant law.

“Lawful but Awful”: Handling Orders That Are Legal but Wrong

A stronger objection to Trump’s presumed desire to use the military to prolong his tenure is that such orders—even if carefully tailored to avoid legal pitfalls—would be morally wrong. The question of the moral responsibility of military officers for the effects of orders they carry out is a difficult one.

On one end of the spectrum is the advice offered in Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” When on the eve of battle Henry moves in disguise among his men to gauge their spirit, he remarks to one of his men that the king’s quarrel is “just and noble.” One remarks, “that’s more than we know,” joined by another who adds, “Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we know enough if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.” At the other end of the spectrum, philosopher Jeff McMahan has written that soldiers who fight in an unjust war bear full moral responsibility for the killing and harm they do, since they commit these acts in the service of an unjust cause. Shanks-Kaurin’s concept of “reflective obedience” seems to strike a balance between these two extremes, in that it asks officers not to blindly obey, but to consider the moral implications of obedience and disobedience, including the duty and presumption of obedience.

But what ought soldiers—especially one in a senior position such as the chairman—do if given an order they believe to be lawful, but morally wrong?

The options available to soldiers given an order are relatively limited. Boiled down to their essence, a soldier’s options are to obey or disobey. If the order is lawful and moral, obedience is a relatively easy choice. If the order is manifestly unlawful, disobedience is hard, but necessary and justified. The more difficult case is when the order is lawful (or the lawfulness is unclear) but morally repugnant. At that point, as Huntington writes, “this comes down to a choice between his own conscience on the one hand, and the good of the state, plus the professional virtue of obedience on the other.” If Milley had confronted such a situation, the balance would seem to tip toward disobedience, since in his judgment the moral objection to the order was that it would be dangerous to the state.

But disobedience in the military comes at a price, especially when it involves the military’s most senior officer and the elected president. It is impossible to have a military subservient to civilian authority if the most senior military officer refuses to follow the orders of the most senior civilian, no matter the reason. As a consequence, many civil-military scholars argue that an officer confronted with this choice must resign. Unlike a civilian official who may consider “civil disobedience,” so long as they are ready to accept any punishment that results, disobedience by the person who controls the military—which has the means to violently enforce its will if it chooses to—is not an acceptable option.

According to the article, Milley considered resignation, and went so far as to draft a resignation letter. However, he eventually decided that he had a responsibility to try to thwart Trump’s actions rather than resign. “He would not quit. ‘Fuck that shit,’ [Milley] told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage, while also acting in a way that was consistent with his obligation to carry out the orders of his Commander-in-Chief. Yet the Constitution offered no practical guide for a general faced with a rogue President.” Thus, the situation with Milley is complicated further by the fact that he didn’t clearly receive unlawful or immoral orders. Instead, he was actively working with others without the president’s knowledge to prevent such orders from being issued.

While Milley’s rationale is laudable, his actions were not. Politicians are chosen and held accountable by election, impeachment, and political pressure. Generals are not. No one voted for Milley. So there are some decisions Milley didn’t have the authority to make. Choosing to “fight” the president, rather than allowing the constitutionally mandated mechanisms of impeachment or replacement under the 25th Amendment was just such a decision. While Trump could have fired or court-martialed Milley, had Milley’s insubordination been direct and clear, Milley’s attempt to hide it from the president meant that the general was intentionally short-circuiting even that extreme mechanism of accountability. Milley’s decision not to resign but, rather, to force the president to fire or punish him, was a stark departure from the military’s fundamental duty to follow and execute lawful orders from civilian authorities.

It may seem that judging Milley harshly suffers from 20/20 hindsight. He was in an unprecedented predicament, and it’s easy to condemn his actions once the crisis has been averted. Philosopher Michael Walzer helps to explain why such condemnation is necessary, even if Milley’s actions may have been justified by the extreme conditions of the moment.

Supreme Emergency and Its Consequences

Walzer’s “Just and Unjust Wars” is a modern classic of moral philosophy, widely admired and cited. In addition to his clear and concise “war convention,” Walzer introduces a controversial concept in the book: supreme emergency. There may be circumstances, Walzer argues, where the continued existence of a political community is in grave peril, and the only way for the community to survive is to commit an act that is ethically wrong. The example Walzer uses is the choice by British leaders during World War II to bomb German cities in order to avoid a Nazi takeover.

It’s possible to consider Milley’s actions in a similar light: The threat posed to the republic by Trump and the apparent unwillingness to act on the part of those constitutionally charged with checks on the presidency left him no other option. Whether or not this reading is accurate is a matter for debate. What Walzer says should follow supreme emergency, however, is not.

“What are we to say about those military commanders (or political leaders) who override the rules of war and kill innocent people in a ‘supreme emergency’? … They have killed unjustly, let us say, for the sake of justice itself, but justice itself requires that unjust killing be condemned.” In other words, an action itself can be unjust—and should be condemned—even if it is part of a broader military effort that is just.

A similar argument might be made regarding Milley’s deliberate choice to undermine the norms of civilian control by choosing to “fight” the elected president. The circumstances were extraordinary. The stakes were high. His choice, at least on the account provided by the New Yorker article, appears to have been made from honorable motives. But the damage to norms of civilian control is real and serious. If the norms of civilian control of the military and military professionalism are to survive, such damage demands condemnation in some form.

Doyle Hodges is the executive editor of the Texas National Security Review. A retired naval officer, he holds a PhD from Princeton University and has taught at Princeton, George Mason University, and the United States Naval Academy. The opinions here are his own.

lawfareblog.com · August 19, 2022

27. Why is Michael Hayden trying to validate Trump's 'deep state' conspiracy theory?

​Interesting critique. I am pretty sure this analysis was not what General Hayden internded.​

Conclusion:

Continuing on this path, Hayden only ensures that the institutions he served will face evermore skepticism and associated strife the next time a Republican takes office. That plainly would not be good for America.

Why is Michael Hayden trying to validate Trump's 'deep state' conspiracy theory?

by Tom Rogan, National Security Writer & Online Editor |

 August 18, 2022 01:17 PM

Washington Examiner · August 18, 2022

A retired four-star Air Force officer, Michael Hayden spent 41 years in uniform. With respective multiyear tenures at the National Security Agency and the CIA, Hayden led two of the nation's three most powerful intelligence agencies.

Hayden credited himself by that service. He defended CIA officers who had engaged in legally authorized interrogation programs, protecting them from politicians who had supported what the officers were doing but then decided to sacrifice them as the political winds changed. In short, Hayden spent his long career making hard, honorable choices to defend Americans of all political stripes. In this, he encapsulated the best of the intelligence community. Whatever their individual politics, the vast majority of U.S. intelligence officers serve their country because they care about advancing the country's interests and protecting their fellow citizens.

This begs a question: Why is Hayden now so determined to undermine the institutions he once served?

I ask this in light of two tweets that Hayden has recently posted.

First off, Hayden's "sounds about right" response to another tweet referencing the Rosenbergs. That couple was executed in 1953 for acting as Soviet intelligence reporting and recruiting agents. Causing immense damage to U.S. national security, they provided Moscow with nuclear weapons designs. Hayden's tweet played to reports that former President Donald Trump may have retained nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago.

The problem?

We don't yet know what Trump had at Mar-a-Lago. To be clear, as I argued last week, if "Trump retained highly classified information relating to nuclear weapons or intelligence reporting on foreign leaders (Macron?), the FBI likely had a just cause for this search and the relevant investigation."

The problem is that when Hayden, one of the most senior former U.S. intelligence officers, tweets, "Sounds about right," he implies that the case is already closed and that Trump should be put to death. Even if this is an attempt at dark humor, it undermines two key precepts of what is known as the "intelligence cycle," or the process of delivering usable intelligence information.

First, the diligent establishing of quality evidence as a prerequisite for a confident assessment of circumstances. Next, the nonpartisan assessment of those circumstances. Whether he means it or not, by apparently calling for Trump's death, Hayden lends unjust validation to Trump's worst "deep state" conspiracy theory — namely, Trump's claim that the "deep state" isn't out to protect the nation, but rather to obstruct the democratic will of his supporters.

Then came Hayden's tweet on Wednesday, endorsing another post by the Financial Times correspondent Edward Luce.

I agree. And I was the CIA Director https://t.co/LRAHDDyy4n

— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) August 17, 2022

This tweet is problematic in a lot of ways. Even the geolocation tag showing Hayden posted from "McLean, VA" is somewhat problematic in these circumstances. After all, McLean is home to CIA headquarters and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Even if only at the margin, it plays to a "deep state" conspiracy working to undermine one side of the electorate. It doesn't matter that this conspiracy does not exist, except perhaps at senior political levels of certain agencies. Considering that America is a democratic republic in which institutions must retain the trust of the people, even the perception of a conspiracy is damaging.

The larger problem, however, is that both Luce's comment and Hayden's addendum are utterly absurd.

For a senior Financial Times correspondent and a former CIA-NSA-Air Force officer to say that they "have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today's Republicans" is truly stunning. For one, those Republicans are elected by roughly half the nation. But consider a few examples of political forces they are quite literally arguing that the GOP is worse than:

• The Chinese Communist Party, which wages genocide and disappearance campaigns against its own people while seeking to dominate the world.
• The Salafi-Jihadists of the Islamic State and al Qaeda who pursue political power through a warped theology of domination and enforce that power via beheading, torture, kidnapping, and subjugation.
• The United Russia party's inner "Siloviki" circle of corrupt killers around Russian President Vladimir Putin. At least one of whom, I suspect, we will learn has orchestrated a terrible covert war on Americans at Hayden's former places of employment.
• The "Juche" starvation-nuclear weapons terror state of Kim Jong Un's Workers' Party of Korea.
• The Lebanese Hezbollah, which holds Lebanon's political future hostage via a mix of terrorism, corruption, and political obstruction.
• The Iranian regime, which uses its oil to export assassins and destabilization instead of funding domestic development.

Put another way, we can assess with high confidence that Hayden and Luce's tweets represent very poor quality analysis.

Moreover, even if Hayden is infuriated by the Republican Party's support for Trump, his assessment ignores the vast congressional bloc of Republicans who supports those things his Twitter feed suggests he prioritizes. Congressional Republicans have, for example, supported more action than the Biden administration in the defense of Ukraine, Taiwan, and a democratic order that serves American values and prosperity.

As a retired senior military officer and CIA-NSA director, Hayden's first responsibility is to use prudent rhetoric rather than launch hyperventilating political attacks. That Trump's reflex veers heavily toward the latter approach is deeply unfortunate but also, at least here, irrelevant. Trump is a politician. Hayden was a career public servant supposedly above the partisan fray. Current Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines offers a far better example here, seeking as she does to ensure that America trusts its intelligence community instead of viewing it as a hidden enemy.

Continuing on this path, Hayden only ensures that the institutions he served will face evermore skepticism and associated strife the next time a Republican takes office. That plainly would not be good for America.

Beware generals bearing tweets.

Washington Examiner · August 18, 2022

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​28. Demystifying the Art of Assessment & Selection

Conclusion:

As the contemporary security environment continues to change and world’s technological landscape flatten, we are reminded that the capable human is still our nation’s greatest and most reliable investment. We look to history, our fellow services and in some cases industry to share lessons learned on the best way to assess, select, and train the right people in the right way to accomplish the most challenging of missions. Coming full circle, we return to the question that was initially posed, “Why do we conduct A&S?” Despite the litany of in-depth discussions that were had about the science, operations and organizational aspects associated with Assessment and Selection, in the end, the answer was simple: Good people. It is good people that are the key to developing and maintaining high performing teams and organizations. It is good people that will ensure ARSOF is postured and ready to compete, deter, and win against adversaries, anywhere and at any time. And it is good people that the SWCS Assessment and Selection programs that will continue to find every day to fill its precious ranks.

Demystifying the Art of Assessment & Selection

By Maj. Gen. Patrick B. Roberson, Maj. Stuart Gallagher, and Maj. Kurtis Gruters, PhD

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/demystifying-art-assessment-selection

Introduction

You are alone in the back woods of North Carolina. It is ten o’clock at night, pitch black and cold as hell. The rain is coming down in sheets… sideways? Your legs are on fire from the seemingly endless number of physical events you have conducted since arriving at the course. Your back and shoulders are screaming at you from the eighty pounds of gear that you are carrying. To add insult to injury, the blister on your right foot just ripped open for the third time causing you to limp through the uneven and heavily forested terrain. As you look at your map yet again to regain your bearings, you ask the uncaring rocks and trees around you, “What in the hell am I doing?!” No response. They have no pity for you.

This is a typical day at Special Forces Assessment and Selection. For most civilians, this scenario may sound like a form of cruel and unusual punishment. At the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS), it is a job interview. Eight times a year, soldiers travel to Fort Bragg from all over the world to attend Assessment and Selection (A&S) to see if they have what it takes to become a member of the elite Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF).

Soldiers attending Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) participate in a team event during Team Week. (Taken from DVIDS)

Photo by K. Kassens

United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School

Whether it is a Fortune 500 company or an elite military unit, good or bad, every organization has some type of systemic process to recruit, assess, select, and train its personnel. Although these processes vary widely in their design and implementation, all organizations ultimately have the same goal: field the force with the right people and accomplish the organizational mission. During the summer of 2020, SWCS embarked on an ambitious initiative to holistically overhaul its training pipelines, paying particular attention to information management and the inclusion of data analytics in order to improve overall efficiency of assessing, selecting and training ARSOF. In the midst of this overhaul, a simple, yet highly relevant question was posited: “Why?” Why do we do it? What does Assessment and Selection accomplish that other job search methods cannot? The purpose of this article is to address this question, to reflect within the ARSOF community on why this process is so important, and to demystify a process that to others may seem like some sort of obscure ritual or rite of passage.

Army Special Operations – A Brief History

Modern day United States Special Operations Forces trace a lineage back to the nation’s birth. During the Revolutionary War, Francis Marion, aka the “Swamp Fox,” assembled a rag-tag group of American colonists skilled in guerilla tactics learned from Native American warriors of the day. These tactics were employed against the British forces to devastating effect. Fast forward to 1941 when the United States was drawn into World War II. The nation quickly realized the need for non-traditional military capabilities to support French and other allied resistance forces. The solution: the establishment of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

The OSS faced the daunting task of assessing, selecting, training, manning, and equipping a force of clandestine warriors capable of conducting covert missions in short order. These small teams would operate behind enemy lines with little information, limited support, and unclear objectives. In concert with and under the tutelage of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), the OSS developed the United States’ first formal process to assess, select and train special operations personnel. They used a systematic approach that required candidates to demonstrate the fitness, cunning, and resilience that would be essential to their jobs. This approach was further formalized in 1948 with the publication of extensive testing and field notes in the document Assessment of Men: Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Services. This book outlined the rigorous scientific process the OSS staff used to assess, select and train our nation’s clandestine warriors. Although SWCS would not be formally established as the training center for ARSOF until decades later, the legacy of the OSS and its approach to, and rationale for, assessment and selection continues today.

Modern Day Application

ARSOF prosecutes some of the country’s most complex and sensitive military missions with minimal support, under austere and physically demanding conditions, in highly ambiguous environments. This takes a certain caliber of person: someone who demonstrates high physical and technical acumen; someone who exhibits exceptional moral and ethical judgment with little oversight; and someone who believes success is possible and pursues it against all odds. While this could be the ideal profile for many occupations in the civilian world, it is absolutely critical for ARSOF. Anything less can result in significant loss of life, international turmoil, or in some cases both.

Soldiers attending Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) participate in a team event during Team Week. (Taken from DVIDS)

Photo by K. Kassens

United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School

In modern military parlance, the term Assessment and Selection refers to any of the various programs used by the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community to determine who will be allowed into the community for further training as a SOF soldier. This includes the likes of Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS), Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUDS), Marine Special Operations Command Assessment and Selection (MARSOC A&S) and Air Force Special Warfare Assessment & Selection (AF SWAS). Additionally, this applies also to paramilitary law enforcement organizations such as the Border Patrol’s BORTAC (Border Patrol Tactical Group), the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s HRT (Hostage Rescue Team) and police Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT). To those aware of or associated with these programs, they convey a certain sense of awe and respect. To those who have completed one of them, the programs are considered an essential rite of passage to ensure quality and trust in the organization.

The Why

Whatever the deeper connotation, the pragmatic reality is that A&S is essentially a job interview, even if it happens to be a particularly uncomfortable one. Like any job interview, the core purpose is to determine whether a candidate is 1) A good fit for the organization (and vice versa); and 2) Whether they are sufficiently trainable for the work at hand. Critical to this function is defining “a good fit”, determining “sufficiently trainable”, and establishing the threshold for when to accept risk in selecting or not selecting a particular candidate.

ARSOF A&S courses at SWCS (namely, Special Forces, Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs) are specifically structured to assess candidates along eight core attributes: Integrity, Courage, Perseverance, Personal Responsibility, Professionalism, Adaptability, Team Player, and Capability. These attributes are defined and reinforced through routine and detailed analysis of the job requirements. Without these attributes, an individual cannot and will not succeed in ARSOF, and worse yet, may cause irreparable harm to national interests. By linking the job interview to the critical attributes required for the job, ARSOF maximizes the likelihood that it will hire the correct personnel for the job.

What makes the ARSOF A&S process particularly effective is the application of physical, mental, and emotional duress. A&S itself generally has three major components: 1) An assessment of the candidate’s individual capability at present; 2) An assessment of the candidate’s ability to learn and apply a new skill set; and 3) An assessment of the candidate’s ability to work as part of a team. These phases are all conducted under conditions of high physical and emotional stress. The added stress is in part to assess physical fitness and stress tolerance, but perhaps more importantly, it allows evaluators to assess performance in conditions that reflect the reality of the job. ARSOF soldiers are often in positions where the stress and fatigue of a mission takes up any cognitive reserves left to that individual, yet they still must perform. By physically and emotionally exhausting candidates, it is possible to see who they are at their very core – Put it another way, they are simply too tired to put up the social barriers one might normally use to hide characterological flaws or interpersonal weaknesses. It also demonstrates what sort of cognitive capability each candidate has “in reserve”; do they continue to demonstrate sound judgment and problem solving even when completely and thoroughly exhausted?

It is important to note that nothing about the A&S process is difficult just for the sake of being difficult. Everything about it is designed to assess the likelihood that a potential candidate will be capable of doing the job; nothing more, nothing less. Those that are selected are deemed to have a sufficiently low risk of failing the required standards. This individual risk must be balanced against risk at the organizational level – specifically, of not being able to maintain a force of sufficient strength to execute the unique ARSOF mission. However, that individual risk cannot be compromised due to the cost of getting it wrong. Under this constraint, balancing risk at the organizational level requires constant refinement at recruitment, A&S, and training rather than any compromise of individual standards.

As with many technical jobs, ARSOF soldiers have a skill set that is rarely found outside of the organization. Accordingly, candidates are not assessed under the assumption that they can do the job right away, but rather for their potential to do the job after training. ARSOF is both physically and mentally demanding, and the technical parts of the job are only more so under stress. Where a lapse in characterological fitness can result in critical harm to the nation, low physical or cognitive fitness can similarly result in mission failure. Special Operations candidates must demonstrate they are exceptional with respect to physical fitness and intelligence out of necessity of the job. The ARSOF job interview is designed to assess this. Moreover, A&S informs leadership with regard to whom they should invest. Only those who show that they can work and learn under extreme pressure and fatigue will be selected to enter the training pipeline.

The Art of Risk Management

Talent acquisition is a constant balance between the need to fill the force with exceptionally qualified individuals and the need to ensure the force is adequately manned to serve the nation. This sets up what appears to be a direct tradeoff between maintaining quality (or standards) versus achieving sufficient quantity. We cannot and do not accept this notion. As the Special Operations Forces (SOF) maxim states, SOF cannot be mass produced; each individual is hand-picked and carefully trained for their job. Further, Special Operations leadership cannot risk leaving the nation unable to respond with SOF capabilities. The stakes are simply too high to accept risk in sacrificing quality or quantity. The goal, then, is to cast as wide a net as possible in recruitment, then enabling the risk management process to unfold from there.

FIGURE 1

Figure 1 illustrates how to conceptualize the ARSOF talent acquisitions process. It includes four phases: Recruitment, Assessment, Training, and Operations. At recruitment, the talent population is random and at low probability of seeking and finding the right person for the job. As the process progresses, the population moves through a series of filters that serve as key decision points necking down the talent pool at each phase, increasing the probability of finding the right person for the job. The “input”, or recruitment, side (far left) includes a pool of potential recruits, some of whom are truly a good fit for ARSOF (denoted with green dots) while others are a poor fit (denoted with red dots). A “good fit” in this case means someone who will perform at or above the unchanging operational standards of exceptional ethical and moral judgement, and with high physical, psychological, and cognitive fitness throughout their career. By filter three, there is little to no possibility that the ARSOF talent acquisition process is vulnerable to random chance. Nearly every individual is a “good fit” for ARSOF.

Army Special Forces soldiers conduct shooting range at training support activity Europe

Photo by Jason Johnston (Photo taken from DVIDS)

Importantly, we cannot actually know this truth about any individual in advance, we can only infer it through process. Although a soldier could look good on paper during recruitment, there is no way to inherently know from the outset (at recruitment) whether someone is a good or poor fit. This requires the organization to estimate “goodness of fit” based on collected evidence. Depending on the amount and type of evidence, a poor fit can look a lot like a good one, so the goal is to separate the two populations as much as possible. Each of the three major filters during talent acquisition is defined on the collection and processing of evidence, designed according to each phase to cut as many of the poor fit cases as possible while having minimal impact on the good fit population. In statistics, this is referred to as precision (in our case, rejecting only poor fit cases without impacting good fit cases) and recall (finding as many of those poor fit cases as possible). Ultimately, the details of the filter design — both with respect to evidence collected and analytics performed — reflect the artistry of risk management.

The process starts with recruitment, where the goal is to have a blunt filter to remove as many clearly poor fit cases as possible with effectively no impact on the pool of potential good fit candidates; that is, aim for high precision, but with an acceptable level of sub-optimal recall. This filter has to be balanced by reality: what is readily available in routine service records and what recruiters can realistically accomplish with their resources across an array of non-standardized recruitment locations around the globe. Most of this filter is practical in nature, identifying those potential recruits who are at least minimally physically fit, have promotion potential based on rank and time in grade, etc... The available evidence at this point is not particularly effective at sorting the two populations, but it does allow SWCS to rule out a lot of definite poor fit candidates.

At A&S, SWCS standardizes the assessment and conducts targeted examinations to focus on those qualities that do a great — though not perfect — job at distinguishing between a good and poor fit. Moreover, this can be done at relatively low cost in both time to the candidates and resources to the organization. Thus, A&S becomes the primary phase to sort good fit from poor fit after the more pragmatic filter of recruitment is applied. This much tighter filter at A&S results in a population that is generally of very good fit with only a few missed cases of poor fit making it through. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of some good fit cases, though there is always a concerted effort made to limit the impact on this population. In the future, as data collection and analytics improve, SWCS will be able to better differentiate the poor fit from good fit cases, allowing better rejection of poor cases while impacting fewer of the good. The inset in Figure 1 illustrates how analytics can both lower the ceiling for poor cases and raise the floor for good cases. This results in better distinction between the two populations and a smaller homogenous region in the center.

When the soldiers get to training, most of the population will be a good fit, as A&S has filtered out the poor fit candidates. The filter points in this phase are usually relegated to significant and uncorrectable failures in academics, behavioral issues that were previously unobserved, or unforeseeable circumstances such as major injury. This phase helps remove the last few poor fit candidates that are still functionally differentiable from good fit candidates.

The last phase, operations, focuses on the operational force, where the goal is to assume minimal risk – more specifically, a soldier failing standards and/or harming the mission and/or nation. At this point, it is expected that ARSOF personnel have the necessary knowledge, skills, and attributes to perform their jobs and represent the enterprise. Unfortunately, no effort to predict long-term human behavior is perfect. Some poor fit candidates will make it through the entire process regardless of the A&S system used, translating to a certain level of risk assumed by the respective organization and its leadership. However, this level of risk is acceptable and unquestionably better than the alternative of not utilizing an A&S course at all.

Special Forces candidates assigned to the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School exit a Blackhawk helicopter during Robin Sage training exercise. 

Photo by K. Kassens (Photo taken from DVIDS)

Assessment & Selection for an Ever Evolving Security Environment

Since the days of the OSS, the ARSOF A&S process has been designed and refined over time to assess an individual’s ability to succeed, with training, in the unique job of an ARSOF soldier. In this vein, SWCS’s recently established Plans and Analysis section has worked diligently to place data capture and analysis at the forefront of the ARSOF force production cycle employing a recently implemented online performance collection application, which is utilized for all ARSOF training pipelines. Using this data and cutting edge analytics, SWCS has begun to identify where the organization can optimize the entire system by: 1) Recruiting more effectively, 2) Refining the risk analysis at A&S, and 3) Personalizing the training that follows. While ARSOF A&S has always been a data-informed process since the days of the OSS, modern approaches to analytics have opened the door for maximizing the quality and quantity of ARSOF graduates while simultaneously minimizing the cost, thus promoting maximum efficiency. This is a significant shift in the cultural mindset to employ across the ARSOF enterprise as one must break down the barriers of past, while simultaneously ushering new systems and a new ways of thinking about data and its usage.

This new approach to data collection and consumption has inevitably placed new demands on the organization. However, as Great Power Competition (GPC) moves to the fore, the world becomes increasingly more complex and warfare more nuanced. As such, the demands placed upon ARSOF personnel also grow more challenging. And although ARSOF will continue to do what they have always done when they answered the call, the nation’s leaders will undoubtedly require more of its ARSOF soldiers. Hence, moving forward it will be more important than ever for ARSOF leadership to be creative and push the limits of the force while maintaining high standards and balancing risk with respect to force requirements and mission accomplishment. 

Bryant Hall – Headquarters to the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School located at Ft. Bragg, NC. 

Photo by Maj. Stuart E. Gallagher

Conclusion

As the contemporary security environment continues to change and world’s technological landscape flatten, we are reminded that the capable human is still our nation’s greatest and most reliable investment. We look to history, our fellow services and in some cases industry to share lessons learned on the best way to assess, select, and train the right people in the right way to accomplish the most challenging of missions. Coming full circle, we return to the question that was initially posed, “Why do we conduct A&S?” Despite the litany of in-depth discussions that were had about the science, operations and organizational aspects associated with Assessment and Selection, in the end, the answer was simple: Good people. It is good people that are the key to developing and maintaining high performing teams and organizations. It is good people that will ensure ARSOF is postured and ready to compete, deter, and win against adversaries, anywhere and at any time. And it is good people that the SWCS Assessment and Selection programs that will continue to find every day to fill its precious ranks.

Veritas Et Libertas!

About the Author(s)

Kurtis Gruters

Maj. Kurtis Gruters, PhD, is the Chief Science Officer for the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Operations Center and School. He has previously served in various research and analysis positions around US Army Special Operations Command and remains active in brain health studies in the command and outside of the military. His PhD is in systems neuroscience from Duke University where he was commissioned through ROTC, and he holds a Masters of Science in computational analytics from Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Stuart Gallagher

Maj. Stuart Gallagher is the Chief, G3/5 Plans and Analysis for the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Operations Center and School. His former assignments include: Senior PSYOP Observer Coach Trainer at the Joint Multinational Training Center, Hohenfels, Germany, Company Commander, 6th PSYOP Battalion, Ft. Bragg, NC and Military Advisor to the US Department of State, Washington D.C. Major Gallagher is a graduate of Marist College holding a degree in Russian Area Studies and National Defense University holding a Masters of Arts in Strategic Security Studies. 

Patrick B. Roberson

Maj. Gen. Patrick B. Roberson is the Commander and Commandant of the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. His former assignments include: Commander, Special Operations Joint Task Force-Operation Iraqi Resolve, Deputy Chief of Staff, United States Army Reserve Command, and Deputy Commanding General – Operations, 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne), where he also served as the Deputy Commanding General for the Special Operations Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve. Maj. Gen. Roberson is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Advanced Military Studies War College Fellowship.  

​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com