Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Note: I will be in Korea for the next week so my daily news analysis timing will change. I will be participating in the international One Korea Forum (hosted by, among others, The Global Peace Foundation) with this year's event focused on "Free and Unified Korea: A Catalyst for Regional and Global Peace and Development." And then we will celebrate Korean Liberation Day on August 15th.

Quotes of the Day:

"Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance."

- Agnes Repplier

“Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector...and miss.”

- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right."

- H.L. Menchen

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 9 (Putin's War)

2. With Enough Help, Ukraine Can Win

3. Military Recruitment Woes Endanger National Security By Michael R. Bloomberg

4. New ‘Influence Triad’ Will Fuse SOF, Cyber, and Space Command Satellite Intelligence

5. U.S. Will Spend $89M To Eradicate Russian Landmines In Ukraine

6. China reaffirms threat of military force to annex Taiwan

7. What ever happened to the “rules-based international order?”

8. A US-China War Over Taiwan Isn't Happening Anytime Soon

9. China drills show ambitions beyond island, Taiwan warns

10. Ukraine Live Briefing: Ukraine special forces behind deadly Crimea strike, official says

11. $1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

12. The President Needs the Power to Fire Bureaucrats

13. New Army recruiting ad continues crusade against civilian workforce

14. The U.S. lost track of why it was in Afghanistan, former commander says

15. FDD | Senior Pakistani Taliban leader reportedly killed in Afghanistan

16. The ‘forever war’ against the West

17. Pentagon Contractors in Afghanistan Pocketed $108 Billion Over 20 Years

18. Opinion | What’s up with Amnesty International and its moral myopia on Ukraine?

19. Chinese Official Says Taiwan Is Part Of China Because It Has Many Chinese Restaurants

20. The FBI’s golden Chinese intelligence asset was a double agent the whole time

21. What Makes the Green Berets Special? A Former Army Special Forces Officer Explains

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 9 (Putin's War)

Maps/Graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-9

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 9

Aug 9, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, Angela Howard, Katherine Lawlor, Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

August 9, 7:45 pm ET

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

The Ukrainian General Staff made no mention of Izyum in its 1800 situational report on August 9, nor did other prominent Ukrainian sources despite Western sources’ claims of an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in this area. This silence represents a noteworthy departure from previous Ukrainian coverage of the Kharkiv-Donetsk axis.

Russian and Ukrainian sources reported a series of large explosions deep within Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and Crimea on August 9, but Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for them as of the time of this publication. Social media users reported witnessing 12 loud explosions at the Saky airbase in Novofedorivka on the Crimean western coast.[1] Social media footage only showed the large cloud of smoke and the aftermath of the incident.[2] Social media footage also showed a large smoke cloud near Novooleksiivka in Henichensk district, in the vicinity of the Kherson Oblast-Crimean border.[3] Advisor to the Kherson Oblast Administration Serhiy Khlan reported that explosions occurred on the Russian ammunition base but noted that there is no official confirmation of Ukrainian involvement in the incident.[4]

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that several aircraft munitions detonated in the storage areas of the Saky airbase due to poor fire protocol, rejecting reports that Ukrainian strikes or sabotage at the military facility caused the explosions.[5] The Russian Defense Ministry added that the incident did not result in any casualties or damage to Russian aviation equipment. The Russian Health Ministry claimed that five civilians were wounded in the incident, however.[6] Social media footage also showed firefighters extinguishing a burning plane, which also contradicts the original Russian Defense Ministry claim.[7] Russian-appointed Head of Crimea Sergey Aksyenov claimed that Russian officials are only evacuating a few residents in homes near the airbase, but social media footage showed long traffic jams approaching the Crimean bridge and the departure of several minibusses, reportedly with evacuees.[8] Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan claimed that the incident was a result of sabotage rather than a missile or rocket strike.[9] Russian milbloggers voiced differing opinions regarding the origin of the strike, with some speculating that Ukrainian forces used US-provided long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS).[10] Ukrainian forces do not have the ATACMS systems, however.

The Kremlin has little incentive to accuse Ukraine of conducting strikes that caused the damage since such strikes would demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defense systems, which the Ukrainian sinking of the Moskva had already revealed. ISW does not yet have any basis independently to assess the precise cause of the explosions. The apparent simultaneity of explosions at two distinct facilities likely rules out the official Russian version of accidental fire, but it does not rule out either sabotage or long-range missile strike. Ukraine could have modified its Neptune missiles for land-attack use (as the Russians have done with both anti-shipping and anti-aircraft missiles), but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis at this time.

Russia launched an Iranian satellite into orbit on August 9 that could be used to provide military intelligence on Ukraine. Iranian Space Agency Head Hassan Salariyeh stated that the remote-sensing satellite, Khayyam, has a one-meter camera resolution.[11] Khayyam has already begun broadcasting telemetry data.[12] Iranian officials have denied that another state will have access to satellite feed at any point, but Western intelligence officials have claimed that Russian authorities will maintain access.[13]

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.

Key Takeaways

Russian forces conducted ground attacks to the southeast of Siversk and around Bakhmut.
Russian forces conducted ground attacks north of Donetsk City and southwest of Donetsk City near the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border.
Several large explosions hit Russian positions near Sevastopol and north of Crimea, but Russia did not blame Ukraine for them and Ukraine has not taken credit for them.
Russia launched a surveillance satellite for Iran.
Western media has reported that a Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway near Izyum, but the Ukrainian General Staff was notably completely silent about the area in its evening report.
Russian sources suggested that recently-formed volunteer battalions are responsible for much of the Izyum sector.
Ukrainian officials claimed that Russian forces continued to fire artillery systems from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russian officials are continuing to take prominent roles in preparing for the sham referenda in Russian-occupied regions despite Kremlin claims that Russia is not conducting the referenda.

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 and Luhansk Oblasts
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)

The Ukrainian General Staff and local officials reported that Russian forces continued to shell settlements north, west, and south of Izyum and along the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border in the Slovyansk direction on August 9.[14]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks east of Siversk on August 9. Ukrainian artillery forced Russian forces to retreat from an attempted ground assault in the Spirne area (13 km southeast of Siversk).[15] Russian forces similarly retreated after a reconnaissance-in-force effort near Ivano-Darivka (10 km southeast of Siversk) following Ukrainian bombardment.[16] Russian troops continued to shell Siversk and nearby settlements and targeted Hryhorivka with an airstrike.[17]

Russian forces conducted several ground attacks in the Bakhmut area on August 9. The Ukrainian General Staff acknowledged that Russian forces led a partially successful advance in the direction of Vershyna (13 km southeast of Bakhmut) as well as failed offensive operations toward Yakovlivka, Bakhmut, and Zaitseve.[18] Ukrainian forces repelled Russian reconnaissance-in-force efforts around Pidhorodne (5 km northeast of Bakhmut), Vesele (10 km northeast of Soledar), Yakovlivka (6 km northeast of Soledar), Soledar, and Bakhmut.[19] Russian media amplified claims from Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Deputy Internal Minister Vitaly Kiselev that the LNR’s 6th Cossack Regiment has partially occupied and held portions of the Knauf Gips Donbas gypsum factory southeast of Soledar since an unspecified date.[20] ISW cannot independently verify these claims, however. The UK Ministry of Defense assessed that Russian forces have advanced only about 10 km in the Bakhmut direction over the past 30 days, and these incremental advances along the Bakhmut axis constitute Russia’s most successful front along the Donbas axis.[21] Russian forces continued shelling of and airstrikes on settlements in the Bakhmut direction on August 9.[22]

Russian forces continued ground attacks northwest of Donetsk City on August 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted failed offensive operations near Krasnohorivka (16 km north of Donetsk City), Avdiivka (15 km north of Donetsk City), and Pisky (11 km northwest of Donetsk City).[23] Russian milbloggers continued to claim Russian control of Pisky on August 9 but there is insufficient basis to extend the assessed Russian control from central Pisky.[24] DNR officials also claimed unspecified gains in the Avdiivka direction, which ISW cannot confirm.[25] Ukrainian forces neutralized Russian reconnaissance-in-force attempts toward the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border near Velyka Novosilka and Vremivka (75 km west of Donetsk City).[26] Russian-led forces continued to target settlements across southwestern Donetsk with artillery and airstrikes.[27]

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 conducted no confirmed ground assaults near Kharkiv City on August 9. Russian forces continued active fighting along current lines and conducted an airstrike near Verkhniy Saltiv.[28] The Ukrainian General Staff also noted continued Russian UAV aerial reconnaissance operations.[29] Russian forces continued routine shelling of Kharkiv City and surrounding settlements with tanks, tube and rocket artillery, and unspecified missiles.[30]

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

Russian forces maintained defensive positions along the southern frontline and did not conduct offensive operations on August 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to launch airstrikes at Bila Krynytsya and Andriivka, in the vicinity of the Ukrainian bridgehead near the Inhulets River, and on Ukrainian positions in Olhine and Osokorkivka near the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[31] Russian forces also conducted aerial reconnaissance in northern Kherson Oblast and continued artillery fire along the line of contact in the region.[32] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) intercepted a Russian servicemen’s call in which he stated that Russian forces operating in Kherson Oblast do not have enough manpower to conduct an offensive operation.[33] Mykolaiv Oblast officials also reported that Russian forces shelled the outskirts of Mykolaiv City and launched rockets from the Uragan multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) at Bereznehuvate, approximately 20 km northwest of the Ukrainian bridgehead.[34]

Russian forces are reportedly continuing to neglect the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline in favor of Donetsk and Kherson Oblast efforts. Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration Head Oleksandr Starukh noted that Russian forces are periodically concentrating forces in Zaporizhia Oblast to redistribute them to Donetsk or Kherson Oblast directions.[35] Starukh added that Ukrainian military command assesses a low risk of Russian offensive operation in Zaporizhia Oblast but specified that combat operations continue at the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command did not report any changes in the Russian troop composition in Kherson Oblast on August 9.[36]

Ukrainian officials maintained that Russian forces are continuing to fire using artillery systems situated at the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces fired 80 Grad MLRS rockets at Nikopol from firing positions on the opposite bank of the Kakhovka Reservoir.[37] Starukh stated that Russian forces continue to use the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP to shell Nikopol and use the plant as a nuclear shield.[38]

Ukrainian officials and social media users reported several explosions at Russian military bases and ammunition depots across the Southern Axis on August 8 and August 9. Advisor to the Kherson Oblast Administration Serhiy Khlan reported that a Russian ammunition depot suffered secondary explosions for over an hour and a half in Novooleksiivka near Henichensk (approximately 35 km north of the Crimean border).[39] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported a series of explosions at the Russian Saky airbase in occupied Novofedorivka, western Crimean coast.[40] Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov also reported 10 explosions at Russian military bases in the western part of Melitopol.[41] Ukrainian officials have not taken responsibility for the strikes on Russian military infrastructure as of the time of this publication. The Southern Operational Command only confirmed that Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions in Snihurivka (approximately 31 km east of Mykolaiv City) and two command posts in the Berislav and Khersonskyi districts.[42]

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

Kremlin-affiliated outlet Kommersant reported that Russian federal subjects (regions) formed over 40 volunteer battalions, confirming (and/or repeating) ISW’s assessments of Russian regional force generation campaigns.[43] ISW has previously identified that federal subjects formed 41 volunteer battalions and units throughout Russia. Kommersant notably did not report on the formation of the Moscow-based “Sobyaninskyi” Regiment that began recruitment on July 1.[44] Kommersant confirmed that St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hometown, is forming three volunteer battalions “Kronstandt,” ”Neva,” and “Pavlovsk” exclusively composed of the city’s residents. St. Petersburg outlet “Fontanka” previously reported that one of the St. Petersburg battalions is an artillery unit.[45] Kommersant identified three new volunteer units from Tomsk, Amur, and Irkutsk Oblasts: Tomsk Oblast is forming the “Troyan” Battalion, Irkutsk Oblast is recruiting for the “Angara” Battalion, and Amur Oblast is expecting to recruit 400-500 volunteers for the “Amurskyi” Motorized Rifle Battalion.

Kommersant also identified the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian federal subject governments, and existing military units as responsible for supplying and preparing individual volunteer battalions. In the example of the Primorskiy Krai-based “Tigr” Volunteer Battalion, the Russian Pacific Fleet provides recruits with ammunition and body armor, Primorskiy Krai supplies clothes and special equipment such as radios, and the Russian Defense Ministry dispenses weapons. If this pattern of responsibility distribution is common for all federal subjects, then some poorer federal subjects are likely to provide lower quality special equipment than other regions. Kommersant’s interview with an unnamed Russian federal official further suggests that the Russian Defense Ministry or the Kremlin ordered federal subjects to set informational and financial conditions for the establishment of the volunteer units, as ISW assessed on July 13.[46]

Kommersant’s report further showcases the involvement of the Kuban Cossack Host (Army) during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in its force generation efforts. The report noted that about 1,200 Cossacks are participating in the Russian hostilities in Ukraine. Kommersant reported that Krasnodar Krai formed additional military units called “Zakharia Chepigi” and ”Kuban” based on the Kuban Cossack Host in April and May, respectively. The Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad also announced the reorganization of the “Don” Cossack Detachment into a brigade joint with the “Terek” Battalion and composed of “Kuban” and “Yenisey” units. The “Don” Detachment has conducted offensive operations around Velyka Komyshuvakha (southwest of Izyum) since at least April and the “Terek” Battalion recruited additional volunteers ages 20 to 63 from Stavropol Krai and Northern Caucasus.[47] The “Terek” Battalion has already reportedly sent 500 Cossacks to Donbas.[48] “Yermak” and “Tavrida” Cossack units are also reportedly conducting combat operations in Ukraine.

The Kremlin or Russian Defense Ministry are likely exploiting leaders of immigrant and ethnic organizations to generate forces for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chairman of the “Society of Central Asian Uzbeks of Perm Krai” Jahongir Jalolov announced that Uzbek nationals living or working in Perm Krai should form the “Amir Timur” Volunteer Battalion in Perm Krai to support Russian forces in Ukraine.[49] Jalolov noted that Uzbeks owe their livelihoods in Russia to the Russian people, and hence should participate in the special military operation. ISW has previously reported that Russian forces have been reportedly recruiting Central Asian immigrants to the Moscow-based “Sobyaninskyi” Regiment in exchange for Russian citizenship and financial compensation.[50]

Russian sources additionally announced a recruitment effort to reinforce the “Russian Legion”—a volunteer battalion currently operating on the Donetsk-Kharkiv Oblast border—as of August 9.[51] The “Russian Legion” is reportedly formed of elements of the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS)—an effort aimed to establish an active reserve by recruiting volunteer reservists for three-year contract service.[52] This unit has reportedly fought on the Izyum axis near Pasika, Studenok, and Bohorodychne without rotation for three months.[53] The Russian Legion’s commander reportedly has been fighting in eastern Ukraine since 2014.[54] The tone of the post suggests that regular units of the Russian military have not fought in a significant part of this frontline sector recently, indicating that the Russian military is leveraging recently-formed volunteer units to perform frontline fighting in some areas, as opposed to reinforcing regular military units.

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 officials are attempting to set conditions for the façade of a normal school year in occupied parts of Ukraine but are likely facing resistance from parents and school officials. The Ukrainian head of the Kherson Regional Administration, Yaroslav Yanushkevych, reported on August 9 that Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast are offering parents approximately 4,000 hryvnias a month (about 108 USD) to enroll their children in Russian-run schools for the autumn term.[55] An advisor to Yanushkevych, Serhiy Khlan, reported on August 9 that occupation officials are struggling to find locations to host polling stations for the sham annexation referendum in Kherson and are pressuring schools and school principals to help organize the referendum and to allow schools to be used as polling stations.[56]

Russian officials are increasingly overtly involving themselves in the planned pseudo-referenda that the Kremlin will use to claim that Russia has a legitimate claim to annex occupied Ukrainian territory despite Kremlin Spokesman Dmitrii Peskov’s claim that it is not Russians who are holding the referendum.[57] The Russian governor of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhaev, announced on August 9 that Sevastopol officials will monitor the referendum in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and that Sevastopol organizers are already at work throughout Zaporizhia.[58] The Sevastopol organizers will likely join volunteers and employees from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, who have been assisting occupation administrations and preparing for the sham referendum in occupied Ukrainian territories since April.[59] The Russian-appointed head of the Zaporizhia Occupation Administration, Yevheny Balitsky, announced the beginning of formal preparations for the annexation referendum on August 8 and told Russian media on August 9 that he is “nearly certain” that Zaporizhia will “return to” Russia following the sham referendum.[60] Russian forces occupy about three-quarters of Zaporizhia Oblast’s territory as of August 9, encompassing the homes of about half of the population of the oblast.

Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications announced on August 9 that the Kremlin has crossed a “red line” by formally announcing the referendum in Zaporizhia, waging an “aggressive, colonial war” to annex Ukrainian territories seeking the “destruction of Ukraine’s statehood.”[61] The Center urged all residents to resist the occupation and noted that “Russia has made a bet on Melitopol [in Zaporizhia Oblast], not on Kherson” because the Kremlin “understands the inevitability of losing their bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnipro [river].” The Center promised that Ukrainian forces will liberate Zaporizhia, Kherson, and all other occupied territories.

[4] https://www.ukrinform dot .net/rubric-ato/3546789-enemy-ammunition-detonates-near-henichesk.html https://www.ukrinform. dot net/rubric-ato/3546789-enemy-ammunition-detonates-near-henichesk.html; https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid0x5AvHy3mAh6XVeDEEyyww3...

[11] https://www.irna dot ir/news/84848211

[13]

[33] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/u-nas-tam-mnoho-poter-kak-by-vam-po-televyzoru-ne-rasskazhut-pravdu.html

[43] https://www dot kommersant.ru/doc/5501970

[47] https://life dot ru/p/1511354; https://news dot 1777.ru/85070-kazaki-severnogo-kavkaza-primut-uchastie-v-voennoy-specoperacii-na-ukraine

[48] https://news dot 1777.ru/85070-kazaki-severnogo-kavkaza-primut-uchastie-v-voennoy-specoperacii-na-ukraine

[49] https://vetta dot tv/news/society/permskie-uzbeki-planiruyut-prisoedinitsya-k-spetsoperatsii-na-ukraine/

[57] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15421435?; https://tass dot ru/politika/15420573; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[60] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15430851

understandingwar.org

2. With Enough Help, Ukraine Can Win

Incremental support is not how to support a friend, partner, or ally when it faces an existential threat.

Excerpt:

The time when incremental support was sufficient has passed. Ukraine’s needs are known. The United States needs to lead an allied surge to provide a massive U.S. and allied heavy weaponry support package to Kyiv while the Ukrainian military is able to further degrade the Russian forces. The $1 billion defense aid package reportedly being prepared is a welcome step, as would be the decision to give Ukraine American fighter jets, but these tranches of support must come more quickly and more often. The sooner we can help Ukraine defeat the Russian military, the sooner the killing of innocent Ukrainians will come to an end. The sooner that happens, the safer other parts of Europe at risk of Russian aggression will be. And then, perhaps, Putin’s grip on power might be challenged, which would be a welcome relief for many Russians who have suffered under his increasingly fascist rule.

Conclusion:

Many believe the war cannot be won on the battlefield and that there will be a negotiated settlement. This is probably too optimistic. The sides are too far apart to see what a constructive, enforceable, lasting settlement could look like, and the vast majority of Ukrainians oppose any negotiations that require any concessions from Kyiv.

It is up to Ukrainians to decide when or if to negotiate with Russia, but it is in our interest to strengthen their hand as much as possible right now. We should prepare for the possibility of escalation by the Russian side, not be paralyzed by fear of it. Thanks to the heroism of the Ukrainians, we have an opportunity to deal the Putin regime a serious, maybe even fatal, blow. It will not last long.

With Enough Help, Ukraine Can Win

There’s a difference between not losing and winning. Support from the United States could determine Ukraine’s fate.

by STEPHEN E. BIEGUN, ERIC EDELMAN, DANIEL FATA, AND DAVID J. KRAMER AUGUST 8, 2022 5:30 AM

thebulwark.com · by Stephen E. Biegun, Eric Edelman, Daniel Fata, and David J. Kramer · August 8, 2022

Recent Western intelligence estimates of Russian losses in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine raise serious doubts about the Russian military’s ability to sustain its offensive operations for an extended period. With the possibility that Russian forces cannot keep up their wholly unprovoked and unjustified aggression, and may even experience a collapse, the United States, together with its allies, must provide Ukraine with everything it needs to defeat Putin’s military. Time is of the essence.

There is a difference between thwarting Russia’s maximal objectives and Ukrainian victory. Playing for a tie runs the risk that Russia can accomplish in a war of attrition what it failed to achieve in its initial blitzkrieg: the destruction of a functioning, sovereign, independent Ukraine. Moreover, allowing this fight to devolve into an “endless war” risks endangering the lives of many more Ukrainians and jeopardizing continued popular support in the West for assisting Ukraine.

More than 75,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, according to Rep. Elissa Slotkin, based on a briefing from the U.S. intelligence community. “Over 80 percent of their land forces are bogged down, and they’re tired,” she added. If true, that would be roughly half of all Russian combat forces sent to invade Ukraine.

“I think they’re about to run out of steam,” said British spy chief Richard Moore during the recent Aspen Security Conference, echoing the view of U.S. intelligence that such staggering losses raise questions about Russia’s ability to sustain its campaign. “I think our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower [and] material over the next few weeks. They will have to pause in some way and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back.”

What remains uncertain is whether the Ukrainians, who have executed a brilliant defensive campaign to thwart Russian imperial ambitions, can now transition to the strategic offensive and take back the territory occupied by the invaders.

Podcast · August 08 2022

Will Saletan: It’s Not Just Trump, It’s Party-Wide

Republicans may love Trump because “he fights,” but CPAC showed that a lust for violence…

Morale among the Russian military, low even at the outset of the campaign, is dropping. Reports of soldiers turning on their commanding officers, Russian men seeking to avoid service, and Wagner mercenaries recruiting forces from Russian prisons add to the sense that things are going very badly for Putin. Thanks to the tremendous bravery and determination of Ukrainians, Putin’s goals of decapitating the Ukrainian leadership and occupying much of Ukrainian territory have failed miserably.

Ukrainians, of course, are paying a horrific price for Putin’s decision to invade. Untold thousands have been killed by marauding Russian forces, many the victims of war crimes and acts of genocide, and millions have been displaced. The toll on Ukraine’s economy is staggering.

Ukrainian officials have been reluctant to release figures on the number of their forces killed and injured, but morale is on their side. War is a contest of wills and Russia’s campaign of atrocities and war crimes is hardening the determination of Ukrainians to resist. What is for Putin an imperial war of choice is for them a war of survival. As Putin himself is fond of saying, a cornered rat has no choice but to fight back.

The fight for Ukraine’s east and south is different from the fight for the country’s western half. Different and longer-range weapons systems are required to maintain the Ukrainian military’s momentum and to try and wrestle back occupied territories. Already, the supply of Western weapons systems is making a serious difference. For the first time, Ukrainian artillery can outrange their opponents. U.S. and allied shipments of HIMARS in particular have enabled Ukraine to take out Russian artillery and ammunition depots as well as command posts, leaving already vulnerable Russian forces cut off and exposed. The Biden administration should be accelerating the delivery of even more and longer-range systems to enable the Ukrainians to defeat the Russian forces more quickly and decisively.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was half right when he said in April that the U.S. wants to “see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” The White House reportedly was unhappy with Austin’s blunt message, but that is because the National Security Council has consistently been reluctant to provide Ukraine with the decisive assistance it needs. What Secretary Austin failed to say is the only possible way to weaken Russia is to defeat Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“While a key goal of the United States is to do the needful to support and defend Ukraine,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said at last month’s Aspen Security Forum, “another key goal is to ensure that we do not end up in a circumstance where we’re heading down the road towards a third world war.”

Providing “needful” support is woefully inadequate. Moreover, concerns about avoiding World War III seem overblown. Although a prudent concern with escalation risks always is wise, the course of this conflict suggests that Putin’s red line is direct U.S. or NATO involvement. Accelerating and increasing military assistance to Ukraine should not come close to breaching it.

Sullivan’s comments also reveal the divide within the administration, with the NSC much more reticent than the State Department and Pentagon to tip the military balance clearly in Ukraine’s favor. While not as bad as some who wrongly and shamefully argued against providing military assistance to Ukraine even before the invasion, the NSC’s position suggests nervousness that Ukraine could actually defeat Russia. And yet that should absolutely be the goal of U.S. assistance: to help Ukraine defeat Russia.

We also need to ratchet up our sanctions on Russia and close any loopholes that enable evasion by Russian banks or oligarchs. The sanctions that already have been imposed have had a major effect on the Russian economy, leading to layoffs and shortages. The Russian ruble, which has strengthened since its dive after the February invasion, has more recently swung wildly in value as Russia’s macroeconomic band-aids start to peel off and long-term economic uncertainty returns. Europe needs to accelerate its plans to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, still an important source of revenue for Putin. Together with serious military assistance for Ukraine, tougher economic sanctions on Putin and his regime will weaken Russia’s ability to carry out its aggression against Ukraine.

Many believe the war cannot be won on the battlefield and that there will be a negotiated settlement. This is probably too optimistic. The sides are too far apart to see what a constructive, enforceable, lasting settlement could look like, and the vast majority of Ukrainians oppose any negotiations that require any concessions from Kyiv.

It is up to Ukrainians to decide when or if to negotiate with Russia, but it is in our interest to strengthen their hand as much as possible right now. We should prepare for the possibility of escalation by the Russian side, not be paralyzed by fear of it. Thanks to the heroism of the Ukrainians, we have an opportunity to deal the Putin regime a serious, maybe even fatal, blow. It will not last long.

Stephen E. Biegun, Eric Edelman, Daniel Fata, and David J. Kramer

Stephen E. Biegun is a visiting instructor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and served as deputy secretary of state from 2019 to 2021. Eric S. Edelman is counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, non-resident senior fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and co-host of The Bulwark’s Shield of the Republic podcast. He served as U.S. ambassador to Finland from 1998 to 2001 and under secretary of defense for policy from 2005 to 2009. Daniel Fata is president of Fata Advisory and was deputy assistant secretary of fefense for Europe and NATO Policy from 2005 to 2008. David J. Kramer is managing director for global policy at the George W. Bush Institute and was assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights & labor from 2008 to 2009.

thebulwark.com · by Stephen E. Biegun, Eric Edelman, Daniel Fata, and David J. Kramer · August 8, 2022

3. Military Recruitment Woes Endanger National Security By Michael R. Bloomberg

I was hoping for a little more substance for Mr. Bloomberg.

Military Recruitment Woes Endanger National Security

The US is facing a shortfall of troops. Here’s how to solve the problem.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-08/us-military-has-a-recruitment-and-retention-problem-here-s-how-to-fix-it?sref=hhjZtX76

ByMichael R. Bloomberg

August 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM EDT

From the Suwalki Gap to the Taiwan Strait, the US military faces no shortage of potential crises. But perhaps its biggest challenge lies close to home: A dwindling number of Americans are able and willing to serve in uniform. To maintain the military’s edge, the Pentagon needs to rethink how it recruits and retains troops — while also preparing to fight future wars with a leaner active-duty force.

On current trends, the outlook is troubling. To meet its overall goal of an active-duty force of 1.3 million, the military needs to bring in roughly 150,000 new recruits across its six service branches. With two months left in the fiscal year, the Pentagon is still 15% short of that goal, with the largest service, the Army, facing the biggest shortfall. Through the end of June, the Army had signed up 22,000 troops, 60% below its annual target. It could end the year with as few as 445,000 troops, nearly 40,000 smaller than the force size authorized by Congress.

A tight labor market is one reason for this state of affairs, but the bigger problem is the shrinking pool recruiters are drawing from. Because of rising rates of youth obesity and drug use, the share of Americans aged 17 to 24 who are eligible to serve without a waiver has fallen to 23%. Discounting those already enrolled in college, the number is only 12%. The military estimates that among those who are eligible, a mere 9% have a “propensity” to serve, the lowest since 2007, during the height of the Iraq War.

New ‘Influence Triad’ Will Fuse SOF, Cyber, and Space Command Satellite Intelligence

Information warfare cells, where space units and SOCOM work side by side, will be dispersed throughout combatant commands.

defenseone.com · by Tara Copp

U.S. Space Command and Army Space and Missile Defense Command are combining the military’s cyber, special operations, and space capabilities to create a new deterrent “triad” akin to the approach the U.S. uses. to deter nuclear attacks.

The Army is “developing an innovative way to generate asymmetrical advantages by fusing the effects of space-based cyber and SOF [special operations forces] capabilities across the compromised spectrum of conflict. This influence triad represents a key evolution in these highly specialized fields,” Gen. James Dickinson, head of U.S. Space Command said at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville Tuesday.

In the new triad concept, U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Cyber Command personnel are embedded with staff from the U.S. Space Command to link the three triad elements—intelligence from space-based assets, intelligence from cyber detection, and intelligence from special operations forces—to amplify all three capabilities when monitoring, influencing, or deterring an adversary.

Dickinson said this could include having combined teams dedicated to defending critical cyber infrastructure, or having teams create information warfare cells where satellite taskings are supported by special operations forces.

“The fusion of traditional space-based capabilities with cyber and SOF can generate new and responsive deterrent options,” Dickinson said.

Across the combatant commands, integrated space teams from the three elements are now embedded in each, to ensure that space capabilities are considered in all operations, plans, and exercises, Dickinson said.

The new structure reflects how U.S. military space assets are becoming a more visible and integrated part of national defense, beyond their more traditional role of missile launch detection, as Space Command and the Space Force become more involved in ground-based intelligence collection through satellites and sensors in low-Earth orbit.

“If we are to stay ahead of our competition … close coordination between U.S. Space Command, U.S. CYBERCOM and U.S. SOCOM is a must,” Dickinson said.

The new triad would be supported by what Dickinson described as two additional triads: One that involves the fusion of space-, sea- and land-based sensors, and one based on improving intra-service and international partnerships.

defenseone.com · by Tara Copp

5. U.S. Will Spend $89M To Eradicate Russian Landmines In Ukraine

It is not just landmines that is the threat, it is unexploded ordnance as well. I bet the Russian munitions have a relatively high dud rate.

Back in the 1990s SOF was involved in supporting demining operations. Right after 9-11 we sent an ODA from Okianwa to Vietnam to train Vietnamese soldiers on some advanced demining equipment that was provided to them without training. We had to get the team trained by the manufacturer before they deployed to Vietnam.

While the US is regularly criticized for maintaining exceptions to the landmine ban for defense in Korea, other nations around the world such as Russia cause terrible human carnage through their employment of land mines. And yet no other country comes close to the US in expending resources to protect civilians from land mines and to try to make areas safe once again after the revisionist and rogue powers like Russia act without any concern for humanity.

U.S. Will Spend $89M To Eradicate Russian Landmines In Ukraine

One hundred demining teams will work over the next year to clear the areas Russia held

defenseone.com · by Jacqueline Feldscher

The U.S. State Department will pay $89 million to help rid Ukraine of dangerous landmines hidden by retreating Russian troops, a State Department official told reporters on Tuesday.

Russian forces have reportedly booby trapped everything from cars to washing machines to dead bodies with explosives designed to seriously injure or kill civilians who discover them. In May, Russian troops placed explosives in a 10-year-old girl’s piano in Bucha, showing that they are deliberately targeting civilians, the official said.

The $89 million will pay for 100 demining teams to work in Ukraine for the next year, the official said. It will also fund training and equipment for Ukrainian teams, but will not address concerns about sea mines in the Black Sea.

No American government personnel will be on the ground in Ukraine, the official said. The money will be given to non-governmental organizations to field the demining teams and to contractors who can train and equip locals, not directly to the Ukrainian government.

Ukrainian officials estimate 160,000 square kilometers—about the size of Virginia, Maryland, and Connecticut combined—may be contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance, the State Department official said. Much of that includes Ukrainian farm land, which further worsens global food security that was already impacted by the war, but it also includes populated areas, with more than 5 million people living near or among hidden explosives.

Use of the weapons violates international humanitarian law because they pose a long-term threat and can not differentiate between civilians and military personnel, according to a June report from Human Rights Watch.

It’s unclear how many people will be on the 100 demining teams, because the teams can vary in size depending on their mission, the official said. Some teams that travel between communities to ask locals what they are seeing and identify possible landmine locations can have just two or three people, while more technical teams using machinery or metal detectors to clear mines can be a dozen people.

The money, which will be distributed over a period of “several months,” is coming from three sources, the official said. The fiscal 2022 appropriations bill included $6 million for humanitarian demining assistance in Ukraine. In addition, the first and second Ukrainian supplemental funding bills included $18 million and $65 million respectively for demining operations.

defenseone.com · by Jacqueline Feldscher

6. China reaffirms threat of military force to annex Taiwan

Could it be made any clearer to us? I doubt we will ever hear the Chinese say, "just kidding."

China reaffirms threat of military force to annex Taiwan

AP · August 10, 2022

BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday reaffirmed its threat to use military force to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control, amid threatening Chinese military exercises that have raised tensions between the sides to their highest level in years.

The lengthy policy statement issued by the Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs Office and its news department followed almost a week of missile firings and incursions into Taiwanese waters and airspace by Chinese warships and air force planes.

The actions have disrupted flights and shipping in a region crucial to global supply chains, prompting strong condemnation from the U.S., Japan and others.

An English-language version of the Chinese statement said Beijing would “work with the greatest sincerity and exert our utmost efforts to achieve peaceful reunification.”

“But we will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures. This is to guard against external interference and all separatist activities,” the statement said.

“We will always be ready to respond with the use of force or other necessary means to interference by external forces or radical action by separatist elements. Our ultimate goal is to ensure the prospects of China’s peaceful reunification and advance this process,” it said.

Taiwan

Chinese envoy tells Australia to show 'caution' over Taiwan

Top Chinese, South Korean diplomats pledge closer ties

Taiwan warns China drills show ambitions beyond island

Asian shares mostly decline on global technology downturn

China says the threatening moves were prompted by a visit to Taiwan last week by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Taiwan says such visits are routine and that China used that merely as a pretext to up its threats.

In an additional response to Pelosi’s visit, China said it was cutting off dialogue on issues from maritime security to climate change with the U.S., Taiwan’s chief military and political backer.

Taiwan’s foreign minister warned Tuesday that the Chinese military drills reflect ambitions to control large swaths of the western Pacific, while Taipei conducted its own exercises to underscore its readiness to defend itself.

Beijing’s strategy would include controlling the East and South China seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, Joseph Wu told a news conference in Taipei.

Beijing extended the ongoing exercises without announcing when they would end, although they appear to have run their course for the time being.

China’s Defense Ministry and its Eastern Theater Command both issued statements saying the exercises had achieved their targets of sending a warning to those favoring Taiwan’s formal independence and their foreign backers.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party administration are “pushing Taiwan into the abyss of disaster and sooner or later will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame!” Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei was quoted as saying in a statement posted to the ministry’s website.

Troops taking part in the exercises had “effectively tested integrated joint combat capabilities,” the Eastern Theater Command said on its Twitter-like Weixin microblog.

“The theater troops will monitor changes in the situation in the Taiwan Strait, continue to conduct military training and preparations, organize regular combat readiness patrols in the Taiwan Strait, and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” spokesperson Col. Shi Yi was quoted as saying.

Taiwan split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949 and the island’s 23 million people overwhelmingly oppose political unification with China, while preferring to maintain close economic links and the status quo of de-facto independence.

Through its maneuvers, China has pushed closer to Taiwan’s borders and may be seeking to establish a new normal in which it could eventually control access to the island’s ports and airspace.

Along with lobbing missiles into the Taiwan Strait, the nearly week-long drills saw Chinese ships and planes crossing the center line in the strait that has long been seen as a buffer against outright conflict.

The U.S., Taipei’s main backer, has also shown itself to be willing to face down China’s threats. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, but is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats against it as matters of grave concern.

That leaves open the question of whether Washington would dispatch forces if China attacked Taiwan. U.S. President Joe Biden has said repeatedly the U.S. is bound to do so — but staff members have quickly walked back those comments.

Beyond the geopolitical risks, an extended crisis in the Taiwan Strait — a significant thoroughfare for global trade — could have major implications for international supply chains at a time when the world is already facing disruptions and uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

In particular, Taiwan is a crucial provider of computer chips for the global economy, including China’s high-tech sectors.

In response to the drills, Taiwan has put its forces on alert, but has so far refrained from taking active countermeasures.

On Tuesday, its military held live-fire artillery drills in Pingtung County on its southeastern coast.

Australia’s recent change of government was a chance to “reset” its troubled relationship with China, but the new administration must “handle the Taiwan question with caution,” a Chinese envoy said Wednesday.

China has brushed aside foreign criticism of its actions, and its ambassador to Australia said Wednesday he was “surprised” that Australia had signed a statement with the United States and Japan that condemned China’s firing of missiles into Japanese waters in response to Pelosi’s visit.

Xiao Qian told the National Press Club China wanted to resolve the situation peacefully, but “we can never rule out the option to use other means.”

“So when necessary, when compelled, we are ready to use all necessary means,” Xiao said. “As to what does it mean by ‘all necessary means?’ You can use your imagination.”

AP · August 10, 2022

7. What ever happened to the “rules-based international order?”

From the Quincy Institute.

I would be interested to hear from the legal experts an assessment of the argument in this article..

But to this layman it seems that terrorists are seeking to upend the rules base international order andthe taliban/Afghsinistan occupiers are contributing to that. Removing terrorists fromthe battlefield is one way to protect the rules based international and it is my guess that legal scholars can describe how there was legal authority for the strike (but of course there will be opposing views from people like those who work at. the Quincy institute).

What ever happened to the “rules-based international order?” - Responsible Statecraft

responsiblestatecraft.org · by Connor Echols · August 9, 2022

Global War on Terror

What ever happened to the “rules-based international order?”

By failing to offer a legal justification for killing al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Biden has made all of us less safe.

August 9, 2022

What ever happened to the “rules-based international order?”

Early last week, President Joe Biden announced that the United States had killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan. The news initially sparked widespread media attention, but in the end it came and went with relatively little fanfare, especially for the death of a long-time American enemy with a $25 million bounty on his head.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the announcement (and the discourse that followed) was what was left unsaid. Despite the fact that Biden ran for president in part on restoring the “rules-based international order,” he made no effort to justify the attack under international law, and most news coverage has failed to even touch on the issue.

On the surface, the strike left relatively little to complain about. It was remarkably precise, killing only Zawahiri, and, for many analysts, it proved that America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan would not hinder its ability to conduct precise counter terror missions.

But experts say the killing lacks legal justification and shows that Biden has bought into one of the most pernicious ideas driving the past two decades of U.S. policy: Washington can and should use force wherever it sees fit, even if that means twisting international law beyond recognition. This is in many ways the underlying logic for America’s globe-spanning military presence, according to experts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft. Worse, it erodes international law, allowing other states to justify all sorts of questionable actions outside their borders.

As Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine enters its sixth month, international law has seldom been more important, according to Craig Martin, a professor at Washburn University.

“We say it’s an act of aggression. We allege that they’re committing war crimes. We’re up in arms,” Martin said. “But you can’t argue that Russia is somehow in violation of this international law — and that they should be held accountable for it — if you yourself are not willing to comply with that international law.”

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon responded to questions from Responsible Statecraft about their legal justification for the strike. In fact, U.S. officials have not yet offered a public justification for the attack. On the domestic front, the administration could point to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against al-Qaida, which provides a strong justification under U.S. law.

The logic is less clear-cut when it comes to international law. Legal scholars who spoke to Responsible Statecraft say that Biden’s team would likely argue that it was an act of self defense and that America had the right to violate Afghanistan’s sovereignty because the Taliban is “unwilling or unable” to help stop the threat posed by Zawahiri. (Secretary of State Antony Blinken may have alluded to this idea in his speech after the strike in which he pointed to the “Taliban’s unwillingness or inability to abide by their commitments.”) Charles Dunlap, a Duke law professor who previously served as an attorney for the Air Force, argued in a blog post that this is enough to justify the strike under international law.

“Such facts seem sufficient, even in the absence of evidence about a specific forthcoming attack, to find that al-Zawahiri represented a threat that met the criteria for the application of anticipatory self-defense,” Dunlap wrote. “[T]he presence of al-Zawahiri living openly in Kabul showed that the Taliban was ‘unwilling or unable’ to address the threat he posed to the ‘security of other countries.’”

In Lawfare, national security law expert Robert Chesney noted that this concept has long held sway among U.S. officials, adding that “[t]here’s little doubt that the ‘unwilling’ condition applies here.”

But much of the international legal community is skeptical of this theory, with only a few countries accepting it as plausible. As legal expert Adil Haque told Responsible Statecraft, it also relies on the questionable assumption that America and al-Qaida are still at war.

“Anytime armed hostilities between the state and a non-state actor fall below a certain minimum threshold of intensity, the armed conflict temporarily pauses and the law of armed conflict no longer applies,” argues Haque, who teaches law at Rutgers University. “There’s a very plausible argument that that’s where the United States and al-Qaida have been for some time, while Al Qaeda really has not been carrying out attacks against U.S. targets on a kind of regular basis.”

And Haque is not alone in this assessment. As Martin noted, the United Nations Security Council recently reported that, while terror groups still create major issues in conflict-ridden countries, al-Qaida “is not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from its safe haven in Afghanistan.”

Questions left unanswered

Zawahiri’s death falls under the category of “targeted killing,” a somewhat euphemistic term that the military insists is different from assassination. Prior to 9/11, Israel was the only country that frequently engaged in the practice, which American leaders opposed. But the Global War on Terror changed the calculus in Washington, and the U.S. military adopted the tactic starting in 2002.

The practice is controversial for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that attacks are rarely as “targeted” as last week’s was. In one previous attempt to take out Zawahiri, the U.S. military killed at least 18 Pakistani civilians. (A second strike that may have targeted the al-Qaida leader killed as many as 80 civilians, many of whom were children.) And this level of “collateral damage” is more common than people like to think. Take the case of Qasim Al-Raymi: The United States took out the former leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in 2020 after killing 66 people, including 31 children, in two prior attempts.

For international legal scholars, this type of attack is complicated. Though it can be legal under certain circumstances, most experts say the state carrying out the strike has to prove that it is at war with the group and that the person targeted poses an imminent threat to its security. In other words, it’s not enough to be a member of al-Qaida in order to be killed; the target has to be engaged in planning or carrying out actual attacks. And when it comes to the 71-year-old Zawahiri, this was far from clear.

Furthermore, the CIA — not the military — carried out the strike on Zawahiri, according to U.S. officials. While Washington has long blurred the line between the CIA and the military, legal experts contend that intelligence officials cannot legally engage in war under any circumstances given that they’re not uniformed combatants.

“They don’t get to kill people in war, at least not with immunity,” said Martin, noting that domestic Afghan law would likely apply in this case.

Perhaps of greater concern is the question of sovereignty, the bedrock of international law. Notably, the United States is no longer at war in Afghanistan with the permission of the Afghan government, and it has made no indication that the Taliban gave an authorization for the strike. In such a case, Washington generally relies on the previously mentioned “unwilling or unable” theory. But Martin contends that this would require U.S. officials to actually seek permission from the Taliban, which seems not to have happened in this case. (The White House did not respond when asked if the U.S. spoke to Afghan officials prior to the strike.)

Policymakers might argue that this is unnecessary given that, by harboring terrorists, the Taliban has violated its 2020 accord with the United States. But that assertion is hard to scrutinize given that the pact has still not been made public.

And all of this relies on another dubious assumption: Namely, that the “battlefield” for war with al-Qaida includes anywhere a member of the group can be found — including an apartment in a crowded city where the United States is not at war.

“If the United States had fired a drone through a street in Paris to kill Zawahiri, there would be a much different conversation, right?” Martin asked. “You would intuitively say ‘no, surely the battlefield is not in France.’ But that is one of the implications of this idea that there’s this global armed conflict with which the battlefield is defined by wherever al-Qaida members happen to go.”

As with domestic law, the international system loses legitimacy and effectiveness when powerful players bend the rule of law to their whim. Other countries have already used America’s arguments to justify questionable attacks, including Turkey, which has targeted Kurdish leaders in Iraq and Syria. (“Turkey is essentially using the same legal rationale,” said Haque. “It’s very difficult to distinguish the two cases.”) And this will only get worse if Washington continues to flout international law at will, according to Samuel Moyn, a professor at Yale University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute.

“In general, the United States has treated the law of self defense as always permissive for whatever it wants to do,” argued Moyn. “And so why wouldn’t other states follow suit?”

Fortunately, it’s not too late for Washington to change its tune. With the threat from al-Qaida at an ebb, officials could start approaching counter terror as a question of law enforcement rather than war and encourage other states to do the same. But, in order to move on from two decades of hollowing out international law, the U.S. foreign policy community will need to get back to a question that has never been properly addressed since 9/11.

“Is it really true that this kind of illegal act is the only way of dealing with the threat?” asked Moyn. “If you say no, then your incentive is to figure out what a better regime looks like.”

8. A US-China War Over Taiwan Isn't Happening Anytime Soon

I really like the photo at the link with the Chinese women soldiers practicing their knife fighting. (note sarcasm).

But I have to invoke Sun Tzu: never assume your enemy will not attack. Make yourself invincible.

From the Admiral:

Based on many years of engagement with the Chinese around the Pacific both operationally and diplomatically, I believe we are years away from any potential military move by Beijing against Taipei, and it is particularly unlikely to happen in the immediate future. There are several reasons.

A US-China War Over Taiwan Isn't Happening Anytime Soon

Here are five reasons a conflict won’t occur in the next 18 months, contrary to warnings from alarmists in and out of the Biden administration.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-09/a-us-china-war-over-taiwan-isn-t-happening-anytime-soon?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d&sref=hhjZtX76

ByJames Stavridis

August 9, 2022 at 7:30 PM EDT

Tensions, already very high between the US and China over Taiwan, were exacerbated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “farewell tour” visit to the island. Many analysts are warning that an invasion by Beijing could come sooner rather than later — within 18 months is a common projection — often citing the Ukraine conflict as a model: China playing the part of Russia and bringing what it views as a non-nation sharply to heel.

Based on many years of engagement with the Chinese around the Pacific both operationally and diplomatically, I believe we are years away from any potential military move by Beijing against Taipei, and it is particularly unlikely to happen in the immediate future. There are several reasons.

China drills show ambitions beyond island, Taiwan warns

militarytimes.com · by Johnson Lai · August 9, 2022

PINGTUNG, Taiwan — Taiwan warned Tuesday that Chinese military drills aren’t just a rehearsal for an invasion of the self-governing island but also reflect ambitions to control large swaths of the western Pacific, as Taipei conducted its own exercises to underscore it’s ready to defend itself.

Angered by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, China has sent military ships and planes across the midline that separates the two sides in the Taiwan Strait and launched missiles into waters surrounding the island. The drills, which began Thursday, have disrupted flights and shipping in one of the busiest zones for global trade.

China’s growing influence in US ‘neighborhood’ worries SOUTHCOM boss

This isn’t the first time SOUTHCOM has voiced concerns over China’s presence in the neighborhood.

Ignoring calls to calm tensions, Beijing instead extended the exercises without announcing when they will end.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that beyond aiming to annex the island democracy, which split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949, China wants to establish its dominance in the western Pacific. That would include controlling of the East and South China Seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, he told a news conference in Taipei.

The exercises show China’s “geostrategic ambition beyond Taiwan,” which Beijing claims as its own territory, Wu said.

“China has no right to interfere in or alter” Taiwan’s democracy or its interactions with other nations, he added.

Wu’s assessment of China’s maneuvers was grimmer than that of other observers but echoed widespread concerns that Beijing is seeking to expand its influence in the Pacific, where the U.S. has military bases and extensive treaty partnerships.

China has said its drills were prompted by Pelosi’s visit, but Wu said Beijing was using her trip as a pretext for intimidating moves long in the works. China also banned some Taiwanese food imports after the visit and cut off dialogue with the U.S. on a range of issues from military contacts to combating transnational crime and climate change.

Pelosi also dismissed China’s outrage as a public stunt, noting on NBC’s “Today” show that “nobody said a word” about a Senate delegation a few visit months ago. Later on the MSNBC news network, she said Chinese President Xi Jinping was acting like a “scared bully.”

“I don’t think the president of China should control the schedules of members of Congress,” she said.

Through its maneuvers, China has pushed closer to Taiwan’s borders and may be seeking to establish a new normal in which it could eventually control access to the island’s ports and airspace. But that would likely elicit a strong response from the military on the island, whose people strongly favor the status quo of de-facto independence.

The U.S., Taipei’s main backer, has also shown itself to be willing to face down Beijing’s threats. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, but is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats against it as matters of grave concern.

China

China fully militarized isles, Indo-Pacific commander says

The efforts were part of China’s flexing its military muscle, U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. John C. Aquilino said.

Beyond the geopolitical risks, an extended crisis in the Taiwan Strait, a significant thoroughfare for global trade, could have major implications for international supply chains at a time when the world is already facing disruptions and uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In particular, Taiwan is a crucial provider of computer chips for the global economy, including China’s high-tech sectors.

In response to the drills, Taiwan has put its forces on alert, but has so far refrained from taking active counter measures.

On Tuesday, its military held live-fire artillery drills in Pingtung County on its southeastern coast.

The army will continue to train and accumulate strength to deal with the threat from China, said Maj, Gen. Lou Woei-jye, spokesperson for Taiwan’s 8th Army Command. “No matter what the situation is ... this is the best way to defend our country.”

Taiwan, once a Japanese colony, had only loose connections to imperial China and then split with the mainland in 1949. Despite never having governed the island, China’s ruling Communist Party regards it as its own territory and has sought to isolate it diplomatically and economically in addition to ratcheting up military threats.

Washington has insisted Pelosi’s visit did not change its “one China policy,” which holds that the United States has no position on the status of the two sides but wants their dispute settled peacefully.

Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this report.

10. Ukraine Live Briefing: Ukraine special forces behind deadly Crimea strike, official says

Ukraine Live Briefing: Ukraine special forces behind deadly Crimea strike, official says

By Adela Suliman, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kendra Nichols

Updated August 10, 2022 at 6:40 a.m. EDT|Published August 10, 2022 at 4:29 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Adela Suliman · August 10, 2022

A deadly strike on a Russian air base in occupied Crimea was carried out by Ukrainian special forces, a Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Wednesday. In central Ukraine, at least 13 people were killed when Russian strikes hit Dnipropetrovsk overnight, local officials said. Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.

Key developments

Tuesday’s airfield explosion in Crimea was the work of Ukrainian special forces, a Ukrainian official told The Post. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and confirmed Ukraine’s role on the condition of anonymity, did not disclose details of how the attack was carried out. The Ukrainian air force said in a separate statement that nine Russian aircraft were destroyed in the blast, without any claim of responsibility. The attack reportedly killed one person and injured at least 13, including two children.
A Ukrainian attack in Crimea would mark a dramatic escalation in the war. It would demonstrate a remarkable ability by Ukrainian forces, or their allies, to strike at Russia far from the front lines. Russia said the blast at the air base was caused by an ammunition explosion. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Post that Ukrainian forces apparently had carried out the strike but did not use a weapon provided by the United States.
Overnight Russian strikes in Dnipropetrovsk killed at least 13 people in the Nikopol region in central Ukraine, according to regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko.

Battlefield updates

Russia has “almost certainly established a major new ground forces formation,” dubbed the 3rd Army Corps, to fight in Ukraine, made up of volunteer male troops up to 50 years old and incentivized with cash bonuses, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday in a daily intelligence update. However, it said the new formation is “unlikely to be decisive to the campaign,” given “very limited levels of popular enthusiasm for volunteering for combat in Ukraine.”
In the northern town of Bucha, 15 bodies were buried Tuesday after they were found four months after Russian forces withdrew from the area. Following a meticulous, and at times gruesome, investigation, officials in Bucha said they had reached what may be the closest they will get to a final accounting of victims: 458 bodies, of which 419 bore signs they had been shot, tortured or bludgeoned to death.

Global impact

The United States “would not want to implement a total ban on all Russians,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post’s Daily 202. A total travel ban would mean denying entry to Russian dissidents and those who have criticized the war, as well as those who are persecuted for politics or sexual orientation, the official said. In an interview with The Post this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Western countries to ban all Russian travelers, comments quickly condemned by Russia.
President Biden signed documents endorsing Finland and Sweden’s NATO Accession Protocols. It represents the most significant expansion of the military bloc in decades, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia successfully launched a satellite on behalf of Iran on Tuesday. The satellite is likely to enhance Tehran’s ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East, but Moscow may intend to first use the spacecraft to assist its own war effort in Ukraine, according to Western security officials familiar with the matter.
Sweden, Denmark and Canada announced that they will help Britain train Ukrainian soldiers in the United Kingdom. The United States has also approved $89 million in aid to assist and train 100 teams to clear land mines and unexploded ordnance in Ukraine.

From our correspondents

In the Ukraine war, a battle for the nation’s mineral and energy wealth: After nearly six months of fighting, Moscow’s sloppy war has yielded at least one big reward: expanded control over some of the most mineral-rich lands in Europe. Ukraine harbors some of the world’s largest reserves of titanium and iron ore, fields of untapped lithium, as well as massive deposits of coal. Collectively, they are worth tens of trillions of dollars.

The lion’s share of those coal deposits, which for decades have powered Ukraine’s critical steel industry, are concentrated in the east, where Moscow has made the most inroads. That’s put them in Russian hands, along with significant amounts of other valuable energy and mineral deposits used for everything from aircraft parts to smartphones, according to an analysis for The Washington Post.

The Washington Post · by Adela Suliman · August 10, 2022

11. $1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

Another package of military aid. Ukraine is going to be the best supported military unit in the US defense budget.

Again, I wonder if our industrial base can keep pace and what if we were conducting our own large scale combat operation (LSCO). Are we logistically prepared?

$1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

defense.gov

Release

Immediate Release

Aug. 8, 2022

Attributed to Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Todd Breasseale:

Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announces the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance valued at up to $1 billion to meet Ukraine’s critical security and defense needs. This authorization is the Biden Administration’s eighteenth drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021. It is the largest single drawdown of U.S. arms and equipment utilizing this authority, and this package provides a significant amount of additional ammunition, weapons, and equipment - the types of which the Ukrainian people are using so effectively to defend their country.

Capabilities in this package include:

Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition;
20 120mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120mm mortar ammunition;
Munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
1,000 Javelin and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems;
50 armored medical treatment vehicles;
Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
C-4 explosives, demolition munitions, and demolition equipment;
Medical supplies, to include first aid kits, bandages, monitors, and other equipment.

In total, the United States has now committed approximately $9.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration. Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $11.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.

To meet Ukraine’s evolving battlefield requirements, the United States will continue to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities calibrated to make a difference.

Related Publication: Ukraine Fact Sheet – Aug. 8

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12. The President Needs the Power to Fire Bureaucrats

Our professional civil servants are the deep state, the boogeyman, the root of all bureaucratic evil, and the scapegoats for all of the government's failings. (note sarcasm and not my real opinion)

I tire of this. In my experience there are many more great civil servants thanthe bad apples. Civil servants are the perfect targets to blame for the failures of leaders, particularly political leaders and their abilities to lead. But we can blame it on the deep state of civil servants if it makes those failed political leaders feel better.

That said, I do agree that there need to be improved procedures and processes for hiring and firing government employees. We need transparent processes that operate at a sound pace.

The President Needs the Power to Fire Bureaucrats

Too often, insubordinate employees subvert the work of political appointees.

By James Sherk

Aug. 8, 2022 5:58 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-to-fire-insubordinate-bureaucrats-schedule-f-executive-order-trump-deborah-birx-at-will-civil-service-removal-appeals-11659989383

President Trump’s Schedule F executive order, which I shepherded, eliminated job protections for policy-influencing federal employees. President Biden rescinded it, but it could—and should—be reissued by another president.

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH

The Schumer-Manchin Bill and the Midterm Elections

00:00

Career employees fill almost all federal jobs. Only 4,000 of the 2.2 million federal employees are political appointees. Career federal employees consequently do almost all the work of government. In theory, these career employees should be nonpartisan experts who neutrally implement elected officials’ policies. But in reality they have their own political views and policy preferences.

While many career employees faithfully implement the president’s policies, others don’t. Deborah Birx recently gave Americans a taste of this insubordination. Dr. Birx was a career employee tapped in 2020 to coordinate the White House Coronavirus Task Force. In her new book she boasts about advancing her own policies in defiance of senior White House staff. Senior appointees directed Dr. Birx to moderate lockdown recommendations in federal guidance. She instead deleted the offending materials, then reinserted them in less prominent places in the same documents. She describes this as “subterfuge” to “work around” senior appointees.

In hindsight it is clear the senior staff were right; Covid lockdowns went too far. But Dr. Birx’s actions wouldn’t have been justified even if she had been correct. Career employees should give their best advice to political appointees, but once politically accountable officials make a decision, career staff should implement it faithfully.

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During my time in government, I saw what political scientists have long documented: Many federal employees reject this philosophy. At the White House I received frequent reports about career staff undermining presidential policies. Career employees routinely delayed producing new rules or produced drafts that couldn’t be used. As a result, many major regulations—such as the Education Department’s Title IX due-process protections—had to be drafted primarily by political appointees.

Career employees also frequently withheld vital information from political appointees. Career lawyers at the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, failed to brief political appointees about major lawsuits. Political appointees had to read public filings to learn what cases the agency was litigating and what arguments were being made in those cases.

Career staff at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division often wouldn’t work on cases they opposed for ideological reasons. They refused to enforce protections that say nurses can’t be forced to assist in abortions. And they refused to sue Yale for racially discriminating against Asian-American applicants.

This resistance, so widespread that it made national news, significantly delayed many policy initiatives and killed others. This behavior undermines our democracy. No one votes for career bureaucrats, and they have no authority to replace elected officials’ policies with their own.

This applies no matter which policies career bureaucrats sabotage. Conservatives widely opposed the Biden administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration vaccine mandate, but Labor Department career staff wouldn’t have been justified in slow-walking that rule. Courts decide the lawfulness of federal policies. (Eventually the Supreme Court struck the OSHA vaccine mandate down.) Career employees have no authority to block them unilaterally. Unfortunately, many do so anyway.

Career employees get away with this behavior largely because they have extensive removal protections. While it isn’t impossible to fire federal employees, it is difficult, uncertain and time-consuming.

Schedule F was developed to address this widespread misconduct and prevent its recurrence. We found a way for agencies to hold intransigent bureaucrats accountable. Schedule F would have made—and might still make—senior policy-influencing bureaucrats at-will employees. The order didn’t let agencies dismiss them for political reasons, but it enabled agencies to remove senior employees swiftly for poor performance or policy resistance.

In my research I learned this was the original vision for the civil service. The 19th-century reformers who ended the spoils system opposed removal protections. As George William Curtis, the era’s foremost civil-service reform advocate, argued, letting employees appeal dismissals would “seal up incompetency, negligence [and] insubordination” in the civil service. So while the Pendleton Act of 1883 strictly regulated federal hiring to prevent patronage, it intentionally kept civil-service employees at-will. The general federal workforce didn’t get removal appeals until a 1962 executive order.

Those protections now prevent the elected president from removing employees who try to undermine his agenda. For the federal government to answer to the American people, that needs to change.

Mr. Sherk is director of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute. He served as a special assistant to President Trump on the White House Domestic Policy Council.

13. New Army recruiting ad continues crusade against civilian workforce

I am sure this ad campaign has been thoroughly tested and vetted by advertising professionals and that it will achieve the desired recruiting effects among the designated target audiences. (note sarcasm)

By the way I have made a lot of coffee in my time in the army, in garrison and in the field and shared it with my fellow soldiers to include our leaders. We do make coffee.

The makers of this ad should ask officers and NCOs what it is like to have to perform all the "additional duty requirements" so they can be transparent in their comparison with the civil world. And compare "area beautification" conducted by all soldiers (but especially "entry level" ones) with entry level activities of their civilian counterparts.

Sigh...

New Army recruiting ad continues crusade against civilian workforce

militarytimes.com · by Sarah Sicard · August 9, 2022

Calling all college seniors.

Are you worried about having to wear a suit, fetch coffee and make copies in your first job post-graduation?

U.S. Army Recruiting Command would like you to consider an alternative: become a soldier.

Its newest ad, “This Instead,” says that unlike civilians who enter the job market fresh out of college, you won’t be the bottom rung on the totem pole. You’ll be a leader.

Because everyone knows that, just out of Officer Candidate School, Army 2nd lieutenants are in charge of everything. And they are most certainly not the butt of any jokes about rank entitlement and poor land navigation skills.

This video is part of the Army’s latest recruiting campaign: “Decide to Lead.” The ad’s closing line suggests soldiers can “skip entry level.”

It follows the branch’s latest line of recruitment pushes designed to make civilian life look terrible in comparison to military life. The last batch, “Know Your Army,” centered on the so-called benefits of being in the military, including pension, paid parental leave, early retirement, and homebuying.

While it is true that officers are technically in leadership roles placed higher in the hierarchy of rank structure than enlisted troops, all soldiers must earn their stripes with grunt work, trust, and team building — just like any corporate job in America.

Even though the Army might do work to inflate newly minted officers’ egos during OCS, soldiers must also contend with the inability to choose where in the world they live, what jobs they have, or if the housing where they reside is livable or has wall-to-wall black mold. Even coffee-fetching civilians never have to worry about that.

In a House Armed Services Committee panel held July 19, Army leadership revealed it will likely be at least 7,000 soldiers short of its staffing goal at the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

While retention is high at 57,000, about 3,000 more soldiers reenlisted than than the expected 54,000, the Army’s number issues lie with recruiting.

“We are examining a wide range of additional steps we could take in the short and longer term to recruit more soldiers into the Army without lowering standards or sacrificing quality,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth in a previous statement to Army Times.

Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.

About Sarah Sicard

Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Military Times. She previously served as the Digital Editor of Military Times and the Army Times Editor. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose, and Defense News.

14. The U.S. lost track of why it was in Afghanistan, former commander says

The U.S. lost track of why it was in Afghanistan, former commander says

NPR · by Mary Louise Kelly · August 10, 2022

U.S. Air Force aircrew prepare to load qualified evacuees aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the Afghanistan evacuation in August, 2021. Senior Airman Taylor Crul/AP

Last August, as city after city in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie was watching from his post in Tampa, Fl.

McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command at the time, was in regular contact with U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan as they evacuated. His position had him overseeing military operations in East Africa, the Middle East and beyond.

Recently retired, McKenzie joined All Things Considered to reflect on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, who bears responsibility for the way it unfolded, and how the U.S. "lost track" of why it was in the country to begin with.

Commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testifies during a hearing before Senate Armed Services Committee in September, 2021. The committee held the hearing "to receive testimony on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counterterrorism operations." Alex Wong/Getty Images

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

On communication between the U.S. and the Taliban during evacuations

I actually flew to Doha on the 15th of August to talk to the Taliban, to tell them that we were, in fact, going to withdraw. We were going to execute a non-combatant evacuation operation — a NEO in our technical lexicon — and if they interfered with that, we would punish them severely.

They were actually receptive to that message. And let me be very clear: I don't trust the Taliban. I have long experience with them, I don't believe they keep their word. But in this particular case, we shared an interest. We wanted to leave, and they wanted us to leave.

So in that very transactional, momentary period of time, they did not interfere with our withdrawal. And I thought that was very significant and probably allowed us to do it in the manner that we did it.

On the original strategy that was planned for evacuation

The plan was to try to get the Taliban to stop at a perimeter maybe 15 or 20 kilometers outside Kabul. We wanted them to not come any closer until we pulled our forces out.

By the time I got there, they were already in downtown Kabul, so that plan was no longer operative, but they continued to be receptive. I left that meeting with what I needed to have — we were going to be able to execute our plan to get our people out and as many other people as we could.

The Taliban were not going to interfere with us. And we had, in fact, established a modality where my commanders on the ground could talk to them about security issues in the vicinity of the airport. So we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish in that meeting.

Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 16, 2021. Shekib Rahmani/AP

On why the vision for an orderly evacuation was not fulfilled, and they were not able to get everybody out in an orderly way.

We were not able to do that. And that's something that haunts me to this day. We had forces that were around the airport on the 15th and 16th. I actually visited the airport on the 17th of August. I was on the ground, walked around a little bit, saw some of the things that were going on. And what you've got is a capacity problem. You've got to process all these people. It took a while, frankly, for our consular officials to get there in the numbers needed to handle the press of people that were outside.

So, no, we did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. We got well over 120,000 people out. And that's the good news story. The bad news story — and I would never try to deny it — is we did not get everybody out that we wanted, particularly a lot of Afghans that had helped us down through the years, that have been partners of ours, often in combat, often in other very demanding times. They had every expectation that we would bring them out. We did not, and we were unable to do that. And that's something that, as I noted earlier, still haunts me to this day.

On what could've been done differently

Well, any time American soldiers, sailors, Marines lose their lives, you spend a lot of time thinking about decisions that you could've made and done differently. So, yes, I think about that quite a bit from the perspective of, right at the end, "What could we have done differently?"

What we should have done was we should have begun to bring people out much earlier, rather than waiting until the very end. Now, the problem with that is — it's an interesting counterfactual, but you've got the government of Afghanistan that's saying, look, the people that you're bringing out are the best people in Afghanistan. If you want us to fight, you can't let these people go out.

On who bears responsibility for the way it all unfolded

Ultimately, the chain of command does. That was a national decision made by the president, and we executed that decision. We had an opportunity to discuss it. We had an opportunity to give input. The president made a decision, and we executed it.

Taliban special force fighters stand guard outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military's withdrawal, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP

On what the U.S. achieved after 20 years in Afghanistan

Well, from my personal perspective, I think we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan [and] why we were there, to prevent al-Qaida from striking our country. Over the course of our engagement over two decades, it grew into something much larger: an attempt to impose a form of government, a state, that would be a state the way that we recognize a state.

I will tell you, I don't believe Afghanistan is ungovernable. I believe Afghanistan is ungovernable with the Western model that will be imposed on it. And so I think that's sort of what draws out to me. We lost track of why we were there, and we did not keep the main thing the main thing.

That being, preventing al-Qaida from being able to gather strength and conduct attacks against us — and ISIS, too, once it began to manifest itself in Afghanistan. Clearly, you need an Afghan military to help you do that. But I think we grew far beyond the original scope and scale of our mission, the original mission.

On what he would want to say to the people of Afghanistan

I think this is now a tough time for the people of Afghanistan. I think that they're not well-served by the Taliban that's in there. The Taliban were never really a particularly popular party in Afghanistan, although they were able to merge religious and other affiliations in a way that the government was never able to do.

I think it's going to be a very tough time. I regret what happened last summer. I regret that we were unable to provide a form of government that would allow for the development of human rights, women's issues, a variety of things, all of which are being, as you know, systematically deconstructed by the Taliban right now. And I fear it's going to get much, much worse before it gets any better.

This story was adapted for the web by Manuela Lopez Restrepo.

NPR · by Mary Louise Kelly · August 10, 2022

15. FDD | Senior Pakistani Taliban leader reportedly killed in Afghanistan

August 9, 2022 | FDD's Long War Journal

FDD | Senior Pakistani Taliban leader reportedly killed in Afghanistan

fdd.org · by Bill Roggio Senior Fellow and Editor of FDD's Long War Journal · August 9, 2022

Omar Khalid Khurasani, a virulent senior leader of a dangerous faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan called Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, was reportedly killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Pakistan on Aug. 6. A spokesman for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan confirmed his death, though he has previously also been reportedly killed twice before.

Khurasani, who is believed to have given sanctuary to Ayman al Zawahiri in the past, has called for global jihad, attacks on the U.S. and openly celebrated the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.

Khurasani and two of his deputies, known as Hafiz Dawlat and Mufti Hassan, were killed in a roadside bombing in the Bermal district in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika. To this point, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack that killed Khurasani.

Khurasani’s presence in Bermal should come as no surprise as it is a stronghold of the Haqqani Network, the powerful Afghan Taliban subgroup whose leader Sirajuddin Haqqani is one of two deputy Taliban emirs as well as the country’s interior minister. Sirajuddin was sheltering Al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri when he was killed in Kabul on July 30, 2022.

Top foreign terror leaders have sheltered in Bermal in the past. In late July 2015, the U.S. killed Abu Khalil al Sudani, a senior al Qaeda leader who took direction from Ayman al Zawahiri, in a raid on an Al Qaeda training camp in Bermal. Sudani had a hand in al Qaeda’s external operations network, which plots attacks against the U.S. and the West.

The raid on the Bermal camp gave the US information on the existence of two other Al Qaeda training camps in the Shorabak district in Kandahar province. More than 150 Al Qaeda operatives and fighters were killed in the subsequent raids on the Al Qaeda camps in Shorabak in October 2015.

A veteran Pakistani Taliban leader

Khurasani took control of the Mohmand tribal agency in Pakistan’s Khyber Paktunkhkwa after defeating a rival terrorist group and soon became the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan’s forces there. He led the charge to seize control of the tribal agency and held it for five years before the Pakistani military drove his fighters underground or across the border into Afghanistan.

He was considered one of the Pakistani Taliban’s most effective and powerful commanders in the tribal areas. Khurasani was known to maintain close ties to Al Qaeda, including the aforementioned safe haven he was believed to provide for Zawahiri.

Khurasani was also allied with Qari Zia Rahman, the dual-hatted Taliban and Al Qaeda leader who operates in Pakistan’s tribal agencies of Mohmand and Bajaur, as well as in Afghanistan’s provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. Rahman eluded U.S. efforts to kill him for over a decade. Rahman has established and operated suicide training camps used to indoctrinate and train female bombers. [See LWJ report, Al Qaeda, Taliban create female suicide cells in Pakistan and Afghanistan]. In Aug. 2011, Khurasani claimed credit for a female suicide attack in Peshawar.

Khurasani has been active in the Taliban’s propaganda machine since the death of Osama bin Laden, and has been vocal in his support of Al Qaeda. In mid-May 2011, Khurasani vowed revenge on Pakistani and US forces just two weeks after the US raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad that resulted in his death.

“We will take revenge of Osama’s killing from the Pakistani government, its security forces, the Pakistani ISI, the CIA and the Americans, they are now on our hit list,” Khurasani said. “Osama bin Laden has given us the ideology of Islam and Jihad, by his death we are not scattered but it has given us more strength to continue his mission.”

In June 2011, Khurasani said the Taliban have been behind a spate of attacks in Pakistan, and he again threatened the U.S.

“Our war against America is continuing inside and outside of Pakistan. When we launch attacks, it will prove that we can hit American targets outside Pakistan,” Khurasani said.

In the same interview, Khurasani said that Ayman al Zawahiri is Al Qaeda’s “chief and supreme leader.” He stated this more than one week before Zawahiri was officially declared emir of Al Qaeda.

In March 2012, Khurasani released a propaganda tape in which he said the Taliban seek to overthrow the Pakistani government, impose sharia, or Islamic law, seize the country’s nuclear weapons, and wage jihad until “the Caliphate is established across the world.” [See LWJ report, Taliban commander wants Pakistan’s nukes, global Islamic caliphate.]

Khurasani initially gained prominence during the summer of 2007, when he took over a famous shrine in Mohmand and renamed it the Red Mosque in honor of the radical mosque in Islamabad whose followers had attempted to impose sharia in the capital.

The Mohmand Taliban took control of the tribal agency after the Pakistani government negotiated a peace agreement with the extremists at the end of May 2008. The deal required the Taliban to renounce attacks on the Pakistani government and security forces. The Taliban said they would maintain a ban on the activities of nongovernmental organizations in the region but agreed not to attack women in the workplace as long as they wore veils. Both sides exchanged prisoners.

The Taliban promptly established a parallel government in Mohmand. Sharia courts were formed, and orders were given for women to wear the veil in public. So-called “criminals” were rounded up and judged in sharia courts. Women were ordered to have a male escort at all times and were prevented from working on farms. The Taliban also kidnapped members of a polio vaccination team.

In July 2008, Khurasani became the dominant Taliban commander in Mohmand after defeating the Shah Sahib group, a rival pro-Taliban terror group with ties to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Pakistani military claimed it killed Khurasani in Jan. 2009, but the Taliban denied the report, and he resurfaced many times. Khurasani was also reported to have been killed in 2017, but he again emerged to deny the news of his death.

The Pakistani government placed a $123,000 bounty on Khurasani’s head in 2009.

Formation of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar

Khurasani split from the Movement of the Taliban in Aug. 2014 due to a leadership dispute and formed Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, but the two groups nominally reunited in March 2015. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has operated with a large degree of autonomy and issues its own statements on attacks and other matters.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has claimed credit for multiple attacks inside Pakistan. In one of its most callous and deadly attacks, a Jamaat-ul-Ahrar suicide bomber detonated at the entrance of a park in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Easter Day in 2016. At least 72 people, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 300 were wounded in the blast. The group’s spokesman explicitly stated that “the target was Christians.”

The terrorist group has also targeted the U.S. consulate in Peshawar and polio vaccination teams in Karachi. In Aug. 2016, the US State Department added Jamaat-ul-Ahrar to the list of global terrorists organizations. State also issued a reward of $3 million for information leading tot he capture and prosecution of Khurasani.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has promoted its activities on social media. In Feb. 2017, it flaunted its training camps and prominently featured Khurasani as well as its suicide assault team.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD’s Long War Journal. Follow him on Twitter @billroggio. FDD is a nonpartisan research organization focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

fdd.org · by Bill Roggio Senior Fellow and Editor of FDD's Long War Journal · August 9, 2022

16. The ‘forever war’ against the West

Excerpts:

Israelis today are at peace with more of their neighbors than ever before. Though they are always willing to participate in “peace talks,” they understand the Reaganesque doctrine that peace is achieved through strength. And strength must be demonstrated — repeatedly and consistently.

Al Qaeda and PIJ have been hit hard. But neither organization will be “gone” anytime soon.

Al Qaeda will soon have a new emir. The front-runner appears to be Saif al-Adel, a 62-year-old former Egyptian special forces colonel, a longtime al Qaeda leader who has been living in Iran as the regime’s guest.

As for PIJ, I’d guess Iran’s rulers will want to build their proxy back better. That will be expensive, but the Biden administration has been offering those rulers hundreds of billions of dollars they can use to support whichever terrorist/jihadi organizations they like. All that’s asked of them in return is a promise to slow-walk their nuclear weapons development program. To believe such a promise would be a fatal mistake.

The ‘forever war’ against the West

America wins a battle against al Qaeda, Israel against Islamic Jihad

washingtontimes.com · by Clifford D. May

OPINION:

Just under a year ago, President Biden asked, “What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone?”

Just over a week ago, he provided an answer. On his order, two missiles from a Hellfire drone targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, the 71-year-old emir of al Qaeda, who was taking his morning tea on the balcony of a well-appointed home in an exclusive Kabul neighborhood.

Al-Zawahiri had come in from the cold, as it were. He’d been hiding out in remote locations since 2011 when SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda’s founder and first leader. Despite the isolation, he achieved goals: Al-Qaeda today controls more territory than ever, with branches in the Indo-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

After last August’s shambolic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover, he had evidently come to believe he could return to the capital to work in comfort and safety. It was a fatal mistake.

The house in which al-Zawahiri resided is owed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of two Taliban deputy emirs. In February of 2020, The New York Times gave him space for an op-ed (without, by the way, sparking fury from the paper’s staff as occurred when Sen. Tom Cotton was afforded the same privilege) in which he asserted: “Reports about foreign groups in Afghanistan are politically motivated exaggerations by the warmongering players on all sides of the war.”

Taliban negotiators later promised not to cooperate with al Qaeda or other groups “threatening the security of the United States and its allies.” Former President Donald Trump and Mr. Biden apparently believed them. That, too, was a fatal mistake.

Eliminating terrorist leaders is useful. But those waging what they regard as a 1,400-year-old jihad against infidels, heretics and apostates tend to be tenacious. The phrase “forever war” doesn’t daunt them. It inspires them.

The rulers of China and Russia also are waging a kind of war against the West. Neo-isolationists — they prefer to be called “restrainers” — will argue that we can’t deal with all these threats simultaneously. But to survive in the jungle, you must defend yourself, not just against lions. The crocodiles can eat you, too.

Israelis have come to terms with this reality. Iran’s rulers threaten them with genocide, as does Hezbollah, Tehran’s Lebanon-based proxy. Against these and other enemies, Israelis fight both wars and “wars between wars.”

They’ve tried other approaches. In 2005, they withdrew from Gaza, which they’d seized from Egypt in the defensive war of 1967. Their hope was that Palestinians would transform the territory into Dubai on the Mediterranean. Instead, Hamas waged a civil war against the Palestinian Authority, decisively taking power in 2007.

Hamas does not invite PA President Mahmoud Abbas to visit. But it does tolerate another rival: Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is fully funded, armed and guided by Iran’s rulers. (Though Hamas also receives weapons and cash from Tehran, it maintains a bit more independence.)

Following an 11-day conflagration with Hamas last May, the Israelis have been attempting to make life easier for Gazans. That has meant assisting efforts to rebuild infrastructure and provide more reliable electricity. Up to 14,000 Gazans have been permitted to enter Israel to work for higher wages than they could command at home. Hamas leaders, thinking strategically, have not been uncooperative.

PIJ, however, cannot abide even temporary detente. Israeli intelligence learned that the group was preparing terrorist attacks not only from Gaza but also from the northern West Bank, where PIJ fighters have been gradually displacing the security forces of the PA and clashing with the Israeli Defense Forces, which have been responding to a wave of terrorist attacks that have claimed 19 Israeli lives since March. Knowing PIJ’s intentions, the Israelis decided it was necessary to do what they could to degrade its capabilities.

On Monday, the IDF arrested the PIJ leader in the West Bank, Bassem al-Saadi. On Friday, the IDF launched a precision airstrike in Gaza, killing PIJ Northern Gaza Division commander Taysir al-Jabari. On Saturday, the IDF killed PIJ Southern Gaza Division commander Khaled Mansour and several other senior PIJ officials.

PIJ fired more than a thousand missiles at Israeli cities and towns. Many fell short, killing Palestinians, including four children in Jabalya in southern Gaza, according to Israeli officials. Other missiles were destroyed by the Iron Dome system. On Monday, with Egypt acting as broker, a ceasefire was announced.

PIJ leader Ziyad al-Nakhaleh spent the weekend in Tehran meeting with Ibrahim Raisi, the president of the Islamic Republic. What are they planning to do next? Your guess is as good as mine, though perhaps not as good as the Mossad’s.

Israelis today are at peace with more of their neighbors than ever before. Though they are always willing to participate in “peace talks,” they understand the Reaganesque doctrine that peace is achieved through strength. And strength must be demonstrated — repeatedly and consistently.

Al Qaeda and PIJ have been hit hard. But neither organization will be “gone” anytime soon.

Al Qaeda will soon have a new emir. The front-runner appears to be Saif al-Adel, a 62-year-old former Egyptian special forces colonel, a longtime al Qaeda leader who has been living in Iran as the regime’s guest.

As for PIJ, I’d guess Iran’s rulers will want to build their proxy back better. That will be expensive, but the Biden administration has been offering those rulers hundreds of billions of dollars they can use to support whichever terrorist/jihadi organizations they like. All that’s asked of them in return is a promise to slow-walk their nuclear weapons development program. To believe such a promise would be a fatal mistake.

• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.

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washingtontimes.com · by Clifford D. May

17. Pentagon Contractors in Afghanistan Pocketed $108 Billion Over 20 Years

Business is good. There were winners in Afghanistan (apologies for the sarcasm)

Pentagon Contractors in Afghanistan Pocketed $108 Billion Over 20 Years

Military contracting "obscures where and how taxpayer money flows," and "makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed," said the Costs of War Project report's author.

JESSICA CORBETT

August 9, 2022

commondreams.org

Contractors from the Bagram Air Field Retrosort Yard load a water tank onto a contracted transportation truck. (Photo: 1st Lt. Henry Chan, 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion Public Affairs/U.S. Army)

Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two decades raked in nearly $108 billion—funds that “were distributed and spent with a significant lack of transparency,” according to a report published Tuesday.

“These contracts show the shadowy ‘camo economy’ at work in Afghanistan.”

“These contracts show the shadowy ‘camo economy’ at work in Afghanistan,” said report author Heidi Peltier, director of programs for the Costs of War Project at Brown Univesity’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

“Military contracting obscures where and how taxpayer money flows, who profits, and how much is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse,” she added. “It also makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed through military contracting.”

Based on Peltier’s review of public contracting databases—USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System—just over a dozen U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors got more than $44 billion, or about 41% of the almost $108 billion, from 2002 to this year.

As the document details:

In addition, thousands of smaller companies earned billions in contract spending, and about one-third of the contracts (in dollar terms) went to companies that are listed as “undisclosed” or “miscellaneous” in the data. These designations result from the contracts being given to foreign companies without a “DUNS” number, or they are undisclosed with national security or protection as a claimed rationale for secrecy. Whatever the reason, this creates an opacity that makes it impossible to know who exactly received U.S. taxpayer funds, what work was performed, how much profit was earned, and whether the intended purposes of the contracts were served.

Inadequate oversight, coupled with the issue of sub-contracting, results in a system in which the U.S. government pays contractors who then leave a trail of spending that is nearly impossible to follow.

“A number of companies performed services in Afghanistan under multiple different business names,” the analysis notes. “A generous interpretation of this is that the businesses pursuing such practices were in fact performing different services. A less generous interpretation is that businesses can obscure how many contracts they are receiving as well as circumvent issues of ineligibility by operating under different names.”

The report emphasizes that the almost $108 billion that Peltier focused on is “in addition to the trillions of dollars spent on DOD contracts performed in the U.S. over that period.”

The contractors examined by Peltier were paid for construction, lodging, office supplies, refrigeration equipment, transportation, waste disposal, and weapons maintenance in the war-torn country. They operated various facilities—such as dining and troop housing—and were contracted for accounting, fuel, food, guard, and surveillance services.

During the nearly two-decade U.S. occupation, the analysis states, “contractors provided all types of goods and services that were essential to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, including services (such as weapons maintenance and fuel supply) that made the U.S. military dependent on and arguably vulnerable to the performance of contractors.”

“Most contracts for work in Afghanistan ended or were rescinded by August 31, 2021, when U.S. troops fully withdrew,” the report says. “Some contractor presence may remain, though it is difficult to know which companies and how many employees could still be working in service of the U.S. government in that country.”

Transparency is a major focus of the document, which highlights that “lack of oversight by the Department of Defense, combined with waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of both contractors and government employees, resulted in billions of misallocated and misspent taxpayer dollars.”

The analysis cites reports by the DOD Inspector General (DODIG) and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In one case involving insufficient voucher reviews for a major contract from 2015 to 2017, the new report notes, “one-fifth of them had questionable or undocumented expenses, totaling over $536 million.”

In another case, SIGAR found that “a subcontractor of Lockheed Martin submitted fraudulent invoices that resulted in overbilling the Department of Defense millions of dollars.”

Peltier’s report also points to government watchdogs’ findings of “incomplete and shoddy construction of school buildings, warehouses, and other facilities” as well as “bribery of U.S. officials to secure contracts.”

SIGAR, in its quarterly report to Congress this past January, “conservatively estimated nearly 30% of U.S. appropriations for Afghanistan reconstruction from 2009 to 2019 was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.” The Pentagon was responsible for the bulk of that spending.

The Brown analysis explains that “the overpayment of illegitimate expenses, and the lack of oversight of contracts by DOD was compounded by yet another problem: In some cases, contractors were hired to perform oversight of other contractors, in lieu of the oversight that should have been performed by DOD.”

Peltier told Responsible Statecraft—which exclusively reported on the new document—that the DODIG “also found oversight by the DOD itself to be insufficient or poorly executed, so really the oversight problems are both ‘the fox guarding the hen house’ as well as internal issues (which in some cases are because of corruption, and in other cases just poor execution).”

The researcher suggested that to help prevent abuse, “there should be a committee or other body to make determinations of whether certain contracts can legitimately be labeled as ‘undisclosed.’”

“I would recommend the DOD reduce its contracting overall and return to providing more services in-house,” Peltier added, referencing “services like weapons maintenance and security, but also things like food services and lodging, in order to have more command in fulfilling its own needs and reduce the use of contracts and the opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse.”

In a statement Tuesday, Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project, put Peltier’s findings about Pentagon contractor spending into a broader context.

“One hundred billion is an enormous amount of money, but it’s also just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the full costs of the post-9/11 wars,” Savell noted. “Nearly a million people have lost their lives in these wars and U.S. taxpayers have paid over $2.3 trillion for the war in Afghanistan alone—and over $8 trillion total for the post-9/11 wars in other places as well.”

“It’s shocking,” she said, “that the U.S. government hasn’t had a serious reckoning with the U.S. militarized counterterrorism model and its human and financial costs over the past two decades.”

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18. Opinion | What’s up with Amnesty International and its moral myopia on Ukraine?

A new IR term: moral myopia.

Conclusion:

This is more evidence that the faulty logic of moral equivalency has taken deep root at Amnesty International. It is a shame that Amnesty is harming its own credibility, because it undoubtedly does a great deal of good in calling out human rights abuses around the world. But until Amnesty recants its offensive accusations against Ukraine — as it previously recanted its risible refusal to list Navalny as a prisoner of conscience — it does not deserve to be taken seriously. It certainly does not deserve more of the individual donations that it uses to support its faulty findings.

Opinion | What’s up with Amnesty International and its moral myopia on Ukraine?

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · August 8, 2022

In February, Amnesty International, one of the world’s premier human rights organizations, removed the status of “prisoner of conscience” from Alexei Navalny, arguably the world’s most famous political prisoner. Amnesty apparently acted in response to a coordinated pressure campaign by pro-Russian trolls pointing out that Navalny, a fearless critic of Vladimir Putin, had once echoed some Russian nationalist views. In May, the organization backtracked, redesignating Navalny a “prisoner of conscience” and apologizing for taking the label away.

Yet Amnesty International seems to have learned nothing from what should have been a chastening experience. It is still exhibiting a bewildering and unconscionable bias against Putin’s enemies. On Thursday, the organization issued a morally myopic statement accusing Ukrainian forces of “violating the laws of war” by “establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals.”

The Russians, who have launched an unprovoked war of aggression, were predictably delighted — and the Ukrainians, who are fighting to save their country from a merciless and bloodthirsty foe, just as predictably dismayed.

The head of Amnesty’s Ukraine office, Oksana Pokalchuk, quit in disgust, writing on Facebook that the organization had not given the Ukrainian Defense Ministry enough time to respond to the accusations. “The organization created material that sounded like support of Russian narratives,” Pokalchuk said. “Seeking to protect civilians, this study instead has become a tool of Russian propaganda.”

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Sure enough, the Russian mission in Geneva tweeted that “When a civilian [house] is used for military purposes, it turns into a legitimate target for a precision strike. Ukraine continues to do it but now even @amnesty can’t handle it.” The Russian Embassy in London, which recently called for the execution of Ukrainian POWs, chimed in to say that Amnesty’s report is “exactly what Russia has been saying all along.”

I hope Amnesty’s employees, executives and board members at least have enough moral sense left to feel embarrassed that their research is being used to justify war crimes. Amnesty itself has chronicled Russia’s barbarous actions, noting that by “using indiscriminate weapons such as cluster munitions in populated areas, including in cities such as Kharkiv and Chernihiv, Russian forces have killed civilians and demolished residential structures, including apartment blocks.”

And yet now Amnesty is suggesting that Ukraine somehow brought these monstrous cruelties on itself by positioning troops in its cities. What was Ukraine supposed to do? Not defend its cities and allow Russia to occupy them without a fight? That would simply expose Ukrainians to the horrors of Russian occupation, which has resulted in credible accusations of murder, rape, looting, mass deportation and other heinous crimes.

It’s true that part of the reason Ukrainian forces fight in urban areas is that these areas offer strong defensive positions. But Ukraine is hardly compelled by international law to surrender its cities. Marc Garlasco, a veteran war-crimes investigator, tweeted that Amnesty has gotten the laws of war wrong: “Ukraine can place forces in areas they are defending — especially in urban warfare. There is no requirement to stand shoulder to shoulder in a field — this isn’t the 19th century.”

Ukraine does have a responsibility to safeguard civilians from combat as best it can, and it is doing so. Ukrainian authorities urge, and even order, civilians to evacuate areas under Russian attack and help them to do so despite the constant threat of bombardment. (In April, a Russian missile struck a train station full of refugees in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 50 people.)

There is no record of the Ukrainians deliberately attacking civilians in Russian-occupied cities such as Kherson, as the Russians routinely do in Ukrainian territory. Nor have they used civilians as human shields to deter attacks, as groups such as Hamas and the Islamic State so often do. Indeed, such tactics would prove entirely ineffective against Russian generals, who show no concern for the lives of their own soldiers, much less for Ukrainian civilians. Amnesty International is blaming the victims by suggesting that Russian attacks on urban areas are somehow justified by the presence of Ukrainian defenders.

On Sunday, following an uproar, Amnesty issued a statement saying that it “deeply regrets the distress and anger” that it caused, but that “we fully stand by our findings.” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, only made it worse with a self-pitying tweet blaming “Ukrainian and Russian social media mobs and trolls” for “attacking @amnesty investigations” and spreading “war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation.” So now Amnesty is accusing not just Russia but also Ukraine of spreading “disinformation”?

This is more evidence that the faulty logic of moral equivalency has taken deep root at Amnesty International. It is a shame that Amnesty is harming its own credibility, because it undoubtedly does a great deal of good in calling out human rights abuses around the world. But until Amnesty recants its offensive accusations against Ukraine — as it previously recanted its risible refusal to list Navalny as a prisoner of conscience — it does not deserve to be taken seriously. It certainly does not deserve more of the individual donations that it uses to support its faulty findings.

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · August 8, 2022

19. Chinese Official Says Taiwan Is Part Of China Because It Has Many Chinese Restaurants

This is Vice not the Onion or the Babylon Bee or the Duffel Blog.

Photo at the link. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake3wb/china-taiwan-military-drills-hua-chunying

How can we take China seriously?

Chinese Official Says Taiwan Is Part Of China Because It Has Many Chinese Restaurants

“The equivalent is like saying the Americans belong to the United Kingdom because they speak English and have fish and chips restaurants.”

By Rachel Cheung

August 9, 2022, 6:16am

CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESPERSON HUA CHUNYING CITED CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN TAIPEI AS EVIDENCE THAT TAIWAN BELONGS TO CHINA. PHOTO: BAIDU MAPS; NOEL CELIS/AFP

Vice · by Alan Wong · August 9, 2022

As China keeps dropping missiles around Taiwan in its largest-ever military drills in the region, Beijing has also ramped up its propaganda push to assert its claim on the self-ruled island. Its latest argument: Taiwan is part of China because there are dozens of restaurants serving Chinese regional cuisines in Taiwan’s capital.

“Palates don’t cheat,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted on Sunday, citing dozens of dumpling and noodle restaurants she found in Taipei using online maps provided by the Chinese search engine giant Baidu. “Taiwan has always been a part of China. The long lost child will eventually return home.”

The statement was immediately mocked by Twitter users as nonsensical and turned into a meme.

“The equivalent is like saying the Americans belong to the United Kingdom because they speak English and have fish and chips restaurants,” American-Taiwanese journalist Clarissa Wei told VICE World News.

The effort to use the cultural and historical ties between Taiwan and China to press its claim on the island underscores Beijing’s eagerness to alter the delicate balance that has kept the peace in the region for decades, seizing on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan last week. Pelosi was the most senior U.S. official to travel to the island in 25 years, a trip China saw as a violation of its sovereignty.

China’s military exercises around Taiwan, initially set to end Sunday, continued into the week. The Taiwanese government said the drills are a rehearsal for an invasion and has begun its own artillery drills to simulate a defense against an attack.

World News

Could Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Set Off a War?

Rachel Cheung

07.28.22

Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, said Tuesday that China is trying to turn the East and South China Seas and the Taiwan Strait—some of the busiest waterways for global trade—into internal waters. A U.S. defense official accused China of trying to “salami slice their way into a new status quo,” although the Pentagon believes that China won’t invade Taiwan in the next two years.

While ridiculed on Twitter, the Chinese spokesperson Hua’s tweet about the abundance of regional Chinese food in Taipei has found a receptive audience on Chinese social media, where nationalism is running high and there is vocal support for an annexation of Taiwan.

“We are all waiting for Taiwan to return home,” one user on Twitter-like Weibo said in a popular comment in response to Hua’s remarks.

Hua’s statement came after Baidu Maps added granular, street-level data of Taiwan, which is listed as a province in the app. Many Chinese social media users also marveled at dozens of streets named after Chinese cities and cited them as proof that Taiwanese residents long to be part of China.

But Wei, the Taiwan-based journalist and author of the upcoming cookbook “Made in Taiwan,” said China is “weaponizing Chinese culture and food against the diaspora”.

“Hua implies that Taiwan is Chinese because we have Chinese culture. But being Chinese—culturally and ethnically—does not mean we are part of the People’s Republic of China,” Wei said, referring to the official name of China.

While the logic behind Hua’s tweet doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, it was a calculated move to resonate with her intended, domestic audience, said Gina Anne Tam, an assistant professor of East Asian history at Trinity University in San Antonio.

“The strategy is emotional—to muddy a logically indefensible case with appeals to vague feelings,” Tam told VICE World News.

But China would lose the narrative battle if its claims hinge on Taiwanese people wanting to be part of the People’s Republic. As few as 1.3 percent of Taiwan’s 23 million population favors unification, while most prefer maintaining the status quo, so that the independent governance and way of life they enjoy today remain unchanged.

The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, after the Chinese Communist Party won a civil war and the Nationalist Party retreated to the island of Taiwan, where it continued its rule under the name of the Republic of China. Many Taiwanese maintain strong cultural if not also familial ties with their Chinese counterparts, and cuisines from both places are appreciated across the strait separating the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

World News

Did Biden Misspeak on Taiwan Again?

Rachel Cheung

05.24.22

Politically, however, relationships between Beijing and Taipei have ebbed and flowed over the years, and an increasingly powerful and assertive China has triggered fears of an invasion. President Xi Jinping and generations of Chinese leaders have vowed to “reunify” with the self-ruled island and have not ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control.

Follow Rachel Cheung on Twitter and Instagram.

Vice · by Alan Wong · August 9, 2022

20. The FBI’s golden Chinese intelligence asset was a double agent the whole time

Hmmm.....

The FBI’s golden Chinese intelligence asset was a double agent the whole time

wearethemighty.com · by Team Mighty · August 4, 2022

Counterterrorism is more of an art than a science at times, it seems. When FBI special agents launched an investigation into an LA-based importer, they discovered she was feeding sensitive technology to the People’s Republic of China. So they did what any good counterintelligence agency would do: Discover her weaknesses and then flip her.

It seemed like the intelligence coup of a lifetime, at least, it was at first. After 20 years, the FBI discovered her intelligence reports were of little to no value and she was secretly flipped back to Chinese intelligence. The worst part was that no one knew because she’d been having an extramarital affair with her FBI handler.

Katrina Leung was definitely an intelligence win, just not for the FBI.

Leung emigrated to the United States in 1970, claiming to be a citizen of Taiwan. She was educated in New York City and earned an MBA from the University of Chicago. After that, she moved to Los Angeles, where moved into an apartment building the FBI called a “nest of spies,” filled with potential Chinese informants. She managed an import-export business that was known to have ties to illegal technology transfers to China. That’s where she first showed up on the FBI’s radar.

The headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security near Tiananmen Square are reported to also function as MSS headquarters, but the degree to which operations are run out of the official address of No.14 Dong Chang’an Jie vis-à-vis the secretive Xiyuan compound is disputed.

While running the business, some of her associates were passing technology to the Chinese government, something the FBI also knew. The FBI began to suspect she had a role in the same kinds of transfers. Leung left the business, and the bureau closed its case against her.

The investigation was reopened by FBI Special Agent James Smith, specialist in Chinese counterintelligence. He discovered a weakness and convinced her to supply information to the United States. Smith became her FBI handler in 1982 and code-named Leung “Parlor Maid.”

After Smith helped her gain legal American citizenship, the two hatched a plan to get Leung recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) which came to fruition in 1984. The Chinese MSS paid Leung for low-level information on the workings of the FBI’s LA field office, while the FBI paid her expenses, including flights to and from China. It worked beautifully.

Leung became a high-profile member of the Chinese-American community and occasionally held diplomatic receptions for Chinese officials. The President of China, then Yang Shangkun, supported her involvement so much that she was asked to advise the Chinese government on where to locate its new Los Angeles consulate building in 1998.

Neither the FBI nor the CIA had any reason to doubt Leung’s bonafides. She had passed multiple polygraph tests and the information she provided was verified by Chinese defectors. In May 2000, the FBI received credible evidence that Leung was indeed spying on the U.S. for China. A month later, Smith retired and the FBI launched an investigation. What it found shocked the bureau to the core.

Its first revelation was that Smith, who was married, and Leung had been carrying on an intimate relationship for nearly the entire time he was her handler, more than 18 years. The investigation also found numerous red flags in Leung’s history with the agency that were never reported or investigated.

MSS facilities in Xiyuan, Haidian District, Beijing.

Smith was a star agent, according to the FBI’s Inspector General (IG) report of the incident, and required little supervision. Except neither he nor anyone else in the LA bureau at the time fully vetted Leung before taking her on as an asset. The IG criticized the field office for its early handling. But Smith had begun his sexual relationship with her in 1983, almost immediately after she was recruited.

The FBI also found that Leung began using untapped payphones to contact Chinese officials, an act that was not reported to higher authorities. Leung had also begun a sexual affair with another FBI agent in the bureau’s San Francisco office around this time, which the IG disregarded. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Leung’s loyalty should have been called into question.

In June 1990, Leung began reporting technical details of an American operation on the West Coast to officials in China. The evidence was lost or placed in multiple files, so the FBI never thought to do a full investigation. Leung continued providing information to the PRC, and the FBI knew it, but no one questioned how she knew the information.

She was getting it from her handler, Smith, who was talking openly about ongoing operations and bringing classified materials to their intimate sessions. Leung would photograph or make copies of these documents and send them to China. Smith knew about the disclosures, but kept quiet because he was afraid of being exposed. These failures went on for a decade.

When Smith was promoted in the bureau, he continued to keep Leung briefed about the FBI activities in Los Angeles. Her handler had become the intelligence asset. No one questioned Smith because his credibility was considered beyond reproach.

In 2001, Leung’s apartment was searched and the FBI found FBI phone directories and secret memos about Chinese fugitives. They later discovered she was providing the PRC with the photos of FBI agents still active in the field, along with more than a decade of updates about FBI counterintelligence ops in Los Angeles and the West Coast. When the investigation concluded in 2003, Leung and Smith were arrested.

The case against Leung was thrown out due to prosecutorial misconduct, but the FBI came back at her for tax-related crimes. She signed a plea deal for three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $10,000 fine. She also had to cooperate with FBI debriefings.

No one really knows the full extent of the damage done by Katrina Leung. It remains one of the biggest counterintelligence failures in American history.

wearethemighty.com · by Team Mighty · August 4, 2022

21. What Makes the Green Berets Special? A Former Army Special Forces Officer Explains

A somewhat superficial overview. I will make it even simpler.

What makes a Green Beret special is his or her single minded focus on conducting Unconventional Warfare and applying "unconventional warfare thinking" to any complex political military problem he or she is faced with solving or contributing to solving. That is the single thing that makes him or her "special" and the difference between SF and all other military personnel., Not better, not superior, not elite. Just a single minded UW focus which is not found in any other military service or branch or discipline.

What Makes the Green Berets Special? A Former Army Special Forces Officer Explains

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · August 8, 2022

The U.S. Army’s Special Forces are known to most as the Green Berets. These legendary soldiers have been honored in books, films, and songs.

In September, troops past and present will gather in Colorado Springs to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Special Forces.

At any given time, Army Special Forces can be found in 80 to 90 countries around the world, conducting missions essential to U.S. and allied nations’ security. They are the shadow warriors, the “quiet professionals.” The training pipeline is long. Candidates must pass through several phases before they can earn the right to wear the Green Beret and bear the title.

What makes these troops so unique? While the paragraphs below will spell out several key reasons, the short answer is: everything.

History of Special Forces

The Army’s Special Forces were officially founded on June 11, 1952, at Smoke Bomb Hill at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, during the height of the Cold War. Col. Aaron Bank was the first commander and has been considered the “Father of Special Forces” since he formed the 10th Special Forces Group. The Army chose that designation – 10th SFG – to confuse the Soviet Union into believing that more special forces groups would meet them if they chose to invade Western Europe.

Many of the original plank holders, Bank included, hailed from the World War II Office of Strategic Services, the first U.S. military/civilian intelligence agency and the forerunner of both the Special Forces and the CIA.

In 1953, the 10th SFG was split, with Bank taking the 10th to Bad Tolz, Germany, while the troops that remained in Ft. Bragg formed the 77th Special Forces Group cadre. In 1960, that group was redesignated the 7th SFG.

Special Forces went through a large expansion during the war in Vietnam. Special Forces A-camps were dotted throughout South Vietnam, where troops trained ethnic Vietnamese and Montagnard tribes in the Civilian Irregular Defense Group program. They also conducted special operations under the MACV-SOG (Studies and Observation Group). More than 20 Medals of Honor were awarded to special forces troops for actions during the Vietnam War.

After a drawdown in the 1970s, SF was re-energized in the 1980s, and Special Forces became its own branch on April 9, 1987. The Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, was formed to place all SOF units under one umbrella organization.

SOCOM has grown exponentially since the onset of the Global War on Terror, and Green Berets have served in the hot spots of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Special Forces and CIA paramilitary operators were the first on the ground in Afghanistan, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks.

Long, Arduous Training

The training for Green Berets begins with the SF Assessment and Selection Course. Once a candidate is selected for training, they begin the SF Qualification Course. The training can last anywhere between 55 and 95 weeks, depending on the occupational specialty. Green Berets are typically a bit older and more mature than their conventional counterparts.

Green Berets. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Special Forces medics are highly trained. In some cases, when operating in the Third World, they are better trained than some nations’ doctors. Medics are arguably the biggest rapport-builders when deployed. Their training pipeline is the longest of all the specialties.

Special forces troops are trained in several different missions, but their bread and butter is unconventional warfare, an area where they have no peers in the U.S. military. Primary special forces missions include but are not limited to:

– DIRECT ACTION – Direct Action missions are short-duration strikes used to seize, capture, recover or destroy enemy material, or recover personnel.

– SPECIAL RECONNAISSANCE – Actions conducted in sensitive environments to collect or verify information of strategic or operational significance.

– COUNTERINSURGENCY – Special Forces troops respond to terrorist activities and train other nations’ militaries in the basics of fighting insurgents.

– UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE – The primary Special Forces operation, unconventional warfare comprises activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area.

– FOREIGN INTERNAL DEFENSE – This is the act of training and equipping foreign allied military forces to defend against insurgency, subversion, terrorism, and other security threats.

– SECURITY FORCE ASSISTANCE – Special Forces soldiers train and develop the defense capabilities of friendly and developing nations.

Special Forces troops serve in 12-man A-Teams, frequently in small, isolated bases away from conventional support. They must be able to adapt to and overcome obstacles on their own. The typical 12-man A-Team is comprised of:

18A – Special Forces Officer

180A – Special Forces Warrant Officer

18B – Special Forces Weapons Sergeant

18C – Special Forces Engineer Sergeant

18D – Special Forces Medical Sergeant

18E – Special Forces Communications Sergeant

18F – Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant

18Z – Special Forces Operations Sergeant

Special forces groups are area-oriented toward a language and culture so that Green Berets can teach and train alongside partner-nation troops and speak to them in their own language.

A-Teams are specialized, and each company will have designated Mountain, SCUBA (Combat Diver), Military Free Fall (HALO) teams, and other specialties.

A Green Beret Is a Fighter and a Teacher

Several years ago, I wrote an article about how teaching is an art for Green Berets. While the training of our allied partners isn’t as sexy as the door-kicking Direct Action missions, it is an essential task.

Being able to reach and teach a foreigner in his own language is a tremendous boost to building rapport, earning trust, and creating a successful team with foreign allies. That’s where cultural awareness and language training become so important.

There are many special operations forces in the U.S. military. But only one is designated Special Forces: The Army’s Green Berets.

Steve Balestrieri is a 1945 National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO, and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation. 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 8, 2022

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

V/R

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Phone: 202-573-8647

Personal Email: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Subscribe to FDD’s new podcast, Foreign Podicy

FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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