Quotes of the Day:

“Lead with civility.

Lead with humility.

Lead with ethical morality.” 

- Alexis Piquero

“Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.” 

- Robert A. Heinlein

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” 

- Aristotle

Apologies for the delay, multiple early meetings and phone calls.

1. Israel, Hamas seek new deal to extend Gaza truce on final day

2. US military aircraft crashes in sea off Japan killing at least one

3. Why Israel Won’t Change

4. China’s acoustic aggression against a US ally follows a pattern. Military talks won’t help.

5. ‘We’re taking it out of hide’: Pentagon says it has no money for Middle East buildup

6. Xi Is Delegating More Authority in China to His Trusted No. 2

7. AI has a political problem

8. Russia to US: You won’t win the next arms race

9. A key Pentagon data link can now talk to satellites—but not in the USA

10. Putin won't make peace in Ukraine before 2024 US election -US official

11. Top CIA official posted pro-Palestine picture on Facebook two weeks after Hamas' terror attack on Israel as Biden faces mutiny from within

12. Opinion | Vladimir Putin is winning

13. US used its Section 702 spy tool to disrupt Iran’s weapons program

14. Possible Outcomes Of Northern Myanmar Military Conflict And Implications For China – Analysis

15. Preparing for a Long War

16. Don’t Count on Economic Woes to Deter China

17. Taiwan still flashing red despite US-China 'thaw'

18. Does bin Laden get the last laugh?

19. Putin sees Finland as the next Crimea20. 

1. Israel, Hamas seek new deal to extend Gaza truce on final day

Israel, Hamas seek new deal to extend Gaza truce on final day

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Mohammed Salem and Maayan Lubell

November 29, 20236:15 AM ESTUpdated 3 min ago

Reuters · by Nidal Al-Mughrabi

• Summary
• LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
• Israeli hostage families notified of group to be released on truce's final day so far
• Palestinian official: no deal to extend truce yet despite willingness of both sides
• No word if 10-month-old baby among final group of hostages due for release
• Palestinians say 160 more bodies recovered from Gaza rubble

GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Israel and Hamas were negotiating through mediators on Wednesday over another potential extension of the Gaza truce, with hours left to reach an agreement before fighting was due to restart after a six-day pause.

Families of Israeli hostages were informed on Wednesday of the names of those due to be released later in the day, Israel's public broadcaster Kan reported, the final group to be freed under the truce unless negotiators succeed in extending it.

So far Hamas, the militant group ruling the Gaza Strip, has freed 60 Israeli women and children from among the 240 hostages they seized in a deadly rampage on Oct. 7 under the deal that secured the war's first truce. Twenty-one foreigners, mainly Thai farmworkers, were also freed under separate parallel deals. In return, Israel has released 180 Palestinian security detainees, all women and teenagers.

The penultimate release on Tuesday included for the first time hostages held by Islamic Jihad, a group allied to Hamas, as well as by Hamas itself.

The initial four-day truce was extended by 48 hours from Tuesday, and Israel says it would be willing to prolong it further for as long as Hamas frees 10 hostages a day. But with fewer women and children still in captivity, that could mean agreeing to terms governing the release of at least some Israeli men for the first time.

A Palestinian official told Reuters that despite a willingness on both sides to prolong the truce, no agreement had yet been reached. Discussions were still under way with mediators Egypt and Qatar, the official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office declined to comment on the state of any talks but noted that an extra 50 Palestinian women detainees had been added on Tuesday to a list cleared to be released in case a new swap was agreed.

FIRST RESPITE

The truce has brought the first respite to a war launched by Israel to annihilate Hamas after the "Black Sabbath" raid by gunmen who killed 1,200 people on the Jewish rest day, according to Israel's tally.

Israeli bombardment has since reduced much of Gaza to a wasteland, with more than 15,000 people confirmed killed, 40% of them children, according to Palestinian health authorities deemed reliable by the United Nations.

Many more are feared buried under the ruins. The Palestinian health ministry said another 160 bodies had been pulled out of rubble during the past 24 hours of the truce, and around 6,500 people were still missing.

On Tuesday, mediator Qatar hosted the spy chiefs from Israel's Mossad and the U.S. CIA.

The officials discussed possible parameters of a new phase of the truce deal including Hamas releasing hostages who are Israeli men or soldiers, a source briefed on the matter said. They also considered what might be needed to reach a ceasefire lasting more than a handful of days.

Qatar spoke to Hamas before the meeting to get a sense of what the group might agree to, and the opposing sides are now internally discussing the ideas explored at the meeting, the source said.

There was no immediate word on whether the final group to be freed on Wednesday would include the youngest hostage, 10-month-old baby Kfir Bibas, held along with his four-year-old brother and their parents. Relatives had come forward with a special plea after they were omitted from the penultimate group freed on Tuesday.

The truce has held throughout the six days despite reports from both sides of comparatively small-scale violations, though both say they are prepared for war to resume with full intensity the moment it lapses.

A spokesperson for Israel's military said the truce was still holding on Wednesday. Palestinians accused Israeli forces of firing at homes near the beach in Khan Younis from the sea, and of shooting in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.

Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Mohammed Salem and Roleen Tafakji in Gaza, Henriette Chacar and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Steve Holland on Air Force One and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Graff; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Nidal Al-Mughrabi

Thomson Reuters

A senior correspondent with nearly 25 years’ experience covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict including several wars and the signing of the first historic peace accord between the two sides.

Reuters · by Nidal Al-Mughrabi

2. US military aircraft crashes in sea off Japan killing at least one

US military aircraft crashes in sea off Japan killing at least one

Reuters · by Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO, Nov 29 (Reuters) - A U.S. military aircraft carrying six people crashed into the sea in western Japan on Wednesday, killing at least one crew member with the condition of at least two hauled from waters unclear.

Japan's coast guard said it found what appeared to be wreckage from the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey and one person who was later confirmed to have died some 3 km (2 miles) from Yakushima island.

Fishing boats in the area found three people in the surrounding waters, a representative of a local fisheries cooperative said, adding their condition was unknown.

Another Osprey landed safely at the island's airport on Wednesday afternoon around the time of the crash, a spokesperson for the local government said.

U.S. forces in the region were still gathering information, a spokesperson said.

The United States has about 54,000 U.S. troops in Japan, many in the strategically important southern island chain, amid growing Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea.

The crash happened just before 3 p.m. (0600 GMT) with witnesses saying the aircraft's left engine appeared to be on fire as it approached an airport for an emergency landing, despite clear weather and light wind, media reported.

The coast guard corrected the number of people on board the plane to six from an initially announced eight.

Yakushima is in Japan's Kagoshima prefecture, some 1,040 km (650 miles) southwest of the capital Tokyo and known for its World Heritage-accredited wildlife and forests.

Japan, which also operates Osprey aircraft, said on Wednesday it had no plans to ground the aircraft but had asked the U.S. military to investigate the crash.

Developed jointly by Boeing (BA.N) and Bell Helicopter, the Osprey can fly both like a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft and is operated by the U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy and the Japan Self-Defense Forces.

The deployment of the Osprey in Japan has been controversial, with critics saying it is prone to accidents. The U.S. military and Japan say it is safe.

In August, a U.S. Osprey crashed off the coast of northern Australia while transporting troops during a routine military exercise, killing three U.S. Marines.

Another crash-landed in the ocean off Japan's southern island of Okinawa in December 2016, prompting a temporary U.S. military grounding of the aircraft.

Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Tim Kelly and Kantaro Komiya; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by David Dolan, Gerry Doyle and Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Reuters · by Kiyoshi Takenaka

3. Why Israel Won’t Change

Excerpts:

Yet in one major way Israel remains unchanged. Although Israelis blame the country’s leadership for the catastrophic security failures surrounding the attacks, their basic political orientation seems unlikely to change. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may well be forced to step down when the war is over—if not before, since the war has no clear endpoint. But as Israeli history has repeatedly shown, especially in recent decades, episodes of war or extreme violence like the current one have only reinforced a rightward tilt in Israeli politics. If that pattern holds now, Israelis might elect a new government, but they might also endorse the same flawed assumptions that have defined that tilt and which have helped shape the current crisis.

Unsurprisingly, many Israelis put the country’s disastrous security failure squarely on the shoulders of Netanyahu, the man at the top. What is more striking, however, is that they are voicing their opposition amid one of the most difficult wars Israel has fought in decades. Thus, in the weeks since the attack, there have been several demonstrations calling on Netanyahu to resign; the head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, joined the call, as have some families of victims who were killed or kidnapped by Hamas. Numerous polls suggest that Netanyahu would be roundly defeated if elections were held now.

...

One of Netanyahu’s worst mistakes was to view the Palestinian problem purely in security terms, as if the politics behind the conflict could be ignored. That, of course, led to the blind spot that helped make the Hamas attacks so deadly. But as an IDF man, Gantz seems likely to view the Palestinian problem in much the same way—as a security threat to be contained rather than an acknowledgement of the Palestinian right to self-determination. And if that is the case, for all its horror, October 7 seems likely to result in more of the same—including future cycles of misery on both sides.

Why Israel Won’t Change

The War in Gaza Will Likely Reinforce the Country’s Rightward Tilt

By Dahlia Scheindlin

November 29, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel · November 29, 2023

Almost from the moment Hamas broke through Israel’s security barrier with Gaza on October 7 and began its rampage, it felt like Israel would never be the same. Within hours, Israelis were forced to confront the reality that many of the assumptions that had long guided Israeli policy toward the Palestinians had crumbled. The state’s 16-year-old policy of blockading Gaza had failed to make them safe. The government’s calculation that it could lure Hamas into pragmatism—whether by allowing Qatari funding for Hamas or by giving work permits for Gaza laborers—had instead lured Israel into complacency. And the belief that most threats from Hamas could be neutralized by high-tech surveillance, deep underground barriers, and the Iron Dome missile defense system had proved dead wrong.

On a broader level, the attacks showed the terrible failure of the idea that the Palestinian political question could be sidelined indefinitely without any cost to Israel, a belief so axiomatic among Israel’s leadership that commentators found names for it: conflict management, or “shrinking the conflict.” Thus, there had been no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a final status peace deal for years, even as Israel pursued normalization with a growing number of Arab states. Over the course of more than two decades, the right-wing parties dominating the Israeli political scene had promised voters that the country was more secure than it would be under any other policy, and the majority of voters agreed. But on October 7, Hamas’s attack brought the status quo crashing down.

Yet in one major way Israel remains unchanged. Although Israelis blame the country’s leadership for the catastrophic security failures surrounding the attacks, their basic political orientation seems unlikely to change. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may well be forced to step down when the war is over—if not before, since the war has no clear endpoint. But as Israeli history has repeatedly shown, especially in recent decades, episodes of war or extreme violence like the current one have only reinforced a rightward tilt in Israeli politics. If that pattern holds now, Israelis might elect a new government, but they might also endorse the same flawed assumptions that have defined that tilt and which have helped shape the current crisis.

BLAMING THE LEADER

Unsurprisingly, many Israelis put the country’s disastrous security failure squarely on the shoulders of Netanyahu, the man at the top. What is more striking, however, is that they are voicing their opposition amid one of the most difficult wars Israel has fought in decades. Thus, in the weeks since the attack, there have been several demonstrations calling on Netanyahu to resign; the head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, joined the call, as have some families of victims who were killed or kidnapped by Hamas. Numerous polls suggest that Netanyahu would be roundly defeated if elections were held now.

Even a survey taken on November 22 and 23—after the government announced a hostage release deal that could have boosted its position—showed the ruling coalition would lose 23 of its 64 seats in the Knesset (out of 120). Support for Netanyahu’s own party has fallen dramatically: if elections were held now, polls show Likud losing nearly half of its 32 Knesset seats. Perhaps most striking, more than three-quarters of Israelis think that Netanyahu should resign, after or even during the war.

These numbers stand in stark contrast to the burst of support that most leaders are accorded when their country is attacked or at war. For example, Americans threw themselves behind U.S. President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and the approval ratings of U.S. leaders rose by double digits during the 1990–91 Gulf War and the Iraq War that started in 2003. Similarly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky enjoyed an overwhelming rise in popularity after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Israelis have often soured on their government after war breaks out.

For Israelis, however, turning against their wartime leaders is not new. The country’s voters have often soured on their government after war breaks out, regardless of the political orientation of the parties in office. In 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir was blamed for failing to anticipate the attack by Egypt that started the Yom Kippur War and was ultimately hounded out of office. The second intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, led to the collapse of Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s government, with Barak losing to Ariel Sharon by 25 percentage points in 2001.

Yet another example was Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah. By August of that year, 63 percent of Israelis felt that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had failed to manage the war properly and ought to resign. By early 2007, Olmert was also facing corruption investigations, and more than three-quarters of Israelis were dissatisfied with his job performance, the same portion who currently want Netanyahu to relinquish power. (Olmert ultimately resigned in 2008 due to his looming indictment for corruption.)

From this well-established pattern, it seems likely that Netanyahu will suffer the same fate. Long before the Hamas attacks, his far-right coalition government, formed in late December 2022, was widely reviled. For much of the past year, huge numbers of Israelis have been taking to the streets to oppose the government’s highly controversial judicial overhaul plan in what had become the longest-running protest in Israeli history: October 7 would have marked the 40th straight week. Already in April, only 37 percent of Israelis backed the prime minister; since the attacks, that figure has plunged to 26 percent. By mid-November, twice as many Israelis, or 52 percent, favored former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival and current partner in the emergency war cabinet.

Moreover, Netanyahu has also been dogged by corruption allegations. Between the active corruption cases against him, the security failures on his watch, and the current war, it will be difficult—if not impossible—for him to remain in office. But the larger question remains: would his departure lead to a fundamental change in the direction of Israeli politics or policy?

RESPONDING RIGHTWARD

Time and again, in moments of war or extreme violence, Israelis have moved to the right. When Israel first elected the right-wing Likud in 1977, it capped the slow downfall of the Labor government that began after the 1973 war. The victory was in fact driven mainly by a long-brewing rebellion against the ruling Alignment/Labor elites, but it legitimized more nationalist and hard-line ideologies as a significant force in Israel. It also ushered in the second phase of the country’s political history, dominated mostly by governments on the right.

During the 1980s, two major conflicts helped drive more Israelis to self-identify with the right: the 1982 war and the first intifada, which started in 1987. The shift is reflected in poll numbers: in 1981, survey researchers found that among the Jewish population (hardly any public surveys included Arabs at this time), 36 percent of respondents said they planned to support a right-wing party. By 1991, that portion who self-identified as right-wing had risen to about half of all Jewish Israelis.

Nevertheless, in the 1992 election, Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin won on a campaign of advancing a peace process with the Palestinians, seemingly countering the expectation that conflict leads to right-wing electoral victories. Some analysts later concluded that Palestinians’ use of force in the first intifada may have contributed to Israel’s support for peace and dovish governments. But that conflict was vastly less violent than later wars. Palestinians largely employed civil disobedience tactics, with light clashes limited mostly to the occupied territories. The 1992 election was also the last time Israelis voted for the left following any sort of conflict with Palestinians.

The effect of the second intifada on the electorate was almost immediate.

Although Rabin’s government signed the Oslo accords with Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, extremists on both sides soon thwarted the process. Between 1993 and 1995, militant Palestinian groups carried out 14 suicide bombings in Israel; in 1994, Jewish fundamentalist settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron. Then, in November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli religious ultranationalist at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.

Many Israeli analysts and even former negotiators believe Rabin’s assassination killed the peace process: Rabin had made it a centerpiece of his leadership and had the political stature to carry along significant parts of the Israeli public. But another interpretation is that, without Rabin, Israelis simply reverted to their natural ideological preferences. In early 1995—before Rabin’s assassination—about half of Israeli Jews labeled themselves right-wing, compared with 28 percent who labeled themselves left and 23 percent who described themselves as centrist, largely mirroring the 1991 polling. And in the 1996 election, despite polling showing post-assassination sympathy for Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, voters went on to elect Netanyahu, who ran on a populist right-wing platform and opposed the “peace process.”

Yet if violence pushed Israelis further to the right, there was also evidence from the Oslo years that calmer times could cause a commensurate, if moderate, swing to the left. For example, during Netanyahu’s first term in the late 1990s, as suicide bombings fell, the proportion of Jewish Israelis who identified as left-wing rose to 35 percent, while those who described themselves as right fell to 42 percent. According to available polling data, that seven-point difference was the narrowest gap between the two sides in the previous 30 years. Then, in 1999, Barak, a leader most Israelis then considered left-wing, was elected to office on promises to revive the peace process and end Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon which at that time had dragged on for 17 years.

But Israeli support for the left didn’t last. At the Camp David summit in July 2000, Barak tried to reach a full-fledged two-state agreement with Arafat. Instead, the talks failed and the second intifada broke out, quickly becoming far more violent than the first. The effect on the electorate was almost immediate: in my surveys, the percent of Jewish Israelis who identified with left-wing attitudes tumbled ten points within the first year of the intifada, and it kept falling after that.

CEMENTING CONTROL

During the first decade of this century, Israelis shifted further to the right. The first half of the decade was characterized by four years of suicide bombings and Israel’s re-invasion of Palestinian towns in Operation Defensive Shield. The second half included the 2006 war in Lebanon, as well as Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, which contributed to Hamas’s victory in Palestinian elections and its violent takeover of Gaza in 2007. This led to Israel’s blockade of the Strip. Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel became more frequent, culminating in Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s massive invasion of Gaza in 2008–9. Shortly after that war, Israelis voted Netanyahu back into office, with his Likud taking an increasingly populist-nationalist orientation. By 2011, more than half of Israeli Jews described themselves as right-wing, more than three times as many who said they were on the left, a number that had declined to 15 percent.

During the 2010s, the trend continued. As Israel fought numerous conflicts with Hamas—including its more extended Gaza operation in 2014—Jewish Israeli voters’ identification with right-wing ideology climbed steadily. Though this indicator still hovered at around 50 percent in the mid-2010s it reached 60 percent by 2019, according to my surveys. By this point, Arab Israelis—about 20 percent of the Israeli population (but roughly 17 percent of the adult citizen electorate)—were regularly polled, as well, and their low levels of support for right-wing ideology brought down the overall average. Nevertheless, even when Arab Israelis were included, about half of the total Israeli public counted themselves as right-wing. (Arab Israelis did boost the left-wing total to about 18 percent of the total population in most surveys of recent years.)

The years leading up to the current war further reinforced this trajectory. In May 2021, a new escalation with Hamas led to unprecedented street violence between Jews and Arab citizens in Israel, followed by a smaller round of violence in 2022 and a quick fight with Palestinian Islamic Jihad in May 2023. Despite widespread outrage at the Netanyahu government for its judicial overhaul plan, the majority of Jewish voters continued to identify as right-wing in surveys.

Notably, just five days before the Hamas attacks, aChord, a social psychology research center affiliated with Hebrew University, conducted a survey that found that two-thirds of Jewish Israelis identified as right-wing (either “firm right” or “moderate right”) while ten percent identified as left. This meant that for every Jewish Israeli voter on the left, the trend was moving toward nearly seven on the right. Based on this stark data, it would be remarkable if Israelis didn’t move further to the right in the wake of the worst episode of violence against Israelis since the country’s founding.

MORE OF THE SAME?

Despite enormous popular disaffection with Netanyahu’s leadership, concerns about political instability will likely allow him to stay in power through the current war. Moreover, much could still happen in the war itself, and voter inclinations may also depend on how much time passes before the next election takes place. But if Netanyahu is ultimately forced out of office, it is far from certain that Israel will take a different ideological path.

Current polls show voters flocking to Gantz’s center-right National Unity party. According to a poll published November 24, if elections were held now, Gantz’s party would receive 43 seats—11 more than Likud won in the 2022 election and well over double what Likud stands to receive now. But it is too soon to know whether these numbers will hold, let alone if they reflect a broader shift toward the center. One problem is that, since all of Israel’s far-right parties are in the deeply unpopular ruling coalition, voters angry with the original Netanyahu cabinet are supporting National Unity—now a wartime partner in that government—by default. Gantz, with his strong military credentials, also seems to be benefiting from “rally round the flag” support in the war itself.

Gantz is unlikely to veer from the right’s existing approach to the Palestinian problem.

But if Israelis resent Netanyahu yet seem likely to shift right, why aren’t they cleaving to the far-right parties in the coalition? So far, polls show no rise for the ultranationalist Jewish Power and Religious Zionism parties. Paradoxically, the Netanyahu government’s extremist program, its attack on democratic institutions, and the catastrophic misgovernance leading up to the war might actually hold back the electorate from making what could have been a reflexive slide toward a more theocratic, antidemocratic, and irredeemable right.

One plausible outcome of the current crisis, then, would see Israel shifting to a new Gantz-led government. Gantz would likely avoid Netanyahu’s constant stream of divisive populism and presumably his corruption scandals, and he would almost certainly avoid the messianic drive of his predecessor’s governments to expand settlements or formalize annexation. Still, with Gantz’s long military record and the presence of former Likud members in his party, he carries legitimacy on the right and will want to maintain it. Moreover, there is little in Gantz’s own rhetoric to suggest he would veer significantly from the right’s existing approach to the Palestinian problem. Neither as a candidate nor since joining the war cabinet has Gantz openly supported a two-state solution, or any political resolution of the Palestinian issue for that matter. As recently as last year, he referred to the idea of “two states for two people,” and said, “I am against this.”

One of Netanyahu’s worst mistakes was to view the Palestinian problem purely in security terms, as if the politics behind the conflict could be ignored. That, of course, led to the blind spot that helped make the Hamas attacks so deadly. But as an IDF man, Gantz seems likely to view the Palestinian problem in much the same way—as a security threat to be contained rather than an acknowledgement of the Palestinian right to self-determination. And if that is the case, for all its horror, October 7 seems likely to result in more of the same—including future cycles of misery on both sides.

• DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN is a pollster, a Policy Fellow at Century International, and a columnist at Haaretz. She is the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel.

Foreign Affairs · by The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel · November 29, 2023

4. China’s acoustic aggression against a US ally follows a pattern. Military talks won’t help.

When have we blunted such aggression in the past? What actions would be appropriate to blunt this aggression. A Multinational information campaign is necessary and important, but we can also argue that actions speak louder than words and are very much a part of an information campaign.

Conclusion:

If this escalation is not blunted, a servicemember from a US ally could be killed by these tactics, which would present a dangerous test of the resolve of the United States and allies to take the risks involved in standing up to Beijing—regardless of what channels exist to communicate with the PRC military. The United States should live up to its obligations as an ally, while also working vigorously to maximize public solidarity among all US allies and friends when one comes under this sort of aggression, rather than placing vain hopes in military-to-military communications channels to prevent Beijing’s escalation. Beijing must come to understand that such tactics are not just risky, but counterproductive—strengthening rather than straining resolve and solidarity among the United States and its allies.

China’s acoustic aggression against a US ally follows a pattern. Military talks won’t help.

By Markus Garlauskas and Philip Yu

atlanticcouncil.org · by jcookson · November 22, 2023

Last week, a Chinese warship used its active sonar to harass and injure two Australian Royal Navy divers with high-powered sound waves. These sailors were attempting to free their own vessel, which had become entangled in fishing nets while it was in international waters off Japan. This is only the latest in a series of escalating acts by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in recent years against US and allied vessels and aircraft operating in international air and sea space of the Western Pacific. This aggression, which has inflicted damage and injuries, should serve as a counterpoint to the afterglow of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s outwardly positive recent bilateral meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden. It should also temper expectations ahead of the resumption of US-PRC military-to-military talks, which was agreed during Xi’s meeting with Biden. Instead, the United States and its allies should work together to call out and counter this pattern of reckless bullying by Beijing.

Acoustic aggression

The recent incident involving the Australian frigate HMAS Toowoomba is the latest in a pattern of bullying. On November 14, the vessel was in international waters inside of Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone headed to a Japanese port, after publicly announced multinational operations to monitor and deter evasion of United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea. It had stopped so that Australian divers could disentangle fishing nets from its propellers, and it communicated clearly using internationally recognized procedures that it was conducting diving operations. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) destroyer Ningbo closely approached, despite the Toowoomba warning it about the divers in the water and the Ningbo acknowledging that it had received these warnings. The Chinese vessel then activated its hull-mounted active sonar, blasting the Australian sailors with high-powered sound waves and forcing the Australian divers to exit the water. Medical examinations revealed the sailors had been injured, according to the Australian government’s statement about the incident.

The Chinese vessel’s behavior was not the result of a misunderstanding or a lack of communication. At a minimum, this behavior was unsafe and unprofessional by the standards of international law and maritime norms and conventions. However, this was not an isolated instance, and taken in full context, it almost certainly amounted to an intentional, if nonlethal, acoustic aggression for coercive purposes. A recent US Department of Defense report has provided a whole series of escalating examples of coercive and risky behaviors by the PRC’s forces since 2021—targeted against Australian, Canadian, Philippine, and US vessels and aircraft. Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner characterized these as part of a “coordinated campaign” by the PRC in his comments at the Atlantic Council on October 23. Further details on some of these incidents were provided by the US Department of Defense in an October 17 release of declassified images and videos of fifteen cases of coercive and risky operational behavior in close proximity to US forces in international airspace since January 2022.

Business as usual with China will not solve the problem

The global media and audiences in the United States have been paying attention to the much-applauded resumption of high level military-to-military communication channels as an outcome of the recent summit between Biden and Xi, along with the revival of the US-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks, the US-China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings, and telephone conversations between theater commanders.

There is nothing wrong with seeking to restore these bilateral military-to-millitary lines of communication, but hard-won experience suggests that these will not solve the problem posed by these PRC behaviors, nor even be an effective means to manage the problem, for three reasons. First, the communications channels will likely simply be used by the PRC to repeat the “party line” about what occurred in an incident rather than sharing any meaningful new facts. Second, the Chinese will likely deflect any US efforts to use a bilateral PRC-US line of communication to discuss PRC military interactions with a US ally’s forces. Third, the PRC is unlikely to live up to any agreements reached through such channels.

For example, in 2014, the two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Rules of Behavior for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters. In it, both countries committed to adherence to specific rules of behavior for air and maritime encounters, based on existing international law and maritime norms and conventions. These rules included the establishment of communication, the use of standard radio frequencies, and the avoidance of aggressive behavior to ensure the safety of military air and maritime activities. The PRC has repeatedly and flagrantly violated the letter and the spirit of the memorandum, as it did in this latest incident.

When the captains and colonels of the US military finally again sit across from their PLA senior captain and senior colonel counterparts, there should be no misconceptions about what outcomes are tangible or what progress is attainable. Based on past experience, the US side will earnestly attempt to strengthen adherence to international law and norms to enhance operational safety and reduce the risk of incidents. In contrast, the PLA delegation will rehash talking points, like those rejecting the facts of Australia’s protest over the Ningbo’s activities.

Time for a multilateral information campaign

Ratner characterized the Toowoomba incident as “the latest example in a pattern of coercive and risky PLA operational behavior.” But more can and should be done.

The United States should take the lead in mobilizing a more comprehensive and intense international response against this and other such aggressions by the PRC in international waters and airspace. Atlantic Council senior fellow Peter Dean, the director of foreign policy and defense at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, noted to us this week the need for international solidarity in the response. He emphasized the “importance of a broad range of countries in the region standing together in relation to international law and to oppose PRC aggression . . . to continue to call it out and highlight these incidences to reinforce resolve to oppose such moves.”

With all this in mind, rather than investing so much political capital and attention on reestablishing and maintaining private military-to-military lines of communication with the PRC, it is important for the United States to focus on coordinating the multilateral public message and posture with allies in response to these actions by the PRC. It is important that the United States show clear backing for its allies facing such tactics from the PRC and that US allies show solidarity with each other in the face of such bullying.

If this escalation is not blunted, a servicemember from a US ally could be killed by these tactics, which would present a dangerous test of the resolve of the United States and allies to take the risks involved in standing up to Beijing—regardless of what channels exist to communicate with the PRC military. The United States should live up to its obligations as an ally, while also working vigorously to maximize public solidarity among all US allies and friends when one comes under this sort of aggression, rather than placing vain hopes in military-to-military communications channels to prevent Beijing’s escalation. Beijing must come to understand that such tactics are not just risky, but counterproductive—strengthening rather than straining resolve and solidarity among the United States and its allies.

Markus Garlauskas is the director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is a former senior US government official with experience as an intelligence officer and strategist, including twelve years stationed overseas in the region. He posts as @Mister_G_2 on X.

Rear Admiral Philip Yu (US Navy, retired) is a nonresident senior fellow with the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative. As a Navy Foreign Area Officer with a background in nuclear submarines, he served in multiple assignments requiring direct interactions with PLA military counterparts.

5. ‘We’re taking it out of hide’: Pentagon says it has no money for Middle East buildup

The Arsenal of Democracy is being stretched thin.

‘We’re taking it out of hide’: Pentagon says it has no money for Middle East buildup

By LARA SELIGMAN

11/28/2023 12:58 PM EST

Updated: 11/28/2023 01:20 PM EST

Politico

Under the temporary budget, funding is frozen at the previous year’s levels.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group sails alongside the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group in support of operations in the Mediterranean Sea on Nov. 3, 2023. | 3rd Class Janae Chambers/U.S. Navy

11/28/2023 12:58 PM EST

Updated: 11/28/2023 01:20 PM EST

The Defense Department has ordered an additional aircraft carrier strike group, air defenses, fighter jets and hundreds of troops to the Middle East since the surprise terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, in an effort to prevent the conflict from spiraling into a regional war.

The problem: Congressional dysfunction means the Pentagon has no money to pay for the buildup.

The military, like the rest of the federal government, is operating under a temporary funding measure that freezes spending at the previous year’s levels. And because the Middle East troop movements weren’t planned, the Pentagon has had to pull money from existing operations and maintenance accounts, DOD spokesperson Chris Sherwood said. President Joe Biden signed the stopgap measure this month to keep the government open until lawmakers can agree on a full-year spending bill.

Because DOD had to hunt for funds, that means less money for training, exercises and deployments the military had already planned for the year. Some contractual payments could be delayed, Sherwood said.

“Current events have revised some of the operational assumptions used to develop the FY 2024 President’s Budget request. Specifically, neither the base budget request nor the FY 2024 supplemental request included funding for U.S. operations related to Israel,” he said.

“We’re taking it out of hide,” Sherwood added.

The buildup in the Middle East — which has included extending the deployment of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group operating off the coast of Israel — has therefore forced the military departments and U.S. Central Command to reassess the requirements for current and future operations based on the developing conflict, he said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, DOD said it was still working on releasing an estimate of the total cost of the U.S. support for Israel.

Top Pentagon officials warn year after year about the harm that temporary funding measures have on military readiness. Operating under a stopgap measure prevents the department from starting any new programs or paying for anything above the previous year’s levels.

That burden is now weighing heavier than usual on DOD, as the Pentagon supports two wars at once: in Ukraine and in Israel.

“We’ve gotten used to getting by, CR to CR, but it’s with significant consequence,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said during a Nov. 21 event in Washington, using the abbreviation for continuing resolution. “That has a cost. You can’t buy back the time. You just can’t.”

Hicks estimated the impact of keeping the Pentagon under the stopgap effectively means the department takes a $35 billion cut.

“We have a responsibility to build trust with Congress — to get done what we want to get done,” Hicks said. “But the truth of the matter is, trust is a two-way street, and we are really being challenged to trust that our partners in Congress can get done what they need to do for us to achieve those ends.”

Once the continuing resolution runs out Feb. 2, it’s up to lawmakers to pass a full-year spending bill. But if the bickering drags on through April, the Pentagon and other federal agencies will face a 1 percent across-the-board spending cut.

POLITICO

Politico

6. Xi Is Delegating More Authority in China to His Trusted No. 2

What say the Sinologists? Accurate? Implications?

Xi Is Delegating More Authority in China to His Trusted No. 2

• Premier leading new financial commission surprised analysts
• Chinese president installed inner circle of loyalists in 2022

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-29/xi-is-delegating-more-authority-in-china-to-his-trusted-no-2?sref=hhjZtX76

By Bloomberg News

November 29, 2023 at 5:00 AM EST

Chinese President Xi Jinping spent his first decade in office accumulating power at the expense of the Communist Party’s No. 2 official. Now that he’s installed a trusted loyalist as premier, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong is getting more comfortable delegating authority.

Last week, state media revealed Chinese Premier Li Qiang is overseeing the Central Financial Commission created in March — surprising analysts who expected his boss to take the job.

Xi — who has been called the “Chairman of Everything” for the sheer amount of titles he’s accumulated — leads all of the seven central commissions set up before he further consolidated power at a leadership congress last year.

The break with precedent to appoint Li was the latest example of Xi giving his No. 2 more leeway, now the role is occupied by someone he shares a past with. Li served as the Chinese leader’s top aide in Zhejiang province in the early 2000s, and his political ascent has closely tracked Xi’s own trajectory.

His loyalty is being rewarded. In September, Li became the first Chinese premier to represent his nation at a Group of Twenty leaders’ summit, as Xi skipped the meeting amid a geopolitical rift with the host, India. The Chinese leader also dispatched his second-in-command to the Boao Forum for Asia in March, despite attending the event in previous years.

Xi’s decision to disperse his workload is a sign he trusts Li, and wants to test his No. 2’s ability, according to Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

“The delegating is dynamic, it really depends on Xi Jinping’s needs,” added Wu. “He does not want to engage personally in every single front-line battle.”

Central Commissions Set Up Under Xi's Rule

Source: Communist Party official readouts

Premier Position

During Xi’s first two terms, China’s premier was Li Keqiang, a trained economist considered to hail from a rival faction of the Communist Party to his princeling boss.

Xi embarked on a massive restructuring mission to move policy areas traditionally overseen by the premier in the State Council into Communist Party organs that he controlled. That included creating central commissions on deepening reform, national security, economic and financial affairs, and cyber security.

In March, Xi continued on that path, creating the so-called Central Financial Commission to oversee the country’s banking, insurance and securities assets. Another body, the Central Financial Work Commission, was set up to manage party building in the financial sector in a bid to ensure political loyalty.

• Read More on Xi’s Power:China Premier Li Qiang Named Head of Powerful Financial Body
• Xi Tightens Communist Party Grip Over China in Major Revamp
• Chinese Premier Li G-20 Debut Eclipsed by Xi in State Media
• How Xi Rewrote China’s Rulebook to Build the Party Around Himself
• Li Assumes New Role at Critical Time for Developers: China Today

Vivian Zhan, a professor of government and public administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Li’s appointment to lead one of those bodies was “a sign Xi is giving the premier more room for policy implementation, especially regarding economic issues that require technical expertise.” That doesn’t necessarily mean Li has decision-making power, she added.

Still, the body’s oversight by a Xi ally could streamline execution, if their close ties lead to clearer communication. With Xi now wearing so many hats, bottlenecks in the system could emerge, as Communist Party officials wait on word from the supreme leader before taking action.

Pressing issues at home this year could also heighten the need for Xi to delegate. China’s economy has struggled with a rocky pandemic exit, as a protracted property slump and a weak labor market weigh on growth. Xi also abruptly purged his foreign and defense ministers, after just months in their roles, suggesting serious personnel problems.

As those matters require his attention, Xi’s left China just three times in 2023, the fewest foreign excursions he’s made in a year outside the pandemic since taking power. That’s a marked change for a leader who traveled more on average than the US president, in the years before Covid closed borders.

Xi Isn't Traveling As Much Post-Pandemic

The Chinese leader has made three overseas trips this year

Source: Chinese government releases

The Chinese leader has also, at times, skipped giving speeches in person while overseas. In August, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao delivered a speech penned for Xi at an event in South Africa, where the other BRICS leaders spoke in person. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in California this month, Xi released a written speech to the CEO summit.

There’s no sign, however, that Xi’s sporadic deputizing means he’s willing to relinquish ultimate control. Even in economic affairs, the Chinese leader has ensured his trusted premier doesn’t have sole implementation rights.

The financial body he created to guide party building in the finance sector, the CFWC, is chaired by Vice Premier He Lifeng, another loyalist who worked with Xi in Fujian province.

Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the ANU Australian Centre on China in the World, said Xi likely put two different men in charge of these bodies to “ensure checks and balances between the leadership.”

“Given that politics is the single most important yardstick nowadays, it’s actually unclear who actually calls the shots,” he said, on which of the two commissions was more influential. “This ambiguity means Xi will always get to play mediator and have the final decision.”

— With assistance from John Liu, Jing Li, Lucille Liu, Tom Hancock, and Fran Wang

7. AI has a political problem

Good. We must maintain a healthy skepticism while we try to effectively employ AI.

Excerpts:

On Tuesday, Schuyler Moore, CENTCOM’s chief technology officer, cautioned against the assumption that military operators, officials, or others automatically trust AI.

“I've been worried sometimes that the AI community frames the discussion around trust as something that has to be pre-built or pre-prepared…Trust builds over time and… it can be improved over time if you set expectations early that there will be a performance improvement if you engage with it in different ways,” she said.

AI has a political problem

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

A protestor holds up a banner during Sam Altman's visit to The Cambridge Union to receive the Professor Hawking Fellowship on behalf of OpenAI on November 1, 2023, in Cambridge, England. Nordin Catic / Getty Images For The Cambridge Union

The military is growing increasingly enthusiastic about AI. The public, less so.

|

November 28, 2023 05:44 PM ET

• Artificial Intelligence
• Elections

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor, Defense One

November 28, 2023 05:44 PM ET

• Artificial Intelligence
• Elections

Left-leaning media outlets are more skeptical of artificial intelligence than right-leaning outlets, a new study shows, which could make a significant difference in voters’ attitudes toward military and government use of AI—as well as how those technologies are regulated.

The study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science in September and made public last week, looked at the way media outlets such as the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal, discussed AI, paying particular attention to specific sentiment tags to determine whether the coverage was positive or negative. The authors found “that liberal-leaning media show a higher aversion to AI than conservative-leaning media,” they wrote. “These partisan media differences toward AI are driven by liberal-leaning media’s greater concern about AI’s ability to magnify societal biases.”

The authors also note that social justice protests and campaigns that emerged after the 2020 death of George Floyd had a broad effect on the sentiment toward AI.

“The results indicated that this event heightened sensitivity toward social biases in society and, consequently, influenced sentiment toward AI in both liberal and conservative media. Thus, these results provide convergent support for the notion that media reactions to AI are influenced by social bias concerns.”

The results come as the Pentagon is growing more vocal in its ambition to use AI to transform the way it operates on multiple levels, but to do so in line with the ethical principles it first published in 2019.

But the study suggests a possible disconnect between public trust around AI and the Defense Department and Biden Administration messaging around it. Lawmakers as well as industry leaders like Eric Schmidt, former head of Alphabet, have cast AI development as a critical aspect of the competition between democratic and autocratic states, with the potential to determine economic realities and greatly accelerate military operations.

The findings follow other polls showing that young people—who are increasingly left-leaning in their political views—are also wary of the role the United States plays in the world and a perceived over-reliance on military solutions. The public in general is also increasingly worried about AI and its potential for harm.

In theory, that poor sentiment toward AI and the military could hurt recruiting or talent acquisition. It could also result in smaller military budgets, further putting the United States behind China. It also suggests that a willingness to acknowledge concerns about social and ethical AI use will be key to winning more hearts and minds.

On Tuesday, Schuyler Moore, CENTCOM’s chief technology officer, cautioned against the assumption that military operators, officials, or others automatically trust AI.

“I've been worried sometimes that the AI community frames the discussion around trust as something that has to be pre-built or pre-prepared…Trust builds over time and… it can be improved over time if you set expectations early that there will be a performance improvement if you engage with it in different ways,” she said.

8. Russia to US: You won’t win the next arms race

I guess they are acknowledging they lost the last one.

Russia to US: You won’t win the next arms race – POLITICO

BY CLAUDIA CHIAPPA

NOVEMBER 29, 2023 10:28 AM CET

1 MINUTE READ

politico.eu

Russia to US: You won’t win the next arms race

‘If the US expects to win another arms race … then the Americans are mistaken,’ Moscow’s deputy foreign minister says.

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, the Kremlin has retained some allies who have continued to boost its arsenal | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

By Claudia Chiappa

November 29, 2023 10:28 am CET

1 minute read

The U.S. won’t win the next arms race against Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

“If the U.S. expects to win another arms race … then the Americans are mistaken,” Ryabkov said in an interview with Russian state-run daily Izvestia, published Wednesday. “We will not give in to provocations, which are typical of American policy toward Russia, but we will guarantee our security.”

Despite its isolation on the international stage following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has retained some allies who have continued to boost its arsenal.

Iran has supplied Russia with Shahed drones, while North Korea has shipped vast amounts of ammunitions — reportedly over a million shells. POLITICO has also revealed that Beijing has chipped in with weapons and military equipment.

Russia has also been pulling out of arms treaties, including the New START Treaty with the U.S. and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE).

Speaking to Izvestia, Ryabkov said there are currently no plans to replace the New START Treaty.

politico.eu

9. A key Pentagon data link can now talk to satellites—but not in the USA

A key Pentagon data link can now talk to satellites—but not in the USA

A Link 16-to-space demonstration abroad went well. Could FAA approval for domestic tests be next?

BY AUDREY DECKER

STAFF WRITER

NOVEMBER 28, 2023 04:55 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Audrey Decker

The Pentagon has extended a widely used tactical data link into space, forging a key connection in its connect-everything effort. Now it needs permission from another arm of the federal government to try it in America.

In a trio of demonstrations held from Nov. 21 to 27, the Space Development Agency used Link 16 to bounce data from ground radios off satellites. The satellites were in low Earth orbit, but the radios were “within the territory of a Five Eyes partner nation,” SDA officials said in a Tuesday statement.

That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration had declined requests for U.S.-based tests, citing concerns that the U.S.-and-NATO-standard gear might interfere with civil aircraft signals.

The demonstrations were part of the SDA’s effort to connect Link 16, which transmits common tactical pictures and various other types of communications, to the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a planned constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites intended to be the military’s “space backbone.”

“Due to current Federal Aviation Administration restrictions that prevent broadcasting Link 16 from space into the U.S. National Airspace System, SDA coordinated with the [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] to obtain a waiver to transmit to a Five Eyes nation and over international water to meet established PWSA mission criteria,” the SDA statement said.

The successful demonstration may provide SDA with more evidence it can use to try to win FAA approval to test Link 16 over U.S. territory.

“Testing Link 16 from space, first with an international partner and then over international water, represents a compromise position and SDA’s requirement remains to test over U.S. air space to demonstrate the feasibility of the PWSA and its ability to deliver fire control information to the warfighter over existing tactical data networks,” SDA said.

Led by the Air Force’s 46th Test Squadron, the recent demonstrations ran on three satellites built by York Space Systems for the PWSA’s Tranche 0, part of an eventual 28-satellite group launched specifically to test out new concepts in space. These will pave the way for Tranche 1 and 2, which will begin delivering operational capabilities for warfighters in late 2024.

“I can’t underscore enough the significance of this technical achievement as we demonstrate the feasibility of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and its ability to deliver space-based capabilities to the warfighter over existing tactical data links,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in the statement. “This is not only the first time Link 16 has been broadcast from space, but the beginning of turning the world’s finest warfighting force into a truly connected beyond line-of-sight joint force.”

The SDA statement said this moves the Pentagon one step closer to its vision to connect military assets across air, land, sea, and space.

“The PWSA Transport Layer is the backbone of JADC2 in space and will enable delivery of tactical messages, including beyond-line-of-sight scenarios, using Link 16 radios aboard space vehicles,” the statement said.

defenseone.com · by Audrey Decker

10. Putin won't make peace in Ukraine before 2024 US election -US official

Excerpts:

A senior official briefing reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels said the alliance reiterated its support for Ukraine knowing that a peace agreement in the next year is unlikely.

"My expectation is that Putin won't make a peace or a meaningful peace before he sees the result of our election," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the outcomes of the meeting.

Asked whether they were expressing a personal opinion or the view of the U.S. government, the official said it was a "widely shared premise."

"That was the context in which the allies all expressed strong support for Ukraine" in the NATO meeting on Tuesday, the official added, without mentioning Trump by name or explicitly saying how the election result would affect support for Ukraine.

Putin won't make peace in Ukraine before 2024 US election -US official

Reuters · by Humeyra Pamuk

BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will not make peace in Ukraine before he knows the results of the November 2024 U.S. election, a senior U.S. State Department official said on Tuesday, amid concerns that a potential victory for former President Donald Trump could upend Western support for Kyiv.

Trump, who is seeking reelection in 2024 and is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been sharply critical of U.S. support for Kyiv.

A senior official briefing reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels said the alliance reiterated its support for Ukraine knowing that a peace agreement in the next year is unlikely.

"My expectation is that Putin won't make a peace or a meaningful peace before he sees the result of our election," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the outcomes of the meeting.

Asked whether they were expressing a personal opinion or the view of the U.S. government, the official said it was a "widely shared premise."

"That was the context in which the allies all expressed strong support for Ukraine" in the NATO meeting on Tuesday, the official added, without mentioning Trump by name or explicitly saying how the election result would affect support for Ukraine.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-November showed Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden locked in a tight race, with Trump leading Biden 51% to 49% when respondents were asked to pick between the two. That result was within the poll's credibility interval of about four percentage points.

Biden, a Democrat, has given massive military aid and other support to Kyiv since Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion, but additional funding for Ukraine is being held up by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier this month invited Trump, who has said he could end the war in 24 hours if reelected, to Ukraine to see the scale of the conflict for himself.

Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Sonali Paul

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Humeyra Pamuk

Thomson Reuters

Humeyra Pamuk is a senior foreign policy correspondent based in Washington DC. She covers the U.S. State Department, regularly traveling with U.S. Secretary of State. During her 20 years with Reuters, she has had postings in London, Dubai, Cairo and Turkey, covering everything from the Arab Spring and Syria's civil war to numerous Turkish elections and the Kurdish insurgency in the southeast. In 2017, she won the Knight-Bagehot fellowship program at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She holds a BA in International Relations and an MA on European Union studies.

Reuters · by Humeyra Pamuk

11. Top CIA official posted pro-Palestine picture on Facebook two weeks after Hamas' terror attack on Israel as Biden faces mutiny from within

If you cannot support US policy, resign.  

Excerpts:

'Given the role director Burns is playing in the ongoing crisis in Israel, social media activity along these lines by a senior US intelligence officer reflects exceptionally and surprisingly bad judgment,' said a third former intelligence official.

The chief is one of three people responsible for approving all analysis disseminated inside the agency, and has also published posts on Facebook taking a stand against antisemitism, a colleague said.

'The officer is a career analyst with extensive background in all aspects of the Middle East and this post was not intended to express a position on the conflict,' they added.

But State Department officials are thought to have deluged with protests through the official Dissent Channel system, set up in the wake of the Vietnam War to allow staff to vent protest at official policy

'I know that for many of you, the suffering caused by this crisis is taking a profound personal toll,' Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wrote to staff earlier this month.

Top CIA official posted pro-Palestine picture on Facebook two weeks after Hamas' terror attack on Israel as Biden faces mutiny from within

• Top intelligence chief changed profile pic to Palestinian flag two weeks after the October 7 attack that claimed 1,200 Israeli lives
• Previously she had posted a selfie with the words 'Free Palestine' superimposed
• Comes as hundreds of White House officials reject President Biden's official line and demand ceasefire in Gaza 

By DOMINIC YEATMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 22:33 EST, 28 November 2023 | UPDATED: 22:33 EST, 28 November 2023

Biden's White House rebellion over Israel reaches top of CIA

Daily Mail · by Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com · November 29, 2023

A growing revolt within the Biden administration at his handling of the Israel-Hamas war has reached the top ranks of the CIA after a top analysis chief changed her Facebook profile to a Palestinian flag.

More than 400 administration staff signed an anonymous letter earlier this month demanding the President seek an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Another 1,000 employed by the US Agency for International Development echoed the call, but State Department officials have refused to crack down on the dissent, instead holding 'listening sessions' with staff as unrest grows.

Now it has emerged that a CIA associate deputy director for analysis changed her Facebook cover photo to a picture of a man waving a Palestinian flag just two weeks after the brutal Hamas attack that claimed 1,200 lives.

The chief who had responsibility for presenting the President's daily intelligence briefing, previously posted a selfie with the motto 'Free Palestine' superimposed on the photograph, the Financial Times reported.

President Joe Biden has been facing a growing revolt from his own staffers over his backing for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The revolt appears to have reached the top ranks of the CIA with an associate deputy director for analysis posting her support for Palestine

Gaza has fallen silent after weeks of relentless Israeli bombing with a fragile truce agreed in exchange for the release of some Hamas hostages

'The public posting of an obviously controversial political statement by a senior analytic manager in the middle of a crisis shows glaringly poor judgment,' one former intelligence official told the paper.

'Given the CIA's longstanding incredibly close relationship with the Israelis in a liaison capacity, this would be highly irregular for a senior agency official,' said another.

Biden has repeatedly refused to demand a ceasefire in the conflict which has now claimed 13,000 Palestinian lives amid relentless Israeli bombing of the Gaza strip.

But calls for a ceasefire have waned as a series of temporary truces have been agreed in exchange for the release of some of the 240 hostages seized by Hamas and its allies during the October 7 attack.

On Tuesday night it was reported that the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas could be extended until Sunday morning if Hamas releases all women and children in their captivity.

Around 100 women and children were thought to be among the hostages and 60 have so far been freed in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

CIA director Bill Burns is currently in Qatar where hostage negotiations are taking place, and critics voiced fear that they could be undermined by the revelation of his analysis chief's sympathies.

'Given the role director Burns is playing in the ongoing crisis in Israel, social media activity along these lines by a senior US intelligence officer reflects exceptionally and surprisingly bad judgment,' said a third former intelligence official.

The chief is one of three people responsible for approving all analysis disseminated inside the agency, and has also published posts on Facebook taking a stand against antisemitism, a colleague said.

'The officer is a career analyst with extensive background in all aspects of the Middle East and this post was not intended to express a position on the conflict,' they added.

But State Department officials are thought to have deluged with protests through the official Dissent Channel system, set up in the wake of the Vietnam War to allow staff to vent protest at official policy

'I know that for many of you, the suffering caused by this crisis is taking a profound personal toll,' Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wrote to staff earlier this month.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has promised to listen to staffers' demands for a ceasefire

'The anguish that comes with seeing the daily images of babies, children, elderly people, women, and other civilians suffering in this crisis is wrenching. I feel it myself.

'We've organized forums in Washington to hear from you, and urged managers and teams to have candid discussions at posts around the world precisely so we can hear your feedback and ideas.'

A spokesperson for the agency refused to say if the analyst would be disciplined but added: 'CIA officers are committed to analytic objectivity, which is at the core of what we do as an agency.

'CIA officers may have personal views, but this does not lessen their, or CIA's, commitment to unbiased analysis.'

Daily Mail · by Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com · November 29, 2023

12. Opinion | Vladimir Putin is winning

Excerpts:

As for the war, the authorities are finding recruits by focusing their efforts on the poorest, most depressed regions of Russia and promising salaries 10 times the average. Putin still has money in his coffers, meaning that he is not going to run out of cannon fodder anytime soon.

Russian elites are well aware that the regime still has many weaknesses. Russia still can’t produce many of the goods it needs, and getting them from its friends is complicated. One businessman told me that airlines will soon have to close because of a lack of spare parts for their passenger planes.

Even so, the shift in public opinion is unmistakable. Twenty months ago, Russian elites were convinced that the long-unassailable Putin had finally overplayed his hand, and that he would likely have to pay a harsh price for his miscalculation.

Now, most of them seem to have changed their minds. The Russian president, as they see it, has shown that he’s here to stay.

Opinion | Vladimir Putin is winning

By Mikhail Zygar

November 28, 2023 at 7:29 p.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Mikhail Zygar · November 29, 2023

Mikhail Zygar, a Russian writer living in exile, is the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin” and “War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.”

Twenty months ago, after Vladimir Putin had launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many high-ranking Russians believed that the end was near. The economy faced disaster, as they saw it, and the Putin regime was on the brink of collapse.

Today, the mood has changed dramatically. Business leaders, officials and ordinary people tell me that the economy has stabilized, defying the Western sanctions that were once expected to have a devastating effect. Putin’s regime, they say, looks more stable than at any other time in the past two years.

Restaurants in Moscow are packed. “The restaurant market is growing, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia, facilitated by the development of domestic tourism,” says a top Russian restaurateur. “And the quality of food is also changing for the better. Sure, panic struck the industry in early 2022, but it quickly passed.”

Real estate prices are rising, and construction is booming. At the beginning of 2022, most global brands left Russia, leaving empty storefronts in malls and streets. Now, the gaps have been filled by Russian counterparts, as the chief executive of one retail network told me. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently admitted that the Russian economy had faced “a threat of collapse” in the months after the invasion, but says that the country is now over the worst.

Before the war, Russian business executives generally kept their savings in the West. They also bought real estate, properties that sometimes served as second homes for their families. Now, as one Russian oligarch told me, that door has been slammed shut, sparking an investment boom back at home. The only option left is for tycoons to put their money into domestic investments. Major building projects are now underway in places ranging from the Altai Mountains in eastern Siberia to Karelia on the border with Finland. In September, Bloomberg reported that Russian oligarchs had returned at least $50 billion to Russia since the invasion. According to those I interviewed, that estimate is very modest.

Russian industry is booming. Defense companies are leading the way, of course, with some expected to show growth of more than 30 percent this year. Moscow is continuing to sell oil and gas to foreign buyers — not only China and India, but European countries, too; most of these customers simply purchase Russian petroleum through intermediaries such as Turkey, Azerbaijan or Egypt. The West might have succeeded in cutting most of its ties with Russia, but Moscow’s trade with the rest of the world is picking up.

The Soviet Union’s Cold War isolation has not repeated itself. Putin’s Russia can get many of the supplies it needs from China. For many Moscow residents, perhaps the most striking change on the streets is the near-wholesale replacement of Western cars with Chinese models.

After the invasion, the International Monetary Fund estimated that the Russian economy would fall by 2.3 percent in 2023. In January 2023, the IMF changed its forecast, predicting growth of 0.3 percent. It changed its forecasts at least two more times during the year; in October, it finally settled on a figure of 2.2 percent.

The sanctions have left Russian business leaders with no option but to stay at home. Even those who wanted to remain in the West and help Ukraine were punished — such as the banker Oleg Tinkov, who condemned the war and even renounced his Russian citizenship, but was hit by sanctions nonetheless. (He finally succeeded in getting them lifted only a few months ago.) The tycoon Mikhail Fridman, the co-founder of Russia’s largest private bank, cautiously criticized the war, only to find himself briefly arrested by the British authorities and hit by American sanctions. A few weeks ago, Fridman gave up, initially leaving his London home for Tel Aviv, then finally returning to Moscow.

Fridman’s return had a symbolic effect on the Russian business elite: It convinced them that the West sees them only as enemies. That means the only way to survive is to cooperate with the Kremlin, because Putin, unlike the West, has not yet punished any business leaders, even those who spoke out against the war.

It is the war in the Middle East, however, that has convinced Russian business leaders that Putin is winning. In their view, public opinion in the West is shifting away from Ukraine. Putin, meanwhile, will strengthen his standing in the eyes of the Global South. His claims that the United States is to blame for the crisis in Gaza resonate with millions of people around the world.

As for the war, the authorities are finding recruits by focusing their efforts on the poorest, most depressed regions of Russia and promising salaries 10 times the average. Putin still has money in his coffers, meaning that he is not going to run out of cannon fodder anytime soon.

Russian elites are well aware that the regime still has many weaknesses. Russia still can’t produce many of the goods it needs, and getting them from its friends is complicated. One businessman told me that airlines will soon have to close because of a lack of spare parts for their passenger planes.

Even so, the shift in public opinion is unmistakable. Twenty months ago, Russian elites were convinced that the long-unassailable Putin had finally overplayed his hand, and that he would likely have to pay a harsh price for his miscalculation.

Now, most of them seem to have changed their minds. The Russian president, as they see it, has shown that he’s here to stay.

The Washington Post · by Mikhail Zygar · November 29, 2023

13. US used its Section 702 spy tool to disrupt Iran’s weapons program

US used its Section 702 spy tool to disrupt Iran’s weapons program

By ERIN BANCO and JOHN SAKELLARIADIS

11/28/2023 05:00 AM EST

Politico

The disclosure is the administration’s latest argument that the Section 702 tool is essential as it pushes for renewal ahead of a year-end expiry.

An Iranian long-range Ghadr missile displaying "Down with Israel" in Hebrew is shown at a defense exhibition in Isfahan, Iran, on Feb. 8, 2023. | Morteza Salehi/Tasnim News via Getty Images

11/28/2023 05:00 AM EST

U.S. officials say a controversial surveillance authority has been key to helping them stop the sale of certain weapons parts to Iran in recent years.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies used information gathered by monitoring the electronic communications of foreign weapons manufacturers to stop several shipments of advanced weapons parts to Iran by land, air and sea, according to two U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

The campaign came as the administration pushed to prevent Iran from building up its ballistic missile program – one officials continue to worry Tehran is using to help Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine. Officials have also focused on limiting Iran’s intervention in conflicts that impact U.S. national security more broadly, including the war between Israel and Hamas.

The disclosure is the administration’s latest argument that the spying authority — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is crucial to national security as it fights to get Congress to reauthorize the tool before it expires at the end of the year.

Many in Congress are calling for changes to Section 702 — which allows intelligence agencies to collect and analyze communications such as emails and text messages of foreigners living abroad — after the FBI was found to have improperly mined the database to see if U.S. political protesters, campaign donors and even members of Congress were on the other end of those exchanges.

The administration has argued that reforms made since those abuses were identified are sufficient and that Section 702 will lose much of its usefulness if more guardrails are put on it.

In the case of Iran’s advanced weapons program, the officials said Section 702 was critical to stopping the weapons sales. They said they used other spying activities to identify what U.S.-made supplies the Iranians needed, and then plugged the names of those components and their manufacturers into the 702 database.

The searches, they said, returned the type of detailed intelligence needed to thwart the sales, including their cost, timing and size. Both officials were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive intelligence matters.

The officials declined to provide further details, or specify the manufacturers or components involved.

“It wasn’t one specific action. It was a number of actions,” the official said. “In at least one instance, if not more, specific sales were stopped either before they went or while they were en route.”

In recent months, U.S. officials have increasingly been disclosing examples of how Section 702 has been used to protect national security, including thwarting the flow of fentanyl through the southern border and identifying the hacker behind a 2021 ransomware attack that crippled one of the country’s largest fuel pipelines.

While Section 702 is generally expected to get renewed in some version, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling for a variety of changes. One bipartisan cohort wants to require spy agencies to obtain a court order before conducting queries that involve U.S. citizens. Others argue there’s no need to require a warrant but that there should be more limits on how agencies access the data.

The officials said queries on U.S. citizens or others in the U.S. were central in the case involving the sale of weapons parts to Iran and in 2022 to help the administration target an individual and foreign firm that attempted to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.

The officials would not specify the name of the company or the country but said the sale of the Iranian goods amounted to tens of millions of dollars. By conducting 702 queries of the names of the individual and company involved, the U.S. Treasury Department was able to block the sale, the officials said.

“Sometimes 702 is the only collection that we have on these kinds of things. So it makes it that much more critical,” the official said.

The disclosures are still unlikely to change privacy advocates’ view on the necessity of a warrant requirement.

Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program, pointed out it’s possible both weapons and sanctions queries would have been permissible under a recent 702 reauthorization bill that privacy stalwarts in both chambers unveiled earlier this month.

The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), includes warrant carve-outs for some queries, including those in which the government can get the consent of the victim.

Goitein also said the administration was still focusing too much on the national security value of the program and hadn’t done enough to address the public’s real concern: privacy.

“These belated and weak examples … merely underscore how out of touch the administration is with the concerns of lawmakers and the conversation that’s actually happening on the Hill,” Goitein said.

Lofgren argued warrants wouldn’t cripple U.S. intelligence or law enforcement agencies.

“I trust that law enforcement can continue robustly protecting our national security after obtaining search warrants for surveillance activities,” Lofgren said in an emailed statement. “It does not need to be one or the other — the Fourth Amendment and security can go hand-in-hand.”

POLITICO

Politico

14. Possible Outcomes Of Northern Myanmar Military Conflict And Implications For China – Analysis

Conclusion:

The conflict in northern Myanmar is currently ongoing, and the MNDAA has made certain progress. If the MNDAA achieves its goal of reclaiming Kokang, there is a possibility of a ceasefire and a new “balance” being reached between non-state armed groups and the Myanmar government. However, if the conflict continues to escalate, pushing Myanmar into a perilous state of division, the junta’s forces may fully engage against non-state armed groups, leading to a potentially uncontrollable situation. Faced with this uncertainty, China should encourage both warring parties to end the hostilities and reach a ceasefire.

Possible Outcomes Of Northern Myanmar Military Conflict And Implications For China – Analysis

https://www.eurasiareview.com/29112023-possible-outcomes-of-northern-myanmar-military-conflict-and-implications-for-china-analysis/

 November 29, 2023  0 Comments

By Anbound

By He Jun

Since October 27, conflict has erupted in northern Myanmar, lasting for a month, and the scale of the conflict is continuously escalating. There is a risk of the conflict evolving from internal conflict to civil war. The epicenter of this is in the Kokang region, located along the China-Myanmar border, and the resulting influx of refugees has begun to impact China. Will the situation in northern Myanmar escalate into a large-scale civil war? What geopolitical conflicts might arise in its future trajectory? What impact could this turmoil have on China and the relations of the two countries? These questions deserve the utmost attention from all parties involved.

Although the current conflict in northern Myanmar has erupted, the historical roots of the conflict between the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Myanmar government run deep. According to Hein Khaing, a scholar at Huaqiao University, over the past decade, the MNDAA has formed a military alliance with the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, the Arakan Army, and the Kachin Independence Army, known as the “Northern Alliance”. This conflict, initiated jointly by these four entities, seems to be a meticulously planned endeavor with a longstanding strategy.

Analyzing the internal conflict in Myanmar requires a fundamental understanding of the local ethnic armed forces. These forces operate independently of the Union of Myanmar government, maintaining their own territories, thus existing in a somewhat adversarial relationship. The MNDAA, among others, operated in such a capacity, along with various other armed groups. In areas governed by these entities, a form of partial rule of law exists, fostering the persistence of gray industries, such as narcotics, gambling, and, in recent years, cyber fraud. Notably, cyber frauds along the China-Myanmar border do not involve Chinese defrauding Myanmar citizens or vice versa. Primarily, it involves the Chinese defrauding other Chinese citizens, with some criminal syndicates exploiting the relatively difficult-to-control nature of this special region in Myanmar for the development of gray industries.

The conflict in northern Myanmar reflects the tension between these local ethnic armed groups and the Myanmar government, essentially serving as a window into the internal ethnic conflicts within the country. The underlying and deep-seated root cause is, in fact, the contradiction between the modern state-building of Myanmar and the ongoing struggle for ethnic identity. Myanmar regained independence from British colonial rule on January 4, 1948. However, since gaining independence, the construction of a national identity in Myanmar has not been successful to this day. Just three months after independence, ethnic armed conflicts erupted in Myanmar and have persisted for over 70 years without cessation. Consequently, the situation regarding the construction of national identity has been a primary task of any Myanmar government for the purpose of ethnic reconciliation.

In 2010, Myanmar held its election, marking the beginning of its democratic transition. In 2011, the then government under President Thein Sein initiated the national peace process. During his five-year term, a nationwide ceasefire agreement was eventually introduced through comprehensive peace talks. However, only eight ethnic armed groups signed this agreement. Subsequently, during Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration, efforts continued to advance the nationwide ceasefire agreement and federal peace conference. Within Aung San Suu Kyi’s five-year term, two more armed groups joined in signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement. Despite some progress, conflicts between ethnic armed groups and the government persisted from Thein Sein’s government to Aung San Suu Kyi’s era.

In 2021, following the military coup in Myanmar, the issue of ethnic reconciliation has become even more intricate. Not only have peace talks stalled, but new conflicts have also erupted. Post the 2021 coup, new armed groups have emerged within the inland regions of Myanmar, particularly among the ethnic majority Bamar themselves. This implies that internal issues have arisen within the Bamar community, shifting from an ethnic matter to a conflict concerning democratization. Hence, the current complexity of internal conflicts in Myanmar lies in the overlay of the inherent ethnic issues with the challenges of democratic transition.

These changes have shifted the perspectives within Myanmar’s society regarding ethnic armed groups and conflicts. According to Hein Khaing, this shift can be analyzed on two levels. Firstly, from a macro and holistic perspective, since the 2021 coup, there has been a profound transformation in the overall perception of ethnic armed groups throughout Myanmar’s society. Previously, conflicts involving groups like the MNDAA or the Kachin Independence Army, when in conflict with the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw), generally did not garner support from the mainstream society beyond ethnic minorities. The mindset of Myanmar society towards ethnic conflicts is intricate; on one hand, there is a desire for ethnic groups like the Kachin and Kokang to receive equal ethnic rights from the perspectives of democratization and ethnic equality. However, on the other hand, military conflicts have significant implications for national social stability and economic development, leading to opposition against armed conflicts. Thus, during that period, the mainstream society in Myanmar held a complex attitude toward the conflicts between ethnic armed groups and the government.

However, after the 2021 coup, in opposing the military takeover, the mainstream society in Myanmar, or the anti-military forces, began to recognize the legitimacy of ethnic armed groups initiating resistance. Consequently, there was a shift in support toward the wars between ethnic armed groups and the Tatmadaw, including Operation 1027 in the Kokang region. Hein Khaing noted that historically, there has never been an occurrence where the mainstream society in Myanmar actively supports and celebrates actions by ethnic armed groups attacking and achieving certain successes against the national defense forces. This marks an unprecedented event in Myanmar since its independence. However, due to varying demands among different local armed groups and the existence of competitive relationships, forming a widespread and profound consensus remains challenging.

Where will the conflict in northern Myanmar lead? What impact will it have on the overall situation in Myanmar?

Due to the multitude of factors influencing the course of the war, at the moment it is difficult to have complete certainty in predicting the ultimate outcome of the entire conflict. However, a rough analysis and prediction can be made based on the power dynamics among the conflicting parties and the motives behind their actions. According to Hein Khaing, firstly, concerning the ethnic armed groups involved in this conflict, such as the MNDAA, the Kokang region covers an area of just over 2,000 square kilometers, with a population of over 300,000 and an army of 30,000. It is difficult to confront the 350,000-strong Myanmar national army, and the best possible outcome for them would be to recapture Kokang, but the Myanmar army could do little more than that. It is crucial to note that the actions of the MNDAA and the Northern Alliance in this operation have severely threatened the authority of the Tatmadaw and the territorial integrity of the country. Therefore, the Tatmadaw are likely to intensify their counterattacks. For example, in a recent meeting of the National Defense and Security Council, President Myint Swe emphasized that the actions in Kokang could potentially lead to the disintegration of the country and must be treated seriously.

Will the conflict in northern Myanmar escalate? If it does, the participation of other ethnic armed groups, the manner of their involvement, and the extent of their participation are unknown variables. Additionally, the People’s Defense Force within the Bamar community also introduces uncertainties regarding the level of impact and response. Consequently, in the short term, the situation in northern Myanmar remains elusive, and it would be difficult to ascertain a definitive outcome. For the Tatmadaw, the most severe short-term consequence might be the potential recapture of the Kokang region by MNDAA, essentially reverting to the situation before 2009. If MNDAA seeks more and collaborates with other ethnic armed groups to expand the conflict, the Myanmar junta government may intensify its military efforts, leading to a different outcome.

After the coup in 2021, because of the political and social upheaval, Myanmar’s economy and finances experienced profound instability and turmoil. In recent years, Myanmar scholars have been debating whether the country is on the verge of becoming a failed state. Most of them ultimately arrived at a somewhat less pessimistic conclusion, suggesting that Myanmar may not become a failed state but is possibly heading towards a state of ‘limited statehood’, which in any case signifies instability and extreme pessimism across various facets of the nation.

The turmoil in Myanmar will certainly have a significant impact on the situation along the China-Myanmar border and the relations between the two nations. Researchers at ANBOUND believe that the following areas are worthy of attention.

The first question is, will China intervene or get involved in the conflict in northern Myanmar?

Due to the conflict in northern Myanmar being considered an internal matter, the official stance of China adheres to the principle of ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries’ and will not directly intervene. There have been rumors circulating on Chinese cyberspace that claim that the MNDAA found a significant amount of weapons and equipment in the forest, implying that China provided substantial support to the MNDAA. However, such rumors can be largely confirmed as false. Especially in the direct conflict between the MNDAA and the Myanmar junta, it is highly improbable that China would supply weapons. China does aim to combat cyber fraud organizations in northern Myanmar, and there is official cooperation between the two governments. After the Chinese police issued a wanted notice for the Mye Shout Hkyann family members, said to be powerful local figures responsible for the fraud and criminal activities, the Myanmar government cooperated by extraditing core members of the family to China. Under this context, it is unlikely for China to provide support to non-governmental armed groups. From China’s perspective, the cessation of hostilities and stability along the border align most with its national interests.

Next, how will China respond to the conflict in northern Myanmar?

In the diplomatic realm, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated that China has been closely monitoring the situation in northern Myanmar, and that China actively encourages peace talks to cease hostilities.

Regarding the military aspect, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command has organized practical exercises along the China-Myanmar border starting from November 25. These exercises aim to test and enhance border control capabilities to effectively fulfil missions when called upon. According to the PLA Daily, the exercises are conducted on the Chinese side of the China-Myanmar border.

Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson for the Myanmar military government, mentioned that Myanmar had received notification about these exercises and stated that the purpose is to maintain “stability and peace” in the border areas, emphasizing that it does not violate China’s principle of non-interference in Myanmar’s internal affairs.

Thirdly, what kinds of impacts might be faced by China-Myanmar cooperation? The impacts on China-Myanmar cooperation are primarily manifested in three aspects:

1. Normal trade and the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC): The ongoing conflict in northern Myanmar has significantly affected trade, rendering the major China-Myanmar trade route, the Mandalay-Lashio-Muse-Jiegao-Ruili corridor, unable to operate normally. Recently, at the Muse 105-mile border trade checkpoint in Myanmar, hundreds of trucks and goods were destroyed by unidentified artillery fire, resulting in substantial losses.

2. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects: During the five years of Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration, Myanmar actively responded to the BRI, and some major projects progressed relatively steadily. However, under the military government, the progress of BRI projects has slowed down. With the intensification of the conflict in northern Myanmar, BRI projects may face delays or come to a halt. For example, the construction of the China-Myanmar railway and highway will likely be significantly affected.

3. Security threats to the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines: The China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines, as the fourth-largest energy import route for China following pipelines from Central Asia, Russia, and maritime routes, are vital strategic assets within Myanmar’s territory. The crude oil pipeline has a designed capacity of 22 million tons per year, and the natural gas pipeline can transport 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to China. The pipelines, with a total length of 771 kilometers within Myanmar, are a key outcome of China-Myanmar cooperation. In the current situation, they may become leverage for Myanmar during conflicts. To date, the oil and gas pipelines have not faced realistic threats from government forces or non-state armed groups. Nevertheless, if the conflict escalates, the potential threats to the pipelines cannot be ignored by China.

Final analysis conclusion:

The conflict in northern Myanmar is currently ongoing, and the MNDAA has made certain progress. If the MNDAA achieves its goal of reclaiming Kokang, there is a possibility of a ceasefire and a new “balance” being reached between non-state armed groups and the Myanmar government. However, if the conflict continues to escalate, pushing Myanmar into a perilous state of division, the junta’s forces may fully engage against non-state armed groups, leading to a potentially uncontrollable situation. Faced with this uncertainty, China should encourage both warring parties to end the hostilities and reach a ceasefire.

He Jun is a researcher for ANBOUND

15. What should Ukraine do next? Preparing for a Long War by Lawrence Freedman

Excerpts:

Confidence is not helped by regular warnings of the risks to the current levels of support from the US and Europe. The risks are real but commentary on these has been overdone. The intricacies of decision-making in the US Congress and in the EU are sources of delay but they can be navigated and probably will be. These delays have their costs, as can be seen in the shortage of ammunition. Western production is increasing but this has been too slow and the benefits to Ukraine will not come through until late next year. Of course everything might get messed up by a Trump victory but one cannot base policy on a speculative possibility.

Looking ahead it is as important that Western countries gear up for a long war. Russia’s economy is tiny compared to theirs, and while some grumble at the economic burden they are not the ones doing the fighting. The costs and impact of a Russian victory would be far greater. Economic sanctions can be tightened, and seized Russian financial assets diverted to help Ukraine. These will not provide killer blows, but they can add to concern in Russia that the longer the war continues the tougher it will be for them. It will be easier for their supporters to do this if Ukraine demonstrates that it has a coherent strategy, so that it can cope with Russian aggression in whatever form it takes while preparing for more focused offensive action of its own either later in 2024 or, as likely, in 2025. Above all it must reinforce the message that this is a war that Russia can never win.

What should Ukraine do next?

Preparing for a Long War

https://samf.substack.com/p/what-should-ukraine-do-next?r=7i07&utm

LAWRENCE FREEDMAN

NOV 29, 2023

In my previous post I discussed the likely form Putin’s strategy would take when Russia is neither winning nor losing its war with Ukraine. If a cease-fire was agreed tomorrow, Russia would be left with a significant amount of Ukrainian territory but less than sought, in a form difficult to occupy and defend over the long term and requiring significant funds to reconstruct and subsidise. It would not be able to stop Ukraine getting close to NATO and the EU. The assumption that Putin would readily agree to a cease-fire if only Zelensky could be persuaded to agree to one does not reflect the logic of Russia’s strategic position. Russia has not proposed one, although Putin has recently spoken in general terms about the desirability of peace.

Putin wants substantive political concessions from Ukraine, accepting both the loss of territory and some sort of veto over its foreign policy. He will also want the sanctions regime to be unravelled. Full negotiations on a comprehensive peace settlement, which these demands would require, could be extraordinarily protracted and complex. (Ukraine would raise issues of reparations and war crimes.) A cease-fire would allow both sides time to regroup and refresh but for neither would this represent a satisfactory or stable outcome.

It is possible that the fighting will reach a genuine deadlock where both sides have secured their positions and neither feels strong enough to mount an offensive. The conflict would then acquire an uneasy stasis, but we are far from that situation. For now the prospect is of continuing fighting that does not quite reach a conclusion, which in principle could go on for many years. Conditions might change sufficiently to trigger some serious diplomatic activity: a sudden shift in balance of military advantage or the wider political context (for example after a Trump presidential victory).

Putin may suppose that over time Russia is more likely to benefit from such changes, but he cannot be sure of that, nor that if they come they will be in a form that he can fully exploit. As Ukraine is perceived to be suffering the aftereffects of a disappointing counter-offensive and shortages of manpower and ordnance, my analysis suggests that Putin would still prefer to create these conditions sooner rather than later and has not given up hope of being able to do so. That explains the extraordinary effort that Russia has put into its own recent offensive operations.

These operations only work if they persuade Kyiv that it has no choice but to tolerate some occupation of its territory and restrictions on its future security policies. If they fail to do so Putin is left with a problem. Even if his economy does not fall off a cliff edge, or Ukraine is unable to make significant gains of its own, a continuing failure to reach an outcome that looks like a ‘win’, in that it meets minimum objectives and has some chance of sticking once the guns fall silent, will be problematic. Though Putin may no longer fear a comprehensive battlefield defeat he needs to beware a growing sense of pointlessness and futility. Public support for the war in Russia is stable but also uneasy, with a slight majority believing the war has done more harm than good, and while over 70% support peace talks far fewer support any concession to Ukraine. The war will soon be taking up a third of all government spending, which is a lot for what began as a limited ‘special military operation’. Remilitarising society (the budget for propaganda is also going up) and then failing to achieve a military solution in Ukraine is going to lead to more questions. Ukraine’s capacity for long-range strikes is growing and while Ukraine will not be able to attack Russia to the same extent as Russia attacks Ukraine the extent to which it can do so could prove to be an embarrassment and can undermine confidence in the security of Crimea.

What does this mean for Ukrainian strategy?

For Ukraine the stakes are much higher as its territory is under occupation and it shows no signs of being reconciled to its permanent loss. So while it is not easy for Putin to end the war, and I have no optimism that he will soon seek to do so, in the end it is still easier for him than Zelensky. If Ukraine is not prepared to concede territory there is not much more for it to discuss with Russia. In the talks that took place in March and April 2022 the issue of neutrality was on the table. That discussion fell apart because Ukraine still did not want to be left defenceless, and wanted security guarantees of some sort, while the revelation of atrocities in the liberated areas around Kyiv added to the urgency of freeing all territory from Russian occupation. On this matter the Russian proposals had been vague.

So there is no obvious negotiated way out of the war for Ukraine at the moment nor a straightforward route to a military victory. With no prospect of an early tolerable conclusion this is a difficult period in the war for Ukraine. In this respect like Russia it is stuck between being able to do enough to avoid losing but not enough to win. Its people are tired and are coming to terms with just how long this war may drag on. Ukraine is building up its own military production but is still dependent upon foreign support. It wants these supporters to do more but is worried that they will be doing less, making it difficult to sustain even the current level of effort. It is also ending the year as it began, pushing scarce resources into defending territory against a Russian onslaught.

The hopes for its own offensive were not realised. It was always going to be difficult to break through well prepared Russian defences, especially without air power and with fresh units that were inexperienced in complex offensive operations and had only limited training. And so it proved. It did not take long for Ukraine to change tactics, which stemmed the losses, but these meant slower movement. By the measure of territory liberated, the one that dominated last spring’s conversations, the results have been disappointing. There have been other developments that have been more positive, of which more below, but 2023 has taken its toll and there is now a challenge working out how best to approach 2024.

The first part of this challenge – assuming that the government judges that this is also the will of the people – is to acknowledge the possibility of a long war and preparing accordingly. This does require a national consensus. There are fissures appearing among the elite though these are not unusual for countries facing stressful times. A degree of tension in civil-military relations is also natural and can be a good thing. But if infighting becomes chronic and decision-making starts to get paralysed with strategies not subjected to criticism and scrutiny, the tensions can soon become harmful. This is something that needs to be addressed so that the country can reinvigorate its message of unity and defiance, so powerful in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion.

The second part is to accept that there are no quick fixes. There is always a temptation, to which Putin may have succumbed, to believe in the one ‘big push’ that will decide the war. Better to conserve capabilities, improve local arms production, and step-up training so that the forces can be more effective in the future at the battalion and divisional level. (The challenges in doing this are explained by Jack Watling in this podcast with Gideon Rachman). There may still be offensive operations, and some perhaps will exceed expectations, but Ukraine is unlikely to be able to invest all resources and hopes in a single campaign. Meanwhile defensive operations, which will continue to be essential, must be seen as being about more than holding the line but also about reducing Russian capabilities and morale.

This leads to the third part of the challenge. Military operations are naturally assessed in terms of territory gained or lost. When there is little movement, as has been the case during 2023, then the next measure tends to be attrition. Even with an apparently inconclusive encounter one side may emerge so bruised that it will be hampered in future encounters. But attrition can only truly be judged by reference to the ease with which casualties, equipment lost, and ammunition expended can be replaced. The effects are therefore cumulative and conditional and in some areas may be quite temporary.

The other way to assess the implications of any operations, whether offensive and defensive, will be on elite perceptions and decision-making in Moscow. This is even harder to measure and depends on many factors that shape the way that governments think. But it is not an objective to be dismissed. The aim is to underline how badly a long war might yet go for Russia. This requires Ukraine to work out what might worry Moscow most. This has already encouraged a focus on Crimea the most important Russian gain of 2014 and which is already looking less rather than more secure as a result of the full-scale invasion. At some point it might be possible to mount a proper land attack to retake the territory but for now the point can be made by regular strikes on targets inside Crimea, and threatening supply lines, including the Kerch Bridge between the mainland and the peninsular, which has already been struck a number of times.

The Land War

So far Russia has shown no inclination to slow the pace of the war. Even when it was more on the defensive over the summer months it counter-attacked continually so that Ukrainian forces were unable to consolidate any advance. As soon as the Ukrainian offensive was apparently winding down, they revived their own offensive in Donetsk. The only general who gave priority to defence, as he wished to concentrate on taking out Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, was General Sergey Surovikin. Because he was too close to Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner group he has been demoted and sidelined. Putin’s inclination, transmitted to his generals, has been to stay on the offensive, relying on superior numbers to overwhelm the Ukrainians, and apparently caring little about casualties.

The main Russian military objective for now is to complete its occupation of the two oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk. For months now Russian forces have been pushing forward along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line in Luhansk, with only limited gains, while they have put a massive effort into taking the city of Avdiivka, which is seen as making possible the control of Donetsk. Avdiivka is turning into one of those long and gruelling fights where Ukrainian defenders seek to hold their positions against constant Russian attacks. The Russians have made some progress in areas close to the besieged and now largely destroyed city, with their main focus being the industrial area on its southeastern edge. Their aim is to cut off supply lines and leave Ukrainian forces trapped. So far they have failed to achieve this, and have suffered heavy casualties and equipment losses. Ukraine still controls the major highways into the city. The Russian command seems reluctant to give up on Avdiivka, so we shall see whether a combination of losses and weather forces it to reduce the intensity and regularity of its attacks.

While this has been going on Ukraine has successfully opened up a new front on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River. This could relieve pressure on the city of Kherson on the West Bank, which has suffered from regular Russian shelling since Ukrainian forces reoccupied the city about a year ago, and it potentially opens up a new route to get at Crimea, but for the moment it is largely about potential.

Critical Infrastructure

Last winter, Russia launched a massive bombing campaign targeting Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. The aim was essentially to deprive the country of energy, leading to social breakdown. The campaign began in October 2022 and lasted until March, as the weather improved, and was conducted by regular waves of missiles and kamikaze drones. Although some 40 percent of the energy infrastructure was damaged, so that Ukrainians became familiar with periods of darkness and little water, they demonstrated resilience as engineers worked to repair or replace the damaged systems and extra air defence systems arrived. At times, however the campaign was close to succeeding, at least to the point where consideration was being given to evacuating major cities, including Kyiv.

Winter weather has now arrived and so has a new Russian campaign. It arrived most dramatically on the morning of 25 November with a massive drone attack, using a variety of flight paths to confuse air defences, largely but not solely targeted on Kyiv. Of the 75 drones sent, 74 were shot down over a six-hour period, with the major damage caused by falling debris. This was the anniversary of the Holodomor, the famine deliberately caused by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s that led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. Follow up attacks since have been quite small but more that are much larger must be expected. Ukraine’s concern is that these drone attacks use up scarce and expensive air defence missiles so that there is insufficient capacity to cope with Russian missiles when they start coming through in numbers.

One new feature of Ukraine’s strategy is a readiness to retaliate. In late October Zelensky observed that: ‘This year we will not only defend ourselves, but also respond.’ Ukraine has longer range capabilities, such as the UK Storm Shadow and US ATACMS. Although in both cases they have agreed not to use them against Russian territory, only targets in Russian controlled territory, including Crimea. But they can use drones. Since October it has launched attacks on at least three electricity substations and an oil refinery in the Krasnodar region of Russia. The day after the drone strikes against Kyiv, Ukraine sent drones of its own against a power station in Starobesheve in Russian-held territory. Sufficient got through to cut power to towns and cities, including the regional capital of Donetsk. An aircraft factory in Smolensk has also been reportedly struck recently. The Russian authorities also claimed to have shot down 11 drones on Saturday night and another nine on Sunday. Again, this is not a transformational capability, but it can eat away at Russian confidence.

The Black Sea    

The naval war has attracted far less attention than the land war, not least because Ukraine lacks a navy. Yet by using missiles and drones Ukraine has been able to make the position of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet barely tenable by both striking individual vessels and compromising the naval base in Sevastopol on the edge of Crimea. (We can recall that part of the rationale for annexing Crimea in 2014 was to prevent a new Ukrainian government denying Russia its special rights over Sevastopol.)

The Black Sea Fleet has menaced Ukraine by putting the port city of Odesa at risk, threatening the main routes for the export of foodstuffs, and also by launching Kalibr cruise missiles against Ukrainian cities. To deal with this menace Ukraine has used uncrewed surface vessels, carrying explosives, to attack Russian warships at sea and in port, to the point where the fleet has been obliged to retreat. Because they don’t carry crew these have the advantage of sitting low in the water and getting heavier payloads directly to their targets. Russian ships are now wary about getting too close to Ukrainian shores. Nor is it easy for Russia to reinforce the fleet because Turkey has closed the Bosphorus Strait to warships other than those of Black Sea nations, as it is entitled to do under the Montreux Conventions.

As it became harder for Russia to enforce a full blockade, and with complaints that it was denying poorer countries essential food supplies, it agreed a deal, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022, that allowed Ukraine to export grain and other foodstuffs from three of its ports. Persistent Ukrainian attacks, including on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters and Russian submarines in Sevastopol, led to Russia withdrawing from the grain deal last July. This was followed by attacks on Odesa and other ports. Russia said it would treat commercial ships going to Ukraine as potentially carrying weapons. The Ukrainian response was to start attacking Russian ships while setting up a humanitarian corridor for commercial ships to travel to and from Ukrainian ports.

In September more Russian ships were attacked, followed on 22 September by an attack on naval headquarters in Crimea which killed, according to Ukraine, 33 Russian officers. (They claimed that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet Viktor Sokolov died in the strike. Sokolov appeared in a Russian video of an on—line Russian command conference the next day, but has not been seen since). The UK’s Armed Forces Minister James Heappey spoke in early October of the ‘functional defeat’ of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It moved its base from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, although it also reportedly reinforced the fleet with two extra frigates and a submarine. The attacks continued into November, with a newly built Russian corvette damaged while at the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch in Crimea, the furthest east Ukraine had managed to strike into Crimea, adding to Russia’s problems of basing, and the challenge of air defences. On 17 November Ukraine claimed that its naval operations had led to the destruction of 15 Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea since February 2022 and that 12 other vessels had been damaged.

Meanwhile the humanitarian corridor continues to work. Over 100 ships have now passed through and a million tons of grain have been successfully transported. The UK has contributed a special insurance fund to support the corridor. The waters around Ukraine are not without hazards. A Liberian-flagged oil tanker hit a mine in October, and another Liberian-flagged commercial ship, was hit by a missile strike against Odesa in November, killing a harbour pilot and injuring three crew members. Zelensky has claimed, without providing details that international partners are preparing to provide Ukraine’s Naval Forces with cutters to bolster security along the grain corridor and ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels carrying food products.

None of this makes that much difference to land operations, and in some ways it is secondary, but one of Russia’s forms of pressure has been thwarted, and it is not a good look for the Black Sea Fleet

Conclusion

I have argued that the logic of the situation turns the prevailing assumptions upside down. Instead of Ukraine pushing for a quick victory while Russia waits for its support to wane in the West Ukraine needs to show patience and concentrate on strengthening its position for the longer term. A dash for a quick victory would exhaust scarce resources and, if it failed, lead to further demoralisation. This is essentially what Russia has been trying to do and, despite its advantages, it has not succeeded and suffered heavy losses. Even if it gets in a position to take Avdiivka it will struggle to push on in the land war. The next few months will be difficult, especially if missile attacks directed against critical infrastructure start to get through its air defences and threats of retaliation fail to deter. The costs and pain of war should never be understated and they can be harder to endure when victory appears as a distant prospect. The challenge for political leadership in Ukraine and in the West is to demonstrate that there is a way forward.

Confidence is not helped by regular warnings of the risks to the current levels of support from the US and Europe. The risks are real but commentary on these has been overdone. The intricacies of decision-making in the US Congress and in the EU are sources of delay but they can be navigated and probably will be. These delays have their costs, as can be seen in the shortage of ammunition. Western production is increasing but this has been too slow and the benefits to Ukraine will not come through until late next year. Of course everything might get messed up by a Trump victory but one cannot base policy on a speculative possibility.

Looking ahead it is as important that Western countries gear up for a long war. Russia’s economy is tiny compared to theirs, and while some grumble at the economic burden they are not the ones doing the fighting. The costs and impact of a Russian victory would be far greater. Economic sanctions can be tightened, and seized Russian financial assets diverted to help Ukraine. These will not provide killer blows, but they can add to concern in Russia that the longer the war continues the tougher it will be for them. It will be easier for their supporters to do this if Ukraine demonstrates that it has a coherent strategy, so that it can cope with Russian aggression in whatever form it takes while preparing for more focused offensive action of its own either later in 2024 or, as likely, in 2025. Above all it must reinforce the message that this is a war that Russia can never win.

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16. Don’t Count on Economic Woes to Deter China

Don’t Count on Economic Woes to Deter China

Xi hasn’t shortchanged the military and boasts of his country’s ability to withstand hardships.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-count-on-economic-woes-to-deter-china-invasion-taiwan-3bb5d686

Nov. 28, 2023 12:54 pm ET

ILLUSTRATION: DAVID KLEIN

During his September trip to Vietnam, President Biden dismissed a reporter who asked for his thoughts on the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to Taiwan. “I think China has a difficult economic problem right now,” Mr. Biden said. “I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan. And matter of fact, the opposite—it probably doesn’t have the same capacity that it had before.”

Mr. Biden’s response perhaps explains why his administration’s China policy has veered away from competition and toward accommodation. The hope is that Beijing’s economic woes will make it more conciliatory. But that assumption badly misunderstands the power-hungry nature of the Chinese Communist Party and the lessons of history.

China doubtless has problems. Many commentators have asked if we’ve reached “peak China,” the point at which demographic headwinds and self-destructive economic policies combine to slow the once mighty engine of the Chinese economy, perhaps for good.

But there is good reason to be skeptical that China’s economic difficulties will on their own prevent conflict. Building a first-class military and reclaiming Taiwan are among President Xi Jinping’s priorities. Even if the economy sags and Mr. Xi has to cut back in other areas, the military will get the funds it needs. The Pentagon’s recently released annual report on Chinese military and security developments makes clear that, notwithstanding a significant slowdown in China’s rate of economic growth, Beijing “can support continued growth in defense spending for at least the next five to 10 years.”

Economic pain may actually be a feature of Mr. Xi’s strategy, not a bug. He thinks the U.S. is weak and unwilling to suffer hardship. China endured the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and still held together, albeit through intense repression and at the expense of tens of millions of Chinese lives. In the event of a Taiwan conflict, sanctions and supply-chain disruptions would wreak havoc on the global economy. Even if China were harder hit, Mr. Xi might bet that Western societies would buckle first, particularly given his proactive steps to prepare for war. As Mr. Xi put it at the start of the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, China must “prepare for a rainy day, and be ready to withstand major tests of high winds and high waves.”

Additionally, Communist Party leaders may perceive a near-term window of relative advantage before China’s structural problems grow even worse. Scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley have warned that the middle to late 2020s could pose a particularly dangerous window for Taiwan for precisely this reason.

At the same time, high unemployment, economic stagnation and popular discontent are existential challenges for the Communist Party. An invasion of Taiwan might provide an effective distraction. If Mr. Xi can’t provide jobs for China’s young people—youth unemployment reached 21% this summer before the Chinese government decided it should stop reporting the figure—or hit previous growth targets, a successful conquest of Taiwan might become more, not less, desirable. If anything, it could become a gambit to jump-start growth, put people to work and unite the country.

Other authoritarian countries have waged war despite domestic economic challenges. Consider Russia under Vladimir Putin. After years of strong growth in the mid-2000s, the Russian economy slowed beginning with the 2008 financial crisis. In the year leading up to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, Russia grew at less than 2%. Declining oil prices and sanctions have since put a damper on the nation’s economy. Between the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, Russia’s growth averaged barely 1%. Nevertheless, Mr. Putin invaded and kept his war machine running, which caused further economic pain in the face of additional sanctions.

Another relevant example is Imperial Japan during the interwar period. Like China today, Japan saw a long boom give way to stagnation, with annual growth falling from an average of 6.2% in 1914-20 to 1.8% in 1921-29, and then to 0.7% in 1930-31 as Japan, like the rest of the world, battled the Great Depression.

The final two years are particularly instructive. The effects of the global crash combined with an abrupt appreciation of the yen, stemming from Japan’s return to the gold standard, led to a paralyzing economic contraction called the Showa Depression. The Showa Depression didn’t, however, temper Japan’s external ambitions. As the nation’s economy was contracting, Tokyo—which had three years earlier signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war—invaded Manchuria in September 1931, kicking off the chain of events that would later lead to total war in the Pacific.

The Chinese Communist Party’s recent behavior contradicts Mr. Biden’s hypothesis. As the Chinese economy has slowed, Chinese coast guard and maritime militia vessels have rammed Filipino coast guard and military-resupply ships in the South China Sea. The Philippines is a U.S. ally. The Chinese military has conducted more than 180 unsafe and unprofessional intercepts of U.S. forces over the past two years—a dangerous spike that has brought U.S. and Chinese forces within feet of deadly collisions. China’s threats to Taiwan also escalate daily, including unprecedented incursions by People’s Liberation Army forces over the “median line” in the Taiwan Strait.

War with China isn’t inevitable. But we can’t rely on an economic deus ex machina to prevent a conflict. Rather than wager peace on wishful thinking, American policy makers—from the president to Congress—must move heaven and earth to deter China and prevent a conflict before it is too late.

Mr. Gallagher, a Republican, represents Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District and is chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party.

17. Does bin Laden get the last laugh?

Conclusion:

Despite the frothy good feeling of the Xi-Biden summit, the US-China relationship remains in a serious downturn. The steps the two countries took toward recovery in the latter part of 2023 are welcome but fragile. They could be swept away easily by the next crisis over Taiwan, which still seems inevitable.

Taiwan still flashing red despite US-China 'thaw'

Xi assuring Biden that he has no immediate plans for invading Taiwan was only superficially encouraging

asiatimes.com · by Denny Roy · November 29, 2023

A restoration of high-level official meetings between US and People’s Republic of China (PRC) leaders following the spy balloon crisis of February 2023 has fueled cautious optimism that US-China relations are improving.

The most important event in this purported “thaw” was the meeting between Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in California on November 15. Xi appeared to offer the Americans assurances that China was not preparing to wage war against Taiwan.

But while the Xi-Biden summit was modestly successful, the chance of a conflict is scarcely if at all reduced because Taiwan, the most likely trigger for war, remains as much a flashpoint as ever.

The most encouraging item from the summit on the Taiwan issue is that Xi reportedly told Biden that China had no plans to take military action against Taiwan. This, however, is only superficially encouraging.

First, it tells us nothing new. War would be a terrible option for Beijing. Either a blockade or invasion could fail, and any “victory” would be Pyrrhic for the Chinese, with huge losses of lives and treasure, serious and perhaps regime-threatening economic disruption, and decades of difficulty trying to govern a hostile Taiwan population.

Therefore we can assume Xi would opt for war only as a last resort, prompted by a trigger that has not yet occurred, such as Taiwan’s formal declaration of de jure independence.

Xi seemed to be refuting speculation that Beijing has already decided to attack Taiwan, perhaps as early as 2024. And we already knew that a major PLA combat operation against Taiwan would require many months of unusual and visible preparations.

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Second, the credibility of any public statement by Xi is questionable. His government denies persecuting Uighurs, denies government-sponsored industrial cybertheft, denies bullying other countries, insists that the spy balloon was a “weather balloon” – I could go on.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden at a summit meeting at the Filoli Estate, San Francisco, November 15, 2023. Photo: Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs

In any case, it would be a mistake to interpret Xi’s comments too literally. In 2015, Xi told then-US president Barack Obama that “there is no intention to militarize” China’s artificial island bases in the South China Sea. After the Chinese government packed those sandbars with military facilities and equipment, government propagandists explained that militarization for self-defense purposes does not count as “militarization.”

Even if Xi has not ordered his military to attack Taiwan by a particular future date, neither can we take his statement to mean that he will never attack Taiwan. Both Xi and the PRC leaders who came before him have stubbornly refused to rule out the possible use of force against Taiwan.

They see this threat as essential to deterring Taiwan independence. Therefore Xi does have a plan, even if he has not yet decided to implement it.

During the retaliation for the Nancy Pelosi visit to Taiwan in 2022 and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to the US in April 2023, PRC forces carried out military maneuvers around Taiwan that showcased capabilities and missions specifically germane to a war to conquer Taiwan, as if to douse any doubts that such a plan exists.

Even Xi’s meager assurance during his California visit may have gone too far. Xi’s own government quickly discounted it.

On November 21, Chen Binhua, spokesperson for the PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office, complained that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Lai Ching-te had been using Xi’s statement to discredit the assertion by the opposition Kuomintang Party that electing a DPP president would lead to a China attack on Taiwan.

Chen said Lai was taking Xi’s statement “out of context” and “creating excuses for continuing provocations.”

Other statements by Xi were less assuring. He reportedly demanded that the United States “take real actions to honor its commitment of not supporting Taiwan independence” and that the US “stop arming Taiwan.”

This reiterates Beijing’s recent position that while claiming to follow a “One China” policy, Washington is in practice pushing Taiwan toward permanent formal independence as a means of “containing” or suppressing China.

Xi’s comments in California indicate no reduction in Beijing’s fear that America is abetting Taiwan’s independence. This fear is the main factor increasing the risk of a Taiwan Strait war. Xi also suggested that there is a limit to how long Beijing will refrain from using force if peaceful attempts at “unification” are not working.

Biden did not promise to stop selling arms to Taiwan and Xi did not promise to halt his military intimidation of the island. Since Xi returned home from California, PRC military aircraft and ships have continued menacing Taiwan, just as they had been before the summit.

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Picking the low-hanging fruit does not necessarily make the high-hanging fruit more accessible. Indeed, Beijing often argues the opposite: that China will not cooperate on issues of obvious common interest until after the more contentious issues are solved.

A helicopter flies a Taiwanese flag in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Photo: Asia Times Files / Ceng Shou Yi / NurPhoto via Getty Images

After the Pelosi visit, for example, Beijing suspended cooperation with the United States in

• combating illegal drug trafficking,
• mitigating the negative effects of climate change and
• avoiding unintended military incidents.

This expansive linkage of issues is also the premise of increasingly frequent Chinese economic coercion against trade partners: normal economic activity cannot continue until the trade partner demonstrates respect for a PRC “core interest,” often Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan.

Despite the frothy good feeling of the Xi-Biden summit, the US-China relationship remains in a serious downturn. The steps the two countries took toward recovery in the latter part of 2023 are welcome but fragile. They could be swept away easily by the next crisis over Taiwan, which still seems inevitable.

Denny Roy is a senior fellow of the East-West Center, Honolulu.

asiatimes.com · by Denny Roy · November 29, 2023

18. Does bin Laden get the last laugh?

Photo of bin Laden's letter at the link.

Does bin Laden get the last laugh?

https://defense.info/highlight-of-the-week/does-bin-laden-get-the-last-laugh/

11/28/2023

By James Durso

Osama bin Laden may be in Hell, but he could be having the last laugh.

TikTokers recently discovered Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” which was written in 2002 and residing online in plain sight.

The letter, allegedly written by bin Laden’s #2, the late Ayman al-Zawahiri, was al-Qaeda’s justification for attacking America on 11 September 2001. In the letter, bin Laden declared that America was attacked because of the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel, made possible by America; for stealing the oil from Muslim countries; occupying Muslim lands with miliary forces; and, being hypocrites for preaching freedom and democracy but “for [the] white race only.” Bin Laden didn’t just blame American leaders, but also the American people who elect the oppressive governments, and whose taxes pay for the military that oppresses the Muslims.

To be clear, the letter is clearly written as propaganda for justifying the terrorist actions with which bin Laden and his followers are well known. But the reappearance of the letter in the current climate underscores the current problems facing America and its role in the world. Too many young Americans simply do not now much about the past and have interpreted this letter as somehow an accurate description of the world today. And the inability of American governing elites to fail to understand their own role in the problems facing the country today is highlighted as well.

A video about the letter was apparently first shared on TikTok on by an “online personality and pro-Palestinian activist” and it got about 800,000 views and over 80,000 likes. Some other TikTokers also posted about the letter with similar results. Soon the hashtag #lettertoamerica was born, but it only took off when journalist Yashar Ali tweeted about it and it soon secured 14 million views, though some were critical of the posting.

 Among the reactions to the letter were, “everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie,” “I will never look at life the same. I will never look at this country the same,” “Osama bin Laden’s letter is not as crazy and threatening as I expected, is well written, and makes some objectively true points,” and “Osama bin Laden was good. Even better than us.”

And, most oddly, “TikTok is going to save this generation [Gen Z].”

After young Americans on TikTok expressed sympathy for Osama bin Laden, the White House had to remind everyone that Osama bin Laden was a bad man.

Eventually, the TikTok videos about the letter, and the letter itself, a copy of which could be found on the website of The Guardian, were promptly removed. TikTok is already in enough trouble with the U.S. government and no doubt wanted to show it was acting responsibly and declared, “Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism.” The Guardian, which was not clear about what it was guarding, just said the transcript of the letter had been “widely shared on social media without the full context.”

But there’s no better way to make a young person think “there’s something they don’t want you to know!” than a speedy cleanse of the Internet of offending commentary, which only validates it as today’s samizdat.

No one seems to know how the bin Laden letter was introduced to Influencer Zero, and people who study online influence campaigns don’t think it’s the effort of Russia or China, but its all guesswork for now. (Though if Beijing is behind TikTok as alleged, it must be marveling at what Americans can be induced to do.) TikTok pointed out that #lettertoamerica was popular due to media attention and postings on Twitter and, at 274 video posts and 1.85M total video views, it was small potatoes on a platform where #travel got 137,011,985 views and #skincare scored 252,103,826 views in a recent 24-hour period.

Many of the TikTokers who pushed #lettertoamerica are probably typical of TikTok users who are mostly teens and young adults. There are 45 million Gen Z TikTok users in the United States as of 2023, 47.4% are 10-29 years old, and 53.4% are female. About a third of TikTok users aged 18 to 29 are most likely to say they regularly get their news on TikTok. (The U.S. has the most TikTok users – 116.5 million – and Indonesia is next with 113 million.)

How could young Americans ever think “Maybe this bin Laden guy has something to say” after he murdered almost 3,000 of their countrymen? Why not trust government figures or establishment journalism on what a bad man bin Laden was?

Well, that’s because The Establishment hasn’t given them any reason to be trusted. The government and its media acolytes were the cheerleaders for the 2003 invasion of on Iraq which was based on lies: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was cooperating with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist group. The cost of the Iraq war: about $3 trillion according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, 4,492 dead U.S. troops, and over 200,000 dead Iraqi civilians. (Total direct deaths of the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen are about 940,000.)

Then there’s Afghanistan.

According to the Afghanistan Papers exposé senior American officials knew the U.S.-led NATO campaign was failing, but they kept it going for almost 20 years until the Taliban victoriously entered Kabul on 15 August 2021. The U.S. finally departed on 30 August, but not before an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members, 12 of them aged 25 and under. The cost: over $2 trillion, over 2,300 dead U.S. troops, and about 100,000 dead Afghan civilians, including opposition fighters, many of whom joined the opposition due to U.S. abuses.

In 2011, the U.S. led the attack on Libya and destroyed the functioning government that was cooperating with Washington, and kicked off a migrant wave that upended politics in Europe. U.S. troops are still in Syria because mumble-mumble terrorism, though the Islamic State was defeated in 2018. Then it was All Aboard! to fight the Russians in Ukraine, but then the U.S. political class and media dropped Ukraine when Israel was attacked by Hamas.

Young Americans are likely realizing that their country is led by unserious people who lie to them as a matter of course.

But it’s not just the liars in Washington, D.C. Parents and teachers must shoulder some of the blame for the lack of critical thinking skills in many young Americans.

American students have been in the care of teachers less interest in civic education than in the “anti-racist” 1619 Project and “decolonizing the curriculum” instead of teaching the three Rs. The result: American students are falling behind the rest of the world and their test scores lag the global average.

And knowing they were lied to may explain the failure of the military to attract enough qualified recruits, which is part of a long-term trend of “historically low faith in U.S. institutions” reported by Gallup. Who wants to be the cannon fodder in the next war fought for dubious “American interests” when you can be sure no one named Bush or Obama will be in that trench with you?

Gen Z members suffer from high levels of depression and anxiety and are most likely to report their mental health as being poor, according to the American Psychological Association. Poor mental health, a bad education, a lack of trust in institutions, and the sense their economic prospects are limited and the American Dream is out of reach, are what’s needed to create a population susceptible to thinking bin Laden was an anti-imperialist who had a point when he said, “Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people.”

After all that pessimism, or maybe adding to it, young Americans have departed from their elders’ reflexive support for anything Israel does. According to a CNN poll, asked whether Israel’s response to the Hamas attack was fully justified, only 27 percent of Americans aged 18-34 agreed, as opposed to 81 percent of Americans over age 65. This is likely due to both existing distrust of the media and government, and what is known as “networked tribalism,” the rapid development of empathy and kinship with others via online media, resulting in maximalist thinking where opposing sides can’t even agree on basic facts.

In a 2004 communiqué, bin Laden declared economic war on America: “We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” He also noted that al Qaeda has found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this administration…All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations.”

In short, bin Laden predicted that America would impoverish itself while it created more enemies than it killed. The U.S. blew over $8 trillion on the post 9-11 wars, most of it borrowed from China, and its national debt will soon exceed $34 trillion dollars, but the leaders who lied to promote the wars won’t be around to pay the tab, leaving that to a resentful and disillusioned young Americans, fertile ground for extremist sentiment. And, hopefully, Washington will come to understand that most of the world failed to support its campaigns in Ukraine and Israel-Gaza because of its heedless waste of money and lives, most of them not American.

Bin Laden was killed 12 years ago, but you must admit – he’s been pretty successful for a dead guy.

James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.

The featured photo is the opening of binLaden’s 2002 letter.

19. Putin sees Finland as the next Crimea

Excerpts:

For years now, Russia has been laying the groundwork to capitalise on warming temperatures in the Arctic Sea, which, in addition to opening up new trade networks, present an opportunity to literally circumnavigate this hypothetical Nato blockade via its northern coastline. And this goal is intimately connected to the security of the ice-free Arctic port of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, which hosts a significant Russian nuclear-deterrence force just a stone’s throw north-east of Finland.

By this ominous logic, however, Russia’s geopolitical interests in the region are driven by the same strategic impetus as Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its push to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea in 2022: a desire to control crucial waterways that allow Russia to escape the prison of the Eurasian landmass. Presumably with such considerations in mind, the Russian military confirmed earlier this year that it would be splitting its Western Military District in two and creating a new locus of military activity right along Finland’s borders, reviving the Leningrad Military District that had been dormant since 2010.

Well before this month’s escalation, it was proof that the escalating hybrid war playing out on Finland’s border is only the beginning of a broader Russian campaign against the country. For Putin, this is the culmination of his twin desires: to bolster his jingoistic narrative at home; and to reinvest in a neglected theatre of great-power competition. For Finland, though, this all means only one thing — the period of quiet rapport it enjoyed between Nato and Russia has come to a definitive end, replaced by an anxious new world of menace and instability.

Putin sees Finland as the next Crimea

Russia has opened a new front

BY MICHAL KRANZ

Michal Kranz is a freelance journalist reporting on politics and society in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the United States.

Michal_Kranz

unherd.com · by Michal Kranz · November 29, 2023

For the second time in as many years, the Kremlin is deliberately fomenting a refugee crisis. In late 2021, it helped embolden the threats of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to “flood” Europe with migrants, targeting Poland and the Baltic countries. Now, over the past few weeks, Russian authorities have been forcibly pushing hundreds of migrants and refugees towards Finland’s eastern frontier.

Yesterday, as a result, the Finnish government sealed its entire border with Russia, with Estonia threatening to do the same. Meanwhile, the European Union’s border agency Frontex has pledged to deploy personnel to Finland’s border.

Predictably, Russia has denied any foul play, but few are convinced. Moscow’s actions are doubtless linked to Finland’s recent entry into Nato and its new defence pact with the United States, negotiated earlier this month. In response, a number of media outlets have interpreted this latest episode in Russia’s hybrid war as an act of revenge: threaten Russia’s security periphery, and face chaos on your own frontiers.

But, though deeply tied to its security calculus, Russia’s motivations go much deeper than that. Nearly two years into his war in Ukraine, these actions play a key role in supporting Putin’s fear-based domestic propaganda narratives. By pitting the encroaching threat of Nato against the livelihood of Russia’s public, he can justify the gradual reorientation of its society and economy towards a semi-permanent war-footing. At the strategic level, the move is also part of a broader vision of Russia’s geopolitical future, and its conception of competing hegemonies in northern and eastern Europe.

Before last year, Finland had been dependably neutral towards Russia for decades. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a national reckoning in the country, and support for Nato membership among Finns jumped to nearly 80% in late 2022. Despite never being part of the Soviet Union, Finland is no stranger to Russian aggression. It was under Russian occupation for over a century until 1917, and famously repelled a Soviet invasion during the Second World War.

Finland’s reorientation has thus predictably been utilised by the Kremlin as an opportunity to play the victim, presenting the current situation on the Finnish-Russian border as an attack on Russians, rather than a crisis of its own making. “They have to keep up the appearances, to make up these kinds of narratives, for themselves, for the population in Russia,” Pentti Forsström, a senior researcher at Finland’s National Defence University, and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Finnish Defence Forces, told me. “Now they are using every bit and piece of what we are doing, [like] closing the border, [to argue] that we are the ones to blame.”

In response to the border closures, the governor of Russia’s Murmansk region that borders Finland has already introduced “a heightened state of readiness… to ensure the security of our residents”, while Russians living in Finland have staged protests accusing the Finnish government of disrupting cross-border family ties.

This type of rhetoric aligns perfectly with Putin’s claims regarding a Russophobic West that infringes upon “the Russian world” and threatens communities in its near-abroad. Though the West used to take them less seriously, such claims have now become part of a longstanding narrative to validate Russian expansionism: protecting ethnic Russians was a large part of Moscow’s official justification for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as that of Georgia in 2008.

Not only that, but a crisis like the one along Finland’s border provides fresh “evidence” for the Kremlin to keep everyday Russians convinced of Nato’s aggressive presence. And this propaganda fodder is more necessary now than ever. Russia is quietly transitioning its economy and defence industry to a long-term war posture, and is facing a resurgence of political pushback from its people as it tries to recruit more troops for its fight in Ukraine. It is crucial that ordinary Russians continue to see the conflict as an existential threat to their way of life, for which it is worth sacrificing livelihoods — and lives.

Finland’s growing military co-operation with the US, and recent promises of support from Poland — a regular focus of Kremlin propaganda — make Finland a perfect place to roll out this strategy. For this reason, talking heads in the Russian media are already hinting that this is only the beginning of Russia’s hybrid war against Finland. In one notable clip, TV host Tigran Keosayan (who is married to the infamous head of Kremlin propaganda outlet RT, Margarita Simonyan) laid out the logic of this rhetorical campaign. “Dear Finns,” he said recently on his programme, “first you banned us from entering by car, now by bicycle” — a reference to the bicycles Russian authorities had allegedly given to migrants on their way to the Finnish border. “You leave us with no choice,” he finished, as a cartoon of a tank appeared onscreen.

However, there is a further element to Russia’s strategy that often gets lost in our feverish news cycle. Finland’s position in the north-eastern Baltic Sea and its proximity to Russia’s strategically important Kola Peninsula have made it critical for Russia’s naval ambitions for more than a century.

For Russia, access to warm-water ports is a permanent objective, essential for projecting global power. A neutral Finland had meant that St Petersburg — which Peter the Great originally built as the country’s navigational and cultural gateway to the West — could provide Russia with a secure maritime corridor for a naval presence in the Baltic. But since the shifting of alliances over Ukraine, this has changed. With Finland now joining Estonia within Nato’s embrace, the military alliance could conceivably blockade the entirety of the Gulf of Finland, reducing Russia’s sea access to its militarily significant (but territorially microscopic) Kaliningrad exclave.

For years now, Russia has been laying the groundwork to capitalise on warming temperatures in the Arctic Sea, which, in addition to opening up new trade networks, present an opportunity to literally circumnavigate this hypothetical Nato blockade via its northern coastline. And this goal is intimately connected to the security of the ice-free Arctic port of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, which hosts a significant Russian nuclear-deterrence force just a stone’s throw north-east of Finland.

By this ominous logic, however, Russia’s geopolitical interests in the region are driven by the same strategic impetus as Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its push to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea in 2022: a desire to control crucial waterways that allow Russia to escape the prison of the Eurasian landmass. Presumably with such considerations in mind, the Russian military confirmed earlier this year that it would be splitting its Western Military District in two and creating a new locus of military activity right along Finland’s borders, reviving the Leningrad Military District that had been dormant since 2010.

Well before this month’s escalation, it was proof that the escalating hybrid war playing out on Finland’s border is only the beginning of a broader Russian campaign against the country. For Putin, this is the culmination of his twin desires: to bolster his jingoistic narrative at home; and to reinvest in a neglected theatre of great-power competition. For Finland, though, this all means only one thing — the period of quiet rapport it enjoyed between Nato and Russia has come to a definitive end, replaced by an anxious new world of menace and instability.

unherd.com · by Michal Kranz · November 29, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com