Quotes of the Day:

“This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle — you know who you're killing." 

- John Paul Vann 

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." 

- H.L. Mencken

“A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." 

- James Madison, from a letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822 

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 4 (Putin''s War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (04.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. On Agent Compromise in the Field (China, Iran, and the CIA)

4. Menendez seeks path forward for Taiwan defense bill

5. Guerrillas on the Bench: Operationalizing Resistance in Ukraine and Beyond

6. Xi Jinping’s third term is a tragic error

7. With the right words, Biden could help China avoid making a wrong move toward Taiwan

8. How to Improve Your Pickup Aviation Advising Game

9. Biden speaks with Zelensky, unveils $625 million weapons package to Ukraine

10. Kremlin Gushes Over Elon Musk as Heroic ‘Russian Officer’

11. Taiwan Local Elections Are Where China’s Disinformation Strategies Begin

12.  Vladimir Putin Now Stands Alone

13. The Downside of Imperial Collapse

14. A Fresh Look at Civic Duty by Walter Pincus

15. Just How Long Should the US Send Aid to Ukraine?

16. Violence Committed Abroad in Our Name

17. Taiwan and the Perils of Strategic Ambiguity

18. Biden’s Anti-Corruption Agenda Finds Its Test Case: Paraguay

19. FDD | Death Toll in Iran Protests Rises to 154 as Khamenei Blames U.S. for Uprising

20. FDD | Release of Hostages in Iran May Be Linked to U.S. Sanctions Relief

21. How China Trapped Itself

22. New Air Force special ops teams model the future of ‘agile’ air wars

23. In War, Information is Power

24. Are worsening US-China relations in Taiwan’s interest?

25. Taiwan Will Treat China Flights Into Airspace as ‘First Strike’

1.  RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 4 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-4

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces continued to make significant gains in Kherson Oblast while simultaneously continuing advances in Kharkiv and Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of partial mobilization is having more significant short-term impacts on the Russian domestic context than on the war in Ukraine, catalyzing fractures in the information space that confuse and undermine Putin’s narratives.
• Ukrainian forces continued to make substantial gains in northern Kherson Oblast on October 4, beginning to collapse the sparsely-manned Russian lines in that area.
• Ukrainian forces continued to make gains in eastern Kharkiv Oblast west of Svatove on October 4, pushing past the Oskil River and increasingly threatening Russian positions in Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued to conduct artillery, air, and missile strikes west of Hulyiapole and in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv Oblasts on October 4.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on October 4.
• The Kremlin effectively ordered local Russian administrations and non-Ministry of Defense institutions to fund a significant part of the mobilization effort from local budgets.
• Russian security officials are attempting to maintain their domestic security apparatus as Putin’s partial mobilization drains the Russian security sector to generate additional forces to fight in Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 4

Oct 4, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, Katherine Lawlor, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan

October 4, 10:00 pm ET

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

Ukrainian forces continued to make significant gains in Kherson Oblast while simultaneously continuing advances in Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts on October 4. Ukrainian forces liberated several settlements on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River along the T2207 highway, forcing Russian forces to retreat to the south toward Kherson City. Ukrainian forces also continued to push south along the Dnipro River and the T0403 highway, severing two Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in northern Kherson Oblast and forcing Russians south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border toward the Beryslav area. Ukrainian military officials noted that the Ukrainian interdiction campaign is crippling Russian attempts to transfer additional ammunition, reserves, mobilized men, and means of defense to frontline positions.[1] Ukrainian forces also continued to advance east of the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast, and Russian sources claimed that battles are ongoing near the R66 Svatove-Kreminna highway.[2]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of partial mobilization is having more significant short-term impacts on the Russian domestic context than on the war in Ukraine, interacting with Russian battlefield failures to exacerbate fractures in the information space that confuse and undermine Putin’s narratives. Ukrainian sources have rightly observed that the partial mobilization is not a major threat in the short term because the Ukrainian counteroffensive is moving faster than the mobilization can generate effects.[3] Ukrainian Intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov even stated that mobilization in Russia is a “gift” to Ukraine because the Kremlin is finding itself in a “dead end,” caught between its failures and its determination to hold what it has seized.[4] The controversies surrounding the poorly executed partial mobilization, coupled with significant Russian defeats in Kharkiv Oblast and around Lyman, have intensified infighting between pro-Putin Russian nationalist factions and are creating new fractures among voices who speak to Putin’s core constituencies.[5]

Putin is visibly failing at balancing the competing demands of the Russian nationalists who have become increasingly combative since mobilization began despite sharing Putin’s general war aims and goals in Ukraine. ISW has identified three main factions in the current Russian nationalist information space: Russian milbloggers and war correspondents, former Russian or proxy officers and veterans, and some of the Russian siloviki—people with meaningful power bases and forces of their own. Putin needs to retain the support of all three of these factions. Milbloggers present Putin’s vision to a pro-war audience in both Russia and the proxy republics. The veteran community is helping organize and support force generation campaigns.[6] The siloviki are providing combat power on the battlefield. Putin needs all three factions to sustain his war effort, but the failures in Ukraine combined with the chaotic partial mobilization are seemingly disrupting the radical nationalist community in Russia. Putin is currently trying to appease this community by featuring some milbloggers on state-owned television, allowing siloviki to generate their own forces and continue offensive operations around Bakhmut and Donetsk City, and placating veterans by ordering mobilization and engaging the general public in the war effort as they have long demanded.

Russian failures around Lyman galvanized strong and direct criticism of the commander of the Central Military District (CMD), Alexander Lapin, who supposedly commanded the Lyman grouping, as ISW has previously reported.[7] This criticism originated from the siloviki group, spearheaded by Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. Kadyrov and Prigozhin represent an emerging voice within the regime’s fighting forces that is attacking the more traditional and conventional approach to the war pursued by Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu and the uniformed military command. The chaotic execution of Putin’s mobilization order followed by the collapse of the Lyman pocket ignited tensions between the more vocal and radical Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, who attacked the MoD and the uniformed military for their poor handling of the war.[8] Putin now finds himself in a dilemma. He cannot risk alienating the Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, as he desperately needs Kadyrov’s Chechen forces and Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries to fight in Ukraine.[9] Nor can he disenfranchise the MoD establishment, which provides the overwhelming majority of Russian military power in Ukraine and the institutional underpinnings needed to carry out the mobilization order and continue the war.

The Kadyrov-Prigozhin incident sparked a rift between the siloviki and the milbloggers, with the milbloggers defending Lapin. Milbloggers are criticizing Kadyrov’s attack on Lapin, claiming that it stems from competition between Lapin and Kadyrov-Prigozhin.[10] The Kremlin did not punish Kadyrov or Prigozhin for their direct attacks on Lapin and the Defense Ministry but has instead deflected blame for the Russian defeat in Kharkiv Oblast onto the Western Military District (WMD). Kremlin-affiliated outlets have even interviewed milbloggers who have painted Lapin as a hero for saving the stranded WMD units in Lyman, likely in an effort to divert responsibility for the Russian defeat there onto recently fired WMD Commander Colonel-General Alexander Zhuravlev.[11] Milbloggers, who had frequently complimented Kadyrov or Prigozhin before this incident, are now more skeptical of the siloviki community, attacking it for being too self-interested.

Fractures are emerging within the Russian milblogger community itself, moreover. Milbloggers have begun increasingly questioning each other's military credentials and rights to offer recommendations for the Russian Armed Forces.[12] One milblogger complained that commentators without appropriate military experience have been improperly criticizing current military commanders and should be focusing on simply portraying the situation on the frontlines without editorializing.[13] These critiques have been largely aimed at the milblogger discourse following the Russian defeat in Lyman and the Kadyrov-Prigozhin incident.[14] These attacks on some milbloggers’ credentials have drawn responses from milbloggers who have met with Putin himself and are being featured on Kremlin-controlled television channels, who now declare that they are the ones who have shown the true shortcomings of the Russian forces to Putin so that he can address them.[15]

The veterans’ community is dissatisfied with the execution of Putin’s mobilization. ISW reported in May that an independent Russian veterans’ organization, the All-Russian Officers Assembly, published an open letter calling on Putin to declare war on Ukraine, announce partial mobilization, and form new war-time administrations to execute the mobilization order.[16] Those new administrations would likely have improved or supplanted the military commissariats that have been mishandling the current partial mobilization. The Assembly also encouraged Putin to recognize that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine, not Ukrainians, long before this narrative gained prominence in the Kremlin’s justifications for its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman. This elder nationalist military community has long been warning Putin of the limitations of his forces, problems in the Russian military-industrial complex, and the failings of the Russian mobilization system. Putin has refused to order general mobilization or declare war against Ukraine, and the partial mobilization has likely been executed as poorly as those who had recommended fixing the mobilization system had feared. Former Deputy Commander of the Russian Southern Military District Andrey Gurulev stated that the Russian military command must disclose its inability to mobilize 300,000 combat-ready reservists and broaden the mobilization criteria if Russia is to have any hope of regaining the initiative in this war.[17] Gurulev even expressed his support for Kadyrov’s and Prigozhin’s attack on Lapin, highlighting the growing fractiousness of the nationalist information space.

The fragmentation of the Russian nationalist information space could have significant domestic impacts and could even affect the stability of Putin’s regime. Putin will be unable to meet the mutually exclusive demands of various groups. Kadyrov and Prigozhin are pushing for a change in the way Russia fights the war to one more suited to their unconventional modes of mobilizing personnel and fighting. The veterans have been pushing for a more traditional overhaul of the Russian higher military command and MoD and for putting Russia on a conventional war footing and the Russian MoD. Russian milbloggers are currently defending the Kremlin’s selection of uniformed commanders while continuing to attack the MoD and making a variety of extreme demands and recommendations of their own—all the while reporting on Russia’s frontline failings in detail even as the MoD tries to silence them. Putin cannot afford to lose the support of any of these groups, nor can satisfy them all as the war wears on and Russian troops continue to sustain losses. The shocks of the Kharkiv and Lyman defeats, energized by the partial mobilization and its poor management, have exposed these deepening fissures within Putin’s core constituencies to the view of all Russians. They could even begin to seed the notion that Putin is not fully in control of his own base. The ramifications of such a development for his regime are hard to predict.

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces continued to make significant gains in Kherson Oblast while simultaneously continuing advances in Kharkiv and Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of partial mobilization is having more significant short-term impacts on the Russian domestic context than on the war in Ukraine, catalyzing fractures in the information space that confuse and undermine Putin’s narratives.
• Ukrainian forces continued to make substantial gains in northern Kherson Oblast on October 4, beginning to collapse the sparsely-manned Russian lines in that area.
• Ukrainian forces continued to make gains in eastern Kharkiv Oblast west of Svatove on October 4, pushing past the Oskil River and increasingly threatening Russian positions in Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued to conduct artillery, air, and missile strikes west of Hulyiapole and in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv Oblasts on October 4.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on October 4.
• The Kremlin effectively ordered local Russian administrations and non-Ministry of Defense institutions to fund a significant part of the mobilization effort from local budgets.
• Russian security officials are attempting to maintain their domestic security apparatus as Putin’s partial mobilization drains the Russian security sector to generate additional forces to fight in Ukraine.

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

• Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Southern and Eastern Ukraine
• Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Eastern Ukraine: (Oskil River-Kreminna Line)

Ukrainian forces continued to make gains in eastern Kharkiv Oblast west of Svatove on October 4. Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian troops in Bohuslavka and Borivska Andriivka, both within 30km west of Svatove and near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border.[18] Bohuslavka and Borivska Andriivka are on the left bank of the Oskil River. These gains, along with other Ukrainian advances on the east bank of the river, have essentially deprived Russian forces of the ability to use the river as a defensive line. A Russian milblogger described this inflection by noting that what used to be the Kharkiv front (the front bounded by the line of the Oskil River) has now become the Luhansk front as Ukrainian troops are threatening Russian positions within Luhansk Oblast itself.[19]

Russian sources continued to discuss Ukrainian advances toward Svatove and noted that while Russian troops still control the R66 (Svatove-Kreminna) highway, which Russian milbloggers regard as a critical Russian ground line of communication (GLOC), Ukrainian reconnaissance groups are operating along the road to set conditions for future attacks toward Svatove.[20] A Russian source reported that fighting is ongoing in Krasnorichenske, a settlement near the R66 and between Svatove and Kreminna.[21] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 1st Guards Tank Army and elements of the 144th Guards Motor Rifle Division of the 20th Combined Arms Army are preparing to defend Svatove.[22] As ISW has previously reported, these units and formations were severely degraded during the Kharkiv counteroffensive and are unlikely to establish a stable defense of these critical areas if Ukrainian forces press their attacks.[23] Russian sources will likely continue to reinforce their positions along the R66 highway in anticipation of further Ukrainian attacks.

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian forces continued to make substantial gains in northern Kherson Oblast on October 4. Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian troops in Velyka Oleksandrivka, Novopetrivka, and Starosillya, all in northwestern Kherson Oblast within 20km south of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[24] Russian sources acknowledged that Ukrainian forces have also captured at least half of Dudchany, a critical settlement in northeastern Kherson Oblast that lies along the T0403 highway, which runs along the west bank of the Dnipro River into the Beryslav-Nova Kahkovka area.[25] Several Russian sources indicated that Russian troops are withdrawing south toward Beryslav and regrouping in the area of Mylove (15km southwest of Dudchany) and that the northeastern sector of the Russian line in Kherson Oblast is collapsing along the Kakovkha reservoir.[26] One Russian source reported that Ukrainian forces captured Kachkarivka, less than 9 km from Mylove.[27] The Ukrainian 35th Marine Brigade also liberated Davydiv Brid in western Kherson Oblast.[28] An established Ukrainian position on the east (left) bank of the Inhulets River and on the right bank of Kakhkovka Reservoir (which feeds the Dnipro River) will enable Ukrainian forces to essentially squeeze Russian troops up against the Dnipro River to the east and force them southwards toward Kherson City and Beryslav-Nova Kakhkova according to a Russian milblogger.[29] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian troops attacked Ternovi Pody (20km northwest of Kherson City), likely to expand Russian control northwest of Kherson City and afford Russian troops more defensible positions around the city as other elements withdraw from the north.[30]

Russian milbloggers provided insight into the sparse allocation of Russian forces that are collapsing under Ukrainian advances in northern Kherson Oblast. A Russian source claimed on October 4 that elements of the 126th Coastal Defense Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet have operated in the area without rotation since March and that the frontline is stretched so thin that some villages in this sector have 15 men defending them.[31] The milblogger claimed that a frontline of 20km needs 500 men to defend at approximately 20m per person and that, due to under-staffing in battalions in northern Kherson Oblast, the ratio was one soldier per 60m of line.[32] This description of a thin and undermanned frontline, along with effective Ukrainian offensive operations, partially explains the rapid rate of Russian collapse in this sector.

Ukrainian forces additionally continued the interdiction campaign in Kherson Oblast to support ongoing ground operations. Ukrainian military sources reported that Ukrainian troops targeted Russian military, logistics, and transportation assets and concentration areas on October 3 and 4.[33] Russian sources reported that Ukrainian troops once again struck the Antonivskyi Bridge in Kherson City.[34]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on October 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks southeast of Siversk near Vyimka and Spirne; on and south of Bakhmut near Mayorsk, Ozeryanivka, Zaitseve, and Bakhmutske; north and west of Avdiivka near Vesele, Kamianka, and Pervomaiske; and near Novomykhailivka in western Donetsk Oblast.[35] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces and Wagner Group fighters fought in eastern Bakhmut and south of Bakhmut in Vesela Dolyna and Zaitseve.[36] A Russian source claimed that Wagner Group fighters are reinforcing positions in the Bakhmut area.[37] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are fighting in the Avdiivka area near Pervomaiske and Nevelske to expand Russian control over the Donetsk City Airport.[38] Russian sources expressed continued concern that Ukrainian forces may launch a counterattack on the eastern Donetsk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast front line in the coming days.[39] Footage posted on October 4 reportedly shows Russian drones and artillery striking a Ukrainian equipment column in the Vuhledar, western Donetsk Oblast area on an unspecified date.[40]

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

Russian forces continued to conduct artillery, air, and missile strikes west of Hulyiapole and in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv Oblasts on October 4.[41] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Zaporizhzhia City and Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[42] Ukrainian sources also reported that Russian forces struck Ukrainian positions near Bereznehuvate and Ochakiv in Mykolaiv Oblast.[43] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian Shahed-136 drone attempting an attack in Odesa City.[44]

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin is doubling down on promises to conduct only partial mobilization but will be increasingly unable to deliver on that promise while meeting his manpower needs. The Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials are going on record to reiterate or adjust Putin’s partial mobilization plan, likely in an effort to downplay reported deviations from the original reservist call up order. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reaffirmed that 200,000 newly mobilized servicemembers are undergoing training at 80 training grounds and six educational centers prior to deployment to Ukraine, despite the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) reporting that mobilized men from Kaliningrad Oblast have already departed for Ukraine as of October 4, only 13 days after the declaration of partial mobilization.[45] Social media footage also indicated that mobilized men from Sverdlovsk Oblast are training in unspecified Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, instead of in domestic Russian training grounds.[46] Other outlets reported that Russian military leaders are not providing recruits physical training opportunities and only teaching them to march instead of training them for impending combat operations.[47] Russian veterans are increasingly stepping in to train mobilized men, indicating the shortage of active-duty trainers.[48] The Russian military has also likely already deployed skilled officers who would be instrumental in training mobilized men, with the Ukrainian General Staff reporting that a Russian aerospace defense academy had to suspend certain courses due to a lack of teaching staff. Missing teachers participated in the invasion of Ukraine.[49]

Shoigu also added that mobilized men will reinforce existing units rather than forming new ones, likely to as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to rush troops to the frontlines. Ukrainian military officials reported that some mobilized elements will reinforce the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 49th Combined Arms Army that has likely operated in southern Ukraine since March.[50] Ukrainian officials added that mobilized men will reinforce the 810th Separate Marine Brigade that fought in Mariupol.[51] The Ukrainian General Staff did note that Russian forces are forming a new motorized rifle division in Crimea with mobilized residents from Crimea, Krasnodar Krai, and the Republic of Adygea, however, indicating that not all mobilized servicemembers will join existing units.[52]

Shoigu also claimed that Russian conscripts who are currently completing their military service will not be subject to mobilization. A Kremlin decision to covertly mobilize recent conscripts would likely lead to further societal discontent.[53] Shoigu also instructed the Russian General Staff to provide Russian draft commission and military enlistment officials with comprehensive lists of the categories of deferrals for men not subject to mobilization such as part-time and full-time students, IT workers, employees of the military-industrial complex, and media representatives, among other criteria.[54] The Kremlin and enlistment centers are unlikely to follow such deferral rules, however. Social media users reported instances of the enlistment centers admitting to men that they were wrongfully mobilized, only to then proceed to draft them regardless.[55]

Russian security officials outside the Ministry of Defense are attempting to maintain Russia’s domestic security apparatus as Putin’s partial mobilization drains the Russian security sector to generate additional forces to fight in Ukraine. Putin decreed on October 4 that former Russian contract soldiers who are now members of the Russian reserves and are therefore eligible for mobilization (per Putin’s September 21 mobilization order) can elect to complete their post-mobilization service with the FSB in place of their military assignment.[56] Putin’s decree indicates that the FSB, Russia’s principal security service, may be understaffed, particularly as the Kremlin requires greater regional intelligence capabilities and more FSB border guards to prevent Russian men from fleeing the country. The emphasis on former contract soldiers and not former conscripts suggests that this track may only be available to older veterans and retired officers, not to the newly and illegally mobilized men with no military experience or to young men who will be sent to fight on the front lines in Ukraine. A Russian news outlet reported on October 4 that the heads of the Moscow Police Department and the Russian Interior Ministry instructed their subordinates to notify their superiors if they receive mobilization notices and to avoid going to military enlistment offices.[57] The outlet claimed that Russian security officials did not submit the proper paperwork to exempt their employees from partial mobilization. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 4 that Russian military leadership ordered the transfer of Rosgvardia troops from Siberia and Syria to fight in Ukraine.[58] Russian officials are likely hard-pressed to maintain domestic and non-Ukrainian international security functions while so many state and military resources are tied up in the invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin essentially ordered local Russian administrations and non-MoD institutions to help fund the mobilization effort from local budgets.[59] Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin decreed on October 3 that all Russian administrative districts, including federal subjects and local governments, are authorized to use their local budgets to purchase military and dual-use equipment on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense.[60] That equipment includes drones, night vision and thermal imaging devices, communications devices, vehicles, uniforms, camping equipment, medicines, food, and hygiene products. Mishustin decreed that local governments can purchase only the equipment asked for by the MoD or other authorized bodies, including local military commissariats, and must transfer that equipment to the federal government free of charge. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 4 that the Kazan Higher Tank Command School is funding the formation of three motorized rifle and two artillery regiments for newly mobilized forces.[61] The burden of supporting the war effort is also falling on individual men and their communities—a Russian milblogger reported that a community in Krasnodar raised 19 million rubles to purchase basic equipment like sleeping bags and body armor for mobilized men in their community and to support the families of those mobilized men while their men are away.[62]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

The Russian government continued legislative processes for the illegal accession of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories into the Russian Federation on October 4. Russian sources reported that Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, unanimously ratified the treaties on the entry of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), Zaporizhia Oblast, and Kherson Oblast into the Russian Federation.[63] The final formality in Russia’s annexation process is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ratification of the treaties. The DNR People’s Council announced on October 4 that it had ratified the accession treaty for the DNR.[64]

Occupation administration officials continued to increase restrictions on Ukrainian movement out of occupied territories on October 4. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that since occupation administrations introduced temporary travel permit regimes on October 1 movement to Ukrainian-held territory has increasingly slowed.[65] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that since October 1 only 52 residents have been able to leave Kherson Oblast, despite queues at checkpoints exceeding 1,000 people.[66] Ukrainian sources also reported that Russian and occupation officials are building an “official state border” at the checkpoint in Vasylivka, Zaporizhia Oblast that will act as the official entry and exit point into Ukrainian-held Zaporizhia Oblast.[67] Ukrainian sources reported that queues at the Vasylivka checkpoint exceed 4,500 people.[68]

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

[3] ttps://gur dot gov.ua/content/pislia-zymy-pochnetsia-zavershennia-konfliktu.html

[4] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/pislia-zymy-pochnetsia-zavershennia-konfliktu.html

[6] https://pravdapfo dot ru/news/v-bashkirii-obyavlen-nabor-v-tretij-dobrovolcheskij-batalon/?_page=2

[59] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/10/04/pravitelstvo-rf-razreshilo-regionam-pokupat-dlya-voennyh-bespilotniki-i-obmundirovanie

[60] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202210030051?index=1&rangeSize=1

[63]

[66] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/10/04/rosiyany-faktychno-zablokuvaly-vyyizd-iz-pivdnya/

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (04.10.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (04.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

The Ukrainian Defense Forces have liberated a total of 1,534 Ukrainian towns and villages from the Russian occupiers, Deputy Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. Tymoshenko noted that more than 500 of them have been cleared of mines; the work of the National Police has been restored in 1,200, and local self-government bodies have started working in 1,508 liberated towns and villages. In the territories liberated from the Russian army, 933 medical institutions have resumed work, 981 educational institutions have been opened, residents receive social protection services in more than a thousand places, and 922 towns and villages have been provided with financial services.

As of the morning of October 4, 2022, more than 1,204 Ukrainian children are victims of full- scale armed aggression by the Russian Federation, Prosecutor General's Office reports. The official number of children who have died and been wounded in the course of the Russian aggression is 418, and more than 786 children, respectively. However, the data is not conclusive since data collection continues in the areas of active hostilities, temporarily occupied areas, and liberated territories.

More than 10,500 schools are ready for the heating season, almost 88% of the total number of secondary education institutions, Education Minister Serhiy Shkarlet said.

Two missiles hit the city of Kharkiv on the night of October 4, Head of Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration Oleh Synehubov said. Critical infrastructure was damaged in the Nobobavarskiy district, and a 46-year-old woman was killed.

At night, the Russian forces attacked the Nikopol and Synelnykove districts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast; four people were injured. The city of Nikopol got the most damage; 30 residential buildings were hit. The town was left without water - the power grids of the water supply pumping station were damaged. More than 7,000 families remained without electricity, Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, said.

At night, Russian troops launched a rocket attack on Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast; two people are known to have been injured, Oleksandr Honcharenko, the head of the Kramatorsk city military administration, said. School and private houses were damaged.

On October 4, at approximately 6:30 a.m., the Russian Armed Forces launched an S 300 rocket attack on the recently liberated Shevchenkove village of Kupyansk district. The houses of civilians were damaged, Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office reported.

In the town of Velykyi Burluk, Kharkiv Oblast, recently liberated from Russian troops, a police department that the [Russian] invaders turned into a torture chamber for local residents was found, the National Police reported.

Today, around 11 a.m., an attack was made on the Voznesenskyi district of Mykolayiv Oblast, Voznesensk city council reported. There are no casualties among the civilian population.

Occupied territories

According to the legally elected Ukrainian Melitopol mayor Ivan Fedorov, an absolute disaster is happening at the Russian checkpoint in the village of Vasylivka that people have to pass to evacuate from the occupied territory of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. According to Fedorov, yesterday morning, 4,000 residents were waiting in line to cross to the territory controlled by Ukraine, and today the number grew to 4,500. An elderly man died in line yesterday.

The Russian occupiers are building a "state border" in Vasylivka, the only village through which it is possible to leave the temporarily captured territories for Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Starukh, the head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration, said. The Russian forces impose their own rules. For example, they do not allow men of conscription age to leave. He added that over the past day, only 43 people could leave the temporarily captured territories through Vasylivka, while this figure reached 1,500-2,000 people per day last week.

Activists of the "Yellow Ribbon" resistance movement posted 2,000 pro-Ukrainian leaflets on the streets of Enerhodar captured by Russian troops, the Mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, reported. The leaflets say that the Russian sham referenda have no legal consequences and call on the local residents not to watch the Russian news.

In the Skadovsk district, Kherson Oblast, the Russian military arrived at a private house, beat the husband for his pro-Ukrainian position, took the wife in an unknown direction and then blew up the house. It's not known where the woman currently is, Kherson Oblast police reported.

Operational situation

It is the 223rd day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy is trying to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories and focuses its efforts on disrupting the intensive actions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces. It conducts aerial reconnaissance and inflicts strikes on civilian infrastructure and residential buildings, violating the norms of international humanitarian law and the laws and customs of war. The threat of Russian air and missile strikes persists throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.

Over the past day, the Russian military launched 3 missile strikes and 12 air strikes and carried out more than 100 MLRS attacks. More than 20 Ukrainian towns and villages were affected by the Russian strikes. In particular, Bilohorivka, Zaitseve, Maryinka and Bakhmut.

The Russian Armed Forces' military leadership decided to relocate the Rosgvardiya units based in the administrative boundaries of the Siberian Military District and the Russian contingent in Syria to the area of hostilities [in Ukraine].

During the past day, the aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces made 22 strikes, hitting 3 enemy strongholds, 16 areas of weapons and military equipment concentration, and 3 Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. Ukrainian air defense units destroyed two Russian UAVs.

Over the past day, Ukrainian missile forces and artillery hit 2 enemy command posts, 12 areas of manpower, weapons and military equipment concentration, 2 ammunition depots, one anti- aircraft missile complex, and 5 other important enemy targets.

Major-General Ignatenko was appointed commander of the 29th Army (Chita) (His previous position was head of the Far Eastern Higher Military Command School). The position had been vacant since after the death in March of the prior commander of the 29th Combined arms army, Major General Kolesnikov.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low.

The units of the newly formed 3rd Army Corps that was recently moved to the territory of Ukraine are not able to effectively perform their duties. The main reasons why the servicemen of the aforementioned Russian troop formation are demoralized are obsolete and unusable weapons and military equipment, personnel arbitrarily abandoning their positions and refusing to perform combat tasks, consumption of alcoholic beverages, and systematic violations of military discipline.

Kharkiv direction

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

The Russian military fired tanks, mortars and barrel artillery at the positions of the Ukrainian troops in the areas of Strileche, Komisarove, Bily Kolodyaz, Varvarivka, Vovchansk, Vilkhuvatka, Khatne, Hryhorivka, Dvorichna, Zapadne. To identify the position of the Ukrainian troops, the Russian forces used UAVs in the area of Siversk, Dvorichna, Novostepanivka, Pervomaiske, Izyumske, Pishchane, Fedorivka, and Buhaivka.

Kramatorsk direction

● Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

●  252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

The Russian forces shelled the Ukrainian Defense Forces with tanks and various kinds of artillery in the areas of Bilohorivka, Verkhnokamyanske, and Serebryanka. They mined the possible advance routes of the Ukrainian Defense Forces units in the Stara Krasnyanka and Pshenychne areas.

Donetsk direction

● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

●  Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces near Soledar, Bakhmut, Mayorsk, Zaitseve, Yakovlivka, Avdiivka, Maryinka, Novoukrainka, Novomykhailivka, Sukha Balka. It carried out airstrikes on the positions of the Ukrainian troops in the area of Bilohorivka (with two pairs of Su-25) and Spirne (with pair of Ka-52).

Units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Vyimka, Mayorsk, Spirne, Ozeryanivka, Bakhmutske, and Kamianka.

The Russian military unsuccessfully led offensive actions employing the following units:

-     131st rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps in the direction of Zaitseve, Mayorsk,

-   4th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps - Mykolaivka, Vyimka; Mykolaivka, Spirne;

-   PMC "Wagner" - Mykolaivka Druga, Ozaryanivka;

-   6th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps – Pokrovske, Bakhmutske,

-     9th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps – Novoselivka Druga, Vesele; Verhnyotoretske, Kamianka;

-   11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps – Pisky, Pervomaiske;

-   39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps of the Eastern Military District - Solodke, Novomykhailivka.

The battle between the Ukrainian Defense Forces and the mercenaries of the "Wagner" PMC continues in the direction of Kodema, Zaitseve.

Zaporizhzhia direction

●  Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;

●  Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military shelled more than 20 towns and villages along the contact line with mortars, tanks, barrel and rocket artillery, including Novoyakovlivka, Hulyaipilske, Novosilka, Novopil, Zaliznychne and Bohoyavlenka.

Kherson direction

● Vasylivka–Nova Zburyivka and Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line - 252 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 27, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.3 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiments of the 106th parachute airborne division, 7th military base of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 16th and 346th separate SOF brigades.

There is no change in the operational situation. The Russian military replenished the stockpile of missiles for the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. On October 2, 16 transport-launch containers with anti-aircraft guided missiles were delivered to the port of Skadovsk.

According to preliminary information, the "Mohajer" UAV flight control center is deployed in the Sakharna Holovka area. At least 25 "Shahed-136" UAVs are stored at Dzhankoy airfield in the occupied Crimea.

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

●  Velyka Lepetikha – Oleksandrivka section: approximate length of the battle line – 250 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces – 22, the average width of the combat area of one BTG –

11.8 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 108th Air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault brigade of the 7th Air assault division, 4th military base of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th, and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 239th Air assault regiments of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331 Air assault regiments of the 98th Air assault division, 126th separate coastal defense brigade, 127th separate ranger brigade, 11th separate airborne assault brigade, 10th separate SOF brigade, PMC.

The Russian forces shelled the positions of the Ukrainian troops with APC weapons, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery in the areas around Oleksandrivka, Luch, Pravdyne, Myrne, Novohryhorivka, Lyubomirivka, Ternovi Pody, Blahodatne, Kvitneve, Kyselivka, Blahodativka, Berezneguvate, Yakovlivka, Sukhy Stavok, Bilohirka, Andriiivka, Bezimenne, Pervomaiske, Dolhove, Olhyne, Arkhangelske, Ivanivka, Vysokopillya. To identify the position of the Ukrainian troops and adjust artillery fire, UAVs were used (27 sorties) for the tactical depth of the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the area of Ternovi Pody. Enemy units of the 33rd motorized rifle regiment of the 20th motorized rifle division conduct offensive operations in the direction of Blahodatne, Ternovi Pody again.

During hostilities, the Russian forces left Lyubymivka, Shevchenkivka, Bilyaivka, and Mykhailivka. Russian units are blocked in the areas of Novooleksandrivka and Havrylivka.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the sea and connect unrecognized Transnistria with the Russian Federation by land through the coast of the Black and Azov seas.

On October 4, 8 enemy warships and boats were on a mission in the Black Sea, conducting reconnaissance and controlling navigations in the Azov-Black Sea waters. Up to 32 Kalibr missiles are ready for a salvo on five carriers: three surface and two underwater (one frigate 1135.6, two "Buyan-M" missile corvettes and two submarines of project 636.3). In general, the current activity of the maritime groups of the Russian Federation is characterized by low intensity. The rocket threat to [the territory of] Ukraine remains high.

Two submarines have been maneuvering quite suspiciously near Cape Fiolent (Sevastopol, Crimea) for two days.

In the Sea of Azov, the Russian military continues to control sea communications, keeping up to 6 ships and boats on combat duty.

During the day, the following number of ships made passage through the Kerch-Yenikal Strait in the interests of the Russian Federation, namely 34 vessels to the Sea of Azov, including 14 vessels that moved from the Bosphorus Strait; and 34 vessels to the Black Sea, including 13 vessels that continued their movement in the direction of the Bosphorus Strait. Russia continues to violate the 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) by turning off automatic identification systems (AIS) on civilian vessels in the Sea of Azov.

The Russian military continues shelling Ukrainian ports and coastal areas. Today, October 4, the enemy shelled Mykolaiv, Ochakiv and Odesa. Another kamikaze drone, "Shahid 136", was shot down over Odesa.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 12 Su-27, Su-30, and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

"Grain Initiative": The total volume of agricultural products exported from the ports of Larger Odesa since the opening of the grain corridor has exceeded six million tons. Eight more ships with food left the Odesa Oblast ports to the Danube's mouth on October 4. The first vessel is PRETTY LADY, followed by SSI RELIANCE, ARGO I, SAM, BARON, CHRYSSA K, NANDI and BC CALLISTO. In

total, since August 1, 269 merchant ships have left the ports of Larger Odesa. Five bulk carriers are waiting in line to enter the ports, and four more are on their way to the Odessa coast.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 04.10

Personnel - almost 60, 800 people (+370);

Tanks 2,424 (+44);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,018 (+27);

Artillery systems – 1,407 (+2);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 340 (+2); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 177 (+1); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,823 (+12); Aircraft - 228 (0);

Helicopters – 226 (+1);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,028 (+2); Intercepted cruise missiles - 246 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a decree stating that the decrees of the Russian President Putin annexing Crimea, the so-called DPR and LPR, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts have no legal power.

President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree enacting the decision of the National Security and Defense Council adopted on September 30, which lists Ukraine's actions in response to Russia's attempt to annex the territories of Ukraine. The first point of the decree says that it's impossible to hold negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In his October 3 evening address, President Zelenskiy said that the Russian propagandists intimidate people in the occupied areas by saying that Ukraine will consider almost everyone who remains in the occupied territory as a "collaborator". Zelenskiy noted that this is an absolute delusion. "If a person did not serve the occupiers and did not betray Ukraine, then there is no reason to consider such a person a collaborator... If a teacher remained a Ukrainian teacher and did not lie to the children about who was the enemy... Or if a person remained a Ukrainian employee of the Ukrainian communal service and helped to preserve the energy supply for people, then such a person cannot be blamed for anything", Zelenskiy stressed.

JSC "Ukrzaliznytsia" national railroad company transported 3.4 million tons of grain and milling products in September 2022. This is a 63.2% increase over the indicator of August this year, the press service of Ukrzaliznytsia informed Ukrinform. The most significant amount of grain was transported for export, namely more than 3 million tons (+91.5% compared to August), and almost 322,000 tons were transported domestically.

International diplomatic aspect

President Joseph Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to "underscore that the United States will never recognize Russia's purported annexation of Ukrainian territory." In addition to last week's announcement of a $1.1 billion mid- to long-term arms package (that includes 18 HIMARS), POTUS pledged another one worth $625 million. The latest package includes four HIMARS that will bring the total number operated by the UAF to 20, as well as accompanying munitions, various types of counter-drone systems, and radar systems.

"It is of the utmost urgency to provide Ukraine with support in the form of supplies of heavy military equipment, anti-rocket, and anti-aircraft defense systems, in addition to tanks and armored vehicles," said the Polish Foreign Minister during a joint press conference with his German colleague. Zbigniew Rau stated: "We also agree that the war must end with Ukraine regaining full territorial integrity, the perpetrators of war crimes being held accountable, and with Russia paying out reparations and war compensation."

While North Korean "rocket man" has fired a ballistic missile over Japan for the first time in five years, his Russian colleague seems to have decided to test his weapon. The Belgorod nuclear submarine has left its home base in the Arctic Circle and might be on its way to the Kara Sea to test a Poseidon nuclear torpedo. For years the Russian media have been threatening the US with washing away an entire coast with a two megatons nuclear warhead aimed at causing an irradiated tsunami up to 1,600ft high. The news is highly likely a PSYOP, yet if true, it would both show the Russian weakness and inability to project its power in the region, not to mention the

globe, and require a robust response from the US. It would also require the engagement of other nuclear states, most of all China and India, to condemn the test and engage in clear messaging to the Kremlin that it would face dire consequences in case of deployment of the ultimate weapon on a battlefield.

While Russians struggle to work out frontiers of the illegally annexed Ukrainian regions, "the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on its basic principles, stresses the need for fully observing countries' territorial integrity as a fundamental rule of international law and for respecting principles and goals of the UN Charter." Tehran did not recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea either. Even Serbia refused to recognize their "brotherly" nation's land grabs. At the same time, Ukraine [earlier] had not recognized the independence of Kosovo, fearing Russia's annexation [of Ukrainian lands]. It is a good question whether Kyiv will recognize it after regaining sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula. The EU membership would require it, but it is in the distant future.

Damascus' regime is highly likely to support Russia, whatever it does. Lukashenko might join the company if it would bring his regime some financial benefits.

Japan's Vice Foreign Minister summoned the Russian Ambassador to inform him that his consul had declared a persona non grata and must leave the country without delay. Though the formal reason was a reciprocal move due to Russia's detention of a Japanese consul in Vladivostok, which is a blatant violation of the Vienna convention on consular relations of 1963, it doesn't rule out that the employee of the Russian consulate was a spy. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan's Ambassador to Russia was summoned to the Foreign Ministry. Russians are not happy that the Ukrainian Ambassador in Astana carries on his official duties despite assurances from the Kazakh side, as Russians claim, to expel him. The situation was heated because of Petro Vrublevskiy's comment that Russia's aggressive war requires Ukrainians to kill as many invaders as possible now, so our children would need to kill fewer Russian invaders in the future.

Russia, relevant news

More than 200,000 Russian citizens have entered Kazakhstan since September 21, and 147,000 have left, the Kazakhstani interior minister Marat Akhmetzhnov said.

Due to sanctions, the Finnish Foreign Ministry refused to issue an export license to export the icebreaker ordered by Norilsk Nickel to Russia. The vessel's construction was to start at the shipyard in Hietalahti in 2023, and the delivery to the customer was planned for the winter season of 2025.

Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS) is a Ukrainian security think tank. We operate since 2020 and are involved in security studies, defence policy research and advocacy. Currently all our activity is focused on stopping the ongoing war.

We publish this brief daily. If you would like to subscribe, please send us an email to

cds.dailybrief@gmail.com

Please note, that we subscribe only verified persons and can decline or cancel the subscription at our own discretion

We are independent, non-government, non-partisan and non-profit organisation. More at www.defence.org.ua

Our Twitter (in English) - https://twitter.com/defence_centre

Our Facebook (in Ukrainian) - https://www.facebook.com/cds.UA

Our brief is for information only and we verify our information to the best possible extent

3. On Agent Compromise in the Field (China, Iran, and the CIA)

What a tragic read. 

Conclusion:

As the Reuters article shows, these Iranian assets deserved — and still deserve — better. The CIA deserves to be better. And the American people deserve a better CIA. A just legacy of a dismal era would be for America’s appointed guardians to labor, however imperfectly, toward all three.

On Agent Compromise in the Field

thebrushpass.projectbrazen.com · by Zach Dorfman · October 4, 2022

In 2017, a team of New York Times journalists revealed that, beginning in 2010, Beijing’s counterintelligence apparatus had systematically rolled up the CIA’s sources in China. What caused the breach? The piece pointed to a potential agency turncoat — later identified as Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA operations officer — or a compromise of the agency's covert communications (COVCOM) system, the surreptitious digital means by which the agency interfaced with its assets there.

After the initial Times report, I dug into the asset roll-up in China. Many of my sources were adamant that Lee’s betrayal could not account for the extent of the agency’s losses there, if at all. They laid blame on the Internet-based COVCOM system used to communicate with the agency’s Chinese sources, characterizing the system as rudimentary and insecure. Former intelligence officials told me dozens of the U.S.’s Chinese sources had eventually been killed.

But the story went beyond China. Jenna McLaughlin and I spent months reporting on how Iranian counterintelligence had compromised a version of this same secret online COVCOM system, which relied on fake, CIA-created websites. As a result, Iranian counterintelligence extirpated the agency’s network there as well. We revealed that this breach occurred at around the same time as the one in China, and may have been the result of enhanced security cooperation between Beijing and Tehran. The breach also likely exposed and endangered any CIA asset around the world using some iteration of this system.

The technical compromises in China and Iran — and, potentially, across the globe — were an epochal disaster for the CIA and the wider U.S. intelligence community. Building robust source networks in countries led by America's authoritarian adversaries can take years. A great human source can be worth an incalculable number of technical intercepts. And in the case of China, the loss of the CIA’s network there coincided with the rise of Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao.

Last week, Reuters’ Joel Schectman and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin published an explosive, disturbing account of the long tail of Iran’s compromise of this secret communications platform. The Reuters story expands and deepens our understanding of the breach in Iran in key ways. These different stories, beginning with the Times’s, and now ending with Reuters’s, form an integrated body of work that are best absorbed in tandem. (I recommend reading them in this order.)

To their great credit, Schectman and Sharafedin actually located and analyzed the now-defunct COVCOM websites used by the CIA in Iran and elsewhere. Their reporting lays bare the agency's sloppiness: The source code for these websites — a simple click away for anyone visiting one of them — contained terms like "password" and "message," essentially screaming “secret communications platform.” The Reuters team, working with independent cybersecurity researchers, eventually identified over 350 separate CIA-authored sites used to transmit messages to agents in over 20 countries.

But, again, per Reuters, these contained fatal architectural flaws. Because U.S. intelligence officials purchased hosting services for these websites in bulk, they had sequential Internet Protocol addresses. In other words, instead of each site being compartmented from one another for security purposes, they were all easily linked together. This means that if Iran or China identified one such site, it would have been easy for them to locate others. And from there, Iranian or Chinese counterintelligence just had to see who accessed them. Whether this was, as Reuters and I separately reported, a throwaway COVCOM system or not — that is, one designed for unvetted agents or lower-priority ones — it does not reflect the level of technical ingenuity one would expect from the world’s premier all-source intelligence agency.

SAY YES TO THE BRUSH PASS

This is shocking reporting from the Reuters team, worthy of extended discussion in its own right. But I want to focus on another important aspect of their work: their interviews with the blown and abandoned assets themselves.

Schectman and Sharafedin spoke to half a dozen of these former Iranian CIA assets, some of whom, courageously, spoke on the record. Interestingly, not all appear to have been compromised by the agency’s faulty COVCOM system. This would seem to underscore Iran’s robust counterintelligence efforts against the U.S., and the CIA’s apparent underestimation of those efforts. (In 2018, former intelligence officials told me all of the agency's compromised China assets had eventually been executed as part of the 2010 roll-up; McLaughlin and I also reported that year that fewer blown sources were killed in Iran, with many jailed.)

As Reuters reports, some compromised Iranian assets served long prison sentences, and were subject to extensive torture and other deprivations. This makes it all the more impressive, and brave, that they — particularly those who still reside in Iran — chose to speak to Schectman and Sharafedin.

These people trusted the agency, implicitly, to take care of them. All feel abandoned by it, and by extension, the United States. Of this they have every right.

One man, an engineer sickened by the corruption and hypocrisy of the Islamic Republic, was a “digital walk-in,” volunteering his services to the CIA via an overt portal on the agency’s website. A subcontractor to a powerful state-owned conglomerate controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei’s office, he provided information relevant to Iran’s nuclear program. His use of the insecure COVCOM system appears to have led to his downfall.

Another man, a member of an Iranian paramilitary group with family links to Iran’s intelligence apparatus, physically walked into the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. He was tasked with collecting information about members of Tehran’s security services; a U.S. official in Istanbul told him to return later to the same facility. This, Reuters reports, was despite the fact that CIA knew at the time that Iranian intelligence was routinely surveilling the consulate, thereby endangering this source by asking him to return to the building.

A third man, a former Iranian government official, eventually jailed for “spying” for the CIA was, in his telling to Reuters, unwitting at best. This man, who ran a travel agency and had received a U.S. visa, visited the U.S. embassy in Dubai to try and drum up more business. Repeatedly called back to the U.S. embassy there, U.S. officials asked him to divulge increasingly sensitive information related to Iran’s aerospace industry and military, likely by a CIA officer posing as an U.S. immigration official, per Reuters. By the time he realized what he had shared—and to whom he had likely shared it — it was too late. Essentially, in his telling, entrapped, he was eventually rolled up by Iranian security services as a U.S. spy, though he says he never agreed to work for the CIA (or Iran, for that matter).

Whether these sources were compromised by a faulty COVCOM system, or more basic tradecraft errors, or by some amalgamation of deceit, callousness, and carelessness, these cases call into question the CIA's real commitment to its sources. Indeed, none of the six former agency assets identified by Reuters have been assisted by the U.S. since their release from prison, per these individuals. They were, it appears, cut loose entirely.

As Reuters notes, it can be dangerous for an intelligence agency to reach out to a blown ex-source. And in the world of counterintelligence, ex-sources can also be recruited as double agents, complicating resettlement efforts. But neither of those worries seem insurmountable or dispositive, given U.S. resources and ingenuity.

Now, an important caveat: I have known dedicated former CIA officials who have spoken of the care, respect, and obligation they felt toward their sources, and the lengths they would go to assist them. For many case officers — that is, the CIA's primary corps of spy handlers — this is a core part of their professional identity.

During the roll-up in China, for instance, a former U.S. official told me about a CIA officer who, aware that something was going terribly wrong there, organized final, assuredly dangerous, in-person meetings with agency sources. This distraught CIA officer essentially shoved wads of cash into sources' hands. This CIA officer warned them of the unfolding disaster and begged them to leave the country as fast as they could. Another source told me a story about a CIA official who, while being debriefed in Langley about the asset roll-up — and the slapdash COVCOM system — broke down in tears upon hearing that sources’ lives had been destroyed because of such obvious dereliction, of which they were previously unaware.

There are some sunnier stories out there, too. I know of a KGB defector who developed a decades-long friendship with his former handlers in U.S. intelligence. Those former officials felt a special bond and responsibility to this man, and wanted to help him navigate life in America.

But I don’t want to oversell this point, either. By its nature, the world of espionage is steeped in the sordid aspects of human experience, exploiting people’s vulnerabilities for narrow informational gain. That doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary or legitimate work, a key tool of modern statecraft.

Indeed, many former CIA officials have a decidedly pragmatic and amoral conception of their profession. Bad things happen when you spy, or recruit others to do so. You do what you do for a higher purpose, even if intermediary steps can sometimes stretch the boundaries of propriety (or even legal niceties). And yes, sometimes assets get compromised, jailed, even killed. I had a conversation once with a former senior CIA official with experience in Iran issues who had an almost naturalistic view of recurring asset losses there over the years: for him, it was a built-in, cyclical feature of the work and environment, like the denuding of deciduous forests every fall.

This is the heart of the matter. What can be explained away as the inevitable, if lamentable, byproduct of the deep structure of the intelligence profession? And when do individuals, and institutions, begin to bear responsibility for a preventable tragedy, one that led to the death and ruin of individuals who risked everything to spy for the United States?

Since I started reporting on this story years ago, I have occasionally asked former U.S. officials if they knew whether any individuals within the CIA or across the wider U.S. intelligence community had been held responsible for the COVCOM disaster. I don’t claim perfect knowledge, but I haven’t heard of a single instance of someone suffering professional, let alone legal, consequences for their negligence. (The CIA declined to comment.) Quite the opposite. In fact, as Jenna McLaughlin and I reported, it appears that a former CIA contractor, John Reidy, who blew the whistle on the faulty COVCOM system, was punished for speaking up. (The House and Senate Intelligence committees convened extensive, contentious, closed-door meetings on the asset losses in China and Iran, as McLaughlin and I reported. But that is the bare minimum one would expect in a catastrophe of this magnitude.)

Accountability is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in journalism. We think it dignifies our profession, gives it the moral bearing that justifies our work, even — especially — when reporting on sensitive subjects. But here, it truly matters. Without accountability, avoidable disasters in America’s intelligence community will be treated as inevitabilities. Secrecy is inextricable from spycraft. But it can also provide a powerful tool for officials to evade responsibility. That may redound to a more powerful intelligence bureaucracy, but it is both morally self-defeating and, ultimately, detrimental to national security.

As the Reuters article shows, these Iranian assets deserved — and still deserve — better. The CIA deserves to be better. And the American people deserve a better CIA. A just legacy of a dismal era would be for America’s appointed guardians to labor, however imperfectly, toward all three.

Get in touch at zach@projectbrazen.com or securely at brushpass1@protonmail.com.

THE BRUSH PASS is an initiative of Project Brazen, a journalism studio and production company based in London and Singapore. Follow our newsletter WHALE HUNTING delving into the hidden world of the rich and powerful and GATEWAY about the European drug explosion.

Follow our exploration of the European drug trade at GATEWAY or dive into the hidden world of wealth and power at WHALE HUNTING.

thebrushpass.projectbrazen.com · by Zach Dorfman · October 4, 2022

4.  Menendez seeks path forward for Taiwan defense bill

Excerpts:

Lastly, the bill directs the president to establish a five-year plan to prioritize the delivery of excess defense articles to Taiwan while requiring the Defense and State departments to develop a comprehensive training program with the Taiwanese military.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and 36 of his fellow Republicans announced their own version of the Taiwan Policy Act last week. Although many of the defense provisions are the same as those in the House bill, it also includes several provisions the Senate Foreign Relations Committee amended or struck in its bipartisan bill following Menendez’s meetings with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Those include a provision that would have renamed the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington the Taiwan Representative Office and another that would have elevated the position of the top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan by requiring Senate confirmation.

“Now is the time to arm our ally — before an invasion occurs, not after,” McCaul said in a statement upon announcing his bill. “Deterrence is key to stopping the [Chinese Communist Party] from provoking a conflict that would seriously harm U.S. national security.”

Menendez seeks path forward for Taiwan defense bill

Defense News · by Bryant Harris · October 3, 2022

WASHINGTON — The senators who last month advanced a sprawling bill that includes $6.5 billion in military aid for Taiwan are hoping to pass it into law as part of the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told Defense News last week he is leading the charge to include the Taiwan Policy Act as an amendment to the NDAA, which the Senate is scheduled to start debating this month.

“We will do as much as we can on the Taiwan Policy Act in the NDAA,” said Menendez. “That’s our goal.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced the bipartisan bill 17-5 last month after amending certain provisions to address White House concerns about some components of the legislation.

The bipartisan bill would provide $6.5 billion in military aid to Taiwan through 2027 via Foreign Military Financing — a program that allows other countries to purchase U.S. military equipment with grants and loans. The legislation also gives Taiwan the same benefits as a major non-NATO ally, expedites arms sales and prioritizes the transfer of excess U.S. defense articles there.

The bill includes a wide array of other non-defense components, including sanctions on China if it “is knowingly engaged in a significant escalation in aggression” against Taiwan. China considers Taiwan a rogue province and has threatened to return it under the mainland’s control, by force if necessary.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., told Defense News his committee would “take a look” at the legislation.

“The other thing too is we’ll get the opinion of the State Department and also the Department of Defense,” said Reed.

Menendez said he intends to propose adding the Taiwan Policy Act in its entirety to the NDAA. “But then we’ll have to see what might have to be amended in order to get the ball rolling,” he continued. “The defense stuff I’ve got to believe is pretty solid.”

The defense portion of the bill also allows the president to establish an Asia-Pacific “regional contingency stockpile” at an unspecified location, allocating $500 million per year in funding for those stocks through 2025.

The bill contains language intended to ameliorate the $14 billion backlog of weapons Taiwan purchased from the United States via the Foreign Military Sales process, according to a document obtained by Defense News in April.

The Taiwan Policy Act directs the Defense and State departments to “prioritize and expedite” foreign military sales for Taipei and prohibits both departments from delaying the sales through a bundling route, whereby a defense manufacturer would simultaneously produce weapons systems from multiple contracts. It also requires U.S. defense manufacturers to “expedite and prioritize” the production of weapons that Taiwan purchased.

Another provision would require the Defense and State departments to develop a list of weapons systems that are “pre-cleared and prioritized for sale and release to Taiwan through the foreign military sales program.”

Lastly, the bill directs the president to establish a five-year plan to prioritize the delivery of excess defense articles to Taiwan while requiring the Defense and State departments to develop a comprehensive training program with the Taiwanese military.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and 36 of his fellow Republicans announced their own version of the Taiwan Policy Act last week. Although many of the defense provisions are the same as those in the House bill, it also includes several provisions the Senate Foreign Relations Committee amended or struck in its bipartisan bill following Menendez’s meetings with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Those include a provision that would have renamed the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington the Taiwan Representative Office and another that would have elevated the position of the top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan by requiring Senate confirmation.

“Now is the time to arm our ally — before an invasion occurs, not after,” McCaul said in a statement upon announcing his bill. “Deterrence is key to stopping the [Chinese Communist Party] from provoking a conflict that would seriously harm U.S. national security.”

About Bryant Harris

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

5. Guerrillas on the Bench: Operationalizing Resistance in Ukraine and Beyond

A critical commentary on the resistance operating concept:

Ponder this excerpt:

In reality, US special operations forces deliver effects in keeping with the concrete skill sets that they possess. America’s Tier 1 capabilities, and the wider Special Forces community, remain overwhelmingly focused on kinetic action. They are at home on flat ranges and in shoot houses. Civil matters and non-kinetic effects are beyond (or, perhaps more accurately, beneath) their line of sight. The special operations component of Civil Affairs, meanwhile, has neither the skills nor the stomach (not to mention the permissions) to catalyze clandestine civil resistance activity in an environment like Kherson or Crimea. Finally, PSYOP is increasingly an e-capability, and is presently on an embarrassing time out.  

Guerrillas on the Bench: Operationalizing Resistance in Ukraine and Beyond

By Dr. Nicholas Krohley

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/guerrillas-bench-operationalizing-resistance-ukraine-and-beyond

The new great game is under way. The rules-based global order is unraveling, and America’s rivals are making moves. Russia has staggered wildly into Ukraine, undeterred by the West. China is flexing its economic muscles across the Global South, currying high-level influence among dictators and democrats alike—while steadily massing resources for a potential move on Taiwan.

Within this chaotic environment, the US special operations community has embraced “resistance” as its core value proposition. Whereas conventional forces are posturing to deter or defeat our adversaries using the latest technologies and weapons platforms, capabilities like Special Forces are to be employed in subtler ways, maneuvering across the competition continuum to cultivate and weaponize resistance movements worldwide. This vision, articulated most notably in NATO’s Resistance Operating Concept (known colloquially as “the ROC”), sits at the heart of contemporary American thinking on special operations.

How, then, do we explain the general irrelevance of the US special operations community’s resistance paradigm to the war in Ukraine? Notwithstanding the embarrassing innuendo of occasional press reports, the Ukrainians have charted their own distinct path to counter Russian aggression. The notion that American special operators are pulling the strings of the Ukrainian resistance (or that the Ukrainians are reading from a script that we have provided) is farcical to anyone with direct experience of the chaos and spontaneous ingenuity of the front lines. America’s experts in resistance are sitting on the sidelines, with little prospect of getting into the game.

The Ukraine case study should be enough to sound alarm bells regarding the prevailing resistance paradigm. But it gets worse. The ROC may well pay lip service to the importance of non-kinetic effects, the information environment, and civil resistance. But what tools exist in the current special operations toolkit to operationalize any of this?

The ROC offers nothing practical for those seeking to deliver non-kinetic effects. Indeed, the parallels to the Surge-era Counterinsurgency field manual are striking: both documents offer a compelling narrative of non-kinetic actions that ought to be carried out and non-kinetic effects that ought to be delivered—with precious little guidance on precisely how any of this is to actually happen.

In reality, US special operations forces deliver effects in keeping with the concrete skill sets that they possess. America’s Tier 1 capabilities, and the wider Special Forces community, remain overwhelmingly focused on kinetic action. They are at home on flat ranges and in shoot houses. Civil matters and non-kinetic effects are beyond (or, perhaps more accurately, beneath) their line of sight. The special operations component of Civil Affairs, meanwhile, has neither the skills nor the stomach (not to mention the permissions) to catalyze clandestine civil resistance activity in an environment like Kherson or Crimea. Finally, PSYOP is increasingly an e-capability, and is presently on an embarrassing time out. 

How is anyone from within the US special operations community going to actually practice resistance—barring the limited set of prospective scenarios in which they might live out the “guerrillas in the mist” fantasy of leading partner forces in a kinetic irregular warfare campaign? Indeed, what is the risk/reward calculus for such activity in a war like the one presently taking place in Ukraine, where the presence of American combat forces on the front lines would mark a radical and reckless escalation?

Elsewhere, consider Chinese activity across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Through debt-trap diplomacy and corruption-enabled elite capture, the Chinese are achieving de facto occupation through non-kinetic means. What is America’s unconventional warfare strategy to enable resistance? What analytical methods and planning frameworks do we have on the shelf to tackle this challenge? In the event we were to develop such a strategy, who within the special operations community could implement it?

These are not rhetorical questions. The fact that there are no compelling answers—and the fact that these questions have not been front and center within the development of the resistance paradigm—exposes a fundamental problem within the enterprise.

How, for example, might we work with local partners to organize, equip, and enable segments of the populace within Cambodia or Colombia to resist Chinese encroachment? These would be wholly non-kinetic lines of effort, requiring a nuanced contextual understanding of grassroots civil dynamics and ever-shifting social, economic, and political factors—paired with the requisite tradecraft to operationalize that understanding, and a carefully considered stance vis-à-vis permissions and sovereignty. At present, the US special operations community has none of this. Nor is there any evidence of substantive interest therein.

The simple truth is that the US special operations community—and the US military as a whole—does not take civil matters seriously. This is evidenced by the lack of capabilities and resources that are brought to bear in this domain. This leaves the military with little to nothing to offer within the roughly 90% of the competition continuum that is not dominated by an enemy or adversary. This is untenable, particularly due to the fact that the US military is the dominant instrument of American foreign policy.

A reckoning is due within the resistance community. What, exactly, does resistance look like across the competition continuum? Not in theory, but in practice in specific contexts and countries. There are few answers to be found within the ROC. The evangelists of resistance must re-frame their value proposition in accordance with the realities of the competitive environment, with the understanding that every situation will present a distinct set of risks and opportunities. In this respect, one of the most critical missing pieces in the pivot from resistance in theory to resistance in practice is the glaring absence of an investigative framework to understand how contextual factors shape those risks and opportunities.

It is time for new thinking, and for the addition of new tools within the toolkit of resistance. Our foremost practitioners of resistance have been sidelined in the defining kinetic conflict of our time. At the exact same time, one woman on social media has done more to ferment resistance and destabilize the Islamic Republic of Iran than anything emanating from the entire US government. The special operations community must get over its contempt for all things “civil”, and get serious about the delivery of non-kinetic effects. Alternatively, they can get used to riding the bench.

About the Author(s)

Nicholas Krohley

Dr. Krohley is the Principal of FrontLine Advisory and the proprietor of www.civilreconnaissance.com.

Twitter @nkrohley

6. Xi Jinping’s third term is a tragic error

Graphics at the link:  https://www.ft.com/content/fa1510a3-0ea9-4eab-a67c-392c7704fdb1

Conclusion:

It is not surprising either that China has become increasingly assertive. Western unwillingness to adjust to China’s rise is clearly a part of the problem. But so has been China’s open hostility to core values the west (and many others) hold dear. Many of us cannot take seriously China’s adherence to the Marxist political ideals that have demonstrably not succeeded in the long run. Yes, Deng’s brilliant eclecticism did work, at least while China was a developing country. But reimposition of the old Leninist orthodoxies on today’s highly complex China must be a dead end at best. At worst, as Xi stays indefinitely in office, it could prove something even more dangerous than that, for China itself and the rest of the world.

Xi Jinping’s third term is a tragic error

China’s macroeconomic, microeconomic and environmental difficulties remain largely unaddressed

Financial Times · by Martin Wolf · October 4, 2022

Xi Jinping will shortly be confirmed for a third term as general secretary of the Communist party and head of the military. So, is his achievement of such unchallengeable power good for China or for the world? No. It is dangerous for both. It would be dangerous even if he had proven himself a ruler of matchless competence. But he has not done so. As it is, the risks are those of ossification at home and increasing friction abroad.

Ten years is always enough. Even a first-rate leader decays after that long in office. One with unchallengeable power tends to decay more quickly. Surrounded by people he has chosen and protective of the legacy he has created, the despot will become increasingly isolated and defensive, even paranoid.

Reform halts. Decision-making slows. Foolish decisions go unchallenged and so remain unchanged. The zero-Covid policy is an example. If one wishes to look outside China, one can see the madness induced by prolonged power in Putin’s Russia. In Mao Zedong, China has its own example. Indeed, Mao was why Deng Xiaoping, a genius of common sense, introduced the system of term limits Xi is now overthrowing.

The advantage of democracies is not that they necessarily choose wise and well-intentioned leaders. Too often they choose the opposite. But these can be opposed without danger and dismissed without bloodshed. In personal despotisms, neither is possible. In institutionalised despotisms, dismissal is conceivable, as Khrushchev discovered. But it is dangerous and the more dominant the leader, the more dangerous it becomes. It is simply realistic to expect the next 10 years of Xi to be worse than the last.

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

How bad then was his first decade?

In a recent article in China Leadership Monitor, Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College judges that Xi has three main goals: personal dominance; revitalisation of the Leninist party-state; and expanding China’s global influence. He has been triumphant on the first; formally successful on the second; and had mixed success on the last. While China is today a recognised superpower, it has also mobilised a powerful coalition of anxious adversaries.

Pei does not include economic reform among Xi’s principal objectives. The evidence suggests this is quite correct. It is not. Notably, reforms that could undermine state-owned enterprises have been avoided. Stricter controls have also been imposed on famous Chinese businessmen, such as Jack Ma.

Above all, deep macroeconomic, microeconomic and environmental difficulties remain largely unaddressed.

All three were summed up in former premier Wen Jiabao’s description of the economy as “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable”.

The fundamental macroeconomic problems are excess savings, its concomitant, excess investment, and its corollary, growing mountains of unproductive debt. These three things go together: one cannot be solved without solving the other two. Contrary to widely shared belief, the excess saving is only partly the result of a lack of a social safety net and consequent high household savings. It is as much because household disposable income is such a low share of national income, with much of the rest consisting of profits.

The result is that national savings and investment are both above 40 per cent of gross domestic product. If the investment were not that high, the economy would be in a permanent slump. But, as growth potential has slowed, much of this investment has been in unproductive, debt-financed construction. That is a short-term remedy with the adverse long-term side effects of bad debt and falling return on investment. The solution is not only to reduce household savings, but raise the household share in disposable incomes. Both threaten powerful vested interests and have not happened.

The fundamental microeconomic problems have been pervasive corruption, arbitrary intervention in private business and waste in the public sector. In addition, environmental policy, not least the country’s huge emissions of carbon dioxide, remains an enormous challenge. To his credit, Xi has recognised this issue.

More recently, Xi has adopted the policy of keeping at bay a virus circulating freely in the rest of the world. China should instead have imported the best global vaccines and, after they were administered, reopened the country. This would have been sensible and also indicated continued belief in openness and co-operation.

Xi’s programme of renewed central control is not surprising. It was a natural reaction to the eroding impact of greater freedoms on a political structure that rests on power that is unaccountable, except upwards. Pervasive corruption was the inevitable result. But the price of trying to suppress it is risk aversion and ossification. It is hard to believe that a top-down organisation under one man’s absolute control can rule an ever more sophisticated society of 1.4bn people sanely, let alone effectively.

It is not surprising either that China has become increasingly assertive. Western unwillingness to adjust to China’s rise is clearly a part of the problem. But so has been China’s open hostility to core values the west (and many others) hold dear. Many of us cannot take seriously China’s adherence to the Marxist political ideals that have demonstrably not succeeded in the long run. Yes, Deng’s brilliant eclecticism did work, at least while China was a developing country. But reimposition of the old Leninist orthodoxies on today’s highly complex China must be a dead end at best. At worst, as Xi stays indefinitely in office, it could prove something even more dangerous than that, for China itself and the rest of the world.

martin.wolf@ft.com

Follow Martin Wolf with myFT and on Twitter

Financial Times · by Martin Wolf · October 4, 2022

7.  With the right words, Biden could help China avoid making a wrong move toward Taiwan

Conclusion:

Biden’s personal commitment to Taiwan’s security is welcome, but his random responses to reporters’ questions, like Trump’s stream-of-consciousness tweets, lack official gravitas and are no substitute for a thoughtful, well-staffed declaratory administration policy that America will defend Taiwan. Strategic clarity will help China’s planners avoid a catastrophic strategic miscalculation.

With the right words, Biden could help China avoid making a wrong move toward Taiwan

BY JOSEPH BOSCO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/04/22 10:00 AM ET

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The Hill · · October 4, 2022

President Biden has been chipping away at America’s longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity on a potential defense of Taiwan. Four times he has stated unequivocally that his administration will defend Taiwan.

Just as faithfully, State Department and White House spokespersons responded to each Biden defense commitment by “clarifying” that U.S. policy regarding Taiwan has not changed and is still governed by the Taiwan Relations Act (1979), the three Sino-U.S Communiques (1972, 1979, 1982) and the Six Assurances (1982).

A similar pattern of presidential commitments to defend Taiwan, followed by administration assurances of policy continuity, occurred with President Bush in 2001 and President Trump in 2020.

The only way to reconcile these alternating and seemingly inconsistent messages would be to accept them both at face value and conclude that the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) — which declares “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States” — was tantamount to a resuscitation of the Mutual Defense Treaty that President Carter had just terminated weeks earlier.

The problem with that view is that the TRA only requires Washington to “maintain the capacity to resist any [Chinese] resort to force or other forms of coercion” against Taiwan, not to exercise it. And even that language was apparently considered merely precatory, going unnoticed and unmentioned through 10 presidential terms until it appeared almost in passing in a State Department release in May 2022.

Indeed, when China fired missiles toward Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995-1996, Chinese officials confronted Assistant Defense Secretary Joseph Nye and asked what the United States would do if China attacked Taiwan. Nye never mentioned the TRA, responding, “We don’t know and you don’t know; it would depend on the circumstances.”

Defense Secretary William Perry, asked the same question on a subsequent Sunday talk show, said Nye’s statement perfectly described U.S. policy and he repeated it verbatim. Each subsequent administration, rather than addressing a direct U.S. role in defending Taiwan, has focused on the TRA language requiring the U.S. to provide “defense articles and defense services … to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability” — not unlike current U.S. policy providing non-kinetic support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasions.

This policy of strategic ambiguity, as it became known, in part reflected Washington’s concern that a pro-independence Taiwan government would exploit a U.S. defense shield and do something that could provoke a Chinese attack. But it also confirmed Washington’s own hesitation about the wisdom of going to war with China over Taiwan — i.e., Nye’s “we don’t know [what we would do].” Chinese leaders have reason to believe they do know what the U.S. would do, based on what it did, and didn’t do, in the 1996 crisis — and now the 2022 crisis.

President Clinton dispatched two carrier battle groups to the region to send a message to Beijing. As Perry put it, according to The Associated Press, “Beijing should know, and this will remind them, that while they are a great military power, the premier — the strongest — military power in the western Pacific is the United States.”

But, after China threatened “a sea of fire” if U.S. ships entered the Strait, they turned away. Kurt Campbell, Biden’s China adviser, who was in the Clinton administration, often calls the episode “our own Cuban missile crisis; we had stared into the abyss.”

China has played on U.S. indecision about challenging China militarily over Taiwan by building anti-access, area denial capabilities to increase the costs and risks of U.S. intervention. Its attack submarines and anti-ship ballistic missiles have created the new “circumstances” Nye said would determine the U.S. response to Chinese aggression. In at least one important respect, the strategy has succeeded. Since the 1996 confrontation, only one U.S. carrier battle group has entered the Strait (in 2007), even though the Pacific commander at the time, Adm. Timothy Keating, defiantly told the protesting Chinese: “We don’t need China’s permission to use these international waters. We will do so whenever … we choose to.”

But, starting with Bush’s pledge to do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan, to Trump’s growling “China knows what I’m gonna do,” to Biden’s multiple references to “a sacred obligation” to defend Taiwan against an unprovoked attack (he said “unprecedented”), American commanders in chief — except for President Obama — have concluded that U.S. national security requires a commitment to defend Taiwan

Nevertheless, incremental progression toward strategic clarity through haphazard presidential remarks lacks the policy coherence needed to gain administration credibility in the mind of the one person whose assessment of U.S. intentions matters most: China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

Xi recently tested the Biden administration’s resolve after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan by precipitating the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis with an unprecedented show of force using live-fire exercises, missile launches, fighter aircraft operations, and a temporary naval blockade of the island — far eclipsing the 1995-1996 crisis and creating “a new normal.”

Washington’s only response, after the crisis passed, was to resume its regular Strait transits, this time with cruisers rather than smaller combatants, but still no carrier. Meanwhile, China’s paltry contingent of two operational carriers makes regular passages through the Strait, reinforcing Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over what the rest of the world considers international waters.

Despite recent Russian setbacks in Ukraine, Xi has reiterated his support for Putin’s war and reaffirmed China’s claim to Taiwan. Biden’s naked fear of Putin’s nuclear threats, which has inhibited U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine, was echoed recently by a warning of “World War III” from national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Chinese officials are encouraged to continue raising a similar specter over Taiwan.

Don’t rush to create an outbound investment review The energy crisis could fragment the European Union

Xi and his colleagues have additional ways to assess the Biden administration’s appetite for confrontation with China over Taiwan. Despite U.S. and NATO commitments to Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity, there was no substantive response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and seizure of Crimea. Beijing may well convince itself to expect little more than economic sanctions, moral denunciations and limited weapons support for Taiwan, but no direct military intervention.

Biden’s personal commitment to Taiwan’s security is welcome, but his random responses to reporters’ questions, like Trump’s stream-of-consciousness tweets, lack official gravitas and are no substitute for a thoughtful, well-staffed declaratory administration policy that America will defend Taiwan. Strategic clarity will help China’s planners avoid a catastrophic strategic miscalculation.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.

The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · October 4, 2022

8. How to Improve Your Pickup Aviation Advising Game

The buried lede:

Air Force Special Operations Command is closing its 6th Special Operations Squadron and 711th Special Operations Squadron and changing the role of its combat aviation advisors. 

Is AFSOC out of step?

How to Improve Your Pickup Aviation Advising Game - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Jonathan Magill · October 4, 2022

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

The United States failed in its attempts to build air forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for numerous reasons. Chief among these was policymakers’ excessive ambition: they failed to consider what the US military services could plausibly deliver and what Iraqi and Afghan air forces could realistically absorb. The provision of ill-suited F-16s to the Iraqis, for example, and UH-60s to the Afghans led to a loss of lives, time, and money. And the US military utilized aviation advisors in an ineffective ad hoc approach that we can best describe as an amateur pickup game—random, inexperienced personnel working together briefly before rotating out.

Imagine walking into a park to see a soccer game. One team is made of pickup players wearing a hodgepodge of uniforms and confused by the game and each other. The team members communicate poorly, resulting in confusion and fouls. Slowly, they learn and improve, but just as things start to go well, they step off the field and walk out of the park. Replacements appear from seemingly every direction to fill the vacancies on the soccer field. With the rookies, the team’s performance slips back to where it started. The new players make the same mistakes and learn the same hard lessons as their predecessors.

This example illustrates the shortcomings of aviation advising in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, aviation advisor missions were staffed with a collection of individual augmentees drawn from the joint and coalition forces based on rank and duty qualifications, but inexperienced in the advising mission. And with few exceptions, aviation advisors rarely returned to the mission after leaving the theater. In effect, advisor missions were forced to continually climb the learning curve only to slide back down when advisors departed en masse with their hard-won knowledge and experience. This approach was ill-suited for a mission that required contextualized learning over the long term.

Air advisors are the US Air Force’s operational arm to conduct security force assistance and exist in both conventional and special operations forces. They train, assess, equip, and assist foreign air forces, and most importantly, understand the bigger strategic picture of security cooperation. Air advisors attend one month of initial qualification training; many continue learning via upgrades and additional qualification training. This is sufficient to start a mission, but not to effectively sustain it—the most important knowledge comes from experience.

The best solution for a successful large-scale air advising mission is for the Air Force to organize, train, and equip a standing advisor wing with regionally aligned squadrons that build partnerships and capabilities in support of combatant command priorities. This wing, when needed, could absorb joint and coalition aviation advisors to execute a large-scale lengthy security force assistance mission to build the next partner’s air force. The validity of this solution has been demonstrated by the US Air Force’s Mobility Support Advisory Squadrons (MSASs). These units stay high on the learning curve through lessons-learned papers, after-action reports, and squadron debriefs when advisor teams return from an engagement with a partner air force. Leadership ensures overlap on teams so that experienced advisors can mentor new advisors and introduce them to the partner airmen, ensuring the relationship of trust endures. The MSAS units also maintain a near constant dialogue with various stakeholders, including component commands and in-country offices of security cooperation.

But an air advisor wing has not yet garnered support from Air Force senior leaders. In fact, the service is currently reducing advisory capacity as part of the shift toward great power competition. It is divesting three of these standing units, and with them, the vast majority of its in-aircraft aviation advising capability, proving once again the perishable nature of this important mission within the service. Air Force Special Operations Command is closing its 6th Special Operations Squadron and 711th Special Operations Squadron and changing the role of its combat aviation advisors. Air Education and Training Command will soon shutter the 81st Fighter Squadron, the unit responsible for training partner nation A-29 fighter pilots and maintainers in light attack and air-to-ground integration mission sets. What will remain is two MSAS units with limited mobility and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities as well as the US Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation rotary-wing advisors. The US military will have such a limited capacity that it will likely have to employ an ad hoc approach when the need for large-scale air advising arises again. Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate the problems of this approach. Four recommendations stand out: track advisor experience, design personnel rotations for continuity, use best-practice onboarding, and leverage the longevity of defense firms.

Track Air Advisor Experience in Personnel Records

When the US military receives another large-scale aviation assistance mission, it will be critical to send experienced personnel. To do this, all the services must identify and tag their air advisor talent still in uniform as they would be the first-round draft picks next to personnel from the MSASs. Drawing from this pool to find commanders, senior enlisted leaders, and planners would go a long way in helping the advisor mission learn faster.

The Air Force recently started tracking air advisors and provides a model for the other services. In 2019, the Air Force began data mining its personnel records to identify members with advisor training and experience—most of its talent was hidden from view. By marking their records with special experience identifiers and allowing them to wear an “Air Advisor” tab on their uniforms, the Air Force can now see the advisors in its personnel system, and we see them walking around bases worldwide. To date, approximately 3,500 tabbed air advisors are still on active duty in the US Air Force.

Unfortunately, the other services have not done this. While the Air Force conducted the lion’s share of aviation advising work in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of soldiers, sailors, and Marines also participated. They have disappeared. The US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps should conduct a similar audit to tag their advisor talent still in uniform. If history is any indication, future missions will need this talent again.

Stagger and Overlap Air Advisor Rotations to Ensure Continuity

Personnel rotations must be designed to ensure mission continuity, rather than following the standard schedules. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States made two major mistakes—rotating most advisors out at the same time and not providing overlap for incoming advisors.

At a macro level, the services tended to rotate most of the aviation advisor mission’s personnel in the summer. Setting up the rotations to align with the military’s moving season left the advisor mission’s experience levels high in the spring but low in the fall after large numbers of pickup rookies joined the team. An almost entirely new set of advisors meant that relationships with partner nation airmen had to be rebuilt by the new team. Simply staggering the deployments of advisors throughout the year would minimize disruptions in the organization and enable it to leverage continuity in the mission.

At an individual level, Air Force air advisors almost uniformly report that they had little to no in-person turnover period with the outgoing advisor. A turnover period provides time for new advisors to establish trusted relationships with partner-nation counterparts and key leaders, which is critical to successful advising. In addition, this period would allow the outgoing advisor to demonstrate how to interact with partner airmen, share lessons learned, and coach the replacement advisor through the critical first few weeks. The military services should ensure a thirty-day overlap period between outgoing advisors and their replacements. Moreover, personnel policies should consider this a mandatory part of the mission—like training—rather than an inefficient redundancy.

Onboard New Air Advisors with Best Practices

When air advisors are pickup players from across the joint force, success depends on equipping them with the current playbook and long-term strategy before they take the field. In the past, many advisors received insufficient preparation for their assignments, but US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) developed an onboarding best-practices program that should serve as a model for future missions. This onboarding course was information dense, strategically focused, and targeted toward preparing pickup air advisors and staff officers coming from across the joint force.

Every month, USSOCOM held week-long onboarding programs at Fort Bragg. Before deploying, pickup advisors learned current and relevant information about the mission and legal authorities of Special Operations Joint Task Force–Afghanistan (SOJTF-A), the current status of Afghan special operations units, the political situation in Afghanistan, and more. SOJTF-A’s commanding general spent an hour with the attendees via videoconference to share his priorities and assessment and to answer questions from the audience. USSOCOM’s leadership strongly believed that if everyone supporting its mission knew the big picture and how they contributed, they would make wiser decisions and be more committed to success. As a result, everyone—including support personnel like forklift drivers—worked together seamlessly to support the advising mission.

Another important aspect of the program was the onboarding process for senior leaders. Before SOJTF-A’s incoming O-6 commanders and E-9 senior enlisted leaders left for Afghanistan, USSOCOM brought them together multiple times for team-building and strategy sessions. These onboarding sessions allowed the new command leadership to establish relationships, discuss the mission and challenges with their new commanding general, and hear directly from regional and military experts about the dynamics of the country and the state of the Afghan special operations forces. Combined, these onboarding programs for pickup advisors and for senior leaders ensured everyone understood the mission and their unique role in it. When SOJTF-A personnel took their place on the pitch in Afghanistan, they could start contributing right away.

Leverage the Endurance of Defense Contractors

Perhaps the greatest source of continuity for aviation advisor missions is the defense firms under contract with the US government to train and maintain partner nations’ air forces. Once the size and scope of an aviation advisor mission exceeds a modest threshold, then maintaining the partner nation’s air force requires the assistance of defense contractors in most cases. In addition to their technical and logistical expertise, defense firms have the advantage of remaining on the job for as long as they are needed. Building air forces is an ultra-endurance event, and defense contracting firms have the legs for it. Aviation advisors come and go, but the contractors come and stay.

The military services should add additional requirements to their contracts for building partner aviation capability such as recording data about the partner nation’s air force, conducting operational analysis of its capabilities, evaluating its effectiveness, writing down its history, and creating decision support tools. With better access to reports, histories, analysis, and lessons learned, pickup teams can avoid the mistakes of their predecessors and make advances that endure with their successors.

Aviation advisor organizations in Iraq and Afghanistan kept records and reports, but it was done unevenly and was not standardized, leaving huge gaps in information and historical context. Accomplishing these things required the commander’s focus, which often turned to other pressing matters. Capturing data and writing reports for future advisors seemed like a tax on overstretched units. Pickup advising does not lend itself to maintaining continuity in the mission because it drains implicit knowledge within the advisor organization, making it easy to repeat the same failures and learn the same hard lessons over and over.

No amount of aviation advisor magic can overcome bad strategic-level policy decisions, but the joint force, principally the US Air Force and US Army, can do a much better job executing future large-scale aviation advisor missions, even with pickup advisors. Our four recommendations—identifying and tracking current advisor talent, rotating advisors more thoughtfully, creating predeployment mission onboarding courses, and utilizing defense contractors’ longevity—are cheap and easy to implement, especially compared to the costs of standing aviation advising wings or brigades. Still, they do require institutional commitment to see them through. These solutions would go a long way toward creating a continuously advancing aviation advisor mission, instead of one that relearns the game every year.

Jonathan Magill is an active duty Air Force officer currently assigned to the Air Staff as the USAF air advising cross functional manager, and previously commanded the 818th Mobility Support Advisory Squadron. He has significant experience in various roles throughout the security cooperation enterprise and has over four thousand hours of flight time in the C-17A and C-208B. As an air advisor, Jonathan has deployed throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Tobias Bernard Switzer is an active duty Air Force foreign area officer, a nonresident fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, and an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. Formerly a special operations helicopter pilot, combat aviation advisor, and Olmsted scholar, he has deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central America in various counterinsurgency roles.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Tech. Sgt. Ashley Hyatt, US Air Force

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.usma.edu · by Jonathan Magill · October 4, 2022

9. Biden speaks with Zelensky, unveils $625 million weapons package to Ukraine

Excerpts:

Tuesday’s weapons package will be the second under presidential drawdown authority, and includes four High Mobility Rocket Artillery Systems, 16 155 mm howitzers, 16 105 mm howitzers, 75,000 155mm artillery rounds, 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds and 1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine Systems, among other equipment.

“Recent developments from Russia’s sham referenda and attempted annexation to new revelations of brutality against civilians in Ukrainian territory formerly controlled by Russia only strengthens our resolve. United with our Allies and partners from 50 nations, we are delivering the arms and equipment that Ukraine’s forces are utilizing so effectively today in a successful counter-offensive to take back their lands seized illegally by Russia,” Blinken said.

Biden speaks with Zelensky, unveils $625 million weapons package to Ukraine

BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 10/04/22 1:22 PM ET

The Hill · · October 4, 2022

President Biden and Vice President Harris spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday and unveiled a $625 million security assistance package to Ukraine amid Russia’s annexation of regions in the eastern and southern parts of the country.

Biden and Harris underscored that the U.S. “will never recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Ukrainian territory,” according to a White House readout of the conversation.

“President Biden pledged to continue supporting Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression for as long as it takes, including the provision today of a new $625 million security assistance package that includes additional weapons and equipment, including [High Mobility Rocket Artillery Systems], artillery systems and ammunition, and armored vehicles,” the readout continued.

The meeting comes as the West continues to grapple with the fallout of Russia moving to annex the Luhansk, Kherson, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine after holding referendums largely decried as shams. National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Andriy Yermak, head of the office of Ukraine’s president, in Istanbul on Sunday, during which Sullivan said there would be ”severe costs” for anyone who supported Russia’s annexation.

During the conversation with Zelensky, Biden also affirmed the U.S.’s “continued readiness” to impose sanctions on any entity that supports Russia’s annexation, and welcomed an agreement that allowed the safe export of grain from Ukraine, the White House said.

The president also spoke of the U.S.’s efforts to “rally the world behind Ukraine’s efforts to defend its freedom and democracy, as enshrined in the United Nations Charter,” the statement added.

Unusual butterfly swarms invading Central Texas Pair accused in fishing scandal won thousands of dollars, boat in string of wins

The U.S. has committed now committed more than $17.5 billion in aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including $16.8 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate statement.

Tuesday’s weapons package will be the second under presidential drawdown authority, and includes four High Mobility Rocket Artillery Systems, 16 155 mm howitzers, 16 105 mm howitzers, 75,000 155mm artillery rounds, 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds and 1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine Systems, among other equipment.

“Recent developments from Russia’s sham referenda and attempted annexation to new revelations of brutality against civilians in Ukrainian territory formerly controlled by Russia only strengthens our resolve. United with our Allies and partners from 50 nations, we are delivering the arms and equipment that Ukraine’s forces are utilizing so effectively today in a successful counter-offensive to take back their lands seized illegally by Russia,” Blinken said.

The Hill · by Alex Gangitano · October 4, 2022

10. Kremlin Gushes Over Elon Musk as Heroic ‘Russian Officer’

Elon Musk must think he is a strategic genius when in fact he appears to just be another useful idiot. I wonder what the Russians will give him when takes control of Twitter?

Or maybe there is some irony in Musk going both ways - one the one hand helping Ukraine with Starlink and on the other hand advocating ceding Ukraine territory.

Kremlin Gushes Over Elon Musk as Heroic ‘Russian Officer’

‘WORTHY OF BEING AWARDED’

The Tesla founder got cursed out by a diplomat after his recent comments on Ukraine—but he’s getting nothing but applause from Vladimir Putin’s top officials.

Shannon Vavra

National Security Reporter

Updated Oct. 05, 2022 4:11AM ET / Published Oct. 04, 2022 1:11PM ET 

The Daily Beast · October 4, 2022

Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Top Russian officials are rallying around Tesla CEO Elon Musk following his commentary Monday that Ukraine should be “neutral” as Russia continues to wage war in the country.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said that Musk should be given an award for his comments.

“Musk did well, by the way. He’s worthy of being awarded with a new officer rank out of order,” Medvedev said.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that he was glad Musk was proposing this peace deal.

“In fact, it is very positive that a person like Elon Musk is looking for a peaceful way out of the crisis,” Peskov said, adding that the proposals “deserve attention.”

Moscow’s applause for Musk comes just hours after he set off a firestorm on Twitter when he posted a poll asking if his followers agreed that Ukraine should be “neutral” and that Crimea—which Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2014—should be given to Russia. Crimea, though, is considered a part of Ukraine, and world leaders have declared the referenda that took place there in 2014 illegitimate.

Several of Musk’s proposals for a supposed peace deal parrot demands that Russia had made earlier in the war. Those talks disintegrated as Ukrainians gained momentum in the conflict.

Peskov said that world leaders and Ukrainian officials would do well to listen to Musk on how to end the war.

“Achieving peace without fulfilling Russia's conditions is absolutely impossible,” Peskov said.

Ukrainian officials lambasted Musk for falling in line with the Kremlin and for echoing information operations aimed to influence public opinion on the war.

“Even the best of us can fall victims to misinformation,” Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States said.

Russia has been conducting influence operations aimed at undermining western support for Ukraine in the war for months now, as The Daily Beast first reported in June. Russian state media and proxies have been circulating information that appears aimed at diluting support for Ukraine, according to an intelligence bulletin from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.

Just this week, senior FBI officials said Russia has continued to try to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Ukraine is a very hot topic for the Russian government… the messaging themes in their influence operations mirror a lot of what we’re seeing from official channels,” one official said.

Musk himself has attempted to smooth over his comments, which came across as support for Moscow’s goals in the war. Musk sought to reassure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in particular that he still supports Ukraine.

“I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world,” Musk said in reply to a tweet Zelensky posted, asking his followers if they preferred a Musk supportive of Russia or Ukraine.

For now, any potential peace settlements don’t appear to be on the table. Ukrainian officials have said that Kyiv will not agree to give up any territory to Russia, and Zelensky reiterated just last week that any negotiation Ukraine participates in must be about “coexistence on equal, honest, dignified, and fair terms.”

The Daily Beast · October 4, 2022

11. Taiwan Local Elections Are Where China’s Disinformation Strategies Begin

We cannot over empshiszie the importance of civil society.

Conclusion:

Taiwanese civil society has not shied from Chinese internet interference and has initiated a wide set of counter-initiatives in advance of the local election. Doublethink Lab has established a monitoring hub using AI and human arbiters to detect Chinese information operations before they reach the mainstream and will publish analyses of new Chinese disinformation strategies. Cofacts, MyGoPen, and the Taiwan Factcheck Center have built factcheck tools that tag disinformation as it moves through the internet. The civil society groups Fake News Cleanser and Kuma Academy run workshops to train citizens in media literacy and detecting manipulated information. While these groups offer an obstacle to Chinese interference, they also signal how deeply consolidated Taiwanese democracy has become. Furthermore, they fill a role that the government cannot: the arbitration of truth against falsehood. If disinformation can be overcome through civic activism, a problem that has so far confounded democracy can be solved in the most democratic of ways. In doing so, Taiwan can become a model for an entire digitized world battling disinformation.

Taiwan Local Elections Are Where China’s Disinformation Strategies Begin

Taiwan’s local elections, not the national ones, incubate China’s disinformation strategies. Civil society is stepping up to fight them.

Blog Post by Ben Sando , Guest Contributor

October 4, 2022 12:31 pm (EST)

cfr.org · by Lindsay Maizland

Taiwanese civil society is gearing up to fight another election disinformation battle with China, or the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This November, when Americans choose their representatives in the U.S. Congress, Taiwanese citizens will also come forward to vote for a wide variety of local officials ranging from city mayors to village chiefs. Taiwan’s local elections have gradually become China’s testing ground for techniques to disrupt the democratic process through internet disinformation.

Outside observers are often aware of Chinese attempts to influence Taiwan’s presidential elections. However, Taiwanese civil society activists such as Ttcat, co-founder of Doublethink Lab (a digital defense NGO and this author’s institution), identify the island’s local elections as being far more significant targets for China’s disinformation efforts. With Taiwanese voters set to elect candidates to fill over 10,000 offices, the information space is fragmented, which gives China greater scope to spread rumors and conspiracy theories through local communities. China also capitalizes on Taiwanese citizens’ lack of attention toward cross-strait relations in local votes. Chinese actors can intervene on behalf of candidates who espouse the value of closer economic ties with China, without these candidates suffering from fatal accusations that they will cede sovereignty to China. Elected candidates, especially city mayors, are then placed in prominent positions to challenge in the national and presidential elections held a year later.

In the last local elections of 2018, China executed the playbook perfectly to promote the election of pro-China candidate Han Kuo-yu in Taiwan’s second-largest city, Kaohsiung. The election of the pro-China Han was stunning in a city that had not chosena candidate of his Kuomintang party for twenty years. The result followed an extraordinary level of social media engagement around Han’s campaign. In the months after his election as Kaohsiung mayor, the journalist Paul Huang discovered networks of Facebook accounts that had coordinated mass online groups channeling disinformation to Kaohsiung voters. The groups’ creators were paired with inauthentic LinkedIn profiles belonging to mainland Chinese and signaled a professional Chinese influence operation. In spite of these accusations of Chinese support, Han’s electoral victory springboarded him to be nominated in the 2020 presidential election to challenge incumbent Tsai Ing-wen. Han led the polls as he advocated for economic and cultural alignment with China but was derailed when Beijing cracked down on democracy activists in Hong Kong in 2019. Han’s loss evinces a contradiction in China’s interference operations; if Beijing makes domestic or foreign policy decisions that are unacceptable to democratic polities, Chinese-backed democratic candidates will founder on pro-China platforms no matter Beijing’s support. Since the 2020 presidential election, Han Kuo-yu has disappeared from the political limelight, but his online support base remains and is able to mobilize disinformation and information manipulation tactics.

Asia Unbound

CFR fellows and other experts assess the latest issues emerging in Asia today. 1-3 times weekly.

View all newsletters >

Eyes on Asia

Insights and analysis from CFR fellows on the latest developments across Asia. Monthly.

Daily News Brief

A summary of global news developments with CFR analysis delivered to your inbox each morning. Most weekdays.

The World This Week

A weekly digest of the latest from CFR on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. Every Friday.

By entering your email and clicking subscribe, you're agreeing to receive announcements from CFR about our products and services, as well as invitations to CFR events. You are also agreeing to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

View all newsletters >

Activists in Taiwan are braced for renewed Chinese efforts to interfere in the November local elections. Doublethink Lab has detected campaigns by Chinese actors to polarize Taiwanese society using false narratives regarding the origins of COVID-19 and incumbent government efforts to manipulate case statistics. Chinese-led disinformation campaigns are increasingly relying on YouTube as a medium for dissemination, the analysis of which calls for human coding at a scale that most watchdogs cannot presently muster. In advance of the November elections, Taiwanese society remains deeply polarized. Research by Huang Chi and Kuo Tzu-Ching fascinatingly uncovers that, while Taiwanese voters do not in reality differ much in their policy preferences regarding cross-Strait relations, they crucially perceive opposition party voters to hold vastly different attitudes. This form of polarization is arguably more dangerous, as it renders voters unable to contemplate an opposition party government and illustrates the success of disinformation in obscuring truth. Observers are anticipating whether Chinese actors will perpetuate a polarization strategy before the election or break in favor of a Taiwanese candidate who advocates China-friendly policies.

Taiwanese civil society has not shied from Chinese internet interference and has initiated a wide set of counter-initiatives in advance of the local election. Doublethink Lab has established a monitoring hub using AI and human arbiters to detect Chinese information operations before they reach the mainstream and will publish analyses of new Chinese disinformation strategies. Cofacts, MyGoPen, and the Taiwan Factcheck Center have built factcheck tools that tag disinformation as it moves through the internet. The civil society groups Fake News Cleanser and Kuma Academy run workshops to train citizens in media literacy and detecting manipulated information. While these groups offer an obstacle to Chinese interference, they also signal how deeply consolidated Taiwanese democracy has become. Furthermore, they fill a role that the government cannot: the arbitration of truth against falsehood. If disinformation can be overcome through civic activism, a problem that has so far confounded democracy can be solved in the most democratic of ways. In doing so, Taiwan can become a model for an entire digitized world battling disinformation.

Creative Commons: Some rights reserved.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.

View License Detail

Ben Sando is a research fellow at Doublethink Lab and an Asian studies MA student at Georgetown University.

cfr.org · by Lindsay Maizland

12. Vladimir Putin Now Stands Alone

Vladimir Putin Now Stands Alone

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Kelly · October 4, 2022

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed through the annexation of invaded territories in Ukraine. These territories are not fully conquered. Indeed, a short time after Putin’s announcement, the Ukrainians recaptured Lyman, a city Russia claims it annexed.

Most countries will not recognize Russia’s moves. Even China, Russia’s shadow ally in the war, will likely avoid directly supporting the annexations. Indeed, Putin’s priority may not even be the land he has grabbed, but rather its utility in providing a pretext to further escalate a war that now threatens his regime — and even his personal survival.

The Sovereignty Principle

Russia’s friends hesitate to back Putin’s territorial claims because of the terrible precedent the annexation sets. If one state can redraw its borders by force, there is little to stop others from considering the same. Most leaders are cautious and oriented toward the status quo. The list of revolutionary imperialists willing to claim neighboring territory by force at any given time tends to be short — Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin are examples. Conflict is inherently risky and destructive, and few states or leaders want a global norm that allows for war as a common tool to set national grievances right. States generally agree to respect each other’s sovereignty, if only for the reciprocal benefits: By guaranteeing your safety through non-aggression, I guarantee my own as well.

Putin’s move is further unnerving because Russia is a large, powerful state — or so we thought until February. Putin’s logic, therefore, is the rule of the strong: World politics is a jungle, and the strong can force their will on the weak. That sort of unconstrained anarchy, where large states bully and dominate small ones, benefits only the great powers. If only because they fear the precedent Putin is setting for their own safety, most small states in the world will reject Putin’s logic and will reject his annexations. Putin will be isolated.

In short, few countries will be comfortable with these annexations. Small countries will oppose the move because they benefit from the basic reciprocal respect of sovereignty that has characterized international politics since World War II. Countries with territorial disputes will fear the idea that force could legitimately solve those disputes. And liberal states that have long ceased to use force against each other will reject the rollback of the non-aggression principle.

Few Examples of Annexation

It is hard to find modern examples of annexation. So uncomfortable does it make most of the world – both dictatorships and democracies, big and small states – that even countries involved in longstanding territorial disputes are loath to openly use force to solve them.

The most obvious example is China. The parallels between China’s claims on Taiwan and Russia’s claims on Ukraine are well established by now. Russia is a large autocracy near a small democracy against which it makes capacious territorial claims. So is China.

Sensing the global anxiety about the norm against conquest, Putin initially tried to pretend that Ukraine did not exist as a separate country. So the invasion was a “special military operation,” not a war. Only after Ukraine fought off a quick conquest did Putin resort to talk of annexation.

This is a clear breakpoint with China. Beijing has long framed its claims on Taiwan within the language of the sovereignty norm. Taiwan is a rogue province, Beijing claims — it is an integral part of China, and its leaders are “splittists.” So long as Putin could package his claims on Ukraine in similarly deceptive but norm-abiding language, China could support the Kremlin’s war. But Ukraine’s intense resistance and the ensuing protracted war have ended the fiction that Russia abides by norms of sovereignty. So Putin dropped the pretense and openly annexed new areas. China will never talk this way, and this move will almost certainly widen the gap between Beijing and Moscow over the war.

Democracies too have acted cautiously in this area since World War II. U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq never had declared territorial claims, and U.S. intent was always to leave proxies in charge and withdraw early. Israel has picked up substantial territorial gains in its various conflicts over the years, and its annexations (of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem) have been deeply contentious and are generally unrecognized.

In short, Putin is mostly alone in this venture. The only states likely to recognize these annexations are rogue regimes such as North Korea. The democracies will never consent, just as they refused to recognize Putin’s snatching of Crimea in 2014. Even China will be wary of openly violating a core norm that it uses to justify its claim to Taiwan. Putin himself likely knows this. His claims are designed to stir up support for the war at home by portraying the fighting in Ukraine as an attack on Russia itself.

Expert Biography: Dr. Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly; RoberEdwinKelly.com) is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University and 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Kelly · October 4, 2022

13. The Downside of Imperial Collapse

Powerful analysis from Robert Kaplan.

Excerpts:

Were any or all of today’s great powers to dramatically weaken, confusion and disorder would increase inside their borders and around the world. A weakened or embattled United States would be less able to support its allies in Europe and Asia. Were the Kremlin’s regime to wobble because of factors stemming from the Ukraine war, Russia, which is institutionally weaker than China, could become a low-calorie version of the former Yugoslavia, unable to control its historic territories in the Caucasus, Siberia, and East Asia. Economic or political turmoil in China could unleash regional unrest within the country and also embolden India and North Korea, whose policies are inherently constrained by Beijing.

...

The United States is a democracy, so its problems are more transparent. But that does not necessarily make them less acute. The fact is that as the federal deficit climbs upward toward insupportable levels, the very process of globalization has split Americans into warring halves: those swept up into the values of a new, worldwide cosmopolitan civilization and those rejecting it for the sake of a more traditional and religious nationalism. Half of the United States has escaped from its continental geography while the other half is anchored to it. Oceans are increasingly less of a factor in walling off the United States from the rest of the world, which for over 200 years helped provide for the country’s communal cohesion. The United States was a well-functioning mass democracy in the print-and-typewriter age but is much less of a success in the digital era, whose innovations fed the populist rage that led to the rise of Donald Trump.

...

Alas, the United States is destined to be embroiled in foreign crises, some of which will have a military component. That is the very nature of this increasingly populous and interlocked, claustrophobic world. Again, the key concept is to always think tragically: that is, to contemplate worst-case scenarios for every crisis, while still not allowing oneself to be immobilized into general inaction. It is more an art and a brilliant intuition than a science. Yet that is how great powers have always survived.

Empires can end abruptly, and when they do, chaos and instability ensues. It’s probably too late for Russia to avoid this fate. China might pull it off, but it will be difficult. The United States is still the best positioned of the three, but the longer it waits to adopt a more tragic and realistic shift in its approach, the worse the odds will get. A grand strategy of limits is crucial. Let’s hope it begins now, with the Biden administration’s war policy in Ukraine

The Downside of Imperial Collapse

When Empires or Great Powers Fall, Chaos and War Rise

By Robert D. Kaplan

October 4, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Robert D. Kaplan · October 4, 2022

Wars are historical hinges. And misbegotten wars, when serving as culmination points of more general national decline, can be fatal. This is particularly true for empires. The Habsburg empire, which ruled over central Europe for hundreds of years, might have lingered despite decades of decay were it not for its defeat in World War I. The same is true of the Ottoman Empire, which since the mid-nineteenth century was referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” As it happened, the Ottoman Empire, like the Habsburg one, might have struggled on for decades, and even re-formed, were it not for also being on the losing side in World War I.

But the aftershocks of such imperial comeuppance should never be underestimated or celebrated. Empires form out of chaos, and imperial collapse often leaves chaos in its wake. The more monoethnic states that arose from the ashes of the multiethnic Habsburg and Ottoman empires often proved to be radical and unstable. This is because ethnic and sectarian groups and their particular grievances, which had been assuaged under common imperial umbrellas, were suddenly on their own and pitted against one another. Nazism, and fascism in general, influenced murderous states and factions in the post-Habsburg and post-Ottoman Balkans, as well as Arab intellectuals studying in Europe who brought these ideas back to their newly independent postcolonial homelands, where they helped shape the disastrous ideology of Baathism. Winston Churchill speculated at the end of World War II that had the imperial monarchies in Germany, Austria, and elsewhere not been swept away at the peace table in Versailles, “there would have been no Hitler.”

The twentieth century was largely shaped by the collapse of dynastic empires in the early decades and by consequent war and geopolitical upheaval in the later decades. Empire is much disparaged by intellectuals, yet imperial decline can bring on even greater problems. The Middle East, for example, has still not found an adequate solution to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as evidenced by its bloody vicissitudes over the past hundred years.

All this should be kept in mind when considering the vulnerability of China, Russia, and the United States today. These great powers may be even more fragile than they seem. The anxious foresight required for avoiding policy catastrophes—that is, the ability to think tragically in order to avoid tragedy—has either been insufficiently developed or nowhere in evidence in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. So far, both Russia and the United States have initiated self-destructive wars: Russia in Ukraine and the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. As for China, its obsession with the conquest of Taiwan could lead to self-destruction. All three great powers have in recent years and decades clearly demonstrated bouts of uncommonly bad judgment when it comes to their long-term survival.

Were any or all of today’s great powers to dramatically weaken, confusion and disorder would increase inside their borders and around the world. A weakened or embattled United States would be less able to support its allies in Europe and Asia. Were the Kremlin’s regime to wobble because of factors stemming from the Ukraine war, Russia, which is institutionally weaker than China, could become a low-calorie version of the former Yugoslavia, unable to control its historic territories in the Caucasus, Siberia, and East Asia. Economic or political turmoil in China could unleash regional unrest within the country and also embolden India and North Korea, whose policies are inherently constrained by Beijing.

SHAKY GROUND

Today’s great powers are not empires. But Russia and China bear the traces of their imperial heritage. The Kremlin’s war in Ukraine is rooted in impulses that existed in both the Russian and the Soviet empires, and China’s aggressive intentions toward Taiwan echo the Qing dynasty’s quest for hegemony in Asia. The United States has never formally identified as an empire. But westward expansion in North America and occasional overseas territorial conquests gave the United States an imperial flavor in the nineteenth century, and in the postwar era it has enjoyed a level of global dominance previously known only to empires.

Today, all three of these great powers face uncertain futures, in which collapse or some degree of disintegration cannot be ruled out. The suite of problems is different for each, but the challenges confronting each country are fundamental to that power’s very existence. Russia faces the most immediate risk. Even if it somehow prevails in the war in Ukraine, Russia will have to confront the economic disaster of being decoupled from the EU and the G-7 economies unless there is a genuine peace, which now appears unlikely. Russia may already be the sick man of Eurasia, as the Ottoman Empire was of Europe.

As for China, its annual economic growth has been slowing from double digits down to single digits, and it may soon reach low single digits. Capital has fled the country, with foreign investors selling many billions of dollars in Chinese bonds and billions more in Chinese stocks. At the same time that China’s economy has matured and investment from abroad has diminished, its population has aged and its workforce has shrunk. All this does not augur well for future internal stability. Kevin Rudd, the president of the Asia Society and former Australian prime minister, has noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping, through his statist and strict communist policies, “has begun strangling the goose that, for 35 years, has laid the golden egg.” These stark economic realities, by undermining the standard of living for the average Chinese citizen, can threaten the social peace and implicit support for the communist system. Authoritarian regimes, while they present the aura of serenity, may always be rotting from within.

Empires form out of chaos, and imperial collapse often leaves chaos in its wake.

The United States is a democracy, so its problems are more transparent. But that does not necessarily make them less acute. The fact is that as the federal deficit climbs upward toward insupportable levels, the very process of globalization has split Americans into warring halves: those swept up into the values of a new, worldwide cosmopolitan civilization and those rejecting it for the sake of a more traditional and religious nationalism. Half of the United States has escaped from its continental geography while the other half is anchored to it. Oceans are increasingly less of a factor in walling off the United States from the rest of the world, which for over 200 years helped provide for the country’s communal cohesion. The United States was a well-functioning mass democracy in the print-and-typewriter age but is much less of a success in the digital era, whose innovations fed the populist rage that led to the rise of Donald Trump.

Owing to these shifts, a new global power configuration is likely taking shape. In one scenario, Russia declines precipitously because of its misbegotten war, China finds it too difficult to achieve sustained economic and technological power under a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that increasingly reverts to orthodox Leninism, and the United States overcomes its domestic turmoil and eventually reemerges, as it did immediately after the Cold War, as a unipolar power. Another possibility is a truly bipolar world in which China maintains its economic dynamism even as it becomes more authoritarian. A third possibility is the gradual decline of all three powers, leading to a greater degree of anarchy in the international system, with middle-level powers, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, even less restrained than they already are, and European states unable to agree on much in the absence of strong American leadership, even as the continent is threatened by a chaotic post-Putin Russia on its frontier.

Which scenario emerges will depend to a great deal on the outcome of military contests. The world is witnessing what a major land war in eastern Europe is doing to Russia’s prospects and reputation as a great power. Ukraine has exposed Russia’s war machine as distinctly belonging to the developing world: prone to indiscipline, desertions, and poor to nonexistent logistics, with an exceedingly weak corps of noncommissioned officers. Like the war in Ukraine, a sophisticated naval, cyber, and missile conflict in Taiwan or in the South China Sea or the East China Sea would be easier to start than to end. For example, what would be the strategic aim of the United States once such military hostilities started in earnest: the end of CCP rule in China? If so, how would Washington respond to the resulting chaos? The United States has barely begun to think through these questions. War, as Washington learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a Pandora’s box.

SURVIVAL STRATEGY

No great power lasts forever. But perhaps the most impressive example of endurance is the Byzantine Empire, which lasted from AD 330 to the conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, only to recover and survive until a final Ottoman victory in 1453. This is doubly impressive when one considers that Byzantium had a more difficult geography and stronger enemies, and consequently greater vulnerabilities, than Rome did in the West. The historian Edward Luttwak has argued that Byzantium “relied less on military strength and more on all forms of persuasion—to recruit allies, dissuade enemies, and induce potential enemies to attack one another.” Moreover, when they did fight, Luttwak notes, “the Byzantines were less inclined to destroy enemies than to contain them, both to conserve their strength and because they knew that today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s ally.”

In other words, it is not just a matter of avoiding major war whenever possible but also a matter of not being overtly ideological, so as to be able to consider today’s enemy tomorrow’s friend, even if it has a political system different from one’s own. That has not been easy for the United States to do, given that it sees itself as a missionary power committed to spreading democracy. The Byzantines wrote an amoral flexibility into their system, despite its putative religiosity—a realistic approach that has become more difficult to accomplish in the United States, partly owing to the power of a sanctimonious media establishment. Influential figures in the American media incessantly call on Washington to promote and sometimes even enforce democracy and human rights worldwide, even when doing so harms U.S. geopolitical interests. In addition to the media, there is the foreign policy establishment itself, which, as the 2011 U.S. military intervention in Libya pointedly demonstrated, did not fully learn the lessons of the collapse of Iraq and what was even back then the ongoing intractability of Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the Biden administration’s relatively measured response in Ukraine—inserting no U.S. troops and informally advising the Ukrainians not to expand their war into Russian territory—may mark a turning point. Indeed, the less missionary the United States is in its approach the more likely it is to avoid disastrous wars. Of course, the United States does not have to go quite as far as authoritarian China, which delivers no moral lectures to other governments and societies, gladly dealing with regimes whose values differ from Beijing’s when doing so gives China an economic and geopolitical advantage.

War, as Washington learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a Pandora’s box.

A more restrained U.S. foreign policy might be the recipe for the long-term survival of American power. “Offshore balancing” would at first glance serve as Washington’s guiding strategy: “Instead of policing the world, the United States would encourage other countries to take the lead in checking rising powers, intervening itself only when necessary,” as the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt put it in Foreign Affairs in 2016. The problem with that approach, however, is that the world is so fluid and interconnected, with crises in one part of the globe migrating to other parts, that restraint may simply not be practical. Offshore balancing might be simply too restrictive and mechanical. Isolationism thrived in an age when ships were the only way to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and took days to do so. Presently, an avowed policy of restraint might only telegraph weakness and uncertainty.

Alas, the United States is destined to be embroiled in foreign crises, some of which will have a military component. That is the very nature of this increasingly populous and interlocked, claustrophobic world. Again, the key concept is to always think tragically: that is, to contemplate worst-case scenarios for every crisis, while still not allowing oneself to be immobilized into general inaction. It is more an art and a brilliant intuition than a science. Yet that is how great powers have always survived.

Empires can end abruptly, and when they do, chaos and instability ensues. It’s probably too late for Russia to avoid this fate. China might pull it off, but it will be difficult. The United States is still the best positioned of the three, but the longer it waits to adopt a more tragic and realistic shift in its approach, the worse the odds will get. A grand strategy of limits is crucial. Let’s hope it begins now, with the Biden administration’s war policy in Ukraine.

• ROBERT D. KAPLAN holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power.

Foreign Affairs · by Robert D. Kaplan · October 4, 2022

14. A Fresh Look at Civic Duty by Walter Pincus

Excerpts:

While writing this column, I recall that back in August 2020, after a three-year study, a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, appointed by then-President Trump and Congressional leaders, released a report that projected by 2031, the 70th anniversary of President Kennedy’s call for Americans to serve their Nation, “more than enough qualified individuals will seek to serve in the Armed Forces, minimizing the need for traditional military recruiting.”

The Commission also found that “22 percent of American adults cannot name any of the three branches of government,” and therefore the country should undertake “widespread and effective civic education” to foster “a culture of service in which Americans can identify how their own strengths, skills, and interests could contribute to the public good by addressing needs in their communities and Nation.”

At that time, the Commission said, “Nearly 24 million individuals participate in some form of military, national, or public service to meet critical national needs—security, disaster response, education, conservation, health care, housing, and more…But in a country of 329 million, imagine what more could be done if significantly more people were inspired and able to answer the call to serve.”

Perhaps more of the roughly 25 million 16-to-21-year-olds, ineligible for the military, could be encouraged to do national service in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps or other institutions at the state or local government levels – thus doing more as American citizens than just paying taxes.

A Fresh Look at Civic Duty

thecipherbrief.com

Fine Print

October 4th, 2022 by Walter Pincus, |

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.

View all articles by Walter Pincus

OPINION — While there has been much attention paid to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s difficulty raising his 300,000 new conscripts, there’s been little public discussion about the problems the Defense Department is having in getting its own new recruits.

While all services in fiscal 2022, raised 177,000 men and women, the U.S. Army fell 15,000 short of its fiscal 2022 goal of 60,000 new soldiers, even though America’s service personnel are not today engaged in major fighting as is Moscow’s struggling army.

The U.S. Navy met its 2022 goal for new active-duty sailors but will fall short of Navy Reserve enlistments as well as its goals for active and Reserve officers. The Air Force too, hit its 26,000-person recruitment goal for this year, but also fell short when it came to its Reserve components.

The Marine Corps made its goal by slightly lowering its recruitment goal midyear. However, by increasing its retention of retirees, the Corps was able stay close to its original personnel goal.

Some of the Pentagon’s problems were laid out in a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing back on September 21, but the situation deserves a broader discussion.

“Our shortfall constitutes an unprecedented mission gap and is reason for concern for the greater state of national service,” Stephanie Miller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy, told the subcommittee. “Recruiting shortfalls are not merely a DoD issue, but a national one.”

One stunning figure brought out in the hearing by Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, was that “currently, only 23 percent of 17-to-24-year-old Americans are fully qualified to serve,” with the “top disqualifiers for service [being] obesity, addiction, conduct, test scores, medical and behavioral health conditions.”

The Pentagon has said that of those 31.8 million U.S. 17-to-24-year-olds, only about 9.1 million meet the basic physical requirements and of those, only some 4.4 million have the minimal academic requirements to enlist.

The Cipher Brief hosts expert-level briefings on national security issues for Subscriber+Members that help provide context around today’s national security issues and what they mean for business. Upgrade your status to Subscriber+ today.

Just five years ago, according to 2017 Pentagon data, 29 percent were eligible to serve and that was considered an alarming situation and dangerous for the country’s fundamental national security. Now, those eligible for service has dropped by six percent in just five years, making the pool for recruits that much smaller.

Looking to the future, Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel, and Services, told the Senators, “One major concern is that the current youth market is increasingly disconnected and unfamiliar with the military, resulting in fewer youth interested or planning to join.”

“Today,” Miller added, “only one of 11 eligible individuals in the 17-to-24-year-old range has a propensity to serve.”

Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas Jr., commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service, told The New York Times last July, “There are just lower levels of trust with the U.S. government and the military.” In 2021, the annual Reagan National Defense Survey, conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, found that just 45% of Americans had a great deal of trust and confidence in the military, down 25 points since 2018.

The post-Trump era, with the questioning of our election process, the increased claims of fake news, the growing partisan nature of our politics and challenges to institutions all are having an effect on the youth needed for our professional military.

A DoD Fall 2021 poll of youth aged 16-to-21, released last August, showed that only 11 percent of those males and eight percent of females thought they would definitely or probably serve in the military. Highest among those polled, 17 percent of African-Americans, who put themselves in the definitely/probably category.

Overall, only one percent of the entire group thought they “definitely” would be in military service. Ironically, 31 percent of those polled thought they would be ineligible for service, whereas the real number was closer to 80 percent.

Among Americans surveyed by the Pentagon who were in the target age range for recruiting, only 13% had parents who had served in the military, down from approximately 40% in 1995. Military recruiters consider parents one of the biggest influencers for service.

DoD survey data showed 52% of all parents do not recommend military service to their children.

However, another poll filed with the Senate Armed Services subcommittee by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, conducted by the National Military Family Association, showed that 44 percent of “military teens,” children of those in service, intended to serve as against the nine percent of the general 16-to-21 in the general population.

That could indicate that the U.S. may be developing a military tradition in certain families. Back in 2020, research showed that the U.S. military was becoming more and more of a family business, with the majority of recruits following in a close relative’s footsteps, according to an article in Military Times.

However, even that category is dropping.

The non-profit Military Family Advisory Network’s 2021 Support Programming Survey, which involved 8,638 active-duty members, retirees, dependents and veterans, found that, “while 63% of those surveyed would recommend military life to someone considering it, that number was down from 75% in 2019.” The survey also found that “enlisted families were significantly less likely to recommend military life to someone who was considering it and officer families were significantly more likely to recommend military life.”

Another statistic worth considering is the drop in applications to the service academies. The Air Force Academy had 8,393 people apply this past year, a 28% drop from the year before. The Naval Academy at Annapolis saw a 20% application drop for its class of 2026, and West Point, with 12,589 applications had a 10 percent drop from last year.

Some officials cited COVID-19 restrictions as limiting in-person military recruiting for the academies, but some officials said they are competing with other colleges and universities for the same students.

That DoD Fall 2021 poll of youth aged 16-to-21, referred to previously, asked the question, “What would be the main reason(s) why you would NOT consider joining the U.S. Military?”

The top two reasons given by over 60 percent of the respondents were “possibility of physical injury/death,” and “possibility of PTSD or other emotional/psychological issues.”

Asked, “If you were to consider joining the U.S. military, what would be the main

reason(s)?” 58 percent answered “Pay/money,” and 48 percent said, “To pay for future education.”

The military services have recognized that money has become the main motivation to join and have responded with various levels of bonuses.

The Army, last June, facing a recruitment deficit, upped by $10,000 its existing $25,000 “quick ship” bonus to new enlistees who signed a four-year contract and agreed to begin basic training within 45 days. On top of that, if the recruit has other skills, he or she could get up to $50,000 in additional bonuses.

Last spring and summer, the Air Force increased its bonus programs by $22 million and added seven new career fields that drew bonuses of from $3,000 to $6,000 depending on the length of service. Those bonus increases drew 2,200 new recruits, Lt. Gen. Miller told the subcommittee.

The Air Force version of the “quick ship” bonus — another $8,000 if a basic training vacancy existed and the individual shipped out within five days or less – drew another 320 enlistees, Miller said.

All services have cyber and IT (information technology) bonuses with the Air Force, for example, offering from $12,000 to $20,000 to enlistees depending on the recruit’s highest level of certification.

In addition to the current enlistment bonuses available, each service has recognized the desire for future education as a recruitment tool.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill provides up to 36 months of education benefits, including full tuition and fees, a housing allowance, and $1,000 per year for books. In addition, active-duty Army personnel, for example, have access to the Tuition Assistance program which provides soldiers up to $4,000 per year to attend civilian education programs.

What about joining as a citizenship duty or old-fashioned patriotism?

DoD’s Fall 2021 poll of youth did not include patriotic duty as a published reason to join, but showed that 37 percent picked “to help others” as a reason to enlist, while 25 percent chose to “make a positive difference in my community.”

While writing this column, I recall that back in August 2020, after a three-year study, a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, appointed by then-President Trump and Congressional leaders, released a report that projected by 2031, the 70th anniversary of President Kennedy’s call for Americans to serve their Nation, “more than enough qualified individuals will seek to serve in the Armed Forces, minimizing the need for traditional military recruiting.”

The Commission also found that “22 percent of American adults cannot name any of the three branches of government,” and therefore the country should undertake “widespread and effective civic education” to foster “a culture of service in which Americans can identify how their own strengths, skills, and interests could contribute to the public good by addressing needs in their communities and Nation.”

At that time, the Commission said, “Nearly 24 million individuals participate in some form of military, national, or public service to meet critical national needs—security, disaster response, education, conservation, health care, housing, and more…But in a country of 329 million, imagine what more could be done if significantly more people were inspired and able to answer the call to serve.”

Perhaps more of the roughly 25 million 16-to-21-year-olds, ineligible for the military, could be encouraged to do national service in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps or other institutions at the state or local government levels – thus doing more as American citizens than just paying taxes.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

15. Just How Long Should the US Send Aid to Ukraine?

Excerpts:

Over the coming years, Ukraine will need to train hundreds of thousands to replace its losses, generate new formations, and retrain existing units to use new equipment and hone tactics necessary for the next phases of the war, such as the integration of infantry, armor, artillery, and air support for offensive operations. Ukraine’s ability to spare personnel for such training, not U.S. and ally capacity, should be the only limiting factor in the pace and scale of training.

A policy of long-term assistance to Ukraine would have other benefits beyond creating a first-class military that secures the country’s future and serves as a key partner for the United States. It would signal to Russia that it cannot outlast the West’s support and put to rest doubts about the reliability of the United States as a military partner following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It would support a badly needed expansion of the U.S. defense industrial base as the war has shown the importance of production capacity in a time of potential great power conflict. But political leaders in Washington on both sides of the aisle must make the case to the public, approve the necessary funding, and execute a well-designed plan.

Just How Long Should the US Send Aid to Ukraine?

History can help us understand whether Kyiv’s situation better resembles Afghanistan or Colombia.

defenseone.com · by Erik Swabb

It is fair to ask how long the United States should provide large-scale military support to Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion in February, Washington has committed more than $16.9 billion in security assistance. The Biden administration has pledged to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes” and is taking steps to provide longer-term assistance.

U.S. taxpayers, however, are facing high inflation and the prospect of further economic contraction. The United States also has a poor record of recent military aid. Despite more than $80 billion of U.S. support over two decades, Afghanistan’s forces collapsed as the Taliban swept into Kabul last year. Should future U.S. assistance be measured in months, or at most a few years, especially if Ukraine is no longer in danger of being overrun by Russia?

The short answer is no. If the United States provides long-term assistance—likely for more than 10 years, not only could Ukraine secure its future against a revanchist Russia, Washington could gain a first-rate military partner. Because of its legitimate government, capable leaders, level of socio-economic development, highly motivated public, and combat experience, among other factors, Ukraine has a strong foundation on which to build. As a result, U.S. support could have an exponential impact on Ukrainian military capabilities. The United States would be a major beneficiary, allowing U.S. forces to focus on potential conflicts outside of Europe over the coming years.

Recent history is illustrative. In Afghanistan, U.S. efforts to create a proficient military were akin to building on quicksand. The Afghan government lacked popular legitimacy. Pervasive corruption and cronyism deprived units of good leadership, manpower, and material. Afghanistan’s underdevelopment, including widespread illiteracy, compounded these problems, making training and maintaining equipment all the more difficult. The result was demoralized, ill-equipped troops in much of the force. It is no surprise that many soldiers did not fight during the decisive Taliban drive on the capital.

In contrast, U.S. support for Colombia in the 2000s was critical in transforming its armed forces into the most capable military in Latin America. With bipartisan support, the United States provided $10 billion of security assistance for over a decade and enabled Colombia to defeat the FARC insurgency there. Today, Colombia is the leading U.S. partner in South America and a source of stability in the region. However, this outcome was only possible because Colombia had a legitimate democratic government, skilled leaders, and a substantial level of development. This foundation allowed Colombia to absorb, use, and sustain the training and equipment Washington provided.

If Afghanistan is at one end of the spectrum and Colombia is at the other, Ukraine clearly falls toward the latter. While Ukraine has faced governance and corruption challenges, it has a democratically-elected government with public legitimacy and capable civilian and military leaders. Ukraine’s level of socioeconomic development is also relatively high with strong industries and vibrant civil society. Ukraine’s population—over 40 million—is one of the largest in Europe and has mobilized to join and support the military. Ukrainian troops have also gained invaluable combat experience in a highly kinetic conventional war—experience that even many U.S. troops do not have. However, for Ukraine to build a first-rate military, U.S. support to Ukraine must last years.

Ukraine has to replace much of its Soviet-era military armaments with Western weaponry—a lengthy process. Ukraine’s equipment and ammunition are being destroyed, damaged, and expended at unsustainable rates. Ukraine has limited stocks and production capability and using captured Russian weapons is not sufficient. Ukraine’s neighbors are providing their old Soviet-era equipment, but those supplies are also running out.

Ukraine will need substantial quantities of Western arms in the long term. Unlike Soviet-era equipment, the United States and its allies can produce and sustain these weapons, which have shown their effectiveness on the battlefield. However, meeting this new demand will likely take years. The United States and its allies have already drawn down their own limited stockpiles to support Ukraine and cannot quickly increase production. These countries must award new contracts, boost production capacity, and manufacture significant quantities.

While Kyiv and its supporters must decide how best to equip the Ukrainian military going forward, developing and executing a long-term plan are vital. To expand production lines, private industry must make major investments, which only make sense if there will be enough demand years into the future. Executing a plan will also help the United States and its allies reduce the different types of systems provided to Ukraine. Ukraine is currently receiving a variety of Western arms. As each system has different training, logistics, and maintenance requirements, Western support is less efficient and effective than it should be.

Equipping the Ukrainian military with Western weapons will also require a long-term effort to enable Ukraine to sustain them. In Colombia and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, the United States used large numbers of U.S. contractors to maintain equipment. While the war rages in Ukraine, this is not an option given concerns over the risk of a U.S.-Russia conflict. Moreover, due to Ukraine’s size, it is not feasible to transport significant quantities of Western equipment to nearby countries for repair. As a result, the United States and its allies must train significant numbers of Ukrainians to maintain the equipment. Building the necessary expertise in Ukraine will take time.

The United States and its allies will also need to increase the training of Ukrainian troops. Efforts are underway. For example, British forces are training in the UK up to 10,000 new recruits for several weeks. However, a long-term program that trains many more soldiers is necessary. At the outset of Russia’s invasion in February, Ukraine total active armed forces reportedly numbered about 200,000. In addition, thousands of volunteers joined with minimal training. Since the invasion in February, Ukrainian forces have suffered heavy casualties. The Ukrainian government has said 100 to 200 of its troops are being killed every day. The frontline is also over 1,000 miles, requiring the deployment of many troops.

Over the coming years, Ukraine will need to train hundreds of thousands to replace its losses, generate new formations, and retrain existing units to use new equipment and hone tactics necessary for the next phases of the war, such as the integration of infantry, armor, artillery, and air support for offensive operations. Ukraine’s ability to spare personnel for such training, not U.S. and ally capacity, should be the only limiting factor in the pace and scale of training.

A policy of long-term assistance to Ukraine would have other benefits beyond creating a first-class military that secures the country’s future and serves as a key partner for the United States. It would signal to Russia that it cannot outlast the West’s support and put to rest doubts about the reliability of the United States as a military partner following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It would support a badly needed expansion of the U.S. defense industrial base as the war has shown the importance of production capacity in a time of potential great power conflict. But political leaders in Washington on both sides of the aisle must make the case to the public, approve the necessary funding, and execute a well-designed plan.

Erik Swabb served as a U.S. Marine infantry officer in Iraq, in the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia, and as General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

defenseone.com · by Erik Swabb

16. Violence Committed Abroad in Our Name

Conclusion:

Our society got pretty good at shutting the post-9/11 wars out of our daily lives. But they still belong to all of us, despite the selective memory of a distracted citizenry that imagines itself as perpetually innocent. The hogtied corpse of war remains with us and within us, impossible to forget but difficult to remember, and central to our national identity.

Violence Committed Abroad in Our Name - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Dewaine Farria · October 4, 2022

Christopher Lyke, The Chicago East India Company (Double Dagger Books, 2022).

My sole unequivocally proud memory of America’s post-9/11 wars occurred in Bossaso — a city in Somalia’s Puntland region that hosts a mid-sized United Nations humanitarian, development, and political presence. Next to the port city’s sand-covered runway back in January 2012, to be precise; kicking rocks between thorn bushes and termite mounds with a gaggle of other U.N. and non-governmental aid personnel, waiting for our plane to be refueled.

Back then, most of the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service Somalia crews hailed from the former Soviet Union, and the gnarled Uzbeks and puffy-faced Belarusians would always get a kick out of the six-foot-two, tattooed Black American prattling away in poorly accented Russian.

“Your Navy SEALs rescued those two in Galkayo,” the Ukrainian pilot informed me. In Russian the word for “seals” is “морские котики.” But without the adjective, “котики” is also the word for kittens. So, it took me a second to figure out what the pilot meant.

Become a Member

In Somali, “Galkayo” translates as, “the place where the white man fled.” Where Sayid Mohamed Abdullah Hassan’s dervish army outwitted the British for the first two decades of the twentieth century, scoffing at the westerners’ aircraft and Maxim guns. The British referred to him as the “Mad Mullah,” a nom de guerre earned in equal parts by daredevil combat antics and brazen, often outrageous, claims of soldierly prowess and divine favor. Sayid boasted that he could transform bullets into water and overhear what men said 75 miles away. He proposed that the Royal Navy’s searchlights in the Gulf of Aden were actually the eyes of Allah come to bless him. He frequently wrote to his foes, addressing one of his many poems to Richard Corfield, the officer who commanded the Somali protectorate on the fringes of the British empire. Sayid instructed Corfield to explain to God’s helpers how, “his eyes stiffened with horror as spear butts hit his mouth, silencing his soft words.”

A century later, some of the Mad Mullah’s relatives had transformed Galkayo into the region’s unofficial pirate capital. A dangerous city of whitewashed buildings and dirt roads split along its east-west axis by the Darood and Hawiye clans, whose perpetual violent feud seemed driven as much by habit as legitimate grievances. But the Darood and Hawiye clan elders could at least agree on one thing: the young, upstart pirates were a pain in the ass. Drawing negative international attention, sparking inflation by carelessly spending millions of dollars in ransom money, and generally transforming Galkayo into the Lord of the Flies with Kalashnikovs.

In October 2011, one of Galkayo’s pirate gangs kidnapped two Danish Refugee Council workers — Jessica Buchanan (an American) and Poul Thisted (a Dane) — on their way to Galkayo’s airport. I didn’t know Jessica and Poul, but most of the Puntland crowd did, and almost all the international aid community for Somalia — including me — had braced themselves during the harrowing drive from the U.N. compound in Galkayo to the airport.

I didn’t read the full account of the rescue until later that day in Garowe, where I was slated to teach a first-aid course, before returning to my duty station in Mogadishu. On the night of Jan. 24, the same SEAL team that carried out the Bin Laden operation parachuted into an area just south of Galkayo, surrounding the camp where the two aid workers were being held. Killing at least eight of the kidnappers, the SEALs freed the two hostage aid workers and took no causalities: the stuff of Tom Clancy novels.

On the runway in Bossaso, I translated what I understood of the rescue for my fellow passengers, and we all cheered. I’m talking do-gooder Canadians and Swedes here, whooping for an American military operation at the top of their lungs. This wasn’t the jubilant crowd escaping Somalia for Tusker beers and rest and relaxation in Nairobi either. Many of us were hungover, returning to our duty stations after Christmas and New Year’s leave, and all bracing to re-board a crop-duster that felt like sitting amidst thousands of metal bits and pieces that just happened to be hurtling through the air in the same direction.

I cheered along with everyone else. That’s a special feeling, isn’t it? Everybody cheering for the same thing, for the same reasons. Hands down, it was the best memory I associate with the messy business of my country’s forever war — a conflict unrestrained by borders, but date-bracketed by the event we vowed to never forget on one end and on the other by the withdrawal from a country that many of us struggled to remember we were fighting in at all.

Reading the fiction inspired by the “Global War on Terror,” I am reminded of how much the battle over the memory of America’s post-9/11 wars is still in its infancy. Like a lot of Americans, I’m often tempted to pretend to not have a dog in this fight. After all, I spent most of the two decades between the attacks on 9/11 and the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a U.N. field security officer. But despite the striking lack of public engagement in our recent wars, all Americans remain complicit in our use of lethal force abroad. If there’s one unifying principle to the novels and short stories that make up this body of work, it’s the scream — the desperate, banshee howl — for Americans to pay attention to the violence committed abroad in our name.

***

In The Chicago East India Company, Christopher Lyke’s narrator trudges through the hallways of Chicago’s public school system into late middle age, struggling to understand what his military service in Afghanistan meant for himself, his community, and his country. In the tradition of linked short narratives of war that stretch from Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry, through Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, to Matt Young’s Eat the Apple, violence and brutality mingle with a surreal, sometimes poetic beauty in Lyke’s collection:

The bullet entered Eugene’s face in the lower left cheekbone. The hole was small and there wasn’t a ton of blood at first. The bullet tumbled through his head in a tenth of a second and made a smacking, popping noise when it came out the left side of the back, near where the spine joins the skull. He fell as though someone pulled all of the bones from his body.

Like his narrator, Chris Lyke spent some of the darkest years of the global war on terror as an infantry platoon sergeant in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, followed by a career as a public-school teacher in Chicago. The refreshing inclusion of a story set in the occupied Ogaden region marks The Chicago East India Company as one of the few works of American war literature to contend with the war on terror’s impact on East Africa. Like all great war stories, these overlay fact and fiction in a way that enhances rather than hinders the truth — and the truths The Chicago East India Company speaks are hard ones. Whether these be the hard truths of unit cohesion in “the Eskimo,”

…some part of me actually wanted something to happen to Lunt. Nothing that needed a tourniquet, but something that would shock him back to the squad and the mountain.

Or the hard truth about the racism of reduced expectations in “Fee Waiver,”

In this alternate reality all the staff and hangers on act like it’s acceptable that the parents don’t do what they are supposed to do as productive adult people. The educators shrug their shoulders and bite their lips and feel guilty. They treat them like children and make excuses for adults that don’t do the bare minimum. They pretend like it is helpful and normal and not elitist or racist to behave this way.

The sharp contrast between the narrator’s combat and classroom experience fuels some of this collection’s best stories — many of which span no more than three or four pages and read like angry love letters to the Windy City. From “The Birdman of Bucktown,”

Every year the city dies a horrid, frozen death. And every year it comes slowly back to life. Road crews arrive with hot-patch and trucks to fix streets that are cracked and sinking under the weight of a thawing city. Parents breathe a sigh of relief as they no longer worry for tiny fingers that freeze in wet mittens. The dog moves off the heating vent, and fifty-five degrees feels like eight-five as the young traipse from bar to bar in shorts and hoodies, praising Sol without knowing it. It is spring, and it is bright, and in the evenings it is red. Maybe we’d have more fun if we still worshipped like that. At any rate, winter was gone and the city was rubbing itself up against the May sun.

The narrative thread running through this collection is loose by design, and the starkness of Lyke’s prose put me in mind of fellow war on terror veteran Kevin Power’s novel The Yellow Birds — beautiful in a bleak, heartbroken way, each story a slice of life cut with a Kbar.

Our society got pretty good at shutting the post-9/11 wars out of our daily lives. But they still belong to all of us, despite the selective memory of a distracted citizenry that imagines itself as perpetually innocent. The hogtied corpse of war remains with us and within us, impossible to forget but difficult to remember, and central to our national identity.

Become a Member

Dewaine K. Farria is the author of Revolutions of All Colors: A Novel. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Rumpus, the Mantle, CRAFT, and the Southern Humanities Review. You can find more of Dewaine’s writing at dewainefarria.com.

Book Reviews

warontherocks.com · by Dewaine Farria · October 4, 2022

17. Taiwan and the Perils of Strategic Ambiguity

Conclusion:

China is so deeply bound into the global economy (unlike Russia) that the Communist Party and its leadership can ill afford a major crisis with the United States and the West. “Strategic ambiguity” encourages the leadership to think that it could avoid a war with the US by a quick and successful invasion of Taiwan. Biden’s recent statements are intended to dissuade Xi from taking that option but there is scope for more clarity about the consequences.

Taiwan and the Perils of Strategic Ambiguity

OCTOBER 4TH, 2022 BY TIM WILLASEY-WILSEY | 0 COMMENTS

thecipherbrief.com · · October 4, 2022

The concept of strategic ambiguity has its advantages but also its perils. It means that a US President may have just a few hours to decide whether to go to war with China or to abandon Taiwan. The US should develop a more calibrated set of options to enable Beijing better to understand the risks of intervention.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — President Joe Biden has told CBS News that United States troops would fight China if Taiwan were invaded. This went further than similar statements in May 2022 and October 2021 and, on all three occasions, the White House “walked back” the comments and insisted that United States policy remained unchanged. However, there can be little doubt that the three statements (and the “walk backs”) were choreographed to warn China of the consequences of an invasion of Taiwan without completely abandoning “strategic ambiguity” in favour of “strategic clarity”.

A good example of “strategic clarity” is China’s position on Taiwan. Taiwan will be reunified with China; no ifs, no buts. The only uncertainties surround the timing and the method. 2035 and 2049 have been suggested as possible dates (being centenaries of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Republic) but it could be much sooner.

By contrast “strategic ambiguity” means that China has to keep guessing whether or not the United States would respond to an act of aggression against Taiwan. The theory goes that ambiguity serves as a deterrent. But does it?

There are four problems with “strategic ambiguity”. The first is that it often masks a genuine uncertainty in the policy-owning country (the US) whether it would go to the defence of the potential victim and whether that defence would include direct military intervention, the provision of arms and intelligence or neither.

The second is that its very existence can serve as an impediment to genuine policy planning. An incoming Secretary of State would be told “our policy towards Taiwan is one of strategic ambiguity” and the briefing then moves on to the next topic. In other words, it looks like a policy but, unless underpinned by full assessment and planning, it is a vacuum.

The third is that potential aggressors are getting wise to the fact that “strategic ambiguity” often means “absence of policy”. In such circumstances the deterrent effect disappears.

And the fourth is that, at the moment of truth, the President will have to take a rushed decision which may embrace a host of other factors such as the state of the global economy and his or her own electoral prospects.

The Cipher Brief hosts expert-level briefings on national security issues for Subscriber+Members that help provide context around today’s national security issues and what they mean for business. Upgrade your status to Subscriber+ today.

There is, of course, one major advantage in “strategic ambiguity”. It does not lock a country by treaty or guarantee into joining a war against its wishes. There were some who wished that Britain did not have to go to Belgium’s assistance in 1914 thanks to the distant 1839 Treaty of London; and many more who regretted going to the aid of Poland in 1939, in honour of a verbal pledge given by Neville Chamberlain only 6 months earlier.

Those who crafted the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 gave Ukraine “assurances” rather than a guarantee when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Assurances carry no legal obligation and proved worthless when Putin invaded Crimea in 2014.

In the case of Taiwan there is a second benefit to “strategic ambiguity”. It is also used by the US as a lever against Taiwan to ensure that the island does nothing unduly provocative, such as declare independence from China. George W. Bush made this abundantly clear in 2003, when he feared that former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was in danger of speaking irresponsibly on the subject.

However, “strategic ambiguity” did not work in the case of Ukraine. President Biden undermined it himself when he made clear that the United States would not intervene militarily if President Putin invaded. But, by then, Putin had concluded, following the Afghan debacle of August 2021, that Biden was unlikely to commit US forces to another war.

Realising that his foreign policy risked another setback in Taiwan, Biden made the first of his three statements which seemed to contradict “strategic ambiguity”. It is telling that such an important policy needed such crude sticking-plaster treatment. It demonstrates that a policy which, at first glance, looks measured and proportionate, is actually very risky. It inevitably leads to hurried decisions with a very binary outcome. At its most visceral level Biden would have to decide whether or not to issue orders to a US submarine in the Taiwan Straits to sink Chinese amphibious landing ships or not. The one decision could lead to a major war; the other could result in the extinction of Taiwan as a democracy (not to mention the loss to China of the world’s most important advanced micro-chip producer).

One approach would be to reinforce “strategic ambiguity” with a clearer statement that the only acceptable way of “unifying” Taiwan would be by a free and fair referendum of the Taiwanese people without any external pressure whilst also outlining the consequences of any coercive action towards Taiwan. These need to go beyond economic sanctions, which Beijing would expect (and anticipate to diminish over time). After all China suffered minimal damage from its suffocation of the Hong Kong democracy movement in spite of obligations implicit in the Basic Law of 1997.

China could be told that any attempt to blockade the island or to threaten Taiwan with invasion would lead to the US (and the West) reconsidering the whole range of measures agreed since the 1970s intended initially to lure Beijing away from its alliance with the Soviet Union and later to bring China into the global economy. This would introduce serious “downside risk” into China’s Taiwan policy. Beijing could expect not just sanctions but a reappraisal of its WTO membership, a reassessment of its claim to sovereignty over Tibet and the Aksai Chin area of the Himalayas, deeper scrutiny of Xinjiang, more opposition to its activities in the South China Sea and ultimately a reappraisal of the whole One China policy.

China is so deeply bound into the global economy (unlike Russia) that the Communist Party and its leadership can ill afford a major crisis with the United States and the West. “Strategic ambiguity” encourages the leadership to think that it could avoid a war with the US by a quick and successful invasion of Taiwan. Biden’s recent statements are intended to dissuade Xi from taking that option but there is scope for more clarity about the consequences.

This piece was first published by our friends at RUSI.

Tim Willasey-Wilsey served for over 27 years in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and is now Visiting Professor of War Studies at King's College, London. His first overseas posting was in Angola during the Cold War followed by Central America during the instability of the late 1980s. He was also involved in the transition to majority rule in South Africa and in the Israel/Palestine issue. His late career was spent in Asia including a posting to Pakistan in the mid 1990s.

View all articles by Tim Willasey-Wilsey

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

thecipherbrief.com · · October 4, 2022

18. Biden’s Anti-Corruption Agenda Finds Its Test Case: Paraguay

Biden’s Anti-Corruption Agenda Finds Its Test Case: Paraguay

A deeply corrupt South American country has entered the White House’s sights.

By Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by Emanuele Ottolenghi · October 4, 2022

U.S. President Joe Biden has defined the fight against global corruption as a “core United States national security interest” and made it an official priority for his administration. Now, he is turning Paraguay into a test case for his policy.

On July 22, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay shocked the country’s political establishment by announcing at a live, televised press conference that the U.S. State Department was sanctioning former Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes, along with his adult children, for their involvement in “significant corruption.” Less than a month later, the Biden administration doubled down by imposing sanctions for corruption on Paraguay’s sitting vice president, Hugo Velázquez, along with his close advisor and associate, Juan Carlos Duarte, and their spouses and children. Cartes, Velázquez, Duarte, and their families will no longer be able to obtain a visa and travel to the United States. A stunned Velázquez—who, until then, was arguably Paraguay’s power behind the throne and a serious contender in next year’s presidential elections—quit the race that same day.

U.S. authorities have targeted former leaders on corruption grounds before, not to mention a plethora of lower-ranking figures. This February, for example, the State Department designated former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. But for the United States to go after the sitting vice president of a friendly country is unprecedented. It is a clear message to Paraguay’s leaders as well as their regional counterparts: Washington will no longer take a passive approach to corruption.

Although the country’s elites have formally embraced democracy since the 1989 overthrow of then-fascist dictator Alfredo Stroessner, they have nonetheless benefited from Stroessner’s legacy: a corrupt power structure complicit with a gargantuan shadow economy estimated to be worth almost half the country’s GDP as well as trafficking in every sort of contraband. Cross-border cigarette smuggling is big business in Paraguay, and brands owned by Tabacalera del Este—known as Tabesa, a manufacturer controlled by the Cartes family—are frequently seized in Brazil. Off-the-books contraband also extends to consumer goods, agricultural products, alcohol, tires, and even pesticides. In an operation last month, Brazilian police seized $190 million worth of goods. All told, the estimated value of goods smuggled from Paraguay is $5 billion annually.

More than 30 years after Stroessner’s departure, Paraguay still ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world. Organized crime and terrorism organizations have converged on its territory, turning its porous borderlands into key hubs for money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorism finance. Paraguayan businesses and the front companies they establish in the United States engage in commodities trading to launder proceeds from these criminal activities. The financial flows frequently go through U.S. banks.

Biden has defined the fight against global corruption as a core U.S. national security interest and made it an official priority for his administration.

Washington’s action on Paraguay is a warning to corrupt leaders everywhere. Biden’s anti-corruption message is a strong and welcome step—and his administration should follow up with further U.S. action. The most hotly debated question in Paraguay now is whether sanctions, like those on Honduras’ former president, will be followed by U.S. criminal indictments and extradition requests. Paraguay’s public response to the designations after the initial shock has also been focused on whether the United States will stop with the current sanctioned politicians or go after even more. The administration should leave no room for doubt: Corruption in Paraguay goes deep and wide, and Cartes, Duarte, and Velázquez should not be the only people on Washington’s list.

In the past, Paraguay’s leaders had impunity as long as they were politically aligned with the United States. Biden’s predecessors, whether Democrats or Republicans, were well aware of Paraguay’s corruption pandemic yet treaded carefully with its leaders amid mounting evidence of corruption in the highest reaches of the country’s power structure. U.S. investigations into Cartes’s suspected role in smuggling predate his 2013 election as president, but they were likely cast aside as part of a diplomatic deal, according to conversations FP had with a former Paraguayan official close to Cartes and a former U.S. official familiar with the U.S. investigation.

In Paraguay, political meddling to protect the culprits has stalled the investigation of the so-called megalavado case, the largest-ever money laundering case in the country, allegedly worth $1.2 billion. For six years now, the investigation has been hampered with periodic changes of prosecutors, sometimes ordered by Paraguay’s attorney general’s office. Each time, the investigation is set back—and there is no end in sight. Other large investigations into money laundering schemes have also failed to yield indictments or convictions. That was the case with Liz Paola Doldán González, whom the U.S. Treasury Department eventually sanctioned in 2021 for corruption. Doldán was implicated in a tax evasion and money laundering scheme worth more than $500 million. Paraguayan authorities slapped her on the wrist with a tax fine despite the staggering losses Paraguay’s treasury incurred. Of the two other businesspeople also sanctioned in the case, cousins Kassem and Khalil Hijazi, only the former has been extradited to the United States, while no legal action is pending against the latter.

For years, Washington buried any acknowledgement of Paraguay’s corruption in annual State Department reports, diligently flagging Paraguay’s deficient anti-money laundering controls and weak judicial system. The department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report routinely described Paraguay’s corruption as “pervasive.” Yet nothing of consequence happened despite periodic alarms about criminal organizations laundering proceeds from smuggling with the complicity of corrupt officials. U.S. investments in anti-corruption training, capacity-building, mutual assistance, and gentle pressure contributed to much legislative reform as well as to successful investigations, raids, arrests, and extraditions. But the bottom line remained the same: Despite “results in terms of arrests and modest progress toward implementation of new legislation … convictions remain rare.”

Observing corruption was not enough as long as Paraguayan politicians believed their loyalty to Washington insulated them from the duty to govern honestly and transparently. U.S. policy still seemed to reflect the old Cold War-era practice of aligning with unsavory regimes as long as they supported U.S. foreign-policy goals. In September 2019, merely three years before facing sanctions, Velázquez received the red carpet treatment in Washington, where he met members of Congress and visited the U.S. Justice, State, and Treasury departments as well as the CIA. Washington threw its weight behind Cartes when he ran for president in 2013 despite having earlier investigated his alleged criminal activities, including by infiltrating his business with an eye toward prosecuting him.

Given how extensive corruption is across the political spectrum among Latin America’s ruling classes, doing business with criminals seemed to be the only way to get things done with those in power. Their opponents, so this logic goes, are just as bad. Paraguay’s pervasive corruption has shown that this approach has not worked.

After Biden took office, there were clues that patience in the White House was running thin. In April 2021, the Biden administration slapped sanctions on a Paraguayan politician and his wife, and in August 2021, it issued sanctions on three businesspeople, Doldán and the Hijazis, for their corrupt practices. Kassem was even arrested and recently extradited to the United States. But despite this progress, corruption remains rampant, and government efforts to combat it continue to be underwhelming. Investigations have suffered setbacks; judicial processes have languished; transnational criminal activities in Paraguay have spiked; and, most dramatically, there was the recent assassination of a top prosecutor spearheading cases against criminal networks, corrupt politicians, and financiers of terrorism.

Even as the Biden administration has now homed in on Paraguay to showcase its fight against global corruption, the country’s ruling elites are likely still hoping the worst that can happen to them is losing their visas to the United States. The White House needs to show them they’re wrong.

The financial flows from Paraguayan corruption frequently go through U.S. banks.

The Biden administration, which clearly aims to tackle corruption well beyond the confines of Paraguay or even Latin America, should not lose sight of the shock-and-awe impact of its summer measures. Relentless, continued focus on Paraguay is therefore essential. Too often in the past, U.S. sanctions, once promulgated, gradually lost their grit as sanctioned foreign nationals were able to adjust and resume their activities as soon as the United States’ Eye of Sauron moved its gaze elsewhere. Velázquez presumably banks on that: After announcing he would end his electoral campaign and resign as vice president, he retracted the latter decision and now plans to serve his full term, which ends in August 2023. Even as a diminished leader, he can hunker down and, for the remaining months of his term, leverage his patronage network to his own benefit. The White House needs to disabuse him of his complacency.

The designations of Cartes, Velázquez, and Duarte offer a clue on where to start. According to the State Department, Cartes “obstructed a major international investigation into transnational crime in order to protect himself and his criminal associate from potential prosecution and political damage.” Duarte, Velázquez’s close associate, “offered a bribe to a Paraguayan public official in order to obstruct an investigation that threatened the Vice President and his financial interests.” Washington needs to ensure that authorities in Asunción pursue serious investigations of these alleged crimes. At the moment, there are still no pending Paraguayan indictments against Cartes, Duarte, or Velázquez.

If the Justice Department can assert jurisdiction, it should. If the evidence for sanctions is sufficient to prosecute Cartes, Velázquez, and Duarte in U.S. courts, indictments should be drafted and extradition requests filed. Sanctions should also target the bribers, not just those on the receiving end. The former’s impunity is equally responsible for systemic corruption, and it is their crimes the politicians seek to conceal.

For far too long, Paraguay’s corruption has sabotaged the course of justice—not least because of Washington’s indifference to its consequences. The Biden administration’s commitment to combat corruption may have just changed that. Let’s hope it stay the course.

Foreign Policy · by Emanuele Ottolenghi · October 4, 2022

19. FDD | Death Toll in Iran Protests Rises to 154 as Khamenei Blames U.S. for Uprising

FDD | Death Toll in Iran Protests Rises to 154 as Khamenei Blames U.S. for Uprising

fdd.org · October 4, 2022

Latest Developments

Iran’s security forces have killed at least 154 protesters since nation-wide demonstrations began in mid-September. On Monday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressed full support for the security forces and blamed the United States and Israel for the unrest: “I say frankly that these incidents were designed by America, the fake Zionist regime, those who are on their payroll and some traitorous Iranians abroad who helped them.” President Joe Biden also issued a statement on Monday, warning, “the United States will be imposing further costs on the perpetrators of violence against peaceful protesters.” However, his administration remains publicly committed to the potential lifting of sanctions on those perpetrators via a new nuclear agreement — a policy contradiction the White House must address.

Expert Analysis

“The growing death toll in Iran’s protests reflects the regime’s contempt for basic democratic norms. It also suggests that Tehran is desperate. Iran’s leaders understand that the demonstrations pose a threat to the survival of the regime, and they are doing everything they can to stop them in their tracks.” – Tzvi Kahn, FDD Research Fellow and Senior Editor

“The White House faces an internal strategic contradiction: How can you claim to be holding the regime accountable for internal repression while offering that same regime sanctions relief in Vienna?” – Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

Protests Across Iran Continue

Protests continue with no end in sight, showing the depth of popular opposition to Iran’s clerical regime, which sparked the demonstrations when it killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating Tehran’s headscarf laws. Over the weekend, students protested at more than 100 universities, in some cases leading to a violent response. “They had guns, they had paintball guns, they had batons,” one witness at Tehran’s Sharif University told CNN, referring to Iranian security forces. “They were using gases… [that are] banned internationally… it was a war zone… there was blood everywhere.”

Massacre in Zahedan

On Friday, Iranian security forces killed at least 63 protesters in the southeastern city of Zahedan, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR). Military helicopters reportedly attempted to disperse demonstrators by firing at them from the air. Habibollah Sarbazi Baluch, an opposition political activist, said on Twitter that “hospitals have no empty beds” as a result of the large number of wounded.

Khamenei’s Conspiracy Theories

Khamenei’s attribution of the protests to American and Israeli predations marks only his latest conspiracy theory. For example, in 2014, he said that America created the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in order to sow division among Muslims. In 2015, he contended that Washington was behind the Islamic State’s terrorist attack in Paris that killed 129 people. In the same year, he claimed — citing a statement by the Islamic Republic’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — that America “was behind all problems” and lies at “the root of all evil things.” In 2020, Khamenei suggested that America created the coronavirus in a deliberate effort to target Iranians.

These conspiracy theories are not just a political tool — rather, they reflect Khamenei’s deeply felt conviction that waging war against the United States, as he asserted in 2015, “is among our fundamental duties. It is one of the principles of the Revolution. If fighting against arrogance does not take place, it means that we are not followers of the Holy Quran at all.”

Related Analysis

“Pandemic Exposes the Paranoid Style of Iran’s Supreme Leader,” by Tzvi Kahn

“Biden’s Iran Policy After the Protests,” by Behnam Ben Taleblu and Saeed Ghasseminejad

fdd.org · October 4, 2022

20. FDD | Release of Hostages in Iran May Be Linked to U.S. Sanctions Relief

FDD | Release of Hostages in Iran May Be Linked to U.S. Sanctions Relief

fdd.org · October 4, 2022

Latest Developments

Iranian state media reports have linked Tehran’s one-week furlough of an American hostage on Saturday to a potentially forthcoming U.S. sanctions waiver authorizing the transfer to Iran of $7 billion. These funds are currently frozen in South Korea. While the National Security Council was quick to deny such a linkage, the Biden administration did not confirm or deny whether it would authorize the release of the $7 billion — a step previously reported as part of the sequencing of a new nuclear deal. In addition to its release of the hostage, Iranian-American Siamak Namazi, Tehran allowed his ailing father, Iranian-American Baquer Namazi, to leave the country. Iran imprisoned the elder Namazi from 2016 to 2018 and has since barred him from exiting Iran.

Expert Analysis

“As the people of Iran continue to take to the streets to defend women’s rights and protest one of the most brutally oppressive regimes on earth, the Biden administration should make clear whether it intends to pump $7 billion into the coffers of the regime. For the defense of American national security and preservation of our most basic values, the administration should withdraw all offers of sanctions relief.”

– Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

U.S. and South Korea Coordinating on Iran Deal, Hostages

Following a meeting in September between U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley and South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister, Malley tweeted, “We thank the Republic of Korea for their close partnership, including their efforts to help ensure the return of our wrongfully detained citizens in Iran and to reach a deal on JCPOA.” Malley’s tweet linked the potential release of $7 billion held in South Korea to the broader nuclear deal negotiations. In late August, leaked details of the nuclear agreement revealed that the release of $7 billion from South Korea would be the first step taken in a new nuclear deal’s sequencing.

Evasion of Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act

A presidential national security waiver would likely be necessary to facilitate the transfer of funds from South Korea to Iran. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), however, explicitly restricts the president’s ability to waive statutory sanctions as part of a nuclear agreement with Iran — giving Congress 30 days to review and potentially reject the deal.

The Biden administration thus finds itself in a legal conundrum: On the one hand, linking the $7 billion to a nuclear deal would prohibit any sanctions waiver prior to congressional review of the full deal pursuant to INARA. On the other hand, linking the $7 billion to the release of an American hostage would be an admission the administration is paying an enormous ransom for hostages.

A Dangerous Precedent of Paying for Hostages

Even if the $7 billion release of funds to Iran were truly disconnected from the nuclear deal, policymakers should object to paying for the release of U.S. hostages. In 2015, the Obama administration negotiated a similar scheme alongside the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, sending Iran $400 million — the first installment of a $1.7 billion payment — at the same time Tehran released four Americans. The result was more hostages taken by Iran. If $1.7 billion encouraged the regime to take more hostages, $7 billion will guarantee much more hostage-taking to come.

Related Analysis

“Iran Releases a U.S. Resident Taken Hostage,” by Tzvi Kahn

“Tehran Sentences U.S. Hostage to 10 Years in Prison,” by Tzvi Kahn

“Iran’s Hostages-for-Cash Scheme Continues – How Should the West Respond?” by Saeed Ghasseminejad and Annie Fixler

fdd.org · October 4, 2022

21. How China Trapped Itself

Excerpts:

After almost three decades with the highest investment share of GDP in history, too much of China’s investment is directed, by necessity, to projects that create economic activity (and debt) but that do not create real economic value. That is why it is unlikely that China can still productively continue to invest anywhere near the same amount every year.

In that case, China’s only options are to bring down investment rapidly and accept the consequences of much lower growth, or to maintain high levels of growth by forcing continued high rates of investment until the resulting surge in its debt burden makes it difficult or impossible to stay on that path. One way or another, in other words, Chinese growth will slow sharply, and the way in which it does will have profound consequences for the country, the CCP, and the global economy.

How China Trapped Itself

The CCP’s Economic Model Has Left It With Only Bad Choices

By Michael Pettis

October 5, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Michael Pettis · October 5, 2022

As China emerges this month from the all-important 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its leadership will have to confront the most difficult set of economic choices it has faced in decades. It can shift out of an economic growth model that has generated a great deal of wealth, albeit at the cost of growing inequality, surging debt, and an increasing amount of wasted investment over the last decade. Or Beijing can choose to continue with its current economic model for a few more years until it is forced by these rising costs into an even more painful transition.

The problem facing China is one that the German American economist Albert Hirschman described many decades ago. All rapid growth is unbalanced growth, Hirschman noted, and a successful development model is one in which unbalanced growth addresses and reverses the existing imbalances in the economy. But as these are reversed and the economy develops, the model becomes increasingly irrelevant to the original set of imbalances and eventually begins to create a very different set of problems.

Unfortunately, Hirschman noted, it is difficult to abandon a successful development model. Its very success tends to generate a set of deeply embedded political, business, financial, and cultural institutions based on the continuance of the model, and there is likely to be strong institutional and political opposition to any substantial reversal.

That’s where China finds itself today. Its high-investment development model was designed to resolve China’s extraordinary investment deficiency but nearly four decades later, it has left China with an excessively high investment rate. According to the World Bank, investment typically comprises around 25 percent of global GDP, ranging from 17 to 23 percent for more mature economies to 28 to 32 percent for developing economies in their high-growth stages. For a decade, however, China has invested an amount equal to 40 to 50 percent of its annual GDP every year. It must reduce this unusually high level by a lot, but with growth so dependent on investment, it probably cannot do so without a sharp slowdown in overall economic activity.

DEEPER INTO DEBT

High investment rates weren’t always a bad thing for China. When it began its era of “reform and opening up” in the late 1970s, after five decades that included war with Japan, civil war, and Maoism, the country was hugely underinvested in infrastructure, logistics, and manufacturing capacity. What it needed above all was a development model that prioritized rapid investment.

The approach it took over the next several years did just that. First, Beijing forced up the domestic savings share of GDP needed to fund investment. In any economy, everything produced that is not consumed is, by definition, saved, so forcing up the savings share of GDP just means forcing down the consumption share.

Beijing did this by systemically constraining the growth of the household share of GDP. A country’s total income is divided among households, businesses, and the government, and households, unlike businesses and government, consume most of what they earn. In practice, forcing down the consumption share meant ensuring that businesses and government retained a disproportionate share of what was produced, and households a declining share. The smaller the share that households retain of GDP, the lower the consumption share and the higher the savings share.

By the late 1990s, the domestic savings share of GDP reached 50 percent, the highest level ever recorded by any country. The banking system, which was China’s main intermediary for savings, made these enormous savings available for Chinese businesses, property developers, and local governments at artificially low, government-determined interest rates. The consequence was rapid growth driven by high levels of investment. That dynamic allowed China to close its underinvestment gap at an astonishing pace.

For a decade, China has invested an amount equal to 40 to 50 percent of its annual GDP every year.

But like every other country that has followed a similar model, including the Soviet Union and Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, China faced a hidden trap: once China closed the gap between its level of capital stock and the level that its workers and businesses could productively absorb, it would need to shift to a different growth strategy that de-emphasized investment in favor of consumption. This gap was probably closed at least 15 years ago, when China’s debt burden began to rise rapidly.

This was not a coincidence. Normally, when an economy channels large amounts of debt into productive investment, the resulting rise in its GDP is likely to exceed the rise in debt, and the country’s debt burden remains low. But when debt is used to fund investment whose economic benefits are less than the cost of labor and resources employed (known as “nonproductive investment”), debt starts to rise faster than GDP. China’s debt burden began to surge around 2006 to 2008.

Since that time, China’s official debt ratio has risen from roughly 150 percent of GDP to nearly 280 percent of GDP–one of the fastest increases any country has ever experienced. The main sources of this rising debt burden were private investment in China’s property sector, including buildings filled with empty apartments that had been purchased for speculative reasons, and investment by local governments in excess infrastructure, such as overly ambitious rail systems, underutilized roads and highways, and trophy stadiums and convention centers.

While both the property and infrastructure sectors had contributed so much to China’s economic activity that they had become politically important to local elites, economic policymakers became increasingly concerned that the only way they could regain control of debt was by constraining nonproductive investment in these two sectors. But with these accounting for over half of all Chinese GDP growth in recent years–and a lot more than half during especially difficult periods for the economy–it was almost impossible to constrain them without causing a sharp drop in economic activity.

BURSTING THE BUBBLE

Regulators finally took an important first step in addressing the surge in debt last year, when they decided to clamp down on leverage by making it more difficult for the most indebted property developers to borrow. For years, these developers had been in a race to borrow as much as they could, not just from banks but also from customers, suppliers, and contractors. They had used these funds to acquire as much property as they could, and as long as real estate prices could be counted on to rise forever, they took little credit risk and were always able to sell at a profit.

But with the property sector accounting for 20 to 30 percent of all economic activity, it was inevitable that any sharp contraction in real estate would quickly become self-reinforcing and would lead to a substantial–and very unwelcome–slowdown in economic activity. What was perhaps unexpected after last year’s clampdown on the property sector’s borrowing was the extent to which financial distress spread to other parts of the economy. This was especially true for local governments, for which land sales comprised the largest single source of revenues; households, which suddenly began to worry that prices wouldn’t rise indefinitely; and businesses directly and indirectly affected by insolvency in the property sector.

With growing concerns about the pace of China’s economic slowdown, Beijing can respond only in limited ways. One option is to return to the days of rapid, debt-fueled growth, either by attempting to revive the property sector or by making up for its decline by significantly increasing spending on infrastructure. Local governments have been eager, almost desperate, to revive the property market, but it may be too late for that if homebuyers’ expectations that home prices in China can keep rising have been permanently punctured.

What is more, officials in Beijing seem very reluctant to return to the old ways of doing business in which developers took on enormous amounts of debt to finance speculative new projects. With Chinese residential real estate priced at roughly three times the comparable level in the United States, and with the property sector representing such an extraordinarily high share of total economic activity, most economic policymakers have long wanted to see the market cool down.

High investment rates weren’t always a bad thing for China.

More likely is that the Chinese government will compensate for the adverse impact of a slower and smaller property market, at least partly, by stepping up spending on infrastructure. Beijing already seems willing to follow this path and has told local governments that they must accelerate or increase their infrastructure spending plans, or both.

But building more bridges and high-speed railway systems still means allowing growth to be driven mainly by nonproductive investment, as it has been during the past decade. This will cause China’s debt burden to continue to rise and resources to be misallocated until the economy can no longer sustain the consequences. When that has happened in previous cases, the result has usually been a very disruptive adjustment, often in the form of a financial crisis akin to Brazil’s in the early 1980s.

The second option for Beijing is to maintain high growth by rebalancing the economy increasingly toward consumption. Beijing has been trying to do this since at least 2007, but an increase in consumer spending requires an increase in the share that households retain of GDP. Ordinary people, in other words, would have to receive a larger share of what the economy produces in the form of higher wages, stronger pensions, more welfare benefits, and so on, and this would have to be paid for by Beijing and local governments by giving up some of their share of GDP.

Such an adjustment is extremely difficult to accomplish politically. The distribution of political power in China, as in any country, is partly the consequence of the distribution of economic power, and a major shift in the latter would almost certainly set off a commensurate shift in the former. That doesn’t mean it cannot happen, but so far there is no evidence that China will manage a rebalancing of the distribution of income that other countries with similar problems have been unable to achieve.

China’s debt burden began to surge around 2006 to 2008.

Finally, if Beijing is determined to act now to control the unsustainable increase in debt and is unable to rebalance the economy, the third option is simply for Beijing to allow GDP growth rates to fall sharply, probably to below three (or even two) percent. If handled correctly, most of the cost of this decline will fall on the government sector and not on households, so this won’t matter too much to ordinary people, but it does mean slower growth for the Chinese economy overall and especially in the state apparatus.

After almost three decades with the highest investment share of GDP in history, too much of China’s investment is directed, by necessity, to projects that create economic activity (and debt) but that do not create real economic value. That is why it is unlikely that China can still productively continue to invest anywhere near the same amount every year.

In that case, China’s only options are to bring down investment rapidly and accept the consequences of much lower growth, or to maintain high levels of growth by forcing continued high rates of investment until the resulting surge in its debt burden makes it difficult or impossible to stay on that path. One way or another, in other words, Chinese growth will slow sharply, and the way in which it does will have profound consequences for the country, the CCP, and the global economy.

MICHAEL PETTIS is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a co-author, with Matthew Klein, of Trade Wars Are Class Wars.

Foreign Affairs · by Michael Pettis · October 5, 2022

22. New Air Force special ops teams model the future of ‘agile’ air wars

New Air Force special ops teams model the future of ‘agile’ air wars

airforcetimes.com · by Rachel Cohen · October 4, 2022

A new kind of unit is popping up across Air Force Special Operations Command — and it wants to break the squadron mold.

AFSOC is experimenting with what it calls “mission sustainment teams,” or groups of several dozen airmen from different career fields that train as a deployable unit separate from their home squadrons.

“The question is, how do you build teams organized around [a] mission and not around a function?” AFSOC boss Lt. Gen. Jim Slife said at a recent event hosted by the Air and Space Forces Association. “That’s at the heart of how we’re approaching what the Air Force broadly calls ‘agile combat employment.’ ”

RELATED

Air Force special ops chief says it’s time to embrace new missions

"The idea that anybody at the headquarters thinks special tactics is irrelevant and should be disbanded is patently false."

The 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, became the first to create one of the cross-functional support teams in March 2021. The 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida, followed suit in January.

Since then, AFSOC has broadened the number of specialties included in each team from 19 to 27 and begun to plant the seeds for more teams round the world. The command plans to expand to six active duty teams across Cannon and Hurlburt, plus teams within the 352nd SOW at RAF Mildenhall, England, and 353rd SOW at Kadena Air Base, Japan.

They aren’t meant to replace squadrons, but are an option for extra support that AFSOC can provide to a commander overseas. It’s a “significant change to how we traditionally deploy support functions,” command spokesperson Capt. Savannah Stephens said.

The command wants to get away from the traditional need to send several support squadrons abroad when just a few members of each will do.

“In the time that I spent at [U.S. Central Command], we never once submitted a request for forces asking for the on-call comptroller squadron because we had a financial management emergency,” Slife quipped.

RELATED

Air Force’s first female special tactics officer earns coveted scarlet beret

The female airman faces about another year of advanced skills training before she is assigned to an operational unit.

But just because an entire squadron isn’t needed doesn’t mean a pair of contracting and finance officers wouldn’t come in handy, for example.

Here’s how it works: Airmen who are picked to join one of the teams spend 15 months away from their squadrons. For the first five months, they learn the skills needed to do their teammates’ jobs so they can respond more quickly in an emergency.

In the next five-month span, the team participates in exercises alongside other special operations airmen.

For example, the Hurlburt team has taken part in exercises like the Navy’s “Rim of the Pacific,” the Air Force’s Agile Flag and U.S. Special Operations Command’s Emerald Warrior events, and in local practice with Army special forces.

During Agile Flag, the team ran separate arming and refueling points at Moody AFB, Georgia, and MacDill AFB, Florida. They used a trailer packed with a power generator, a heating and cooling unit and two tents to assemble a pop-up camp in about 30 minutes.

RELATED

Air Force plans more tests of amphibious, armed MC-130J airlifter

“It does have strategic implications, but I think that’s all to the positive,” Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Jim Slife said.

“Both locations were sustained for 48 hours and provided a place for aircrew, maintenance and [arming and refueling] personnel to go in the event there was a delay due to weather or maintenance,” Stephens said.

A 15-person contingent also set up a bare base that housed more than 100 U.S. and foreign special operations forces for about a week during Emerald Warrior, Stephens said.

“They all learn to interoperate and, critically, they learn to trust their teammates because they’ve been training with them for the whole cycle,” Slife said. “They didn’t just meet at Bagram Air Base or Al Udeid Air Base.”

Then they become available to deploy for another five months, before heading back to their home squadrons to rest and participate in their normal training.

It’s a chance for support staffers to feel more connected to military operations and contribute in new ways, Stephens said.

“The sense of purpose that those airmen possess is really remarkable. Every time the command chief and I go visit these airmen, the first question they ask is, ‘Do I have to go back to my squadron?’ ” Slife added. “They really, really like what they’re doing because they’re directly connected to a mission, and they’re challenging themselves.”

Still, AFSOC acknowledges that pulling airmen away from their regular squadrons is a problem for the units who are down workers for three-quarters of their deployment prep cycle. Standing up additional, separate organizations within a wing also strains their finite resources.

“To overcome these challenges, transparency and communication is critical,” Stephens said. “Wing leadership as well as AFSOC staff continue to advocate for [mission sustainment team] objectives and assist them as much as possible.”

RELATED

Special ops boss hopes replacing CV-22 clutches will keep airmen safe

A spike in engine torque can destabilize the Osprey after just one-millionth of a second.

AFSOC hopes to expand its idea across its Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve components. At least one Guard wing, the 137th Special Operations Wing in Oklahoma, already has its own team up and running.

The Guard argues that its members are so-called “multi-capable airmen” from the start, since they bring experience from both their Air Force and civilian jobs.

“It is better to train as a whole versus training separately, and only once we’ve deployed do we discover each other’s talents,” said Maj. Neil Chaves, officer in charge of the 137th SOW’s mission sustainment team. “Our scenarios are not specific to … going out to the field and facing attacks. We could face natural disasters or refugees coming to our bases for help, and we need to be training outside of the box.”

The full list of Air Force specialties that participate in mission sustainment teams includes:

• Radio frequency transmissions
• Fuels management
• Supply
• Traffic management
• Vehicle operations
• Vehicle maintenance
• Air transportation
• Power production
• Electrical systems
• Heating, ventilation and air conditioning
• Pavements and construction equipment
• Structures
• Water/fuel systems maintenance
• Engineering assistant
• Personnel
• Services
• Deployed aircraft ground response element
• Security forces
• Combat arms training and maintenance
• Contracting
• Public health
• Independent duty medical technicians
• Explosive ordnance disposal
• Air traffic control
• Airfield management
• Finance
• Radar, airfield and weather systems

About Rachel S. Cohen

Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.

23. In War, Information is Power

Excerpts;

The Pentagon needs to understand that information warfare is here to stay and must invest in capabilities to combat it and keep the United States safe. As noted above, information operations are the foundation for Chinese views on war and are important historically for Russia, which conducted them as special activities and increasingly embraces them as hybrid warfare. From 2014 until 2022, Russia put its information operations first and deployed military support to give credibility to Russian narratives.

Information warfare capabilities, however, are relatively inexpensive. You could fund almost everything necessary for the cost of one F-22 before it was updated. By contrast, some estimate that Russia spends $1.5 billion annually on its information operations. For example, the RT television network is budgeted annually at over $300 million.

China tries to keep its spending a secret but estimates of Chinese spending on international propaganda just a few years ago were estimated to be between $7 billion and $10 billion. Not everything China does works. For example, Xi’s efforts to exploit COVID-19 to boost its standing have backfired. But persistence in communication has a way of paying off and looking ahead, and the Chinese are arguably the most aggressively persistent nation in the world in pushing its narratives. Is the United States ready to push its own narratives?

In War, Information is Power

Words: James Farwell

Pictures: Roman Kraft

Date: October 3rd, 2022

inkstickmedia.com · · October 3, 2022

The Taliban didn’t topple the Government of Afghanistan purely through kinetic operations. Complex reasons, including a corrupt, inept government whose leaders insisted on centralized control in a culture that valued decentralized power, account partly for the failure. And although he ignited a firestorm of controversy, General David Petraeus has argued that the United States needed to show more strategic patience, stronger and more consistent commitment, and work with the government to make it more effective.

But information warfare proved central to the Taliban in toppling the Kabul government. The Taliban marshaled propaganda through channels ranging from flyers to social media to help discredit and de-legitimize a struggling central government.

The success of the Ukrainians in turning back the Russian invasion has turned on its ability to do what the Afghanistan government failed to do. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s courage and resourceful leadership united and rallied his citizens to resist the Russian invasion. He used words, deeds, images, and symbols to wage information warfare. The former actor and comedian had low approval ratings prior to the war but when the war broke out, Zelenskyy measured up to the task. He showed that information is power.

Zelenskyy stayed in his offices when the invasion broke out, at great personal risk to himself and his family. He spoke to the nation every night. He has been tireless in rallying NATO and the United States to provide political support and arms — and last week, Ukraine formally applied to NATO. Above all, he has lifted up the morale and spirits of Ukrainians and united them against the invaders. The outcome of the war is undecided, but as August 2022 ended, military observers believe that the advantage is shifting toward Ukraine in what had been a stalemated war. The concept that Ukraine could hold a superpower — well, a nation previously viewed as a superpower — at bay is historic and startling.

These examples, one from an adversary, the other from an ally, point to the importance of information in a networked, globally connected world linked by nodes on the Internet. They illuminate the emerging importance of information. It used to be that information supported kinetic operations. Today, increasingly, armed conflict is employed to support the narratives that nations use to influence target audiences.

WHAT INFORMATION WARFARE LOOKS LIKE

President Vladimir Putin limited the military assets that he committed to Syria while trumpeting the fact that it was riding to the rescue of its long-time ally Assad, and positioning itself as a champion against terrorism. Officially, it mounted a communication campaign asserting as its excuse for intervention that thousands from the former Soviet Union had joined the Islamic State, and that intervention would prevent terrorist attacks inside Russia — although its own record in Chechnya manifested full-throated support for terrorist tactics. Russian information operations in Ukraine, however, have backfired, and Russia now stands accused of war crimes.

It used to be that information supported kinetic operations. Today, increasingly, armed conflict is employed to support the narratives that nations use to influence target audiences.

The primary and well-executed strategy that defines Russian activity in Syria and Ukraine is information operations. Russia makes a big show of expanding its military facilities in Syria, notably at Tartus and Hmeimim air bases in Latakia, and using them to attack terrorists. These actions seem aimed at seizing moral high ground as it works to extend its influence over the regional audience. In Ukraine, Putin has mandated that the war can only be referred to as a “special military operation.” And poorly coordinated communication has rendered its new efforts to partially mobilize new recruits a mess.

Russia is certainly not the only global power using information warfare to meet its strategic goals. China’s “Three Warfares” concept — using legal warfare, public opinion warfare, and psychological warfare, rooted in notions propounded by Sun Tzu — eschew armed conflict in favor of non-kinetic operations to achieve strategic and tactical goals. Three Warfares aims to shape public opinion domestically and internationally and to enhance political power. In other words, China avoids kinetic operations but employs its possession of a massive, modernizing military to intimidate target audiences in support of legal, psychological, and media warfare.

China, however, uses military force to bolster non-kinetic initiatives. President Xi Jinping sent 220 vessels to Whitsun Reef in the South China Sea, an area whose sovereignty is contested by the Philippines, China, and Vietnam. Ostensibly anchored due to sea conditions, the vessels were manned by military militia. China’s coast guard has used water cannons on Philippines fishing boats and urged Manila to increase its “education” of its fishermen. It placed the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile in Guangdong Province to threaten US aircraft carriers. While the missile has never been tested, the tactic has forced the United States and its allies to either deploy countermeasures or think about how far to go in endangering a carrier.

Currently, the Pentagon does not have a dedicated plan to devise and execute information operations to properly counter Russian and Chinese activities. The 2018 National Defense Strategy mentions information warfare only in passing. The Joint Staff has a well-led team in its Structured Multi-Layer Assessment cell, but instead of increasing its funding, the impetus has been to cut or eliminate its funding. The Chinese write extensively on their views about warfare but there is no US bureau that identifies, translates, and makes available what is out there on an unclassified basis; and the intelligence community cannot do this because their work is classified. Furthermore, the Department of State’s culture works against information operations even though it is supposed to be a leader in strategic communication.

HOW TO COMBAT INFORMATION WARFARE

The Pentagon needs to understand that information warfare is here to stay and must invest in capabilities to combat it and keep the United States safe. As noted above, information operations are the foundation for Chinese views on war and are important historically for Russia, which conducted them as special activities and increasingly embraces them as hybrid warfare. From 2014 until 2022, Russia put its information operations first and deployed military support to give credibility to Russian narratives.

Information warfare capabilities, however, are relatively inexpensive. You could fund almost everything necessary for the cost of one F-22 before it was updated. By contrast, some estimate that Russia spends $1.5 billion annually on its information operations. For example, the RT television network is budgeted annually at over $300 million.

China tries to keep its spending a secret but estimates of Chinese spending on international propaganda just a few years ago were estimated to be between $7 billion and $10 billion. Not everything China does works. For example, Xi’s efforts to exploit COVID-19 to boost its standing have backfired. But persistence in communication has a way of paying off and looking ahead, and the Chinese are arguably the most aggressively persistent nation in the world in pushing its narratives. Is the United States ready to push its own narratives?

James Farwell has advised the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the Department of Defense. An associate fellow in the Centre for Strategic Communication, Department. of War Studies, King’s College, and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, his books include “Information Warfare” (Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2020) and Persuasion and Power (Washington: Georgetown U. Press, 2012). The views expressed are his own and not that of the US government, its departments, agencies, or USSOCOM.

inkstickmedia.com · by Sahar Khan · October 3, 2022

24. Are worsening US-China relations in Taiwan’s interest?

Excerpts:

The more that Taiwan gets pulled into becoming the central flashpoint of major power rivalry, the more pressure Taipei would face to make alignment decisions between the United States and China. Already, American demands have been building on Taiwan to limit hi-tech exports to China. There also has been mounting expectations for Taiwan to join a grouping with other advanced democracies that produce high-end semiconductors (e.g., South Korea, Japan, and the United States). China is urging Taiwan’s businesses to move in the opposite direction.

Given these realities, it may be more accurate to conclude that Taiwan’s interests are best protected when U.S.-China relations are not too hot, and not too cold. A durable, predictable U.S.-China relationship could open space for the United States and Taiwan to deepen substantive ties. It also could lower risk for other countries to strengthen their relations with Taiwan without fear of being pulled into an intensifying militarized confrontation. Ultimately, the more that Taiwan is woven into the fabric of the global economy and enjoys strong, interest-driven relations with the United States and others, the better it will be able to preserve its autonomy and democratic way of life.

Are worsening US-China relations in Taiwan’s interest?

The Brookings Institution · by Ryan Hass · October 4, 2022

Editor's Note: "A durable, predictable US-China relationship could open space for the United States and Taiwan to deepen substantive ties. It also could lower risk for other countries to strengthen their relations with Taiwan without fear of being pulled into an intensifying militarized confrontation," writes Ryan Hass. This piece originally appeared in the Taipei Times.

I was privileged to have an opportunity to meet with many of Taiwan’s leaders and leading thinkers during a study tour visit in August. One theme I heard several times during that trip was that bad relations between the United States and China benefit Taiwan.

At first thought, I empathize with the argument. After all, there is a troubling record of America’s leaders negotiating with Beijing over the heads of Taiwan’s leaders. For example, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt returned Taiwan to the Republic of China after World War II. President Richard Nixon surprised Taiwan leaders with his 1972 visit with Mao Zedong. President Jimmy Carter unilaterally chose to normalize relations with Beijing and de-recognize Taipei in 1979. President Ronald Reagan also negotiated a communiqué with Beijing on future reductions of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan without the support of Taiwan’s leaders. In other words, American leaders of both parties pursued interests with China at the expense of Taiwan.

Importantly, though, all these examples predate Taiwan’s transition to democracy. Since the transition, American leaders generally have recognized that Taiwan’s elected authorities are the best judges of Taiwan’s interests and that they must be consulted on any potential changes to U.S. policy that would impact Taiwan’s security. There also has been a tradition of U.S. officials quietly consulting with their Taiwan counterparts before and after high-level exchanges with Chinese leaders on issues relating to Taiwan.

Even so, there still seems to be a lingering sentiment that Taiwan is the beneficiary of worsening relations between Washington and Beijing. This argument merits scrutiny.

On one hand, Taiwan’s leaders likely believe that when relations between Washington and Beijing are fraught, the likelihood of the United States and China reaching understandings on Taiwan are diminished. Taiwan’s leaders likely also gain confidence when the United States views Taiwan as standing at the frontier of freedom and deserving of support for preserving autonomy and democracy.

On the other hand, there should be little anxiety these days about the United States and China reaching agreements relating to Taiwan without Taipei’s consent. There is no meaningful support in the United States for sacrificing Taiwan’s interests in pursuit of benefits from Beijing.

President Biden has been more outspoken in his support for Taiwan than any leader since before Nixon. Congressional and public support for Taiwan also is very strong, just as it also is very negative toward Beijing.

Any anxieties about the U.S. compromising Taiwan’s interests should be further dispelled by the fact that U.S.-China relations currently are experiencing a sharp downturn that bears resemblances to two previous nadirs in relations. The first breakdown in relations occurred following the founding of the People’s Republic of China and was exacerbated by the Korean War and domestic upheaval inside China that followed. The second breakdown occurred after the Tiananmen massacre and the end of the Cold War. Each of the two previous nadirs lasted many years. This period likely will be no different.

Furthermore, the historical record suggests that cross-Strait relations and U.S.-Taiwan relations are not derivative of U.S.-China relations. As I argued elsewhere, worse U.S.-China relations have not translated into better U.S.-Taiwan relations, or vice versa. For example, during the Ma Ying-jeou presidency, cross-Strait relations grew warmer while U.S.-China competition grew more sharply competitive. Conversely, the downturn in U.S.-China relations during the late 1980s and early 1990s did not generate a windfall for U.S.-Taiwan relations. The point is that each of the three dyads in relations between the United States, China, and Taiwan operate according to their own logics and are driven by each side’s identification of priorities and concerns.

There also is risk for Taiwan if U.S.-China relations grow so tense that every event turns into a major power test of wills. Taiwan’s security becomes more precarious when it is viewed as the central flashpoint between the United States and China, leading each action to become measured as a win or loss for one side or the other.

The more that Taiwan gets pulled into becoming the central flashpoint of major power rivalry, the more pressure Taipei would face to make alignment decisions between the United States and China. Already, American demands have been building on Taiwan to limit hi-tech exports to China. There also has been mounting expectations for Taiwan to join a grouping with other advanced democracies that produce high-end semiconductors (e.g., South Korea, Japan, and the United States). China is urging Taiwan’s businesses to move in the opposite direction.

Given these realities, it may be more accurate to conclude that Taiwan’s interests are best protected when U.S.-China relations are not too hot, and not too cold. A durable, predictable U.S.-China relationship could open space for the United States and Taiwan to deepen substantive ties. It also could lower risk for other countries to strengthen their relations with Taiwan without fear of being pulled into an intensifying militarized confrontation. Ultimately, the more that Taiwan is woven into the fabric of the global economy and enjoys strong, interest-driven relations with the United States and others, the better it will be able to preserve its autonomy and democratic way of life.

The Brookings Institution · by Ryan Hass · October 4, 2022

25. Taiwan Will Treat China Flights Into Airspace as ‘First Strike’

Taiwan Will Treat China Flights Into Airspace as ‘First Strike’

• Taipei warns against incursions into 12-nautical-mile zone
• Latest attempt to deter Beijing’s military pressure campaign

BySarah Zheng and Cindy Wang

October 5, 2022 at 3:01 AM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-05/taiwan-will-treat-china-flights-into-airspace-as-first-strike?sref=hhjZtX76

Taiwan warned it would treat any Chinese incursion into the island’s airspace as a “first strike,” as Taipei seeks to deter Beijing from ratcheting up military pressure around the island. 

Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told lawmakers in Taipei that the ministry was taking such incursions more seriously after a recent spate of closer flights by Chinese warplanes and drones. Pressed on whether any warplane’s violation of Taiwan’s airspace would be viewed as a first strike, Chiu said, “Yes,” without elaborating what the response would be.

“In the past, we said we won’t be the first to strike, which meant we won’t do it without them firing artillery shells or missiles, et cetera, first,” Chiu said Wednesday. “But now the definition has obviously changed, as China used means like drones. So we have adjusted, and will view any crossing of aircraft or vessels as a first strike.”

Taiwan is trying to reassert a buffer zone that China has eroded, particularly since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in August. Since then, an average of 10 Chinese military aircraft per day have flown across the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait or into the southwestern corner of the island’s larger air-defense identification zone, according to Bloomberg-compiled data.

So far, Chinese military aircraft and warships have kept well outside the smaller 12-nautical-mile (22 kilometer) area that Taiwan regards as defining its territorial sea and airspace. Taiwan would react militarily if Chinese forces crossed the 12-nautical-mile line, Reuters reported in August, citing an unnamed Taiwanese official. 

Chiu appeared to go further in response to a lawmaker’s question Wednesday about recent drone flights over Taiwanese-controlled islands located off the Chinese coast. On Sept. 1, Taiwan shot down a civilian drone near Kinmen Island, after other attempts to repel it failed. 

“First strike or not, as long as any China’s aircraft or vessel crosses the line, we will destroy it,” Chiu said. “We have made the adjustment now.”

Taiwan is set to be a core issue at the twice-a-decade congress of China’s ruling Communist Party, scheduled to begin Oct 16. Chinese President Xi Jinping is widely expected to secure a third term in power, and could face greater pressure to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s rule, as part of a longer-term goal of national rejuvenation.

Chiu on Wednesday said China’s activities had shattered the concept of the median line, which the US drafted decades ago to prevent a conflict between the two sides. Beijing has said it does not recognize the median line, and has blamed Washington’s more vocal support for Taiwan for ratcheting up tensions.

READ: China Stayed 24 Nautical Miles From Taiwan During Drills

Taiwanese military planned to continue to patrol and train east of the line, Chiu said. Still, Taiwan wanted to minimize the risk of an accident that results in miscalculation, he added. 

“We will try our best to avoid a minor incident that could escalate the situation,” Chiu said. “But if China continues with repeated actions, we will show our will.”

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com