Quotes of the Day:

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities."

- Voltaire

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.'"

- Aldous Huxley

"I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I'm like that. If I stop reading, I die."

-Patrick Rothfuss

1. Remarks by President Biden Ahead of the One-Year Anniversary of Russia's Brutal and Unprovoked Invasion of Ukraine

2. Putin's address to Russia's parliament

3. Global impact: 5 ways war in Ukraine has changed the world

4. Victory in the Battle of Kyiv: A Story of Ukrainian Resilience and Strategy

5. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 21, 2023

6. No, the Smith-Mundt Act doesn't apply to the Defense Department

7. US military investigating leak of emails from Pentagon server

8. Biden’s visit to Kyiv may help both Ukraine and Taiwan

9.  New Age of Warfare: Acing technologies, tactics that helped Ukraine neutralise Russia’s firepower is every military’s goal

10. The Critics are Dead Wrong: The F-35 Is a Game Changer

11. If Taiwan Falls, What Happens to America? by Ian Easton

12. A year of Russian fighting in Ukraine shows the US military what it needs to improve, analysts say

13. NATO’s new center of gravity

14. China’s Checkbook Diplomacy Has Bounced

15. The war is making Ukraine a Western country

16. Biden Went to Kyiv Because There’s No Going Back

17. A year in the trenches has hardened Ukraine’s president

18. How Green Beret Paris Davis’ teammates fought the Pentagon for his Medal of Honor

19. Spirit of America, Ukraine

20. The US should insist that Russian and Belarusian athletes be banned from the 2024 Olympics

21. The next Intifada is about to begin

22. Russia, China Challenge U.S.-Led World Order

23. Opinion | Why Ukraine will win the war by Mark Hertling

24. Xi the Survivor

25. Move Fast and Win Things

1. Remarks by President Biden Ahead of the One-Year Anniversary of Russia's Brutal and Unprovoked Invasion of Ukraine

Remarks by President Biden Ahead of the One-Year Anniversary of Russia's Brutal and Unprovoked Invasion of Ukraine - The White House

whitehouse.gov · by The White House · February 21, 2023

The Royal Castle in Warsaw

Warsaw, Poland

5:39 P.M. CET

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Poland! (Applause.) One of our great allies. President Duda, Prime Minister — Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Mayor, and to all the former ministers and presidents, as well as mayors and Polish political leaders from all across the country: Thank you for welcoming me back to Poland.

You know, it was nearly one year ago — (applause) — nearly one year ago I spoke at the Royal Castle here in Warsaw, just weeks after Vladimir Putin had unleashed his murderous assault on Ukraine. The largest land war in Europe since World War Two had begun. And the principles that had been the cornerstone of peace, prosperity, and stability on this planet for more than 75 years were at risk of being shattered.

One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv. Well, I have just come from a visit to Kyiv, and I can report: Kyiv stands strong! (Applause.) Kyiv stands proud. It stands tall. And most important, it stands free. (Applause.)

When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages.

Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested. And the questions we faced were as simple as they were profound.

Would we respond or would we look the other way? Would we be strong or would we be weak? Would be — we would — would we be — all of our allies — would be united or divided?

One year later, we know the answer.

We did respond. We would be strong. We would be united. And the world would not look the other way. (Applause.)

We also faced fundamental questions about the commitment to the most basic of principles. Would we stand up for the sovereignty of nations? Would we stand up for the right of people to live free from naked aggression? Would we stand up for democracy?

One year later, we know the answers.

Yes, we would stand up for sovereignty. And we did.

Yes, we would stand up for the right of people to live free from aggression. And we did.

And we would stand up for democracy. And we did.

And yesterday, I had the honor to stand with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv to declare that we will keep standing up for these same things no matter what. (Applause.)

When President Putin ordered his tanks to roll into Ukraine, he thought we would roll over. He was wrong.

The Urai- — the Ukrainian people are too brave.

America, Europe, a coalition of nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific — we were too unified.

Democracy was too strong.

Instead of an easy victory he perceived and predicted, Putin left with burnt-out tanks and Russia’s forces in delay — in disarray.

He thought he’d get the Findalization [Finlandization] of NATO. Instead, he got the NATOization of Finland — and Sweden. (Applause.)

He thought NATO would fracture and divide. Instead, NATO is more united and more unified than ever — than ever before.

He thought he could weaponize energy to crack your resolve — Europe’s resolve.

Instead, we’re working together to end Europe’s dependence on Russil [sic] fo- — Russian fossil fuels.

He thought autocrats like himself were tough and leaders of democracies were soft.

And then, he met the iron will of America and the nations everywhere that refused to accept a world governed by fear and force.

He found himself at war with a nation led by a man whose courage would be forged in fire and steel: President Zelenskyy. (Applause.)

President Putin — President Putin is confronted with something today that he didn’t think was possible a year ago. The democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker. But the autocrats of the world have grown weaker, not stronger.

Because in the mo- — moments of great upheaval and uncertainty, that knowing what you stand for is most important, and knowing who stands with you makes all the difference.

The people of Poland know that. You know that. In fact, you know — you know it better than anyone here in Poland. Because that’s what solidarity means.

Through partition and oppression, when the beautiful city was destroyed after the Warsaw Uprising, during decades under the iron fist of communist rule, Poland endured because you stood together.

That’s how the brave leaders of the opposition and the people of Belarus continue to fight for their democracy.

That’s how the resolve of Moldovan people — (applause) — resolve of the people of Moldova to live in freedom gained them independence and put them on the path to EU membership.

President Sandu is here today. I’m not sure where she is. But I’m proud to stand with you and the freedom-loving people of Moldova. Give her a round of applause. (Applause.)

One year in- — one year into this war, Putin no longer doubts the strength of our coalition. But he still doubts our conviction. He doubts our staying power. He doubts our continued support for Ukraine. He doubts whether NATO can remain unified.

But there should be no doubt: Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire. (Applause.)

President Putin’s craven lust for land and power will fail. And the Ukrainian people’s love for their country will prevail.

Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow, and forever. (Applause.) For that’s what — that’s what’s at stake here: freedom.

That’s the message I carried to Kyiv yesterday, directly to the people of Ukraine.

When President Zelenskyy said — he came to the United States in December — quote — he said this struggle will define the world and what our children and grandchildren — how they live, and then their children and grandchildren.

He wasn’t only speaking about the children and grandchildren of Ukraine. He was speaking about all of our children and grandchildren. Yours and mine.

We’re seeing again today what the people of Poland and the people all across Europe saw for decades: Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed.

Autocrats only understand one word: “No.” “No.” “No.” (Applause.)

“No, you will not take my country.” “No, you will not take my freedom.” “No, you will not take my future.”

And I’ll repeat tonight what I said last year in this same place: A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease [erase] the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free. And Ukraine — Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never. (Applause.)

For free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.

You know, this has been an extraordinary year in every sense.

Extraordinary brutality from Russian forces and mercenaries. They have committed depravities, crimes against humanity, without shame or compunction. They’ve targeted civilians with death and destruction. Used rape as a weapon of war. Stolen Ukrainian children in an attempt to — in an attempt to steal Ukraine’s future. Bombed train stations, maternity hospitals, schools, and orphanages.

No one — no one can turn away their eyes from the atrocities Russia is committing against the Ukrainian people. It’s abhorrent. It’s abhorrent.

But extraordinarily, as well, has been the response of the Ukrainian people and the world.

One year after the bombs began to fall and Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Ukraine is still independent and free. (Applause.)

From Kherson to Kharkiv, Ukrainian fighters have reclaimed their land.

In more than 50 percent of the territory Russia held last year, the blue and the yellow flag of Ukraine proudly waves once again.

President Zelenskyy still leads a democratically elected government that represents the will of the Ukrainian people.

And the world has already voted multiple times, including in the United Nations General Assembly, to condemn Russia’s aggression and support a just peace.

Each time in the U.N., that vote has been overwhelming.

In October, 143 nations in the United Nations condemned Russia’s illegal annexation. Only four — four in the entire U.N. — voted with Russia. Four.

So, tonight, I speak once more to the people of Russia.

The United States and the nations of Europe do not seek to control or destroy Russia. The West was not plotting to attack Russia, as Putin said today. And millions of Russian citizens who only want to live in peace with their neighbors are not the enemy.

This war was never a necessity; it’s a tragedy.

President Putin chose this war. Every day the war continues is his choice. He could end the war with a word.

It’s simple. If Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the war. If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, it would be the end of Ukraine.

That’s why, together, we’re making sure Ukraine can defend itself.

The United States has assembled a wor- — worldwide coalition of more than 50 nations to get critical weapons and supplies to the brave Ukrainian fighters on the frontlines. Air defense systems, artillery, ammunition, tanks, and armored vehicles.

The European Union and its member states have stepped up with unprecedented commitment to Ukraine, not just in security assistance, but economic, and humanitarian, refugee assistance, and so much more.

To all of you here tonight: Take a moment. And I’m serious when I say this: Turn on and look — turn around and look at one another. Look at what you’ve done so far.

Poland is hosting more than 1.5 million refugees from this war. God bless you. (Applause.)

Poland’s generosity, your willingness to open your hearts and your homes, is extraordinary.

And the American people are united in our resolve as well.

All across my country, in big cities and small towns, Ukrainian flags fly from American homes.

Over the past year, Democrats and Republicans in our United States Congress have come together to stand for freedom.

That’s who Americans are, and that’s what Americans do. (Applause.)

The world is also coming together to address the global fallout from President Putin’s war.

Putin tried to starve the world, blocking the ports in the Black Sea to stop Ukraine from exporting its grain, exacerbating the global food crisis that hit developing nations in Africa especially hard.

Instead, the United States and the G7 and partners around the world answered the call with historic commitments to address the crisis and to bolster global food supplies.

And this week, my wife, Jill Biden, is traveling to Africa to help bring attention to this critical issue.

Our commitment is to the people of Ukraine and the future of Ukraine — a Ukraine that’s free, sovereign, and democratic.

That was the dream of those who declared Ukraine’s independence more than 30 years ago — who led the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity; who braved ice and fire on the Maidan and the Heavenly Hundred who died there; and those who continue still to root out Kremlin’s efforts to corrupt, coerce, and control.

It’s a dream for those Ukrainian patriots who have fought for years against Russia’s aggressions in the Donbas and the heroes who have given everything, given their lives, in the service of their beloved Ukraine.

I was honored to visit their memorial in Kyiv yesterday to pay tribute to the sacrifice of those who lost their lives, standing alongside President Zelenskyy.

The United States and our partners stand with Ukraine’s teachers, its hospital staff, its emergency responders, the workers in cities across Ukraine who are fighting to keep the power on in the face of Russia’s cruel bombardment.

We stand with the millions of refugees of this war who have found a welcome in Europe and the United States, particularly here in Poland.

Ordinary people all across Europe did whatever they could to help and continue to do so. Polish businesses, civil society, cultural leaders — including the First Lady of Poland, who is here tonight — have led with the heart and determination, showcasing all that’s good about the human spirit.

Madam First Lady, we love you. Thank you all. (Applause.)

I’ll never forget, last year, visiting with refugees from Ukraine who had just arrived in Warsaw, seeing their faces exhausted and afraid — holding their children so close, worrying they might never see their fathers, their husbands, their brothers or sisters again.

In that darkest moment of their lives, you, the people of Poland, offered them safety and light. You embraced them. You literally embraced them. I watched. I watched the looks on their faces.

Meanwhile, together we have made sure that Russia is paying the price for its abuses.

We continue to maintain the largest sanctions regime ever imposed on any country in history. And we’re going to announce more sanctions this week together with our partners.

We’ll hold accountable those who are responsible for this war. And we will seek justice for the war crimes and crimes against humanity continuing to be committed by the Russians.

You know, there is much for us to be proud of over the — all that we have achieved together this past year. But we have to be honest and cleared-eyed as we look at the year ahead.

The defense of freedom is not the work of a day or of a year. It’s always difficult. It’s always important.

As Ukraine continues to defend itself against the Russian onslaught and launch counter-offensives of its own, there will continue to be hard and very bitter days, victories and tragedies. But Ukraine is steeled for the fight ahead. And the United States, together with our Allies and partners, are going to continue to have Ukraine’s back as it defends itself.

Next year, I will host every member of NATO for our 2024 summit in the United States. Together, we’ll celebrate the 75th anniversary of the strongest defensive alliance in the history of the world — NATO.

And — (applause) — and let there be no doubt, the commitment of the United States to our NATO Alliance and Article 5 is rock solid. (Applause.) And every member of NATO knows it. And Russia knows it as well.

An attack against one is an attack against all. It’s a sacred oath. (Applause.) A sacred oath to defend every inch of NATO territory.

Over the past year, the United States has come together with our Allies and partners in an extraordinary coalition to stand against Russian aggression.

But the work in front of us is not just what we’re against, it’s about what we’re for. What kind of world do we want to build?

We need to take the strength and capacity of this coalition and apply it to lifting up — lifting up the lives of people everywhere, improving health, growing prosperity, preserving the planet, building peace and security, treating everyone with dignity and respect.

That’s our responsibility. The democracies of the world have to deliver it for our people.

As we gather tonight, the world, in my view, is at an — at an inflection point. The decisions we make over the next five years or so are going to determine and shape our lives for decades to come.

That’s true for Americans. It’s true for the people of the world.

And while decisions are ours to make now, the principles and the stakes are eternal. A choice between chaos and stability. Between building and destroying. Between hope and fear. Between democracy that lifts up the human spirit and the brutal hand of the dictator who crushes it. Between nothing less than limitation and possibilities, the kind of possibilities that come when people who live not in captivity but in freedom. Freedom.

Freedom. There is no sweeter word than freedom. There is no nobler goal than freedom. There is no higher aspiration than freedom. (Applause.)

Americans know that, and you know it. And all that we do now must be done so our children and grandchildren will know it as well.

Freedom.

The enemy of the tyrant and the hope of the brave and the truth of the ages.

Freedom.

Stand with us. We will stand with you.

Let us move forward with faith and conviction and with an abiding commitment to be allies not of darkness, but of light. Not of oppression, but of liberation. Not of captivity, but, yes, of freedom.

May God bless you all. May God protect our troops. And may God bless the heroes of Ukraine and all those who defend freedom around the world.

Thank you, Poland. Thank you, thank you, thank you for what you’re doing. (Applause.) God bless you all.

6:00 P.M. CET

whitehouse.gov · by The White House · February 21, 2023

2. Putin's address to Russia's parliament

You can read the entire address at the Kremlin website but I don't think anyone wants to go there. Reuters has done a nice job of providing the highlights.

Putin's address to Russia's parliament

Reuters · by Reuters

Feb 21 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin updated Russia's elite on Tuesday on the war in Ukraine, nearly one year to the day since ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Here are highlights from his speech, delivered to members of both houses of parliament and to military commanders and soldiers.

DIFFICULT TIME

"I am making this address at a time which we all know is a difficult, watershed moment for our country, a time of cardinal, irreversible changes around the world, the most important historic events that shape the future of our country and our people, when each of us bears a colossal responsibility."

PROTECTING PEOPLE OF DONBAS

"Step by step, carefully and consistently, we will resolve the tasks facing us. Since 2014, the (people of the) Donbas (in eastern Ukraine) had been fighting, defending their right to live on their own land, to speak their native language. They fought and did not give up in the conditions of blockade and constant shelling, undisguised hatred on the part of the Kyiv regime. They believed and expected that Russia would come to their rescue... We patiently tried to negotiate a peaceful way out of this most difficult conflict, but a completely different scenario was being prepared behind our backs."

HOSTAGE OF WEST

"I have already said many times that the people of Ukraine have become the hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western overlords, who have effectively occupied this country in the political, military and economic sense... Today's Ukrainian regime essentially serves not the national interests but those of third countries."

EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO RUSSIA

"The elites of the West do not hide their purpose... That is, they intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. This is exactly how we understand it all and we will react accordingly, because in this case we are talking about the existence of our country. But they also cannot fail to realize that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield. Therefore, they are conducting more and more aggressive information attacks against us."

CULTURE WARS

"They distort historical facts, constantly attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religions of our country. Look at what they do with their own peoples: the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and the abuse of children are declared the norm. And priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages... As it became known, the Anglican Church plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God... Millions of people in the West understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe.

IMPACT OF SANCTIONS

"They (Western countries) want to make the (Russian) people suffer (with sanctions)... but their calculations did not materialise...

"Those imposing sanctions are punishing themselves. They have caused price hikes, job losses, an energy crisis. And we hear them telling their own people that the Russians are to blame."

RUSSIAN RESILIENCE

"The Russian economy and management system turned out to be much stronger than the West believed. Thanks to the joint work of the government, parliament, subjects of the Federation and, of course, the business community and labour, we ensured the stability of the economic situation, protected citizens, saved jobs, prevented market shortages, including essential goods, supported the financial system, entrepreneurs who invest in the development of their business, and therefore in the development of the country...

"Thanks to a strong balance of payments, Russia does not need to borrow abroad, bow down, beg for money, and then have a long dialogue about what, how much and under what conditions to give. Domestic banks are operating stably and steadily, and have a solid safety margin...

"According to estimates, already in the second quarter of this year, inflation in Russia will approach the target level of 4%. Given the positive dynamics of this and other macroeconomic parameters, objective conditions are being formed for reducing long-term lending rates in the economy, which means that loans for the real sector should become more accessible."

ELECTIONS

"It is the people of Russia who are the basis of the country's sovereignty and the source of power. The rights and freedoms of the citizens are inviolable. They are guaranteed by the constitution and, despite external challenges and threats, we will not retreat from them. In this regard, I want to emphasize that the elections to local and regional authorities this year, and the presidential elections in 2024 will be held in strict accordance with the law, taking into account all democratic and constitutional procedures.

Reporting by Reuters

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Reuters

3. Global impact: 5 ways war in Ukraine has changed the world

Global impact: 5 ways war in Ukraine has changed the world

AP · by JILL LAWLESS · February 22, 2023

LONDON (AP) — War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. The world is a more unstable and fearful place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.

One year on, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy.

Here are five ways the war has changed the world:

THE RETURN OF EUROPEAN WAR

Three months before the invasion, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at suggestions that the British army needed more heavy weapons. “The old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European landmass,” he said, “are over.”

Johnson is now urging the U.K. to send more battle tanks to help Ukraine repel Russian forces.

Despite the role played by new technology such as satellites and drones, this 21st-century conflict in many ways resembles one from the 20th. Fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region is a brutal slog, with mud, trenches and bloody infantry assaults reminiscent of World War I.

The conflict has sparked a new arms race that reminds some analysts of the 1930s buildup to World War II. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of conscripts and aims to expand its military from 1 million to 1.5 million troops. The U.S. has ramped up weapons production to replace the stockpiles shipped to Ukraine. France plans to boost military spending by a third by 2030, while Germany has abandoned its longstanding ban on sending weapons to conflict zones and shipped missiles and tanks to Ukraine.

Russia-Ukraine war

Ukraine's year of pain, death —and also nation-building

Ukraine's health care on the brink after hundreds of attacks

Biden in Poland: US, allies 'will never waver' in Ukraine

Wagner owner blasts 'treason' of Russian military chiefs

Before the war, many observers assumed that military forces would move toward more advanced technology and cyber warfare and become less reliant on tanks or artillery, said Patrick Bury, senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath.

But in Ukraine, guns and ammunition are the most important weapons.

“It is, for the moment at least, being shown that in Ukraine, conventional warfare — state-on-state — is back,” Bury said.

ALLIANCES TESTED AND TOUGHENED

Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped the invasion would split the West and weaken NATO. Instead, the military alliance has been reinvigorated. A group set up to counter the Soviet Union has a renewed sense of purpose and two new aspiring members in Finland and Sweden, which ditched decades of nonalignment and asked to join NATO as protection against Russia.

The 27-nation European Union has hit Russia with tough sanctions and sent Ukraine billions in support. The war put Brexit squabbles into perspective, thawing diplomatic relations between the bloc and awkward former member Britain.

“The EU is taking sanctions, quite serious sanctions, in the way that it should. The U.S. is back in Europe with a vengeance in a way we never thought it would be again,” said defense analyst Michael Clarke, former head of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

NATO member states have poured weapons and equipment worth billions of dollars into Ukraine. The alliance has buttressed its eastern flank, and the countries nearest to Ukraine and Russia, including Poland and the Baltic states, have persuaded more hesitant NATO and European Union allies, potentially shifting Europe’s center of power eastwards.

There are some cracks in the unity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s closest ally in the EU, has lobbied against sanctions on Moscow, refused to send weapons to Ukraine and held up an aid package from the bloc for Kyiv.

Western unity will come under more and more pressure the longer the conflict grinds on.

“Russia is planning for a long war,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of 2022, but the alliance was also ready for the “long haul.”

A NEW IRON CURTAIN

The war has made Russia a pariah in the West. Its oligarchs have been sanctioned and its businesses blacklisted, and international brands including McDonald’s and Ikea have disappeared from the country’s streets.

Yet Moscow is not entirely friendless. Russia has strengthened economic ties with China, though Beijing is keeping its distance from the fighting and so far has not sent weapons. The U.S. has recently expressed concern that may change.

China is closely watching a conflict that may serve as either encouragement or warning to Beijing about any attempt to reclaim self-governing Taiwan by force.

Putin has reinforced military links with international outcasts North Korea and Iran, which supplies armed drones that Russia unleashes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow continues to build influence in Africa and the Middle East with its economic and military clout. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has grown more powerful in conflicts from the Donbas to the Sahel.

In an echo of the Cold War, the world is divided into two camps, with many countries, including densely populated India, hedging their bets to see who emerges on top.

Tracey German, professor of conflict and security at King’s College London, said the conflict has widened a rift between the “U.S.-led liberal international order” on one side, and angry Russia and emboldened rising superpower China on the other.

A BATTERED AND RESHAPED ECONOMY

The war’s economic impact has been felt from chilly homes in Europe to food markets in Africa.

Before the war, European Union nations imported almost half their natural gas and third of their oil from Russia. The invasion, and sanctions slapped on Russia in response, delivered an energy price shock on a scale not seen since the 1970s.

The war disrupted global trade that was still recovering from the pandemic. Food prices have soared, since Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of wheat and sunflower oil, and Russia is the world’s top fertilizer producer.

Grain-carrying ships have continued to sail from Ukraine under a fragile U.N.-brokered deal, and prices have come down from record levels. But food remains a geopolitical football. Russia has sought to blame the West for high prices, while Ukraine and its allies accuse Russia of cynically using hunger as a weapon.

The war “has really highlighted the fragility” of an interconnected world, just as the pandemic did, German said, and the full economic impact has yet to be felt.

The war also roiled attempts to fight climate change, driving an upsurge in Europe’s use of heavily polluting coal. Yet Europe’s rush away from Russian oil and gas may speed the transition to renewable energy sources faster than countless warnings about the dangers of global warming. The International Energy Agency says the world will add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20.

A NEW AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

The conflict is a stark reminder that individuals have little control over the course of history. No one knows that better than the 8 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee homes and country for new lives in communities across Europe and beyond.

For millions of people less directly affected, the sudden shattering of Europe’s peace has brought uncertainty and anxiety.

Putin’s veiled threats to use atomic weapons if the conflict escalates revived fears of nuclear war that had lain dormant since the Cold War. Fighting has raged around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising the specter of a new Chernobyl.

But the conflict has also brought reminders that, sometimes, individual human actions make all the difference. Defense analyst Clarke said one such moment occurred a day after the invasion, when Zelenskyy filmed himself outside in Kyiv and vowed not to leave the city.

“That was critical in showing that Kyiv would fight,” Clarke said. “And with that, of course, the United States, Joe Biden fell in behind it. If those two things hadn’t happened — Zelenskyy and then Biden’s decision — the Russians would have won.

“That Zelenskyy moment will go down in history as very, very important.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · by JILL LAWLESS · February 22, 2023

4. Victory in the Battle of Kyiv: A Story of Ukrainian Resilience and Strategy

Tue, 02/21/2023 - 5:11pm

Victory in the Battle of Kyiv: A Story of Ukrainian Resilience and Strategy

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/victory-battle-kyiv-story-ukrainian-resilience-and-strategy

By Daniel Rice

The Battle of Kyiv is a story of Ukrainian resilience and strategic prowess, and a remarkable victory against a larger and better-equipped enemy. Sun Tzu famously wrote that "most battles are won before they are fought," and this was certainly the case in Kyiv. Despite being outnumbered and under-equipped, the Ukrainian Armed Forces emerged victorious, thanks to better leader development, leadership, strategy, and training.

As we approach the one-year anniversary, the world will remember the illegal Russian invasion, which began on February 24th, 2022, with bombings and the crossing of borders. However, it was two days earlier, on 2/22/22, when Ukrainian General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi began moving his army under cover of darkness. The US had already detected a large buildup of Russian troops near the border and warned the world of an imminent invasion.

In my exclusive interview with General Zaluzhnyi on May 5th, 2022, he recounted how the Ukrainian army had positioned itself in ambush sites along all major invasion routes by midnight on February 22nd. When the Russians attacked on February 24th, they mostly encountered empty Ukrainian bases. Unbeknownst to them, they were walking into a massive ambush. Due to the muddy conditions of February, the Russian armored columns were forced to travel on known routes and were exposed to Ukrainian anti-tank and artillery forces.

General Zaluzhnyi and his army were well-prepared for this battle. They even taunted the Russians on social media and on bridges leading to Kyiv, with messages written in fluent Russian saying, "Welcome to HELL!" The Russian soldiers, who had looted, raped and murdered their way across Ukrainian cities, were largely killed or wounded in the ambush.

Since then, the Russian army has struggled to replenish its ranks. The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, was allowed to recruit from Russian prisons, offering pardons to convicted murderers and other criminals who completed six months of service in Ukraine. However, this has not been a successful strategy, as word got out to remaining prisoners that they do not want to be sent to Ukraine. The Russian army is also having trouble filling its ranks with untrained conscripts since so many eligible men have left the country to avoid the draft.

Ukraine has been killing between 20,000-30,000 Russian soldiers per month, with 50,000-60,000 wounded. As casualties mount, it remains to be seen what will break first for the Russians: the oligarchs, the military leadership, or the soldiers themselves, who may refuse to fight. But one thing is clear: the Ukrainian Armed Forces, led by the Iron General Zaluzhnyi, will not break.

About the Author(s)

Daniel Rice

Dan is the President of Thayer Leadership and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served his commitment as an Airborne-Ranger qualified Field Artillery officer. In 2004, he voluntarily re-commissioned in the Infantry to serve in Iraq for 13 months. He has been awarded the Purple Heart, Ranger Tab, Airborne Badge and cited for ‘courage on the field of battle” by his Brigade Commander. 

SCHOLARLY WORK/PUBLICATIONS/AWARDS

Dan has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Small Wars Journal, and Chief Executive magazine. In 2013, he published and co-authored his first book, West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage, which features 200 of West Point graduates who have helped shape our nation, including the authorized biographies of over 100 living graduates.. The book received 3 literary awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association plus an award from the Military Society Writers of America (MSWA). Dan has appeared frequently on various news networks including CNN, FOX News, FOX & Friends, Bloomberg TV, NBC, MSNBC, and The Today Show.

EDUCATION

Ed.D., ABD, Leadership, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education (graduation expected 2023)

MS.Ed., Leadership & Learning, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, 2020

M.S., Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill Graduate School, Northwestern University, 2018

M.B.A., Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 2000

B.S., National Security, United States Military Academy, 1988

Full bio here: https://www.thayerleadership.com/about/founders/daniel-rice

5. No, the Smith-Mundt Act doesn't apply to the Defense Department

Another important essay from Matt Armstrong. A pretty strong allegation in the subtitle.

This excerpt illustrates one of the many reasons why we cannot conduct effective influence operations: our own ignorance.

(And just to add my 2 cents is a comment I heard when spending some time with the PSYOP officers at Fort leavenworth - short course not the long one - they lamented, "It is easier to get permission to a hellfire missile on the forehead of a terrorist than it is to get permission to put an idea between his ears).

Excerpts:

Naturally, someone responded that certain restrictions limit US information operations capabilities abroad. Of course, I asked what exactly were these specific restrictions as I shared that in my experience, many “restrictions” were institutional and conceptual rather than statutory (i.e., established by an act of Congress).

The reply asserted that the Smith-Mundt Act, even as amended by the Modernization Act of 2012, continues to limit what the Defense Department and others can do. I expected this answer. This is an institutional response, and the respondent only conveyed what they were told (likely countless times over many years). That this remains common “knowledge” – or an “accepted wisdom,” take your pick – is impressive and appalling. The legal advisors the respondent came into contact with directly or indirectly, and the people those advisors and others informed and influenced over the past ten+ years failed the respondent, the institutions, and our national security requirements. That’s a hefty charge, and I’ll stand by it, partly because of the acknowledgment the Smith-Mundt Act was amended.

Let’s start with the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. The primary purpose of this amendment was to insert the following text into 22 USC 1461-1a, the oft-cited domestic dissemination bit of the Smith-Mundt Act:

​...

There is the old lament that information operations are cheap relative to the tangible kinetic national defense options. Here’s a statement from October 1945 that remains relevant today when swapping out the specific weapon:

The interchange of skill, culture, and information costs very little in contrast to a single battleship in a fleet of battleships. Today I can hardly imagine a cultural-relations program on a world scale which, on an annual basis, would equal the cost of a battleship. A battleship is a traditional and orthodox expenditure of the taxpayer's dollar. The exchange of skills, knowledge, students, scientists, and other specialists is a relatively new idea and hence, to some unorthodox.

I will note that both “information” and “exchange” was interpreted in a far more expansive and inclusive way then than is typically thought of today. Every exchange and information engagement was an intentional influence operation.​

No, the Smith-Mundt Act doesn't apply to the Defense Department

The misinformation around the Smith-Mundt Act borders on willful disinformation at this point

Matt Armstrong

14 min ago

mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong

The misinformation around the Smith-Mundt Act is fantastic. Unfortunately, at some point, much of it, including public legal analyses and especially internal legal and other guidance, seems bent on earning the label of disinformation. I had not planned on publishing here for another week as I am focused on a more critical writing effort, but I was, I’ll admit it, triggered by a reference to the Smith-Mundt Act.

The setup was a conversation that began with a comment about the amount of money and effort by an adversary’s information operations efforts. The forum is not public and includes many national security-related and interested folks, so you’ll understand my vagueness about what others said. The conversation unsurprisingly shifted into US efforts, budgets, and the like that include but span far beyond “public diplomacy,” “information warfare,” “information operations,” and “strategic communication.”

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I’ll set aside, for now, that budgets without leadership or strategic coherence greatly diminish any value suggested, assumed, or hoped for when seeing the significant sums of tax dollars spent. These sums aren’t vast, just great, but paltry relative to the tangible elements of national security (i.e., the things that go boom or deliver a boom) that most focus on and gain the most attention. Moreover, the absence of leadership across government departments – and above – is an endemic problem afflicting all levels of interaction, inhibiting training, empowerment, encouragement, and agility to proactively and reactively function in this area. But again, I’ll set this aside.

Naturally, someone responded that certain restrictions limit US information operations capabilities abroad. Of course, I asked what exactly were these specific restrictions as I shared that in my experience, many “restrictions” were institutional and conceptual rather than statutory (i.e., established by an act of Congress).

The reply asserted that the Smith-Mundt Act, even as amended by the Modernization Act of 2012, continues to limit what the Defense Department and others can do. I expected this answer. This is an institutional response, and the respondent only conveyed what they were told (likely countless times over many years). That this remains common “knowledge” – or an “accepted wisdom,” take your pick – is impressive and appalling. The legal advisors the respondent came into contact with directly or indirectly, and the people those advisors and others informed and influenced over the past ten+ years failed the respondent, the institutions, and our national security requirements. That’s a hefty charge, and I’ll stand by it, partly because of the acknowledgment the Smith-Mundt Act was amended.

Let’s start with the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. The primary purpose of this amendment was to insert the following text into 22 USC 1461-1a, the oft-cited domestic dissemination bit of the Smith-Mundt Act:

The provisions of this section shall apply only to the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors and to no other department or agency of the Federal Government. [italics mine]

The then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who created and championed this amendment, wanted to insert this language because of the defective legal and amateur (and academic, I’ll add) analysis that held the Smith-Mundt Act’s restrictions applied to the Defense Department.

The perception in the Defense Department conforms with this August 2006 memo produced by a department lawyer: “although [the Smith-Mundt Act was] addressed to the activities of USIA and now the Department of State, Smith-Mundt, in its text and legislative history, indicates a strong aversion by Congress to government activities intended to influence a domestic audience.”

A reference to the Smith-Mundt Act should not have appeared in this memo, nor should it have appeared first among the three “restrictions on influencing a domestic audience [that are] applicable to the Department of Defense.” The three examples, the other two being Title 50 restrictions and the (very) common “publicity and propaganda riders” that appear in (probably or nearly) every appropriation act, are used to demonstrate Congress spoke with a “clear voice” on this matter.

The memo’s analysis seems solid, but the “clear voice” gets quite muddled quickly when scratching the surface. For example, the 1972 amendment by Senator Fulbright, referred to by the memo as clarification of the law, was instead part of his effort to shut down all information operations, notably foreign activities, as he attempted to close USIA, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty. The 1985 amendment by Sen. Zorinsky, also cited as a clarification of the law was propelled by his view of a deep politicization and possible corruption at USIA. The Senator charged the agency with rampant nepotism; he was upset the USIA Director spent nearly $35,000 in agency funds for a home security system, and he lumped Otto Reich’s Office of Public Diplomacy nested in the State Department with USIA. I have researched the Smith-Mundt Act for well over a decade, and I can find not a single reference by Congress that the legislation, original or as amended, sought to broaden by implication or letter its application to the entirety of the State Department or the rest of government.

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Like any other law review article this century of the Smith-Mundt Act, the analysis does not probe whether all information and influence operations by the State Department are covered (hint: they aren’t, generally only the stuff that used to be part of USIA before 1999). While some law review articles did raise other domestic information activities as a concern, such as the 2005 video news releases scandal, there was no relevance to the Smith-Mundt Act. None of the legal review journal articles and academic articles (or media/pundit/think tank comments) that I’ve read touch on, let alone answer the question of how a Title 22 statute that names explicitly the State Department, the Secretary of State, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and the US Information Agency somehow magically applies to the Title 10, or Title 50, activities of the Defense Department. (The current statutes list names, organizations, and relationships long gone, as the text has not been adequately updated.) As I wrote in 2008, “If preventing government advocacy and influence operations on the American public is the goal, Congress should limit appearances by the executive branch on the Sunday talk show circuit, implement campaign reforms, among other changes.” The “clear voice” isn’t really that clear.

By the way, I’d advise not doing a general Google or Twitter search for the Smith-Mundt Act as you can get sucked into the world of tinfoil arguments that a) Smith-Mundt was “repealed” by Obama, b) the repeal led to massive domestic influence operations by the media, and other nonsensical arguments. On (a), the Smith-Mundt Act was not repealed in any way, shape, or form. It was amended through a Republican-sponsored effort to stop the Defense Department from invoking Smith-Mundt as a reason not to do something. Regarding (b), the argument is predicated on the false myth that the pre-2012 Smith-Mundt Act prevented all domestic propaganda, and the result is today’s biased and bad news coverage. Good Lord, this is not just false; it’s dumb. Let’s move on.

The Smith-Mundt Act appeared, and I’m postulating here, because of common lore, the “accepted wisdom,” and the “conventional wisdom.” But the memo made its point clear with this statement, which is supported by quickly confirmed facts and which does not require any reference to the irrelevant Smith-Mundt Act:

…such agencies may only do what Congress has authorized and funded them to do. The publicity and propaganda riders go further, however. Lest there be any doubt, the riders restate this principle, and in the case under discussion, with regard to covert propaganda. Thus, while Congress has funded various Information Operations activities abroad, it has never authorized or funded Information Operations activities targeting a domestic audience. Moreover, Congress has also authorized and fundedthe position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, who obviously is permitted to target a domestic audience but for purely informational purposes only. Under both the general rule and the more specific rider then, DoD lacks the authority to engage in domestic influence operations.

For this note, I’m not going to delve into the text above and the differences between inform and influence, nor will I discuss the differences between capitalized Information Operations and lowercase information operations. Nor will I discuss that egregious examples of domestic influence by the Defense Department earlier this century came from the public affairs operation and not the IO (or “io”) areas.

I’m not saying there aren’t restrictions on the Defense Department’s ability to conduct (lowercase) information operations abroad that need to be changed. I’d wager the “restrictions” result from problems with leadership rather than actual statutory restrictions, mainly since the latter often follows the failure of the former. I am saying that the Smith-Mundt Act does not and never did apply to any activity of the Defense Department. Congress spoke with a clear voice in 2012 on this point, yet here we are in 2023 and still hearing that the Smith-Mundt Act somehow impeds the Defense Department. It feels like we don’t want to be successful, which I again chalk up to leadership, which includes not questioning institutional biases and “accepted wisdom.”

There is the old lament that information operations are cheap relative to the tangible kinetic national defense options. Here’s a statement from October 1945 that remains relevant today when swapping out the specific weapon:

The interchange of skill, culture, and information costs very little in contrast to a single battleship in a fleet of battleships. Today I can hardly imagine a cultural-relations program on a world scale which, on an annual basis, would equal the cost of a battleship. A battleship is a traditional and orthodox expenditure of the taxpayer's dollar. The exchange of skills, knowledge, students, scientists, and other specialists is a relatively new idea and hence, to some unorthodox.

I will note that both “information” and “exchange” was interpreted in a far more expansive and inclusive way then than is typically thought of today. Every exchange and information engagement was an intentional influence operation.

Thanks for reading Arming for the War We’re In! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong

6. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-21-2023

Key Takeaways

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 21 address to the Russian Federal Assembly did not articulate specific goals or intentions for the war in Ukraine, instead reinforcing several long-standing rhetorical lines in an effort to buy Putin more space and time for a protracted war.
• Putin announcement of Russia’s suspension of participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) captured more attention than the relatively boilerplate content of the rest of the speech.
• US President Joe Biden gave a speech in Warsaw, Poland on February 21 to reaffirm US and NATO support for Ukraine after his trip to Kyiv.
• Many Russian milbloggers condemned Putin’s failure to use his speech to forward new war aims, outline new measures to support the war, or hold Russian authorities accountable for their many military failures.
• International journalists reportedly obtained the Kremlin’s classified 2021 strategy document on restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus through the Union State by 2030.
• Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office Director Wang Yi met in Moscow on February 21 on deepening Sino–Russan cooperation.
• The Financial Times (FT) reported that Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s international companies continue to garner hundreds of millions of dollars in profits despite long-standing Western sanctions.
• Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna. Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a limited counterattack near Kreminna.
• Russian forces continued making incremental tactical gains in and around Bakhmut, and continued ground attacks near Avdiivka.
• Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces continue to reinforce and build fortifications in rear areas in southern Ukraine.
• The Kremlin may be directing patronage programs between Russian regions and occupied Ukrainian territory to promote socio-economic recovery and infrastructure development.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin further expanded unrealistic promises of benefits for Russian soldiers in his address to the Russian Federal Assembly.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Feb 21, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 21, 2023

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, George Barros, Nicole Wolkov, Angela Howard, and Frederick W. Kagan

February 21, 8pm 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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 21 address to the Russian Federal Assembly did not articulate specific goals or intentions for the war in Ukraine, instead reinforcing several long-standing rhetorical lines in an effort to buy Putin more space and time for a protracted war. Putin claimed that Russia began the “special military operation” in Ukraine a year ago in order to protect people in Russia’s “historical lands,” ensure Russian domestic security, remedy the threat posed by the Ukrainian “neo-Nazi” regime that he claims has been in place since 2014, and protect the people of Donbas.[1] Putin virulently accused the collective West of arming Ukraine and deploying bases and biolabs close to Russian borders, thereby unleashing the war on Russia.[2] Putin falsely analogized the Ukrainian Armed Forces with various Nazi divisions and thanked the Russian Armed Forces for their efforts in fighting the Nazi threat.[3] The emphasis of a significant portion of the speech was on the supposed resilience of the Russian economic, social, and cultural spheres, and Putin made several recommendations for the development of occupied territories of Ukraine.[4] Putin's speech notably re-engaged with several long-standing Russian information operations regarding the justifications of the war and did not present an inflection in Russia’s rhetorical positioning on the war. Putin could have used this event to articulate new objectives and means for achieving them, such as announcing another formal wave of partial mobilization, redefining the “special military operation” as an official war, or taking additional steps to mobilize the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) in a more concrete way. Instead, Putin said very little of actual substance, likely in order to set continued information conditions for a protracted war in Ukraine by not articulating specific temporal goals and framing the war as existential to the Russian domestic population.

Putin announcement of Russia’s suspension of participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) captured more attention than the relatively boilerplate content of the rest of the speech. Towards the end of his speech, Putin claimed that the collective West has used START to try to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and that Russia is therefore suspending its participation in START, although Putin did emphasize that suspension is not a full withdrawal.[5] Putin called on the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Russian nuclear energy agency Rosatom to ensure readiness for testing nuclear weapons.[6] Putin may have made this announcement in order to re-introduce nuclear rhetoric into the information space, thereby distracting from the overall lack of substance in the rest of his speech. ISW has previously reported on the Russian use of nuclear rhetoric as an information operation to discourage Ukraine and the West and compensate for Russian battlefield failures.[7] ISW continues to assess that Russia will not employ a nuclear weapon in Ukraine or against NATO, however.

US President Joe Biden gave a speech in Warsaw, Poland on February 21 to reaffirm US and NATO support for Ukraine after his trip to Kyiv. Biden emphasized the unity among NATO countries and stated “our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.”[8] Biden also directly addressed Putin’s February 21 speech stating, “the West was not plotting to attack Russia” and “[Putin] could end this war with a word.”[9]

Many Russian milbloggers condemned Putin’s failure to use his speech to forward new war aims, outline new measures to support the war, or hold Russian authorities accountable for their many military failures. Some milbloggers with prior Kremlin affiliation as well as occupation officials attended the speech in person and expressed positive or neutral support for Putin’s framing of the war as a conflict against the West, suspension of Russia’s participation in START, and support of the Donbas separatist republics.[10] Other milbloggers criticized Putin’s address as boilerplate and without meaningful action. Russian milblogger Igor Girkin notably claimed that Putin did not say anything meaningful for 40 minutes; omitted Russia’s military defeats, military failures, and economic downturn; and failed to hold Russian officials accountable.[11] Girkin also expressed frustration at Putin’s failure to use the address to formally recognize the war, announce next objectives, or counter Western sanctions. Another milblogger claimed that the suspension of Russia’s participation in START is politically symbolic but complained that the suspension will not improve Russia’s situation on the battlefield, instead calling on Russia to hinder Western military aid deliveries to Ukraine.[12] A third milblogger compared Putin to a corpse and echoed many of Girkin’s complaints about accountability and action.[13] Other milbloggers similarly noted the need for decisive action and called for Russia to foster the growth of and promote military leaders with a demonstrated history of taking decisive action on the battlefield.[14] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he did not watch Putin’s speech live because he was too busy working to supply Wagner forces with ammunition necessary to continue effective combat operations in Ukraine.[15]

International journalists reportedly obtained the Kremlin’s classified 2021 strategy document on restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus through the Union State by 2030. The Kyiv Independent, Yahoo News, and several of their international media partners published an investigative report on February 20 about a classified 17-page Russian strategy document on how the Kremlin seeks to absorb the Belarusian state using the Kremlin-dominated Union State structure by 2030.[16] The journalists did not publish the strategy document to avoid compromising sources they said. While ISW is unable to confirm the existence or contents of this document, the reporters’ findings about the strategy document and its various lines of effort for Belarus’ phased military, political, economic, and cultural integration with Russia through the Union State are consistent with ISW’s long-term research and assessments about the Kremlin’s campaigns and strategic objective to subsume Belarus via the Union State.[17]

NATO must seriously plan for the likely future reality of a Russian-controlled Belarus. As ISW previously assessed, Putin will very likely secure significant gains in restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus regardless of the outcome of his invasion of Ukraine.[18] Russia’s likely permanent gains in Belarus present the West with a decision about how to deal with the potential future security landscape on NATO’s eastern flank. If the West allows Putin to maintain his current gains in Ukraine—particularly Crimea and eastern Kherson Oblast—then the Kremlin will be able to use both occupied Belarusian and Ukrainian territory to further threaten Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank. The West could alternatively set conditions for a future in which a territorially-whole Ukraine becomes a robust military partner in defending NATO’s eastern flank against Russia and Russian-occupied Belarus. This preferable long-term future is predicated on immediate and sustained decisive Western action to empower Ukraine to expel Russian forces from its territory. It is extraordinal unlikely that the West will be able to defeat or respond effectively to the Russian campaign to absorb Belarus without first defeating the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office Director Wang Yi met in Moscow on February 21 to discuss deepening Sino–Russian cooperation.[19] Patrushev stated that developing a strategic partnership with China is an unconditional foreign policy priority for Russia.[20] Patrushev claimed that Western states are acting against both China and Russia and claimed that both states stand for a fair world order. Wang stated that Sino–Russian relations remain strong and can “will withstand the test of the changing international situation.”[21] Wang will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on February 22.[22] US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on February 18 that China is strongly considering providing lethal support to Russia.[23]

The Financial Times (FT) reported that international companies belonging to Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s continue to garner hundreds of millions of dollars in profits despite long-standing Western sanctions.[24] FT reported that the Prigozhin-controlled company Evro Polis, which received energy concessions from Syria in exchange for recapturing ISIS-controlled oilfields, had net profits of $90 million in 2020 despite US sanctions on the company in 2018, providing a 180 percent return on investment for shareholders that was repatriated to Russia. FT reported that smaller Prigozhin-controlled companies like M Invest, which runs gold mines in Sudan, and Mercury LLC, a Syrian oil company that likely transferred operations to a new business name to evade sanctions, continue to rake in millions in profit. FT’s report further demonstrates the extent to which Western sanctions have failed to stop Russian or Russian-backed actors that help Russia fight against Ukraine.

Key Takeaways

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 21 address to the Russian Federal Assembly did not articulate specific goals or intentions for the war in Ukraine, instead reinforcing several long-standing rhetorical lines in an effort to buy Putin more space and time for a protracted war.
• Putin announcement of Russia’s suspension of participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) captured more attention than the relatively boilerplate content of the rest of the speech.
• US President Joe Biden gave a speech in Warsaw, Poland on February 21 to reaffirm US and NATO support for Ukraine after his trip to Kyiv.
• Many Russian milbloggers condemned Putin’s failure to use his speech to forward new war aims, outline new measures to support the war, or hold Russian authorities accountable for their many military failures.
• International journalists reportedly obtained the Kremlin’s classified 2021 strategy document on restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus through the Union State by 2030.
• Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office Director Wang Yi met in Moscow on February 21 on deepening Sino–Russan cooperation.
• The Financial Times (FT) reported that Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s international companies continue to garner hundreds of millions of dollars in profits despite long-standing Western sanctions.
• Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna. Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a limited counterattack near Kreminna.
• Russian forces continued making incremental tactical gains in and around Bakhmut, and continued ground attacks near Avdiivka.
• Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces continue to reinforce and build fortifications in rear areas in southern Ukraine.
• The Kremlin may be directing patronage programs between Russian regions and occupied Ukrainian territory to promote socio-economic recovery and infrastructure development.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin further expanded unrealistic promises of benefits for Russian soldiers in his address to the Russian Federal Assembly.

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.

• Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1—Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1- Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and continue offensive operations into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna on February 21. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on February 21 that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks near Hryanykivka and Masiutivka (both 54km northwest of Svatove).[25] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted a ground attack from Shyplivka (8km south of Kreminna) and gained positions in the Serebrianska forest area (roughly 11km southwest of Kreminna).[26] The milblogger also claimed that Russian forces attacked Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), Terny (17km west of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).

Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted limited counterattacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna on February 21. Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian counterattack near Hryanykivka.[27] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a counterattack in the Serebrianska forest area near Shyplivka (9km southeast of Kreminna) and made marginal advances.[28]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces continued making incremental tactical gains in and around Bakhmut. Geolocated footage taken on February 14 and posted on February 20 shows Ukrainian tanks firing at Russian infantry in the tree line along the E40 Bakhmut-Slovyansk highway, confirming that Russian forces have succeeded in cutting the E40 northwest of Bakhmut.[29] However, the fact that Russian forces interdicted the E40 a week ago and still have not forced Ukrainians to withdraw from Bakhmut suggests that it is not the vital logistics artery into the city that milbloggers often claim it is. Geolocated footage additionally indicates that Russian forces have made small advances northeast of Bakhmut near Berestove (20km northeast of Bakhmut) and in southwestern Bakhmut in the area of the Mariupolske Cemetary.[30] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself; north of Bakhmut near Vasyukivka (11km north) and Berkhivka (4km north); and northeast of Bakhmut around Vasylivka (21km northeast).[31] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces broke through Ukrainian defensive lines near Yahidne (on the northwestern outskirts of Bakhmut) and reached the Stupky railway station on the northern tip of Bakhmut.[32] Several Russian milbloggers noted that the Wagner Group is approaching the AZOM metal processing plant in northern Bakhmut and assessed that fighting in Bakhmut may concentrate on the territory of the plant as Wagner tries to move into the center of the city.[33] Milbloggers compared the AZOM plant to Ukrainian defensive efforts at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol and the Azot steel plant in Severodonetsk in 2022.[34] A Russian milblogger additionally claimed that Russian forces are still fighting near Ivanivske, 5km west of Bakhmut.[35] The concentration of milblogger claims regarding Russian efforts in northern Bakhmut compared to the relative silence regarding operations west of Bakhmut along the T0504 Kostyantynivka-Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut highway may suggest that Russian forces have given up on trying to encircle Bakhmut and are instead focusing on fighting into Bakhmut from the north. This effort is likely to be exceedingly costly and slow, given the dense urban environment and Ukrainian fortification systems within Bakhmut. The Russians may resume efforts to encircle Bakhmut in the coming days or weeks, however.

Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Avdiivka–Donetsk City area on February 21. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attacked near Novobakhmutivka (10km northeast of Avdiivka), on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Vodyane and Nevelske, and on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Marinka.[36] Two prominent milbloggers reported that Ukrainian forces conducted a successful counterattack north of Avdiivka and regained lost positions near Vesele (6km northeast of Avdiivka).[37] Russian sources continued to claim that Russian forces are fighting for the center of Marinka.[38] Geolocated footage shows that Russian forces have made marginal advances near Novomykhailivka, just south of Donetsk City.[39]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on February 21. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian naval infantry elements continue assaults on Ukrainian positions in southeastern Vuhledar.[40] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko claimed that certain Russian forces previously deployed within the Russian rear in Donetsk Oblast have transferred to the Vuhledar front.[41] Geolocated footage shows that elements of the 36th Combined Arms Army (Eastern Military District) made marginal advances near Mykilske, just southwest of Vuhledar.[42]

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

Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces continue to reinforce and build fortifications in rear areas of southern Ukraine. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported that Russian forces increased the number of Wagner Group forces, mobilized personnel, and battalions of Ossetian and Dagestani personnel in unspecified areas of Zaporizhia Oblast.[43] ISW has previously reported on the formation of Russian volunteer battalions in Russian federal subjects (regions), including in North Ossetia and Dagestan.[44] Transporting such irregular forces who are likely battle weary, poorly trained, or both to Zaporizhia Oblast suggests that Russian military leadership has de-prioritized making new territorial gains in Zaporizhia Oblast. Geolocated imagery dated on January 21 and February 20 shows that Russian forces continue to dig trenches south of Armiansk in northern Crimea.[45]

Russian forces continued routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts on February 21.[46]

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin further expanded unrealistic promises of benefits for Russian soldiers in his February 21 address to the Russian Federal Assembly. Putin announced a policy of regular 14-day leaves for Russian soldiers at least once every 6 months and proposed the creation of a special state fund for targeted, personal assistance to the families of fallen soldiers and veterans of the war in Ukraine.[47] Such unlikely-to-manifest promises are probably losing credibility among the Russian public, as the Russian government has already failed to deliver on a variety of financial promises to soldiers, as ISW has previously reported.[48] Putin also attempted to divert responsibility for providing for military personnel to Russia’s federal subjects, calling for all federal departments, municipalities, and beyond to pay close attention to the needs of military personnel and their families.[49]

Russian authorities continue to use the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian educational institutions to support force-generation efforts. A Russian opposition source stated on February 20 that Russian priests discussed the war in Ukraine and encouraged medical college students to apply for early conscription while the students visited the Church of the Nativity in Volzhsky, Volgograd Oblast on a school trip.[50] The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on February 21 that Russian authorities are taking measures to prepare for another wave of mobilization by creating “alert stations” in universities to aid the mobilization of full-time students and have already worked with the management of Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Tomsk Polytechnic University, and Tomsk State Pedagogical University.[51] The GUR published an intercepted document dated February 9, 2023, that apparently shows documentation of such an arrangement with the Russian Ministry of Enlightenment and Tomsk State Pedagogical University.[52]

Russian authorities continue to prosecute residents for alleged sabotage efforts and attempts to resist mobilization. A popular Russian news source claimed on February 21 that a court in Belgorod sentenced two residents to three and a half years in prison on charges of sharing unspecified information about the Russian military via a pro-Ukraine website and attempting to derail a train by sabotaging railroad tracks used by the Russian military.[53] Russian human rights activist Pavel Chikov reported on February 20 that the Pechenga Garrison Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against a lieutenant and doctor for refusing to comply with Russian mobilization on January 20, 2023, due to his personal beliefs.[54]

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

The Kremlin may be directing patronage programs between Russian regions and occupied Ukrainian territory to promote socio-economic recovery and infrastructure development. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his speech to the Federal Assembly on February 21 that Russian regions are providing direct support for cities, districts, and villages in occupied areas.[55] Tyumen Oblast-based news outlet Neft reported that Tyumen Oblast Governor Alexander Moor visited Sorokyne (Krasnodon) in Luhansk Oblast and claimed that Tyumen specialists are working to restore social facilities in Sorokyne.[56] Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Governor Natalya Komarova visited occupied Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, brought military equipment to Makiivka, and met with Russian forces from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and humanitarian corps volunteers.[57] ISW has previously reported on instances of Russian regions providing material support to occupied areas of Ukraine in order to consolidate Russian economic and social control in occupied Ukraine.[58] ISW has also previously assessed that the Kremlin aims to shift the financial burden of the war to regional governments.[59] The establishment of economic and development patronage programs between Russian regionals and occupied Ukrainian territories could further shift the financial burden of installing occupation networks away from the Kremlin.

Russian officials continue to use social benefit schemes to expand administrative control of occupied area of Ukraine. Putin proposed the provision of maternity capital to all occupied regions for families with children born since 2007.[60] Kherson Occupation Administration Head Vladimir Saldo claimed that extending the maternity capital program is an important step to ensuring Kherson Oblast residents receive the same benefits as all Russian citizens.[61] ISW has previously assessed that maternity capital programs help to consolidate Russian control over occupied areas by incentivizing families to have more children who will receive Russian citizenship at birth.[62] Maternity capital programs also enforce crypto-Russification as certain occupation authorities require the translation of birth certificates into Russian, thus changing names and locations from Ukrainian to Russian orthography.[63]

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.)

The Belarusian military reportedly deployed military equipment from Minsk toward the Belarusian-Lithuanian border. Independent Belarusian monitoring organization The Hajun Project reported that four columns of equipment including 35 BMPs and other equipment of the 358th Separate Mechanized Battalion of the Minsk-based Belarusian 120th Mechanized Brigade deployed towards the Lithuanian Border on February 21.[64] The Belarusian Hajun Project reported that the columns proceeded along the Minsk beltway and further to the M6 highway and along it to the M7 highway in the direction of the border with Lithuania and the Belarusian city of Ashmyany, Grodno Oblast.[65] The Belarusian Ministry of Defense announced on February 21 that the Belarusian Armed Forces deployed unspecified mechanized elements reinforced with air defense units to an unspecified area on the night of February 20–21 as part of a combat readiness check.[66]

Belarusian maneuver elements continue to conduct exercises in Belarus. Unspecified elements of the Belarusian 11thSeparate Mechanized Brigade conducted live fire exercises with T-72 tanks and BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles at the Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground in Brest, Belarus, on February 21.[67]

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.

[1] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[2] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[3] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[4] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[5] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[6] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[16] https://kyivindependent dot com/investigations/leaked-document-reveals-alleged-kremlin-plan-to-take-over-belarus-by-2030; https://vsquare dot org/secret-kremlin-document-russia-plans-take-over-belarus-putin/; https://news.yahoo dot com/russia-belarus-strategy-document-230035184.html; https://dossier dot center/union-br/; https://www.tagesschau dot de/investigativ/ndr-wdr/russland-belarus-kreml-papier-101.html; https://www.expressen dot se/nyheter/lackan-fran-kreml-putins-hemliga-plan--for-att-ta-over-belarus/; https://epl.delfi dot ee/artikkel/120146238/saladokumendid-naitavad-just-nii-plaanib-putini-venemaa-valgevene-alla-neelata; https://vsquare.org/secret-kremlin-document-russia-plans-take-over-belar... https://frontstory dot pl/tajny-plan-kreml-aneksja-bialorus-putin-lukaszenka/

[20] https://ria dot ru/20230221/vstrecha-1853501059.html

[21] https://www.straitstimes dot com/world/europe/putin-ally-tells-top-chinese-diplomat-wang-yi-that-russia-backs-beijing-against-west

[22] https://www.straitstimes dot com/world/europe/putin-ally-tells-top-chinese-diplomat-wang-yi-that-russia-backs-beijing-against-west

[32] https://readovka67 dot ru/news/133173; https://t.me/rybar/43806; https://t.me/kommunist/15981

[47] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[49] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[51] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/v-rf-hotuiutsia-do-masovoi-mobilizatsii-studentiv-ochnoi-formy-navchannia.html

[52] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/v-rf-hotuiutsia-do-masovoi-mobilizatsii-studentiv-ochnoi-formy-navchannia.html

[55] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

[56] https://neft dot media/tyumenskaya-oblast/news/gubernatory-tyumenskoy-oblasti-i-yugry-posetili-lnr

[57] https://neft dot media/tyumenskaya-oblast/news/gubernatory-tyumenskoy-oblasti-i-yugry-posetili-lnr

[60] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70565

understandingwar.or

7. US military investigating leak of emails from Pentagon server

US military investigating leak of emails from Pentagon server | CNN Politics

CNN · by Sean Lyngaas · February 21, 2023

CNN —

The US military’s Special Operations Command says it is investigating a report from a cybersecurity researcher that the command was leaking a trove of unclassified email data on the internet.

On Monday, the command “initiated an investigation into information we were provided about a potential issue with the command’s Cloud service,” Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesperson Ken McGraw said in an email to CNN on Tuesday.

“The only other information we can confirm at this point is no one has hacked US Special Operations Command’s information systems,” McGraw said.

TechCrunch first reported on the data leak, which was discovered by independent cybersecurity researcher Anurag Sen.

Samples of the data Sen shared with CNN dated back years and included standard information about US military contracts and requests by Department of Defense employees to have their paperwork processed.

Anyone who knew the IP address of the server could access the data without a password until the server was secured on Monday, Sen said.

The data exposure is an example of how powerful organizations can unwittingly expose potentially sensitive internal data by not configuring their computer servers properly.

It is not uncommon for large organizations to inadvertently expose internal data to the internet, but the fact that this is a Department of Defense email server will give US officials cause for concern. It is unclear if any malicious outsider accessed the exposed SOCOM data. CNN has requested comment from the command.

Special Operations Command is an elite Pentagon command responsible for counterterrorism and hostage rescue missions around the globe.

The leaked Department of Defense email data spanned three terabytes (the equivalent of dozens of standard smartphones’ storage), most of it belonging to SOCOM, according to Sen, who said he found the leak on February 8.

CNN · by Sean Lyngaas · February 21, 2023

8. Biden’s visit to Kyiv may help both Ukraine and Taiwan

Conclusion:

Biden’s visit to Ukraine also could have beneficial spillover effects on the U.S.-China relationship, by conveying America’s resolve to stand by democratic allies and partners under attack by an authoritarian neighbor — especially if the visit offsets some of the more pessimistic comments emanating from other administration officials.

Biden’s visit to Kyiv may help both Ukraine and Taiwan

BY JOSEPH BOSCO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 02/21/23 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3867138-bidens-visit-to-kyiv-may-help-both-ukraine-and-taiwan/

President Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday was a historic turning point in Russia’s war on Ukraine and a potential game-changer in the global struggle between democracies and autocracies.

Biden staked his own political fortunes, the legacy of his administration, and the international standing of the United States on what he reaffirmed in Kyiv as “our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty and territorial integrity. … We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Congressional critics, distinct minorities in both parties, will decry the president’s open-ended commitment as “a blank check.” Given the global ramifications, it has been anything but that. The administration and NATO allies who follow America’s lead have been hesitant and cautious about the quality and quantity of arms they send to Ukraine and the pace at which they are delivering them.

Even some long-delayed systems that are finally arriving in Ukraine lack the needed ammunition, which is being shipped later. All these delays have cost Ukraine in lives lost and cities destroyed. Meanwhile, Russia has intensified its grinding assaults in the Donbas region, where waves of prison conscripts are attacking the outnumbered Ukrainian defenders. 

Biden’s dramatic meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a necessary corrective to some wavering of public (and even administration) support for the Ukraine effort. There have been hints that some in the administration may be inclined to pressure Ukraine for an earlier settlement negotiation than Zelensky’s government is prepared to undertake, and for territorial concessions that it is unwilling to make.

One unidentified administration official last week described the warnings that are being given to Ukraine’s leaders, based on congressional impatience: “We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever.”  

Regarding the president’s words indicating an indefinite commitment, the same official said, “‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict. It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.” That curious statement will raise questions about how solid America’s “rock-solid” commitment to Taiwan is.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, foresaw no victory for either side but a prolonged, grinding stalemate. He told the Financial Times, “It is unlikely that Russia is going to overrun Ukraine. It’s just not going to happen.” But he was equally skeptical that Ukraine could achieve its maximalist goals for the conflict: “It is also very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to kick the Russians out of every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine. It’s not to say that it can’t happen … but it’s extraordinarily difficult. And it would require, essentially, the collapse of the Russian military.”

For long-suffering, but still grateful, Ukrainians and their Western supporters, there is a bitter irony in those administration expressions of muted pessimism. First, expectations of a quick Ukrainian collapse when Russia invaded proved to be spectacularly off base, thanks to the valor of Ukraine’s military and the brave determination of Zelensky and the Ukrainian people to defend their freedom and sovereignty.

Second, vital as Western arms were to enable Ukraine’s army to withstand and push back some of the Russian onslaught, they have been far short of what Zelensky and his generals requested to achieve a decisive military victory over Russia. The escalation fears of Biden and others in the West have constrained Ukraine’s strategy and virtually assured the long, costly stalemate. 

Before the announcement of Biden’s trip, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) expressed the hope that Washington will increase its delivery of missiles to Ukraine and reverse its opposition to providing fighter jets. Kyiv is desperately seeking those systems in anticipation of a Russian offensive fortified with tens of thousands of new ground forces. The agonizingly long-sought Western tanks, committed by Germany and the U.S. two weeks ago, may not be delivered for months, at the earliest — not in time to withstand Russia’s expected new offensive. 

“The longer they wait, the longer this conflict will prevail,” McCaul warned. And, he might have added, the greater will be administration and Western pressure on Ukraine to strike an unacceptable settlement deal with Russia. 

While the West dithers in providing all that Ukraine needs to win, Russia’s few allies — international criminals in their own right — are increasing their support for the aggressor. Iran is providing Shaheed-126 drones to Russia, and North Korea has made arms deliveries for use by the Wagner Group, Russia’s mercenary army in Ukraine.

China, which has subverted Western economic sanctions by massively increasing its purchases of Russian oil, has been sending nonlethal material aid in violation of the sanctions. Having paid no unacceptable price for working against the world’s interests in stopping Russia’s aggression, Beijing may up the ante and provide its “no-limits strategic partner” with lethal systems. 

“China is trying to have it both ways,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday. “Publicly, they present themselves as a country striving for peace in Ukraine. But privately … we’ve seen already over these past months the provision of nonlethal assistance that does go directly to aiding and abetting Russia’s war effort.”

Blinken said he told Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, that providing “materiel support to Russia’s war effort that would have a lethal effect … would have serious consequences on our own relationship, something that we do not need on top of the balloon incident that China is engaged in.”

Beijing has sought to portray Blinken as beseeching the Chinese for the meeting, the posture of American supplicant the Chinese Communist Party has been exploiting since 1971. If Blinken actually read the riot act to Wang, it could mean a healthy change of attitude in the Biden administration toward China.  

Biden’s visit to Ukraine also could have beneficial spillover effects on the U.S.-China relationship, by conveying America’s resolve to stand by democratic allies and partners under attack by an authoritarian neighbor — especially if the visit offsets some of the more pessimistic comments emanating from other administration officials.

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.

9. New Age of Warfare: Acing technologies, tactics that helped Ukraine neutralise Russia’s firepower is every military’s goal

I am sure we will be reading a lot of one year retrospectives with the search for game changing silver bullets.

New Age of Warfare: Acing technologies, tactics that helped Ukraine neutralise Russia’s firepower is every military’s goal

moneycontrol.com · by Raj Shukla

Ukrainian soldiers fire an artillery at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (File image)

It all began in February 2022 as an attempted surgical occupation of Ukrainian cities by Russian armed forces, considered the world’s fifth largest in terms of personnel. But that dissolved into a grinding back and forth of infantry-tank assaults punctuated with massive artillery, missile and drone strikes.

Over the past one year, the most striking feature has been Ukrainian creativity in weaving smart technological prowess into trench warfare skills to evolve a unique brand of military resilience that has helped liberate 54 per cent of the territories that the Russians had seized since February 24, 2022. The conflict has thrown up a host of valuable lessons in statecraft and warfighting, for our collective reflection. I list seven here.

Need Modern But Tenacious Army

One: the conflict has breached the long standing norm against territorial conquest. In consequence, the instrument of force has returned decisively to the centre of the power calculus. Two distinct conflict dyads seem to be emerging : one in Europe, the other in the Indo – Pacific.

Given the ballooning strategic uncertainties around India, the surest guarantor for peace in the coming decades, will be a modern, joint, calibrated, technologically enabled, ready, instrument of force : each one word descriptor, indicative of deep military capacities that take decades to create. Comprehensive and wide-angled resourcing of the military is therefore critical. Crafting a war winning instrument in the highest state of combat readiness, should be a priority for Indian statecraft to focus on.

Two: Many paradigms regarding the “character of war” have been upended. Most notable amongst them being that all-out wars are a thing of the past and that modern conflicts will be sharp and swift. The abiding lesson from the conflict for militaries worldwide, is to focus on wide spectrum preparedness, arduous slogs and long haul industrial sustainment.

Comprehensive techno-strategic competitiveness, grey zone proficiencies, traditional warfighting, industrial era prowess, digital combat and nuclear capacities are all equally salient. Even as the Indian military pursues technological sophistry, it must not be at the cost of the fundamental tenets of combat - that is the central lesson from Ukraine.

Nukes Command Respect, Fear

Three: the conflict also tells us that nuclear capacities as the ultimate backstop and guarantor in national security does matter. The fact that Russia boasts of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal (4,447 warheads) has been a significant factor in limiting the arc of US and NATO defence planning.

The Chinese nuclear posture is growing in size, precision and sophistication – it has two distinct orientations in the form of a strategic nuclear force and a theatre (tactical) nuclear force – its targeting of India, both, in terms of counter value and counter force dispositions, is precise and focussed.

The Chinese FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) has introduced the possibility of an additional hypersonic, nuclear vector through space. It may be wise therefore, to revisit the conceptual metrics of our nuclear posture as also the modernisation of our nuclear triad, to ensure that our nuclear deterrence does not seem fragile in moments of grave crises.

India’s Precision Munition Challenge

The fourth aspect is the game changing role of precision strike regimes / long range fires also merits deeper analysis. Precision has been the dominant theme through the conflict. The defining role of the HIMARs or even the precise targeting of critical Ukrainian infrastructure by the Russians has demonstrated the distinct role of precision in modern combat.

In India, our ordnance factories are these ammunition behemoths with little capacity to manufacture smart and precise munitions of the future – they need to transform comprehensively in thought, form and structure. The marriage of explosives with micro-electronics is the enduring technological challenge of our times. The critical role of long range fires is also instructive.

The momentum of Ukrainian frontline operations has often been stymied due to Ukrainian inability to secure its depth areas through the threat of retaliatory long range strikes in kind - of Russian cities and infrastructure. The Indian military needs to revisit the mechanics of its operational posture/deployment along our Northern borders – the need to fight distributed and dispersed to thwart the might of the PLA’s Rocket Force, as also its own options in terms of retaliatory strikes.

A sophisticated ecosystem of precisionary and long range strike, with distinctive counter value and counter force capacities, is the need of the hour.

Limits To Russian Airpower

The fifth lesson is the underwhelming performance of Russian airpower despite an overwhelming superiority in numbers across aircraft types, merits deeper analysis, especially since our own IAF operates a fleet, largely of Russian origin. Traditionally, air forces use their precision strike capacities to take out mobile AD systems and leverage the space so created to establish air superiority over the wider battle space with unguided munitions. This strategy has not quite worked. Given the sophisticated A2AD (anti-access and air denial) Wall in the Chinese Western Theatre Command, penetration of the same by the IAF is a challenge that we need to revisit.

Additionally, the great democratisation of capacities in space, air and intelligence are severely challenging the ability of conventional air forces to operate with the same freedoms as in the past. Given the significant contribution of unmanned systems like the Bayrakhtars and Switchblades in impacting combat outcomes, we may consider the embrace of hybrid air fleets (manned and unmanned) to enhance our combat prowess in aerial combat.

Age Of Algorithmic Warfare

Sixth and perhaps most significantly, the salience of digital combat / algorithmic warfare has been proven. It turns out that the formidable Russian military machine has come a cropper on account of a severe deficit in chips and allied microelectronics. As many as 27 Russian military systems (from tactical radios to kill chains to high end missiles) and 450 micro components have been subjected to Western sanctions, leading to declining levels of Russian combat effectiveness on the battlefield.

Data, algorithms and the miniaturisation of combat power have emerged as the new engines of war. Coders wedded to Infantry Battalions have proved to be as critical as ammunition stockpiles. Private sector competencies, in both, capacity building and warfighting have also come to the fore with great vividity.

Private Sector Heft: From Elon Musk’s Starlink Terminals (off grid, high bandwidth, internet access that links low flying satellites with day-to-day combat operations) to the Microsoft Cyber Threat Identification Centres to the Palantir Algorithm that is powering intelligence fusion, battlefield management and devastating kill chains, the private sector’s influence is ubiquitous and game changing. These electronic kill chains were extremely useful during the liberation of Kherson, Izium and Kharkiv .

What makes these systems truly revolutionary however, is the ability to aggregate data from commercial vendors as well. Using a Palantir tool called Meta Constellation, the Ukraine military can see what commercial data offers about a given battle space. A wide array, from optical pictures to synthetic aperture radar that can see through clouds, to thermal imagery that can detect artillery or missile fire, myriad sources have been leveraged to upgrade combat operations qualitatively.

In Kherson, for example, Palantir drew on imagery from some 306 commercial satellites, focused to an accuracy of 3.3 metres. The final link in the system is the meshing of broadband connectivity provided from overhead by Starlink’s array of roughly 2,500 satellites in low-earth orbit, enabling Ukrainian soldiers to upload intelligence or download targeting information using handheld tablets. A secure chat system, called “eVorog,” has allowed civilians to provide 453,000 reports of military value, since the war started ; a 200-strong “Army of Commercial Drones” is being used for air reconnaissance and targeting .

A battlefield mapping system called “Delta” that provides actual data in real time, completes the digital combat loop. Logistics problems which once took months to resolve, are now resolved in seconds courtesy the algorithm. A key lesson from Ukraine is this : innovation, enterprise and entrepreneurial skills associated with private sector/startups lend to modern armies the critical edge that could define the victor and the vanquished.

Generalship: Seventh and last, a glaring deficit in the Russian campaign has been the visible lack of generalship – in terms of imagination, creativity, critical thinking and the inability to speak truth to power, the latter leading often to tactical reality colliding with strategic expectations.

The Indian military will do well to consider the aforestated points and take measures as deemed appropriate.

Lt. General (Retd.) Raj Shukla, till very recently, was Army Commander, ARTRAC (The Army Training Command). Views are personal. He can be reached on Twitter @Gen_RajShukla or at rajshukla35@yahoo.com. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.

moneycontrol.com · by Raj Shukla

10. The Critics are Dead Wrong: The F-35 Is a Game Changer

The Critics are Dead Wrong: The F-35 Is a Game Changer

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Goure · February 21, 2023

The F-35 Is Writing A New History As The Most Capable Fifth-Generation Fighter: When defense writers have nothing new to say, they sometimes dredge up old stories.

This is the case with a piece in The Week titled “The F-35 Fighter Jet’s Troubled History.” The article is an unbalanced mishmash of old news about challenges the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) faced as a developmental program, inadequate information about the F-35’s current status, and the almost obligatory suggestion that entrenched interests are keeping the program going. There is both a lack of balance and a failure to recognize the F-35 program’s successes. It also lacks a straightforward acknowledgment that, to date, 17 countries have chosen the JSF as their fighter for the 21st century after independently analyzing combat effectiveness, cost, and sustainability of the aircraft.

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Every one of the Pentagon’s developmental programs has had teething problems. The JSF is no exception. Yet what The Week fails to remember is that most of these technical challenges have already been dealt with. For example, problems with the original helmet led to corrective measures several years ago. The same is true for the maintenance of the aircraft’s stealth coating.

The article notes that the F-35 still has not been approved for full-rate production. This is misleading, if not disingenuous, since the primary reason for this delay in the defense department’s Initial Operational Test and Evaluation process, including the difficulty in building the required simulation capability.

Another way of denigrating the JSF is to suggest that it is too expensive. The article in question notes that the life cycle costs for the F-35 program are estimated to be $1.7 trillion over the next fifty years. What is not mentioned is that this is an after-inflation estimate. My colleague, Loren Thompson, put this argument to bed years ago, pointing out that over the same period, inflation means that the costs of military bands would be some $25 billion.

The article also reflects a failure of imagination. The authors make the mistake of viewing the F-35 as just another fighter, albeit one with fifth-generation features. There is a failure to understand that the F-35 is unlike any fighter ever built. It is less the last fighter of the industrial age than the first aerial platform of the Information Age. It is a sensor/network node with wings and weapons. With its advanced electronic systems, sophisticated networking technologies and ability to fuse sensor data from multiple sources, the F-35 can act as the “quarterback” for complex air operations and even combat operations involving land and naval units.

Moreover, unlike fourth-generation platforms which often have to be reconfigured with “bolt-on” capabilities to conduct particular missions, the F-35 comes as a complete package, with sensors, computers, weapons and electronic warfare all part of an integrated whole. This not only simplifies mission planning but allows the JSF to switch between air-to-air, air-to-ground and sensing missions as the tactical situation dictates.

In multiple Air Force exercises, the F-35 has consistently demonstrated its unparalleled performance in both air-to-air and air-to-ground modes. In the 2017 Red Flag exercise, the F-35 achieved a kill ratio of 15 to one, something no other fighter in the U.S. inventory has ever done. Employing its sophisticated sensors and networking to collect and pass targeting information, the F-35 also demonstrated that it could improve the performance of fourth-generation aircraft.

A year of fighting in Ukraine has provided a number of lessons regarding the evolving role of airpower in the Information Age. In the latest Project Convergence exercise, designed to demonstrate sensor-to-shooter connectivity and the ability to rapidly engage targets at long distances, the U.S. Army successfully employed data from an F-35’s sensors to an artillery unit. The F-35 can use its stealthiness and advanced sensors to penetrate hostile air defenses and destroy critical targets, while simultaneously providing critical targeting data to other shooters in multiple domains.

While more sophisticated than any deployed fighter, the F-35 is also more cost-effective to operate and maintain. It is no accident that the F-35 has repeatedly won fair and open competitions to replace existing, aging fighter fleets. Recent acquisition decisions by Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Poland, and Finland have each been the result of comparative evaluations of the F-35.

The reality is that acquiring the F-35 will actually save money. The Swiss decision to acquire 36 JSFs came after an exhaustive four-year evaluation process. According to an article authored by respected defense aviation analyst John Venable:

“The Swiss evaluators found the networked systems of the F-35A enabled pilots to have more situational awareness and that the stealth fighter was more survivable in all mission areas. The F-35A also achieved the highest grades for product support, efficiency of maintenance and potential for collaboration with other countries.”

It is important to recognize that an F-35 already acquired or under contract will not be the same aircraft a few years in the future. Planned upgrades and improvements mean that today’s JSFs will have significantly enhanced capabilities. This program involves improvements in computing power and data management, called Technology Refresh 3, intended to support the Block 4 upgrade that will add some 75 new capabilities including new sensors, the ability to employ a number of new munitions, advanced software for better data fusion, and enhanced electronic warfare capabilities.

The F-35 JSF is writing a new chapter in history as the Free World’s fighter of choice. Ultimately, the value of the F-35 is reflected in the fact that 17 nations are currently flying or have decided to acquire the aircraft. The F-35 offers unparalleled capabilities, future growth options, and continuous improvements in maintainability and sustainability. Equally important is that with the number of deployed JSFs approaching one thousand, a community is being created that can not only share tactics, techniques, and procedures but, in the event of conflict, move data across military services and between countries. This ability to share critical information will be of incalculable value in Joint and Coalition operations.

Author Expertise and Experience

Dr. Daniel Goure, a 1945 Contributing Editor, is Senior Vice President with the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy research organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. He is involved in a wide range of issues as part of the institute’s national security program. Dr. Goure has held senior positions in both the private sector and the U.S. Government. Most recently, he was a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. Dr. Goure spent two years in the U.S. Government as the director of the Office of Strategic Competitiveness in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also served as a senior analyst on national security and defense issues with the Center for Naval Analyses, Science Applications International Corporation, SRS Technologies, R&D Associates, and System Planning Corporation.

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Goure · February 21, 2023

11. If Taiwan Falls, What Happens to America? by Ian Easton

Excerpts:

Given the strategic importance of Taiwan, the U.S. government should give more consideration to the benefits of establishing a significant presence of at least 1,500 special operations forces and marines in Taiwan for training, advisory, and liaison purposes. Ship visits, joint Taiwan Strait patrols, and routine senior leader delegations from Washington to Taiwan are additional low cost and high impact options that are available. Only bold activities are likely to upset Xi Jinping’s calculations and shake his confidence.

The worst thing Washington could do would be to give too much credence to Beijing’s “red lines”, which have no basis in international law and have been purposefully designed to ensure Taiwan becomes increasingly vulnerable and easy to conquer.

To protect their own nation’s vital interests, American leaders must frustrate those of the Chinese government. Taiwan’s future may be in doubt, but its fall is undoubtedly something America cannot afford to let happen.

If Taiwan Falls, What Happens to America?

19fortyfive.com · by Ian Easton · February 21, 2023

War games and tabletop exercises can tell us what it might look like if China attacks Taiwan. But they say little about why Taiwan matters and is worth defending. A new study examines what Americans would lose if they lose Taiwan — and what might happen next.

The first thing to know is that Taiwan is now a very big deal. America’s political and military leaders are increasingly convinced that the Taiwan Strait is the strategic nerve center of the world. No other flashpoint is as structurally unstable, as politically vexing, and as likely to draw the world’s superpowers into a war.

The second thing to know is that an invasion is no longer unthinkable. Through both word and deed, Chairman Xi Jinping is signaling his intention to annihilate Taiwan’s government. A large body of evidence suggests that China is getting ready to do something terrible. There is a growing concern in Washington that it may no longer be a question of if Xi plans to attack Taiwan, but rather when and how.

Thinking It All the Way Through

Conflict is not inevitable, and it is debatable whether or not China’s high command is operating according to a cast iron timeline. For all we know, Xi is convinced that a campaign of coercion will succeed at crumbling the Taiwanese government’s ability to resist annexation.

An understudied aspect of the Taiwan defense debate is what would happen after it was all over. What might happen if the People’s Republic of China succeeded in conquering Taiwan? How would that impact the national security of the United States?

Naturally, a lot would depend on how the war unfolded and what the U.S. did (or didn’t do), but several troubling implications would remain constant irrespective of how it happened. Taiwan has outsized strategic value for America due to its extraordinary political character, its unique military and intelligence capabilities, its critical role in global high-tech supply chains, and its geographic location in the heart of East Asia.

Regardless of how the Republic of China (Taiwan) was captured by the Chinese Communist Party, the world would have lost a leading democracy, and the security architecture of the region would be altered. This would be a traumatic – and probably catastrophic – event in the history of American foreign policy.

When a Democracy Dies

At the time of this writing, Taiwan is ranked among the top 10 freest countries in the world. In 2022, Freedom House gave Taiwan a composite score of 94 out of 100 when it came to measures of global freedom (in comparison the U.S. ranked 83 and China ranked near rock bottom). The U.S. and many other countries have robust relationships with Taiwan, and Taiwan is widely considered by governments across the democratic world to be a responsible, like-minded partner and a model of good governance.

If Taiwan was conquered, however, it would become an occupied territory ruled by China’s one-party dictatorship. The free and independent country that used to be Taiwan would disappear, and a repressive police state would emerge.

The Communist Party can be expected to employ terror tactics against the local Taiwanese population. The mass surveillance and control complex that is omnipresent in Xinjiang and Tibet would likely be installed. A local proxy government under the direct control of Beijing would rule the islands, and all territory formerly administered by the ROC government would be harshly policed.

Having lost one of its best democracies, the international community would be in the presence of a growing sense that illiberal forces were on the march and authoritarianism was spreading. The loss of Taiwan could lead many governments to experience a crisis of confidence. Observers might draw the conclusion that China’s Marxist-Leninist model was superior – or at the very least ascendant – and liberal democracies too weak to resist the new world order that Beijing was creating.

Lost Military and Intelligence Capabilities

If Taiwan falls, its military bases and intelligence facilities would be occupied by the PLA. The Chinese navy can be expected to base its ships and submarines in Taiwan’s deep-water ports. The naval bases on Taiwan’s east coast would be especially valuable for the PLA, which for the first time in its history would have unencumbered access to the deep waters of the Pacific.

After annexation, Chinese bombers and missile units based on Taiwan would be able to hold U.S. forces at risk of surprise raids. PLA Navy surface action groups and aviation units based in Taiwan and the Penghu islands could threaten a blockade of Japan and South Korea by cutting off their primary sea lines of communication. The top of the South China Sea would be “corked” – providing PLA ballistic missile submarines with a maritime bastion and further reinforcing China’s military dominance of Southeast Asia.

The U.S. would lose access to a critical information gathering hub, and the American intelligence community would lose its primary window into China. Taiwan is an irreplaceable source of Mandarin language training and all-source intelligence on China. Without Taiwan, the Pentagon and CIA would likely begin producing flawed analytical products, leaving policymakers ill-informed and prone to making strategic mistakes. In the wake of a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan, U.S. intelligence failures could increase dramatically.

Shattered Supply Chains

Today, Taiwan is the United States’ 8th largest trading partner and a pillar of our knowledge-based economy. A cross-Strait war would likely cost millions of Americans their jobs, and trillions of dollars would be lost. The loss of Taiwan would deeply impact the health of the U.S. economy and could trigger an economic depression in America and across the world.

A recent report asserted that “Taiwan may be the most critical link in the entire technology ecosystem,” due to its dominance in the chip sector, original equipment manufacturing, original design manufacturing, and role as a central hub for producing technology-related materials. In other words, whoever controls Taiwan controls the future of the Internet and the global economy.

Harsh Geostrategic Realities

By seizing Taiwan, the PRC would have effectively carved out a powerful sphere of influence for itself in Asia using violent methods. This could have grave implications for international law, the idea of national self-determination, and the principle of state sovereignty.

The fall of Taiwan would likely undermine perceptions of U.S. global diplomatic and military leadership, straining (and possibly breaking) the American alliance system and the United Nations System. China would probably be viewed as the most powerful nation in the world and the prime mover of the 21st century.

Leaders would experience trepidation as Beijing marched toward its vision of a new centralized, authoritarian world order. Nuclear arms racing would almost certainly accelerate and could spiral out of control. This would be a new age of empires. And jungle rules.

America Gets a Vote

To appreciate why deterring Beijing from attacking Taiwan matters, we must carefully consider the consequences of failure. Facing up to the existence of stark scenarios is only the first step. The next step is acting to forestall aggression before it culminates into a preventable war.

Given the strategic importance of Taiwan, the U.S. government should give more consideration to the benefits of establishing a significant presence of at least 1,500 special operations forces and marines in Taiwan for training, advisory, and liaison purposes. Ship visits, joint Taiwan Strait patrols, and routine senior leader delegations from Washington to Taiwan are additional low cost and high impact options that are available. Only bold activities are likely to upset Xi Jinping’s calculations and shake his confidence.

The worst thing Washington could do would be to give too much credence to Beijing’s “red lines”, which have no basis in international law and have been purposefully designed to ensure Taiwan becomes increasingly vulnerable and easy to conquer.

To protect their own nation’s vital interests, American leaders must frustrate those of the Chinese government. Taiwan’s future may be in doubt, but its fall is undoubtedly something America cannot afford to let happen.

Author Expertise and Experience

Ian Easton is a senior director at the Project 2049 Institute and author of The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy. This article draws heavily from The World After Taiwan’s Fall, edited by David Santoro and Ralph Cossa. Reprinted with permission.

19fortyfive.com · by Ian Easton · February 21, 2023

12. A year of Russian fighting in Ukraine shows the US military what it needs to improve, analysts say

A year of Russian fighting in Ukraine shows the US military what it needs to improve, analysts say

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · February 21, 2023

A U.S. Army M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle drives along a road during a multinational exercise at Hohenfels Training Area in Germany on June 8, 2022. This month, the first Ukrainian battalion completed training on using the Bradley, which the U.S. is sending to Ukraine for its fight against Russia. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

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A year ago, many outside observers said it was only a matter of time until Kyiv’s fall, as Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine in a bid to capture its capital.

Instead, Moscow’s full-scale invasion floundered. Two months into the fighting, Kyiv stood and Russian forces were in retreat.

But hidden amid those failures is a threat still facing the United States military and its allies in Europe, where vulnerabilities persist on its eastern borders, experts say.

“The Russians didn’t get close to capturing Kyiv in three days, but they did capture enough territory equal to the size of Estonia,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said in a recent phone interview.

Despite the Kremlin’s battlefield failures and the huge toll in lives and materiel in Ukraine, allies should be careful not to underestimate a Russian military that can be expected to undergo a major reset regardless of the outcome in Ukraine, analysts say.

“At the end of the day, NATO forces would crush Russian forces, but that doesn’t mean that in the early days, if we were caught flat-footed, that there would not be enormous casualties and damage,” Hodges said.

Among the concerns are persistent bureaucratic obstacles that hamstring NATO’s ability to mobilize on short notice to head off any potential incursion, Hodges said.

“The ability to move forces rapidly throughout Europe in pre-crisis conditions, we still have not fixed this problem, and that is even more stark now,” Hodges said.

Allies also are being pushed to the brink when it comes to their arms and munitions stockpiles, which have been greatly depleted during the past year as countries pour weaponry into Ukraine.

“I don't think NATO can be very bullish because our stockpiles are too low, especially in Europe,” said John R. Deni, an expert on European security at the U.S. Army War College.

Much is riding on the war, whose outcome has security implications that ripple well beyond the battlefields in eastern Ukraine.

“If the Russians win, it is going to be bad news for the Baltic states, Finland. They’re going to perceive a lot of pressure,” Deni said. “We will have to use this window of time to more adequately prepare our defenses and square away our affairs on the eastern front.”

Should the West waver and allow Moscow to eventually succeed, China could perceive that weakness as a green light to invade Taiwan.

If the U.S. wanted to support the Taiwanese with weaponry, there is a risk that the Pentagon would quickly find its arsenal short on inventory, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Power Studies in Washington.

“If there's anything that has been a wake-up call that we need to pay attention to, it is ensuring that there are adequate munition stocks,” Deptula said. “Unfortunately, during peacetime, there's no constituency for munitions, so therefore, programmers when they work the budget, they often times go to the munitions accounts to find the offsets.”

Considering that the U.S. and its allies in the European Union have a combined gross domestic product that dwarfs Russia’s, Moscow shouldn’t be able to compete in materiel production, Hodges said.

“If we're losing in a munitions race, it’s not because there's not enough money. It’s because we haven't done what needs to be done,” Hodges said. “We've been talking about it for over a year now and it’s still not fixed.”

A German military instructor, third from left, introduces Ukrainian soldiers to the Patriot air defense system during a training event in Germany in an undated photo shared Feb. 17, 2023, by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on Twitter. Fast weapons deliveries will be critical to Ukraine's war effort, Ukrainian officials and NATO analysts say. (German Defense Ministry)

Poor planning

Outside observers say Ukraine deserves some blame as well. In the nearly nine years since Putin invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, Kyiv never got the country on a wartime footing in domestic arms production, Hodges said.

“Now we are playing catch-up,” he added.

Other analysts highlighted the shortcomings of Europe as a whole.

NATO and the EU need to “get further into the knickers” of their member states, Deni said.

“For example, in the U.S., we have defense industrial laws that allow the president to direct industry to do certain things. Germany doesn’t have that,” he said.

In the year ahead, the war’s direction may hinge on whether the West can sustain or step up weapons deliveries to Ukraine, where spring offensives and counteroffensives will soon pick up.

“We need speed. Speed is crucial,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told global leaders gathered in Munich over the weekend in regard to deliveries.

Still, questions remain over how far the West is prepared to go to get Ukraine the weapons it says it needs.

For example, the U.S. and Germany have so far ruled out sending modern fighter jets, which are near the top of Ukraine’s wish list.

“Without airpower, those tanks are simply going to feed the meat grinder of what's really devolved to a stalemate resembling a World War I-like quagmire,” Deptula said. “And that's not a fight that Ukraine can win.

“We need to get Ukraine air power to replace its declining air force, and we need to get it to them as fast as possible.”

Delivering F-16s or other NATO-standard aircraft would exploit advantages that only airpower can create and allow Ukraine’s ground forces to carry out combined arms attacks more fully, he said.

The road ahead

Analysts expressed mixed views on the likely outcome in Ukraine. Some are skeptical about Kyiv’s ability to reclaim its territory even with allied support.

A study by the Rand Corp. in January argues that it would be in the U.S.’s interest to focus more on a negotiated solution, even if that’s at odds with Kyiv’s goals.

“Territorial control, although immensely important to Ukraine, is not the most important dimension of the war's future for the United States,” stated the Rand study, called “Avoiding a Long War.”

The aim for the U.S. should be “averting possible escalation to a Russia-NATO war or Russian nuclear use,” the report said.

Such concerns take precedence over “facilitating significantly more Ukrainian territorial control,” the report concludes.

During the past year, the question of whether the conflict could escalate to a point at which NATO is drawn into it has loomed over events and factored into weapons delivery decisions.

Early on, the U.S. and other allies balked at sending Ukraine modern battle tanks. But gradually, more advanced systems have been cleared for delivery without bringing alliance troops into combat.

The Kremlin, which has lashed out repeatedly at Western military support, has painted itself as being at war indirectly with NATO.

Periodic nuclear saber-rattling from Putin also has raised fears that Russia could at some point use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine to avoid losing the war.

Nonetheless, weapons convoys continue to flow into Ukraine virtually unchallenged. There has been no apparent attempt by the Russians to sabotage the efforts or target storage centers.

“I have been stunned that the Russians have let the West get away with supplying as much stuff as we have. I think the lesson here is that deterrence works,” Deni said.

Hodges said the U.S. and allies have been unnecessarily concerned with the escalation question and moved too slowly in supplying weapons as a result. In so doing, they have only prolonged the war, he added.

“There's absolutely zero doubt in my mind that Ukraine is going to win, that they are going to regain control of their sovereign territory,” Hodges said.

“I see no bright lights on Russia's horizons. The only hope they have is if we, the West, led by the United States, lose the will to keep doing what’s needed to deliver the capabilities that Ukraine needs.”

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · February 21, 2023

13. NATO’s new center of gravity

NATO’s new center of gravity

Politico · by Chels Michta · February 21, 2023

Opinion

Washington may look to establish a permanent presence in key eastern flank countries to counter the Russian threat far sooner than many thought possible.

Notwithstanding German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s talk about German leadership in Europe, in NATO, Berlin is increasingly seen as a laggard at best and a spoiler at worst | Georges Gobert/AFP via Getty Images

By

February 21, 2023 4:00 am CET

5 minutes read

Chels Michta is a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and a military intelligence officer serving in the U.S. Army.

The war in Ukraine, now approaching its first anniversary, is continually changing European politics. And as a result, the hub of European leadership is trending eastward — most obviously toward Poland.

The Polish government was at the forefront of the effort to organize a “free-the-Leos” coalition within NATO, which resulted in the recent increase in Western military aid — particularly the decision by Berlin to provide its Leopard 2 tanks and grant permission for others to do the same.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and Defense Minister Marian Błaszczak took the lead in building momentum and support in various capitals to apply pressure on Berlin, eventually announcing that Poland would send the Leopards to Ukraine with or without Germany’s sign-off. And this pressure from Central Europe was an important factor in Washington’s decision to lean on Germany and — in sending its own Abrams tank — leave Berlin no let-out.

This was, undoubtedly, a political win for Poland — but the Leopard 2 coalition that Warsaw built stretches beyond Central Europe. It includes Finland, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, and it has the potential to change Europe’s internal dynamic, shifting NATO’s center of gravity away from the Franco-German tandem.

It shows that Poland, the largest eastern flank country, is accumulating political capital not merely among “front-line” states but across the alliance on account of its critical role in the supply chain, feeding weapons, munitions and equipment to Ukraine.

Notwithstanding German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s talk about German leadership in Europe, in NATO, Berlin is increasingly seen as a laggard at best and a spoiler at worst. In contrast, Warsaw’s leadership on the Leopard issue and, most importantly, Poland’s ability to speak not just on behalf of the Baltic states but Finland and other mainstays of Western consensus also suggests that Europe’s strategic center is moving east.

However, the Continent’s shifting internal dynamics aren’t just about political gamesmanship or building coalitions within NATO — ultimately, they’re about hard power and risk-taking. And here, again, Central European countries are leading the way to reverse the damage caused by decades of under-investment in defense, by buying weapons, equipment and munitions at rates unseen since the Cold War.

Poland’s purchase of 250 M1A2 SEPv3 tanks, 32 F-35 aircraft and 96 Apache attack helicopters from the U.S., in addition to a massive deal this past summer to buy main battle tanks, self-propelled howitzers and aircraft from South Korea, speaks volumes about the country’s intent to rearm and field the most capable tank force on NATO’s eastern flank.

Meanwhile, the German army is struggling with its unreformed and dysfunctional procurement process as it moves — albeit at a snail’s pace — to make up for years of neglect and structural underfunding.

And though they are in better shape than the Bundeswehr, the armies of the United Kingdom and France — Europe’s traditional key players when it comes to defense — are struggling as well: The British army is burdened with old equipment and needs real investment in equipment modernization and training, while the French armed forces, though adept at small, expeditionary campaigns, urgently need modernization as well. As France’s former chief of staff remarked recently, the French army “does not have the means for a high-intensity war.”

And yet, calls for European “strategic autonomy” persist, despite glaring evidence that without the U.S., the Continent’s armies lack the equipment, training and, most of all, the logistical capacity that’s made supplying Ukraine possible in the first place.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and Defense Minister Marian Błaszczak took the lead in building momentum and support in various capitals to apply pressure on Berlin | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

In light of the changing distribution of power in Europe, as flank countries rally to address the Russian threat by working closely with the U.S., talk of an independent European military capable of projecting significant power now sounds like a quaint echo of a bygone era.

But Poland’s emergence as a key player in helping shape the outcome of the war in Ukraine isn’t just about Warsaw’s deft negotiation game and pressure tactics, or its investment in hard power — it’s also about the unyielding logic of geopolitics. The Polish transportation hub near the town of Rzeszów has become a logistical gateway to Ukraine, without which the U.S. and its allies would be unable to supply and sustain the Ukrainian military or deliver economic and humanitarian assistance.

This fact alone has exponentially increased Poland’s profile as a pivotal U.S. ally, willing to take considerable risks for Ukraine.

And, in turn, the country’s growing prominence in European security policy raises questions about America’s ladder of relationships — namely, whether it’s postured to meet today’s geostrategic imperatives given that most legacy installations remain in Germany, where reluctance to take risks in support of U.S. policy objectives in Ukraine continues to reign. Thus, the U.S. may look to establish a permanent presence in key eastern flank countries to counter the Russian threat far sooner than many thought possible.

Of course, it’s still impossible to predict what comes next, but one thing is now clear: Warsaw’s skillfully played hand of international poker, which moved Berlin to yield and release German-manufactured tanks to Ukraine, has changed the landscape in Europe. It has made not just Poland but all the countries along the eastern flank — from Scandinavia through to the Baltic Sea and Central Europe to the Black Sea — orders of magnitude more important to Europe’s future than they were mere months ago.

* The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Army, the U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

14. China’s Checkbook Diplomacy Has Bounced

I am saving this one: "make friends or break legs but you can't do both"

Excerpts:

Part of the trouble, Parks said, is that Beijing does not have a playbook for navigating debt crises and sovereign debt restructuring. “China has never gone through this before,” he said. “They’re kind of extemporaneously trying to make things up as they go along and try to adapt and iterate on the fly.”

In an attempt to come to grips with distressed economies’ debt restructuring challenges, representatives from the IMF, the World Bank, India, China, the Paris Club, and other lenders and borrowers met last Friday. This week, leaders are again convening for a series of G-20 finance meetings in India, and New Delhi is reportedly preparing a proposal that would pressure major creditors including China to accept a haircut on their loans, Reuters first reported.

“China was hoping to get its money back, plus a nice coupon and a little bit of interest,” Setser said. But it “has discovered, in a significant set of cases, that it’s going to be very difficult to get its money back—and the countries want a break.”

China’s Checkbook Diplomacy Has Bounced

China can make friends or break legs. It can’t do both.

By Christina Lu

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu · February 21, 2023

In the span of a decade, China has emerged as the developing world’s bank of choice, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in loans into global infrastructure projects as part of its sprawling Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

But as its borrowers fail to pay up, China is finding that its newfound authority is coming at a price. Eager to recoup its money, Beijing is transitioning from generous investor to tough enforcer—and jeopardizing the very goodwill that it tried to build with initiatives such as the BRI. China has broken a few bones in Sri Lanka, whose financial turmoil allowed Beijing to seize control of a strategic port, and is hassling Pakistan, Zambia, and Suriname for repayment.

For two decades, countries “were getting to know China as the kind of benevolent financier of big-ticket infrastructure,” said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at William & Mary. Now, he said, “the developing world is getting to know China in a very new role—and that new role is as the world’s largest official debt collector.”

In the span of a decade, China has emerged as the developing world’s bank of choice, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in loans into global infrastructure projects as part of its sprawling Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

But as its borrowers fail to pay up, China is finding that its newfound authority is coming at a price. Eager to recoup its money, Beijing is transitioning from generous investor to tough enforcer—and jeopardizing the very goodwill that it tried to build with initiatives such as the BRI. China has broken a few bones in Sri Lanka, whose financial turmoil allowed Beijing to seize control of a strategic port, and is hassling Pakistan, Zambia, and Suriname for repayment.

For two decades, countries “were getting to know China as the kind of benevolent financier of big-ticket infrastructure,” said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at William & Mary. Now, he said, “the developing world is getting to know China in a very new role—and that new role is as the world’s largest official debt collector.”

The problem for China is that nobody likes being hounded for money. Chasing down unpaid debts won’t win many friends. It complicates Beijing’s broader aspirations of extending its influence and forging new relationships through economic deals. That tension, experts say, has left Beijing facing an impossible trade-off: Can it collect its money without hurting its image?

“This is a moment where China cannot have its cake and eat it too,” said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, an international political economy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think China literally has to choose which side it wants to let go. If you want to have your money back, you want to force debt repayment, that basically means you are going to forgo the goodwill.”

Once billed as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “project of the century,” the BRI was unveiled in 2013 as an ambitious infrastructure development campaign that would crisscross some 140 countries. In practice, the initiative was less streamlined and more opaque. As Chinese lenders scrambled to administer projects under the BRI umbrella, it became a haphazardly executed mishmash of projects with shoddy lending contracts.

BRI was, in large part, a response to China’s own domestic economic challenges, where an excess of domestic production capacity could find no easy outlet, rather than a grand strategy to upend the global order. Following the 2008 financial crisis, Beijing “freaked out” and funneled vast sums of money into infrastructure development as a domestic stimulus package, said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center.

“The goal was to keep the economy going and keep the economy growing,” she said. “The unintended consequence was that it put China’s domestic industries on steroids.”

Read More

Sri Lankan construction workers along a road in Colombo.

China’s Belt and Road to Nowhere

Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy is a “shadow of its former self.”

A woman looks at wishing cards in Beijing.

Beijing Needs to Junk Its Economic Playbook

Government stimulus and greater exports can’t dig China’s economy out of a deep hole.

Overpumped, the Chinese market became saturated with steel, cement, glass, and aluminum, prompting Beijing to look abroad for answers. Given the size of the overseas market for infrastructure, the logic went, the BRI would allow China to export this industrial overcapacity while also harnessing its foreign reserves and surplus dollars.

“This was about economics,” Parks said. “Now if you fast-forward to today, if the whole purpose of this program is to make money and now you have a lot of deadbeats that are not repaying their dollar-denominated loans, then it probably feels like your strategy is backfiring.”

In 2017, China overtook the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cement its position as the world’s biggest creditor, although Beijing has since scaled back its lending. But many of its borrowers—still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, alongside Beijing’s lending practices—are now battling to pull their economies back from the brink. Around 60 percent of China’s overseas loans went to financially distressed countries in 2022, compared with just 5 percent in 2010, according to Parks. Unable to pay China back, some cash-strapped governments are pushing for debt relief, forgiveness, or restructuring.

That has put Beijing in a bind. “You make friends when you provide loans. You don’t make friends when you insist on full payment, when conditions have changed and full payment is nearly impossible,” said Brad Setser, a former senior advisor to the U.S. trade representative during the Biden administration, now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “China has put itself in a difficult position because the financial interests of its key policy banks really do now trade off against its diplomatic interests.”

Take Zambia, which defaulted on some $17 billion of debt in 2020 and counts China as its largest bilateral creditor. Over the years, once rosy relations between the two countries have soured as Beijing and Lusaka struggled to hammer out a debt relief deal as part of the G-20 Common Framework. Roadblocks have emerged in the process: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has urged China to forgive Zambia’s debt, recently accused Beijing of being a “barrier” to progress. Beijing, in turn, has blamed Washington for “sabotaging other sovereign countries’ active efforts to solve their debt issues.”

“There seems to be a complete impasse between Zambia and China right now,” Setser said. “Any realistic solution to Zambia’s debt problems requires China’s participation. There’s no possibility of going around China.”

With Sri Lanka, another borrower that has been buckling under the weight of its ballooning debt, Beijing has granted Colombo a two-year debt moratorium. But it has not provided the required financing assurances for the IMF to step in, effectively blocking the institution from offering rescue loans to the country.

Part of the trouble, Parks said, is that Beijing does not have a playbook for navigating debt crises and sovereign debt restructuring. “China has never gone through this before,” he said. “They’re kind of extemporaneously trying to make things up as they go along and try to adapt and iterate on the fly.”

In an attempt to come to grips with distressed economies’ debt restructuring challenges, representatives from the IMF, the World Bank, India, China, the Paris Club, and other lenders and borrowers met last Friday. This week, leaders are again convening for a series of G-20 finance meetings in India, and New Delhi is reportedly preparing a proposal that would pressure major creditors including China to accept a haircut on their loans, Reuters first reported.

“China was hoping to get its money back, plus a nice coupon and a little bit of interest,” Setser said. But it “has discovered, in a significant set of cases, that it’s going to be very difficult to get its money back—and the countries want a break.”

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu · February 21, 2023

15. The war is making Ukraine a Western country

The war is making it so, not the US or NATO. (this is important because we are not (or should not be) trying to recreate Ukraine in our image - it is pursuing its own destiny - with international help and support -  support for self determination.)

Excerpts:

The Ukrainian state still has many weaknesses. Corruption continues to plague it. A recent scandal involving overpriced contracts for military rations shows that plenty of venal officials remain, even in the Ministry of Defence. Nor has petty politics disappeared: the president’s office is paranoid about the stratospheric popularity of Valery Zaluzhny, the head of the armed forces, and appears to be circumscribing his role. “Ukraine faces its biggest danger when politicians start interfering and telling soldiers what to do,” warns Mr Shabunin.

And whatever strides Ukraine has made, they must be weighed against the catastrophic consequences of the war. Hundreds of thousands have died. Whole cities have been razed. Ms Povalyaeva, the mother of Mr Ratushny, who headed to the front so eagerly on the first day of the war, says she sensed her son would die many months before he eventually did, on a reconnaissance mission in June. She could see the desperation on his face. “The pain is unbearable,” she says, reflecting on her son’s squandered potential. “We are losing our best people. The very people we need if we are to build the modern, just society we all now demand.”

The war is making Ukraine a Western country

But the cost is appalling

The Economist

Editor’s note: This is one of a series of daily articles we will be publishing in the run-up to the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th. See the rest of our coverage and the photo essay including the above picture.

Ukraine’s armed forces had prepared for the invasion that began at 4:30am on February 24th, but many ordinary Ukrainians had not. Svitlana Povalyaeva, a writer, had to be woken by her 24-year-old son, Roman Ratushny, at about 5am. She wanted to go back to sleep; he insisted that she take the news seriously. “They’re bombing Boryspil airport with fucking ballistic missiles,” he railed.

Prepared or not, people like Mr Ratushny jumped into action. Later that day he returned to see his mother, in military fatigues, with a gun. She screamed at him hysterically, desperate to stop him going off to war and getting himself killed. But she also knew that he was a determined sort, who had faced down death-threats while campaigning to stop a wood in Kyiv being bulldozed by developers. As she feared, her protests were in vain.

Mr Ratushny was not the only one doing the unexpected that day. When Andrii, a fighter pilot, finally took a break after almost 19 hours of sorties, too exhausted to fly any more, his commanding officer spooned stew into his mouth to revive him. Vitaly Shabunin ignored warnings that his name was on a list of people whom Russian forces had been instructed to kill, and set about turning his anti-corruption organisation into a network to support the armed forces. Famously, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, declined to flee the onslaught. Instead, the next day, he posted a video of himself in the centre of Kyiv to reassure Ukrainians that the state was still functioning. “We’re all here,” he declared. “The military is here. Citizens and society are here. We’re defending our independence, our country.”

With Mr Zelensky setting the bar for courage, the Ukrainian state proved much less flimsy than the Russians—and many Westerners—had expected. What is more, many ordinary Ukrainians were eager to come to its defence. During the course of the war, the state and civic pride have become stronger still. “We had belief in the resilience of our institutions, but it was only after 24th February that we became sure,” says Denys Shmyhal, the prime minister. “We paid bills, collected taxes, supported business, provided services and restructured the economy. Our Western partners tell us they are amazed at how strong we’ve been.”

The Russians, says Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the president, “don’t get what Ukraine is about”. They disliked that it was becoming a more functional democracy and, by fits and starts, drawing closer to Europe. But they did not understand how far that process had advanced. On the face of things, after all, the country was still riven by political divisions, addled by corruption and dominated by powerful oligarchs. Twice in a decade, in 2004 and 2014, protesters had toppled unpopular governments. The previous president, Petro Poroshenko, a media and chocolate magnate, had been voted out in part because of a litany of corruption scandals. Russian-speakers in the south and east of the country seemed alienated, often voting differently from the rest of the country. And in 2014 Ukraine had not been able to stop Russia seizing Crimea and fomenting rebellion in the Donbas region.

But all the upheaval, while revealing discontent and division, also showed that civil society was becoming more vigorous and politics more responsive to it. People like Mr Shabunin and Mr Ratushny, who both participated in the Maidan protests in 2013-14, kept up their activism after the crowds had dispersed, the first as an anti-corruption campaigner, the second as an environmentalist. Despite the domination of the media by oligarchs, a genuinely free press had also sprung up, abetted by the internet. Large-scale migration for work to European countries, and a liberal regime for tourism, had helped develop an affinity for Europe. Meanwhile, efforts to curb corruption had begun to undermine Russia’s chief means of exerting influence.

The war has accelerated all these trends. Almost overnight Ukraine’s geographical divisions, which had anyway become less important since 2014, disappeared. Russian-speakers bore the brunt of the invasion, since they are concentrated close to the Russian border. The indiscriminate, vicious offensive disabused them of any illusions they might have had about Russia’s brotherly benevolence. According to Volodymyr Paniotto, a pollster, most of the 9m or so Russian-speakers in Ukraine now regard it as their homeland. Many of them are learning Ukrainian and immersing themselves in Ukrainian culture, which they might previously have considered quaint or parochial.

The political rift about whether Ukraine’s future lay more with Russia or the West has also been decisively resolved. Ukraine has officially become a candidate for eu membership, a step that was seen as a decade away before the invasion. A full 86% of Ukrainians want their country to join Nato, up from barely half before the war.

Fewer Ukrainians describe themselves as cynical than a year ago; three and a half times as many (68%) express optimism for the future. Trust in government and institutions has increased. Mr Zelensky’s approval rating shot up after the invasion, from barely 30% to over 90%. Mykola Davydiuk, a political analyst, likens the surprisingly concerted response to the invasion to the behaviour of bees: “In normal times, bees buzz around and make honey. But when a bear tries to steal it, they swarm, and sting him.”

Ukrainians’ willingness to swarm, in turn, reflects genuine improvements in its institutions, and above all in the armed forces. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Viktor Muzhenko, Ukraine’s top general at the time, said his army was “literally in ruins” and suffering from “total demoralisation”. Much of the navy defected to Russia rather than fight. Mr Poroshenko initiated sweeping military reforms. America, Britain and Canada sent aid and advisers. Five battalions a year received training from America at a military base in western Ukraine. America first gave Ukraine Javelin anti-tank missiles—used to great effect to repel the Russian advance on Kyiv—in 2017. Perhaps most importantly, Ukraine’s military culture was transformed. By the time Russia invaded again last year, says Liam Collins, a former US Army officer involved in those efforts, “Ukraine had built a well-led, professional force with a culture that encouraged junior leader initiative on the battlefield.”

Other parts of the government, too, have shown remarkable adaptiveness. Ukrzaliznytsya, the state railway company, runs trains through war zones, evacuating citizens and ferrying troops, supplies, and diplomats in the opposite direction. Government cyber-security agencies draw on the best IT specialists in the country to provide a robust defence against some of the world’s most sophisticated hackers. Engineers in the power industry worked around the clock, sometimes in body armour, to somehow bandage together infrastructure as fast as Russia bombed it.

The Ukrainian state still has many weaknesses. Corruption continues to plague it. A recent scandal involving overpriced contracts for military rations shows that plenty of venal officials remain, even in the Ministry of Defence. Nor has petty politics disappeared: the president’s office is paranoid about the stratospheric popularity of Valery Zaluzhny, the head of the armed forces, and appears to be circumscribing his role. “Ukraine faces its biggest danger when politicians start interfering and telling soldiers what to do,” warns Mr Shabunin.

And whatever strides Ukraine has made, they must be weighed against the catastrophic consequences of the war. Hundreds of thousands have died. Whole cities have been razed. Ms Povalyaeva, the mother of Mr Ratushny, who headed to the front so eagerly on the first day of the war, says she sensed her son would die many months before he eventually did, on a reconnaissance mission in June. She could see the desperation on his face. “The pain is unbearable,” she says, reflecting on her son’s squandered potential. “We are losing our best people. The very people we need if we are to build the modern, just society we all now demand.” ■

Photograph: ron haviv/vii

The Economist

16. Biden Went to Kyiv Because There’s No Going Back

Biden Went to Kyiv Because There’s No Going Back​

The president’s surprise visit sent a message to Moscow—and to European leaders.

by Anne Applebaum​

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · February 20, 2023

An American AWACs began patrolling the skies west of Ukraine last night; Kyiv was locked down this morning. Motorcades crisscrossed the city and rumors began to spread. But although it was clear someone important was about to arrive, the first photographs of President Biden—with President Zelensky, with air-raid sirens blaring, with St. Michaels’ square in the background—had exactly the impact they were intended to have: surprise, amazement, respect. He’s the American president. He made an unprecedented trip to a war zone, one where there are no U.S. troops to protect him. And, yes, he’s old. But he went anyway.

Biden’s visit took place on the eve of the first anniversary of the outbreak of the war, and on the eve of a major speech to be delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the visit was not just a blaze of one-upmanship, nor should it be understood as the beginning of some kind of mano a mano public relations battle between the two presidents. The White House says the planning began months ago, and the visit is actually part of a package, a group of statements designed to send a single message. The first part came in Vice President Harris’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, when she declared that “the United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity,” and that Russia will be held accountable for war crimes in Ukraine. The next will be delivered in Warsaw, tomorrow: America will continue to stand by Poland and the rest of the NATO alliance, and no NATO territory will be left undefended.

The message today is about Ukraine itself: Despite a year of brutal war, Kyiv remains a free city, Ukraine remains a sovereign country—and this will not change. Jake Sullivan, the national-security adviser, put it like this during a press conference call from Kyiv: “The visit today was an effort to show, and not just tell, that we will continue to stand strong.”

These messages matter because Ukraine is now engaged in a war of attrition on several fronts. In the eastern part of the country, Ukraine and Russia are fighting an old-fashioned artillery battle. Russia sends waves of conscripts and convicts at the Ukrainian defenses, suffering huge losses and appearing not to care. The Ukrainians use up huge quantities of equipment and ammunition—one Ukrainian politician in Munich reminded me that they need a bullet for every Russian soldier—and, of course, take losses themselves.

But alongside that ground combat, a psychological war of attrition is unfolding as well. Putin thinks that he will win not through technological superiority, and not through better tactics or better-trained soldiers, but simply by outlasting a Western alliance that he still believes to be weak, divided, and easily undermined. He reckons that he has more people, more ammunition, and above all more time: that Russians can endure an infinite number of casualties, that Russians can survive an infinite amount of economic pain. Just in case they cannot, he will personally demonstrate his capacity for cruelty by locking down his society in extraordinary ways. In the city of Krasnodar, police recently arrested and handcuffed a couple in a restaurant, after an eavesdropper overheard them complaining about the war. The Sakharov Center, Moscow’s last remaining institution devoted to human rights, has just announced that it is being evicted from its state-owned buildings. Paranoia, suspicion, and fear have risen to new levels. Many expect a new mobilization, even an imminent closure of the borders.

This psychological war plays out elsewhere, too. Some Europeans, and indeed some Americans, have not yet adjusted their thinking to this Russian strategy. In Munich last weekend, it was clear that many haven’t yet accepted that the continent is really at war. The Estonian Prime minister, Kaja Kallas, told me she fears her colleagues secretly hope “that this problem will disappear by itself,” that the war will end before any deep changes have to be made, before their defense industries have to be altered. “Russia,” she said in a speech at the conference, “is hoping for just that, that we will get tired of our own initiatives, and in Russia, meanwhile, there is a lot of human resources and enterprises there work in three shifts.” Consciously or unconsciously, many still speak as if everything will soon return to normal, as if things will go back to the way they were. Defense industries have not yet switched to a different tempo. Defense industries have not yet raised their production to meet the new demands.

Biden’s visit to Kyiv is intended to offer a bracing contrast, and a different message: If the U.S. president is willing to take this personal risk, if the U.S. government is willing to invest this effort, then time is not on Russia’s side after all. He is putting everyone on notice, including the defense ministries and the defense industries, that the paradigm has shifted and the story has changed. The old “normal” is not coming back.

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · February 20, 2023

17. A year in the trenches has hardened Ukraine’s president

A year in the trenches has hardened Ukraine’s president

Volodymyr Zelensky came into office thinking peace with Putin was possible. He now believes victory is the only answer.

By Paul Sonne and  David L. Stern 

February 22, 2023 at 12:01 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Paul Sonne · February 22, 2023

Not long after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, a year ago this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky found himself in a safe room beneath Kyiv’s government complex with the voice of the Belarusian president booming over the phone.

Alexander Lukashenko, one of the Kremlin’s key allies, was inviting a delegation of officials to Minsk to negotiate an end to the war that Russia had launched just three days earlier, according to Andriy Sybiha, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, who was in the room for the call.

Zelensky was incensed at the invitation to another negotiation — recalling talks over the conflict in Ukraine’s east, known as “Minsk 1” and “Minsk 2,” that took place in the Belarusian capital in 2014 and 2015 — in which Kyiv was forced to make concessions to the Kremlin under the threat of battlefield losses.

“There will be no Minsk,” Zelensky said, according to Sybiha. “There will be no Minsk 3.”

Zelensky’s refusal to entertain another Minsk negotiation — despite Russian attack helicopters, fighter jets and tanks descending on Kyiv — showed how the Ukrainian leader was hardening in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat, a process that began many months before the invasion and accelerated as the war unfolded.

The comedian turned president refused offers to be spirited away to safety and emerged as a far fiercer foe than Moscow has expected, part of a broader transformation that has cemented his global reputation as a hard-bitten wartime leader.

“Of course, we all have changed, including the president,” said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office. “The ordeals that have marked his tenure — they can’t but change a person. Has he become harder? Of course, he has. Has he become stronger? From my point of view, he was always strong.”

In the past year, Zelensky has risen to global renown, fashioning himself as the brash conscience of Western democracies, as he pushes for more weapons to bolster Ukrainian forces. With the savvy of a professional entertainer, he has delivered hundreds of speeches presenting the war as a Manichaean struggle between democracy and autocracy, freedom and tyranny, fairness and injustice — and most recently, at last week’s Munich Security Conference, David and Goliath. In a distracted Western world, he has kept the Ukrainian cause alive.

All the while, Zelensky himself has changed, hardening into a more uncompromising leader grizzled by the exigencies of war. His positions, particularly on how to deal with Russia, have grown stauncher with every attack, mirroring a broader defiance toward Moscow that has welled up in Ukrainian society, even as millions of Ukrainians find themselves exhausted after nearly a year of total war.

Where Zelensky as a presidential candidate in 2019 held out Russia as a prospective partner with whom he could negotiate peace, he now regularly brands Russia a terrorist state that must be vanquished to save the West, completing a transformation that has made him arguably Putin’s most vocal and determined global opponent.

He derided Putin in an interview with Sky News last month. “Who is he now?” Zelensky asked. “After the full-scale invasion, for me he is nobody. Nobody.”

Zelensky’s transformation became particularly apparent in September, when he stood in front of Ukraine’s government complex in his army-green T-shirt and fleece — the same day Putin “annexed” four regions in eastern Ukraine — and closed the door to any possible discussions with the Russian leader.

Ukraine, Zelensky said, had tried through negotiations to find a peaceful coexistence with Russia “based on equal, honest, dignified and just terms.”

“It is clear that with this Russian president, that is impossible,” Zelensky declared. “He doesn’t know what honesty and dignity are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia — but already with a different Russian president.”

Zelensky would later moderate his position under pressure from Washington, but the thrust of his message remained clear: The Ukrainian leader had reached a point of no return with Putin.

The metamorphosis into hardened wartime leader was complete.

Gone was the boyish, turtlenecked comedian who campaigned for Ukraine’s presidency in 2019 on idealistic promises to find a way to make peace with Russia. Gone, too, was the eager young president jumping through hoops in his first year in office to land a meeting with Putin in search of elusive common ground. Gone was the wartime leader of the early weeks who sent emissaries to talks in Belarus and Turkey in the hope that reason might prevail.

Experience and tragedy had washed over him. Cynicism battled with idealism inside him. He had seen the aftermath of atrocities and grasped the hands of the loved ones of Ukraine’s dead soldiers. He coldly fired a childhood friend who had served as his intelligence chief. His style of management toughened to fit the circumstances of war. So did his positions toward both Russia and the West.

David Arakhamia, the leader of Zelensky’s faction in parliament, said the Ukrainian leader had grown more cynical due to Russia’s perfidy but also after seeing “how the international community plays games.”

“It often happens that they tell you, ‘We are for democracy’ and such and then do something with the Russians,” Arakhamia said. “I don’t want to name countries, but there are statistics. You can see who has what trade balance with them. It’s clear that is simply cynicism.”

Convinced there is no deal with Russia to be had, Zelensky now faces increasing pressure to sustain and extend Western support for a prolonged fight against Moscow that Kyiv is unable to win on its own. Both Ukraine and Russia are preparing new offensive operations ahead of a spring fighting season that could prove decisive in the trajectory of the war.

Zelensky, in the Sky News interview, warned that Ukraine was just a “first step” for Putin and that the Russian leader could “move further.”

“They don’t want any talks, and this was the case before the invasion. President Putin decided so,” Zelensky said. “He doesn’t want negotiations because he doesn’t want peace.”

The comedian and the spy

Zelensky took power in 2019 brimming with youthful sincerity about building a new European Ukraine and espousing idealism about making peace with Russia — positions that helped him defeat his more nationalist, hard-line opponent, Petro Poroshenko, with a resounding 73 percent of the vote.

As an entertainer, Zelensky had long articulated pro-European views through his skits and characters and often imbued his jokes with a skepticism of Moscow. At the same time, he primarily spoke Russian, grew up in a Russian-speaking family in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih and enjoyed significant fame across Russia as an actor. He was seen as the candidate more pragmatic about Moscow.

In between navigating a U.S. impeachment scandal, Zelensky spent much of his first year in office trying to make progress with the Kremlin, arranging prisoner swaps, pulling forces back from the front line and working to tee up an in-person meeting with Putin mediated by Germany and France.

William B. Taylor Jr., the top official at the U.S. Embassy at the time, recalled finding Zelensky in his office in the summer of 2019 expressing curiosity about the “Steinmeier Formula,” an interpretation of the Minsk accords named after Germany’s former foreign minister that the Ukrainian president hoped might lead to a deal with the Kremlin.

“No one knows what it is,” Taylor recalled replying. “Steinmeier doesn’t know what it is.”

Zelensky, according to Taylor, grabbed his phone and pointed to a document explaining the formulation, thinking that somewhere in the details of the legalese a workable compromise with Moscow might be found.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Taylor replied, though Zelensky went on to endorse it in the coming months, trying to land a face-to-face with Putin.

When that meeting materialized in Paris in December 2019, Putin treated Zelensky as an actor who wandered accidentally onto the set of a diplomatic negotiation, at one point instructing the Ukrainian leader to turn around and smile for the cameras, when they sat down with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Still, Zelensky departed Paris hopeful.

Russia agreed to a broader prisoner exchange and offered Ukraine a $3 billion gas arbitration settlement as well as a new gas transit deal.

“But when it came to the details, when the exchanges started and they started to cheat, he already started to say, ‘They don’t seem to keep their word at all and most likely will lie,’” Arakhamia said. “The first changes in the relationship for him already started then.”

“I saw the man who said one thing and then did another,” Zelensky told Sky News.

As Putin and Zelensky sized up one another, views began to evolve.

“The Russians initially thought Zelensky getting elected was going to play into their hands — a Ukrainian nationalist sort of government was defeated by a Russian-speaking candidate talking about the need for peace and to talk to the Russians,” said Henry E. Hale, a political science professor at George Washington University and co-author of “The Zelensky Effect.” “Soon, it became clear to the Kremlin that he wasn’t going to hand over the farm, that in fact he was just as European-oriented as the other side had been in Ukraine. Therefore, their only action was going to have to be military, if they were going to have hopes of reintegrating Ukraine into Russia’s orbit.”

During a year of negotiations following the Paris meeting, the Ukrainians came to understand that Russia “didn’t sincerely want to end the war,” Yermak said. “The process had reached a dead end.”

By early 2021, Zelensky believed that negotiations wouldn’t work and that Ukraine would need to retake the Donetsk and Luhansk regions “either through a political or military path,” Arakhamia said.

The Kremlin disengaged.

“Zelensky came to realize what Russian intentions were about, at least Kremlin intentions,” Hale said. “And the Kremlin came to realize what he was about.”

Russia built up forces on Ukraine’s border in the spring of 2021 and rebuffed Kyiv’s calls for talks.

“What’s the use of meeting with Zelensky if he has handed over his country to complete outside management?” Putin said in June 2021. “Key questions in Ukrainian life are being solved not in Kyiv but in Washington and partially in Berlin and in Paris. What’s there to talk about?”

Soon after, Putin published a treatise saying that sovereignty for Ukraine was possible only “in partnership with Russia” and warning that he would not allow Moscow’s “historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia.”

By then, Ukrainian authorities had placed Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician who was friends with Putin, under house arrest. U.S. intelligence later in the year began to warn that Russia was preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“When they realized they couldn’t steamroll us, they went to the extreme and made this historically tragic mistake for everyone, including for Russia, and attacked us,” Yermak said.

The day before, Zelensky again tried to talk to Putin.

“Today I initiated a phone call with the president of the Russian Federation,” Zelensky said in a direct address to the Russian people he gave on the eve of the war. “The result was silence.”

Toughened by tragedy

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, watched as Zelensky morphed from a peacetime president into a wartime leader almost overnight. “He led. He gave orders. He kept people in their places because some felt panicked. And he did all of this by his own example,” Kuleba said.

“He became more resolute in making decisions. … He became more uncompromising on the behavior of people,” Kuleba added.

Arakhamia, the head of Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, said the Ukrainian leader became “10 times tougher compared to when he took office in 2019,” understanding that mistakes — though perhaps understandable in peacetime — were no longer acceptable and would cost Ukrainian lives.

Zelensky remained adamant that Ukraine would not enter another Minsk-type negotiation with Russia, but emissaries from the Ukrainian government still held talks with the Russians in Belarus and Turkey throughout March, until the discovery of Russian atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. When Zelensky visited Bucha on April 4, he looked visibly stricken, telling reporters it was “very difficult to talk when you see what they have done here.”

Arakhamia said he called the leader of the Russian negotiating team and explained that Ukraine could no longer participate in any negotiations. “How can I fly in and sit down at a table and speak to them?” Arakhamia said. “I simply don’t understand.”

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, recalled having dinner with Zelensky the following evening in Kyiv’s equivalent of the White House Situation Room. Danilov said he and a group of 10 other top advisers had a frank conversation with Zelensky about the prospect of negotiations with Russia and the likelihood that “even if you agree with them on something, they will definitely break their word.”

As he ate, Zelensky listened to everyone carefully, Danilov said.

“I think he made a decision for himself that it is extremely dangerous to negotiate with the Russians,” Danilov said. “Moreover, it is absolutely not in favor of our country, despite the difficult situation, despite the fact that we are suffering losses.”

On the eve of Russia’s orchestrated “referendums” and “annexations” of four regions in eastern Ukraine, Zelensky again met with his top advisers to decide on a response. Sybiha, the deputy head of the presidential office, said the team made the decision to rule out any negotiations with Putin, “noting everyone was unanimous in their opinion.”

Zelensky’s interactions with other leaders and staff are now squarely focused on how to achieve victory on the battlefield, not how to reach an agreement with Moscow.

“The challenge of any country at war is you want complete vanquishment of the enemy, but in reality, it is probably going to be something short of that. The question is what,” Hale said. “My sense is that he has to just fight for everything that he can right now and cross the bridge of how to settle and when to settle when it comes.”

Kuleba, the foreign minister, said Zelensky’s team believes only in victory.

“He is leading the country to the victory that he personally, sincerely believes in — and it’s take it or leave it. It’s true. There is nothing in between for him,” Kuleba said. “And this is also how I feel, because if we imply there is something in between, we are not going to win.”

The Washington Post · by Paul Sonne · February 22, 2023

18. How Green Beret Paris Davis’ teammates fought the Pentagon for his Medal of Honor

An incredible story of heroism by COL Davis (on many levels). But the fight against the bureaucracy was even harder but was overcome because of the brotherhood of soldiers. This is the paradox of subtle or even systemic racism versus military comradery. While the bureaucracy worked to keep some men down (intentionally or not), soldiers disregard race and fight for the man on their left and right regardless of race. And these men fought a long time to ensure their brother got the recognition he deserves.

Excerpts:

“I could not believe that someone would risk their life to the level that he did and not have everybody in the Army at that time respect that heroism and not at least take that recommendation seriously,” he said. “It befuddles me, it just overwhelms me to think that someone could possibly lose a recommendation for the Medal of Honor.”

In the years since then, some volunteers suspected that racism played a role in the nomination being lost. Thorne said that would have fit with the era, just a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.

“There’s nothing that overtly spells out racism, but look at the times,” he said. “Given that time, and with him being one of the first Black Special Forces officers … everything points to there being something against him.”

An official Army inquiry in 1969 deemed that the nomination had indeed been lost or destroyed and that a new one was needed. However, Thorne found no evidence that a new one was submitted. 

“Twice Davis’s nomination has had the opportunity for official recognition and twice that nomination has been lost, or through inadvertence not acted upon,” read the revived package decades later.

How Green Beret Paris Davis’ teammates fought the Pentagon for his Medal of Honor

“We could have given up at any time in that nine years and it would have gone nowhere.”

BY DAVID ROZA | PUBLISHED FEB 21, 2023 6:27 PM EST

taskandpurpose.com · by David Roza · February 21, 2023

Early next month a decorated Special Forces colonel who disobeyed orders to save the lives of his men during a fierce battle in Vietnam in 1965 will receive the Medal of Honor at a ceremony in the White House. The award recognizes Col. Paris Davis’ courage under fire that day 58 years ago, but it is also a testament to the dedication of a team of veterans who took on the Pentagon bureaucracy to get Davis’ nomination package approved more than half a century after it was inexplicably lost in the system.

“We got pushback every single step of the way,” said Neil Thorne, an Army veteran and one of the key volunteers who helped resurrect the push for Davis’ Medal of Honor over the past nine years.

“We could have given up at any time in that nine years and it would have gone nowhere,” he said. “So part of it was persistence and part of it was just getting people to understand what happened here.”

What happened was a larger-than-life story of unbelievable heroism, inconceivable negligence, and dogged determination — and that’s just the beginning.

Building a beehive in a hornet’s nest

In June 1965, then-Capt. Paris Davis was one of the first Black Special Forces officers in U.S. history and, according to Thorne, he was universally beloved by the men under his command.

“Every single person who I have spoken to, probably about 12 people, who served under Col. Davis over the years use the same phrase, ‘he was the best commander I ever had,’” Thorne said.

Just a month earlier, in May 1965, Davis was awarded a Soldier’s Medal for risking his own life to pull a comrade out of an overturned fuel truck before it exploded. But while the men under him loved Davis, a few of his fellow Special Forces officers held a different opinion.

“You can hear the animosity in the tone … it does not match with what the people who served under him say,” said Thorne, who has spoken with several of those officers. “It was more animosity for folks loving him and his success.”

That animosity may have been amplified when Davis volunteered to take on a near-impossible mission: help push back North Vietnamese and Viet Cong control of Binh Dinh Province, located on the country’s south central coast. To do that, Davis was to build a new Special Forces camp at a village called Bong Son while also training a volunteer unit of Regional Forces /Popular Forces, commonly referred to as Ruff Puffs. Ron Deis, a junior member of Davis’ Special Forces A-Team in Bong Son, said the task was similar to building a beehive in a hornet’s nest

“It was a hotbed … when we went on an operation, we always were outgunned, we always got into situations that were very precarious,” Deis said.

Davis congratulates trainees on completion of training in Vietnam. (Ron Deis photo via The Paris Davis Interactive MOH Story)

‘The move saved his men from being overrun’

On the night of June 17, 1965, Davis led three Green Berets and a company of about 100 Ruff Puffs in a raid against North Vietnamese forces northeast of Bong Son. That night and into the next morning, Davis’ troops captured four enemy soldiers who revealed a nearby force of 200-300 well-trained, well-armed North Vietnamese troops. The information was confirmed at around 5:30 a.m. on June 18 by Deis, who was serving as a spotter aboard a tiny L-19 Bird Dog propeller plane circling overhead. Not long after that, enemy troops detected Davis’ company and the battle commenced.

“Davis charged forward, opening fire with his M-16 and killing five NVA soldiers,” read Davis’ Medal of Honor narrative. “So intense was the fire coming from the enemy that the spotter aircraft with Deis on board was damaged and forced to return to the Bong Son camp.”

Despite being outnumbered, Davis rallied his troops and attacked what he suspected to be the enemy command building.

“He moved to a window and threw a grenade inside, then burst into the house, killing 10 NVA with his rifle and rifle butt,” read the narrative. “In leading the assault, Davis killed at least 10 more enemy fighters. Davis received a wound in the right forearm during the firefight.”

The Green Beret then went on with a small group to “engage four NVA soldiers in hand-to-hand combat and with his rifle butt,” the narrative said. But by now the element of surprise had been lost, so the captain split his troops and began moving them back into better positions. Several bugle calls from the enemy troops signaled a counterattack. Davis killed two more enemy soldiers and suffered his fingertip being shot off, according to the narrative.

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By around 7:45 that morning, Davis and the survivors of his force moved toward a hill where the North Vietnamese left behind several dozen foxholes. But Davis’ troops were not in great shape: all four Green Berets had been wounded several times and while the Ruff Puffs were motivated to fight, their youth and inexperience made them prone to break under sustained enemy pressure.

“These young men, they did what was asked of them and under enemy fire they probably were not as organized [as a more seasoned unit] but it was not for lack of wanting to do the right thing,” Deis said.

To make matters worse, Davis’ team sergeant, Master Sgt. Billy Waugh had been shot three times and pinned down in a buffalo wallow, a sort of depression that holds rainwater. Meanwhile Davis’ demolitions specialist, Staff Sgt. David Morgan had been knocked out by an exploding mortar and was taking sniper fire as he regained consciousness, and the team medic, Spc. 4 Robert Brown Jr., was unaccounted for, though Davis did not know it yet.

The captain spotted the enemy sniper targeting Morgan from a camouflaged foxhole and shot him with his M-16, the narrative said. By around 8:30 that morning, Davis regained communication with his split force and over the next two hours, he used a PRC-10 radio to call in artillery and airstrikes against enemy positions.

“This move saved his men from being overrun by the vastly superior enemy force,” the narrative reads.

A reconstructed bird’s-eye view of the battlefield. (Image via The Paris Davis Interactive MOH Story)

‘That was quite the statement’

But the fight was far from over: Davis realized that Brown was unaccounted for, Waugh could not move because of his injuries, and Davis himself was pinned down. Around noon, the captain took matters into his own hands: calling an artillery strike within 30 meters of his position to carve a route so he could rescue Waugh. For context, the Army considers any artillery strike within 500 meters of a friendly position to be “danger close.” Davis and a fellow Green Beret, Sergeant 1st Class John Reinburg, rushed through open ground to pick up Waugh and pull him out of danger.

Billy Waugh is a legend in the history of Army special operations. Besides serving in the Korean War and later as a Green Beret in Vietnam where he conducted the first military freefall high altitude, low opening (HALO) jump in a combat zone, Waugh also worked for the CIA in Libya, spied on terrorist leaders in Sudan, and at the age of 71 he helped topple the Taliban during the opening salvos of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001.

But sometimes even legends need rescuing, and Waugh’s rescuer in Bong San was Capt. Paris Davis. The captain carried the wounded Waugh fireman-style back up the hill, where a helicopter had landed carrying a wounded door gunner and Davis’ commander, Maj. Billy Cole. The major told Davis to leave with the wounded and said he would relieve him, but the captain refused.

“Sir, please do not do that to me. I’m not hurt that bad,” Davis said, according to the narrative. “I’ve got to get my men out of this predicament. We have another strike on the way. I refuse to go.”

“You’ve got it, Dave,” Cole replied. “Good luck and God bless you.”

Though Reinburg was wounded in the chest shortly after Cole departed, Davis kept guiding in artillery and airstrikes, preventing his troops from being annihilated. The captain then crawled more than 150 yards to drag Brown back to friendly territory, though Davis was wounded by grenade fragments. After almost 19 hours of nearly continuous combat, the enemy finally retreated as friendly reinforcements arrived.

Davis’ men already admired him for being extremely brave, Deis said, but it was clear that something extraordinary had just happened.

“Sgt. Morgan said to me, ‘I think Capt. Davis deserves the Medal of Honor for what he did out there.’ That struck a note with me that I never forgot,” said Deis. “Sgt. Morgan had a lot of combat experience, so for someone with his experience to say that … that was quite a statement for him to make.”

Unfortunately for Davis, it would be more than half a century before he received what he deserved.

‘Everybody was waiting for something that’s in a garbage bin’

Maj. Billy Cole, Davis’ commanding officer, submitted the captain’s nomination for the Medal of Honor shortly after the battle in July 1965. In December, Davis was awarded the Silver Star “as an interim award while the Medal of Honor packet was assumed to be in-process,” according to documents from Davis’ resubmission package.

The years passed and by 1969 there was still no word on the medal. The Army could not find the nomination packet, despite Maj. Cole formally submitting it at the Special Forces headquarters in Nha Trang. Thorne said this is the first proven case of a lost Medal of Honor nomination packet in U.S. history.

“Everybody was waiting for something that’s in a garbage bin,” said Thorne, who estimated he has helped recover 30 to 50 missing, lost, or downgraded military award nominations over the years. “You just don’t see a Medal of Honor packet get lost … it’s a big deal. It got trashed.”

Davis being presented with his interim Silver Star. (Stars and Stripes photo via The Paris Davis Interactive MOH Story)

Medal of Honor nominations also require substantial paperwork such as eyewitness statements, a unit report of the action, maps, and other documents, Thorne explained. It still baffles Deis that the Army could lose such a packet, considering the sanctity of the Medal of Honor.

“I could not believe that someone would risk their life to the level that he did and not have everybody in the Army at that time respect that heroism and not at least take that recommendation seriously,” he said. “It befuddles me, it just overwhelms me to think that someone could possibly lose a recommendation for the Medal of Honor.”

In the years since then, some volunteers suspected that racism played a role in the nomination being lost. Thorne said that would have fit with the era, just a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.

“There’s nothing that overtly spells out racism, but look at the times,” he said. “Given that time, and with him being one of the first Black Special Forces officers … everything points to there being something against him.”

An official Army inquiry in 1969 deemed that the nomination had indeed been lost or destroyed and that a new one was needed. However, Thorne found no evidence that a new one was submitted.

“Twice Davis’s nomination has had the opportunity for official recognition and twice that nomination has been lost, or through inadvertence not acted upon,” read the revived package decades later.

‘It only takes one bad egg’

Years passed, and in 1981 Billy Waugh attempted to resurrect the effort to get his old captain the Medal of Honor, Thorne said. After that effort failed, thirty more years went by before a serious group of volunteers gathered to get Davis, who retired from the Army in 1985 at the rank of colonel, the recognition he deserved. Thorne became involved in 2014, and he leveraged his expertise in the military award process to put together a thorough resubmission of the package.

“They had not pulled any of the records so we started doing that,” Thorne said. “During that time we were hunting for eyewitnesses, anybody that might have been there: chopper pilots, forward air controllers, FAC pilots.”

Part of the trouble was that some of the eyewitnesses had died in the intervening years either due to old age or enemy fire. For example, Staff Sgt. Morgan was killed in combat later in 1965 and Spc. 4 Brown never recovered from the wounds he suffered in Bong Son that day. But between the statements and documents filed in support of Davis’ case over the years and a 1969 special episode of the Phil Donahue Show where Davis and other soldiers were interviewed about the battle, they had enough evidence to resubmit the nomination in 2016. But no matter how thorough a nomination package may be, the team found the military bureaucracy moves at its own pace.

“Any time you’re dealing with any one of these steps, whether it be the Army’s Awards and Decorations Branch, the Secretary of the Army level, or the Secretary of Defense level, you’re also dealing with people and personalities,” said Thorne.

For example, Thorne said that one point the package was held up by the commander of Fort Knox who, despite the package having evidence from the National Archives, did not believe there was enough proof that Col. Davis had been nominated for the Medal of Honor in 1965.

“I sent a very, I’ll say ‘terse’ email, because I was pretty much fed up at that point, and it just so happened to land on the desk of the new commander” at Fort Knox, Thorne recalled. “He took one look at it and said ‘this is going forward.’ That was our first break.”

The process continued in fits and starts through each level of the Army and the Secretary of Defense. Each step takes months just for the relevant party to review the package, and at each step, the package may get shot down, either because of minor typos or out of some kind of office habit.

“Anyone can say no the first time,” Thorne said. “I have no proof of this but I always wonder if that first kick-out is so they can say they did their due diligence.”

Thorne does not know where the institutional bias to say ‘no’ comes from, but he pointed out that there are plenty of helpful people in the process too.

“It’s the good people who help move it forward, who can look at it with open eyes and not be ready to say ‘no’ right off the bat. And we’ve encountered plenty of those too,” he said. “But it only takes one bad egg to cost you months or years.”

For example, the package was held up for three years at one point by a member of the Secretary of Defense’s office of Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Thorne said he thinks the member “was determined to say no just because he said no the first time.”

When pushback happens, it often takes more than just an immaculate nomination package to push through the bureaucracy: it takes connections to people who can speed up the process.

‘I’m not smart, but I’m relentless’

In 2015, Jim Moriarty, a lawyer who served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam, joined the project. A former director of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, Moriarty said he had connections with several high-level military leaders including then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, then-Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, and then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

“I’m surrounded by people who have all sorts of stroke and I’m hitting on everybody I know: ‘we need to go award Paris Davis the Medal of Honor,’” Moriarty said.

Moriarty did not just know people with pull, he was also willing to pester them to get their support for Davis’ case.

“I’m not smart, but I’m relentless,” he said.

Moriarty’s pull and Thorne’s meticulous documentation helped keep the package moving through the bureaucracy, but by 2020 it was stuck again within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Davis’ team was worried that the colonel would pass away from old age before the upgrade process was complete, but salvation came in the form of the new acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, a veteran of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), the same unit Davis was assigned to when he was a captain at Bong Son.

The 5th SFG(A) was also the unit Moriarty’s son Jimmy belonged to when he was killed by a gate guard in Jordan in 2016. Moriarty eventually got Miller’s attention through a chain of connections and contacts. It paid off: Moriarty said Miller played a key role in not only his son receiving the Silver Star but also Davis receiving the Medal of Honor, though it took until earlier this month for it to finally become official.

“As I anticipate receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, I am so very grateful for my family and friends within the military and elsewhere who kept alive the story of A-team, A-321 at Camp Bong Son,” Davis said in a statement when the news broke on Feb. 13 that he would receive the medal. “I think often of those fateful 19 hours on June 18, 1965 and what our team did to make sure we left no man behind on that battlefield.”

When asked if his perception of the medal has changed over the years, Deis said he thinks it means more to him now than it did in the years directly after the battle.

“When you’re young like I was and you witness those things [in war], it puts a hard edge on you. Maybe that’s a self-defense mechanism,” he said. “But as you age, that hard edge breaks down and it just makes you more emotional. That has been my experience so that every time I see the Medal of Honor being awarded it makes me cry … because I know what it takes to get that medal.”

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taskandpurpose.com · by David Roza · February 21, 2023

19. Spirit of America, Ukraine

I wanted to pass on news of the great work Spirit of America is doing in Ukraine. This one of a kind organization continues to make important contributions.

(I was given permission to forward this).

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Matt Dimmick 

Date: Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 1:54 PM

Subject: Spirit of America, Ukraine

To: Jim Hake , Wayne Zinn

Jim and Wayne,

You requested an assessment you could share with the Board about Spirit of America’s work in Ukraine since the beginning of the war last February. Here you go.

Our overarching objective is to help Ukraine win. Here are the key points:

• Spirit of America’s relationships in Ukraine since 2014 have been essential.
• Spirit of America was on the ground five days after the war began.
• We’ve delivered more than $25mm and 200 tons of protective aid to the front lines. We have saved countless lives.
• 36 hours to the front lines. Our partnership with the US military has given us unprecedented speed and scale.
• We are filling mission critical gaps. As frontline needs shift, so does our assistance.
• What’s next: we are continuing to meet urgent frontline needs.
• Beyond military aid, we have provided targeted humanitarian assistance. We also are helping Ukrainian high school students rebuild their communities.

All of that is explained in more detail below. Colleen and I are ready to talk to any Spirit of America Board members and supporters. It’s important people know what’s going on.

Spirit of America was on the ground five days after the war began

Understanding conflict was imminent, Colleen increased communication with US military and US Embassy Kyiv personnel in the months before the war began. Those US personnel relocated to Poland in early February. When Russia invaded on Feb. 24, they asked Colleen to come to Poland to begin coordinating Spirit of America assistance. Colleen was on the ground alongside our US military partners in five days. I believe our speed of response is unmatched. It is extremely well received and appreciated by our partners. Photo is Colleen delivering body armor to Ukrainian troops.

Spirit of America’s relationships in Ukraine since 2014 have been essential

Spirit of America has provided aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression since 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea and the Donbas (Eastern Ukraine). One of our early and most impactful projects was supporting the creation and launch in 2015 of ArmyFM – Ukraine’s first armed forces radio station – to meet the information and entertainment needs of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines. ArmyFM has been on the air throughout the war providing critical information and boosting military and public morale throughout Ukraine. 

Our work in Ukraine over the years gave us strong and trusted relationships with Ukrainians as well as US military and State Department personnel. These relationships made it possible to quickly understand and meet needs when the war began. More broadly, having the flexibility to maintain relationships (as Spirit of America did in Ukraine from 2015 to 2022) when media and government attention turns away is critically important. As Admiral McRaven has said, “You can’t surge trust.”

We’ve delivered more than $25mm and 200 tons of lifesaving aid to the front lines.

The map image and graphics below summarize the assistance we have provided to help Ukraine win. It shows that the destinations of our aid followed the key front line needs of Ukraine’s military. The primary recipients of our aid have been Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and the civilian volunteers of the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF). Early media coverage included CBS Evening News and the New York Times. 

We have procured and delivered more than 200 tons of body armor, helmets, first aid and trauma kits, satellite phones, radios, ready-to-eat meals, and a host of other protective, lifesaving aid directly to frontline Ukrainian troops and special operators where they were needed most. Frankly, we stopped keeping track of tonnage last summer as we began providing vehicles, 50-passenger buses, and other assistance where weight metrics are not particularly relevant.

One example to describe the scale of our assistance: from March to May 2022 we provided more than 9,000 Level IV bulletproof vests (body armor) and ballistic helmets to Ukrainians on the front lines. To put it in perspective: that would be enough gear to equip every Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Marine Special Operator in the US military. And, we did it all in 2.5 months. The TDF Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Sobko, told us that these early sets of body armor and helmets played a direct role in the ability of Ukrainian troops to hold ground and blunt the advance of Russia’s early offensives. Sobko talked about Spirit of America aid on Fox Business.

36 hours to the front lines. Our partnership with the US military has given us unprecedented speed and scale.

The scale and speed of our response to the war in Ukraine has showcased the importance of our partnership with the US military. Because of Spirit of America’s agreement with the Department of Defense, US military personnel have been able to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate closely with SoA. They have also been able to receive and transport assistance we provide for their Ukrainian military counterparts.

The result of all this is that we were able to deliver cargo by air to Poland where the host nation's military voluntarily provided offloading and ground transportation. Using their own trucks, they pushed our cargo through a special military delivery corridor. Our donated aid was often in the hands of Ukrainians on the front lines in less than 36 hours from the time it hit the ground in Poland. The savings in time, money, and lives are remarkable. Photo shows vans being loaded with Spirit of America-provided ready-to-eat meals headed to the front lines.

We are filling mission critical gaps. As front line needs shift, so does our assistance.

As we do all over the world, Spirit of America fills the gaps between what is needed and what the government can do. In Ukraine, we closely track the military aid the US government, NATO allies, and other governments are providing, and we adjust our assistance accordingly. For example, early in the war we provided large quantities of basic protective aid and equipment to Ukrainian soldiers: things like bulletproof vests, helmets, and first aid kits. Later, government supplies of those items came online and we stopped providing them.

As the war transitioned to new phases, we continued to anticipate the needs of our Ukrainian partners and listen carefully to their assessments. During the counteroffensive campaigns at the end of last year, we shifted resources toward equipment that would enhance their speed and maneuverability. We provided surveillance drones, binoculars, personal tactical equipment, and ruggedly mobile pickup trucks to all the operational detachments directly responsible for pushing Russians back in key sectors from Kharkiv to Kherson.

We have since refined our purchases to accommodate what Ukrainian forces need most as they probe weaknesses across the length of Russian lines while protecting their troops from the ravages of winter and strategic attacks on civilian infrastructure. We recently provided critical startup funding to the Territorial Defense Force’s Captain’s Course. That course is now churning out dozens of combat-credible leaders with each graduating class while serving as a shining example for the rest of the armed forces in how to build relevant professional military education in wartime conditions.

We partnered with the TDF in a groundbreakingly creative project to rapidly repair and deploy military grade trucks currently languishing in motor pools throughout the country. Here is the video the Ukrainians produced about this initiative (it reflects a sense of humor). Photo is of two of the trucks repaired and deployed with Spirit of America funding.

What’s next?

We will continue to meet urgent frontline needs with speed and flexibility. Right now we are purchasing generators in a variety of power ranges to support frontline units. And, we are continuing to flow versatile surveillance drones needed by every frontline unit. I expect we will be purchasing mobile bath and laundry units for battalion-sized units as soon as this month. This will have an immeasurable impact on soldier morale and welfare.

Beyond military assistance

98% of our assistance has gone to support Ukraine’s military (especially Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and Territorial Defense Forces); however, we have provided targeted humanitarian support when it can have an off-scale impact. Two examples. One, early in the war we provided sprinter vans to humanitarian organizations. We also provided body armor and helmets to protect the drivers. Those vehicles have now transported hundreds of tons of food, medicine, and hygiene supplies into and throughout Ukraine. They have also been instrumental in evacuating an untold number of injured and vulnerable civilians. As a striking demonstration of how impactful they have been, one of our vans dedicated to supporting the devastated city of Kharkiv is facilitating the distribution of food to over 15,000 residents every week. 

Two, we are sponsoring a pilot project for high school students to help them rebuild their communities. This includes curriculum on problem-solving, entrepreneurship, and leadership lessons for the purpose of putting those skills to work in rebuilding their shattered communities. As part of the instruction, we are providing grants so the best student ideas can be implemented.

This past year of work in Ukraine has demonstrated how the Spirit of America team leverages speed, scalability, efficiency, flexibility, and accountability within a complex and uncertain environment to achieve high-payoff outcomes.

Most notably, our consistently tailored and targeted support has had a tangible impact on the battlefield and saved untold numbers of lives. As we head into the second year of the conflict, we will channel all the support we can provide to help our Ukrainian partners shorten this war and achieve victory. 

Best,

Matt

20. The US should insist that Russian and Belarusian athletes be banned from the 2024 Olympics

The US should insist that Russian and Belarusian athletes be banned from the 2024 Olympics

BY IVANA STRADNER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 02/17/23 7:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3856560-the-us-should-insist-that-russian-and-belarusian-athletes-be-banned-from-the-2024-olympics/

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) needs to get off the sidelines on the question of whether Russian athletes will participate in the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. Instead, it appears the IOC is trying to have it both ways — a cowardly stance that will fool no one.

Russia’s revanchist invasion of Ukraine and the resulting death and destruction have no precedent in recent history and the Olympic movement’s response should be a principled and categorical rejection of any participation by the perpetrators.

President Biden made an inspiring pledge in his State of the Union address to have the U.S. work “for more freedom, more dignity and more peace, not just in Europe, but everywhere.” To fulfill that vision, his administration should rally participants in the Summit for Democracy in March to pressure the IOC to exclude athletes from Russia and Belarus.

So far, the IOC has imposed sanctions against Russian and Belarusian government officials and expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian cause. But late last month, the IOC also provisionally announced that Russian and Belarusian athletes could attend the 2024 Olympics and the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, albeit under a neutral flag and without any “anthem, colors or any other identifications whatsoever of these countries being displayed at any sports event or meeting.”

“No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport,” the IOC executive board said. Meanwhile, the head of the organizing committee for the Paris games, Tony Estanguet, has maintained, “The Olympics in Paris will be kind of a neutral zone, not involved in political issues.”

In fact, politics will suffuse the Olympics, as it often does, especially if the Russian military is still slaughtering Ukrainian civilians on a daily basis. And no observer will fail to understand that Russia, despite its brazen flouting of civilized norms, was permitted to field a large contingent of athletes whose victories would be duly celebrated at home as Russian achievements and cause for national pride. 

The Kremlin historically has used the Olympics as a tool of soft power and a lever of international prestige. During the Cold War, an explicit goal of the Soviet Union was to display international dominance through sports. As early as 1949, the USSR’s sports committee’s agenda was to “spread sport to every corner of the land, raise the level of skill and, on that basis, help Soviet athletes win world supremacy in major sports.” During the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, where it competed for the first time, the Soviet Union spent the modern-day whopping equivalent of $8.2 billion on sports equipment to face the challenge of competing against the U.S. — and finished second in the medal count.

This obsession with winning continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the point that Russian officials conspired in what the IOC eventually would conclude had been “systematic doping in previously unfathomable ways” — abuses “so severe they were without precedent in Olympics history.”

Ever the mild disciplinarian, however, the IOC banned Russia from participating in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea but allowed Russian athletes to compete “as individuals wearing a neutral uniform.” (The World Anti-Doping Agency later imposed a ban of its own on Russia’s official participation in international sporting events.)

Given the IOC’s recent hesitation to bar a country’s athletes from competing, you might think the Olympics had never actually gone that far. In fact, South Africa was banned for three decades because of its apartheid policies, and Japan and Germany were not welcome in 1948.  

To be sure, Olympic boycotts have a far more robust pedigree, with many examples over the years on behalf of a variety of causes. For example, several nations — although not the U.S. — boycotted the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne because of the Soviet invasion of Hungary.  

Soviet aggression also sparked the largest boycott, when the U.S. and more than 60 other countries boycotted the Moscow-hosted 1980 Olympics to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies retaliated in 1984, boycotting the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

For that matter, in 2014, several leaders, including President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, boycotted the opening ceremony in Sochi, Russia, for a variety of issues involving human rights.    

So, the U.S. would be on well-trod ground if it insists that politics is indeed relevant in this extraordinary context and that the IOC must ban athletes from the national architect of the bloodiest land war in Europe since World War II, as well as its flunky, Belarus. Moreover, such a campaign would clearly secure a great deal of support. Sports ministers in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have warned that the IOC’s decision to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete could galvanize a major boycott of Paris; Polish minister Kamil Bortniczuk predicted up to 40 countries would back such a move. 

A meeting on Feb. 10 seemed to confirm his claim, when most of the 35 participating countries came out in support of excluding athletes from Russia and Belarus. Although the U.S. participated in the meeting, the Biden administration’s position remains ambiguous. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this month said the administration does not object to athletes from Russia or Belarus competing if it is “absolutely clear” they are not representing their home countries. And after the recent multi-nation meeting, the State Department issued a statement promising to consult the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee “on next steps.”

Meanwhile, there is debate in Russian media over whether Russia itself should boycott the Olympics, rather than allow its athletes to submit to allegedly humiliating conditions. But just as Russian athletes participated in the Olympics after the doping ban, they are likely to participate in 2024, too, unless the IOC is persuaded to bar them. And while nothing the IOC can do will change the course of events in Ukraine, at least a full-scale ban would signal that the international community is truly intent on defending democracy and treating Russia as the outlaw nation it has become. 

Ivana Stradner is a research fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Barish Center for Media Integrity, where her research focuses on Russia’s information operations and cybersecurity, particularly Russia’s use of advanced forms of hybrid warfare and the threat they pose to the West. Follow her on Twitter @ivanastradner.

21. The next Intifada is about to begin

ConclusIon:

Three destructive and unnecessary wars put the Palestinians in the lamentable place they now inhabit. It’s impossible to know what the fourth will look like, but it’s unlikely it will resemble that or any of the previous three. The current violence has not sparked that war yet, but unless something dramatic changes in the political trajectories of both parties, something eventually will. And when it does, Israelis will pay a heavy and avoidable price — and the Palestinians an even larger one.

The next Intifada is about to begin

Israel's luck will soon run out

BY SHANY MOR

unherd.com · by Shany Mor · February 20, 2023

The deadly wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence that crested in the last week of January seems to have subsided for now. Yes, the IDF keeps raiding West Bank sites to arrest holed-up militants, occasionally with casualties, and various militants keep attempting to carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis. Sometimes even a rocket or two is fired from Gaza toward southern Israel and the Israeli Air Force “retaliates”, mostly without any casualties on either side.

But the unusually high body count in January hasn’t led to a spiralling escalation. There was no terrorist attack that shocked Israelis out of their routine and forced the government’s hand into a broader operation. There was no deadly revenge attack from settler radicals. There was no botched Israeli military operation with a high body count, which then circulated on social media and spiked local passions and global condemnations. But at some point, probably soon, our luck will run out. After nearly two decades of comparative quiet, the Israelis and Palestinians seem headed towards another pointless round of violence.

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Israel’s fundamental dilemma has not changed much since 1967 when it first conquered the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War. Withdrawing from the occupied territories leaves the very real risk that they will become a base for future attacks (as has happened with nearly every other territory Israel has withdrawn from), while incorporating the territories into Israel requires an existential compromise on either Israel’s democratic or Jewish character. Avoiding a decision, meanwhile, raises the costs of a future settlement while sinking Israel deeper into the strategic and moral morass of occupying a foreign nation and governing the Israeli civilians who have settled there.

Aspects of the dilemma have shifted slightly, but this big picture has not. The internal Israeli political debate has taken to ignoring the issue, and for now is consumed with a controversial legal reform advanced by Netanyahu’s new Right-wing government to weaken the Supreme Court. It is a highly illiberal reform and Israel will be much better off if it is blocked or heavily diluted. But it’s hard to say that it heralds “the end of Israeli democracy”, especially when that has been the charge against nearly every development in Israeli politics in the last 40 years. And while this diversion draws all the attention, a parallel legislative effort is quietly underway which, if anything, is even more ruinous to Israeli democracy. This is the attempt to legalise the wildcat Israeli settlement Homesh, located outside Jenin in the northern West Bank. It is one of four which Israel took down in the 2005 Disengagement, the same week as it pulled out all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza.

From 2007 to 2020 the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian territories had three faces. In Gaza, there was no military or Israeli civilian presence of any kind, and the territory was ruled by an isolated and internationally-unrecognised Hamas government. In the northern West Bank around Jenin, there was no Israeli civilian presence but full freedom of action for the IDF to carry out raids and arrests, with varying measures of security cooperation from the Palestinian Authority, and a large and mostly unnoticed business footprint of Israeli Arabs from northern Israel. In the rest of the West Bank there was also a significant Israeli military presence, but unlike in the Jenin sector there was a large and growing Israeli civilian presence as well.

This status quo held for 13 years, and created a kind of unintended laboratory condition for dealing with the Palestinian Territories without a peace agreement (or a full-scale war, for that matter). And the clear winner among the three was the model that had a military presence but no Israeli settlers. Jenin, which had been the suicide bomber capital of Palestine in the Second Intifada, became the quietest sector in the entire conflict. Compared with the chronic violence in and around Hebron, to say nothing of Gaza, it left little room for doubt: the disengagement from the northern West Bank was, in the immediate term at least, a success.

But for the Israeli settler movement, this was a success that had to be denied or obscured, lest it be copied elsewhere in the West Bank. Repeated efforts were made to reestablish settlements, especially around Homesh. But with varying levels of speed and resistance, the IDF generally moved in and removed the illegal outposts whose settlers claimed, not always seriously, that they had established a seminary not a settlement.

Then, in 2020, two things changed. First, coronavirus restrictions ended the flow of Arabs from northern Israel into the northern West Bank — as well as their cash. And second, newly appointed Defence Minister Benny Gantz, not wanting to rock the boat in anticipation of his promised rotation into the PM’s office under the deal he had struck with Netanyahu, temporarily stopped the army from removing the Homesh settlers. There, they became more and more entrenched, and the inevitable friction led to violence with local Palestinians.

When a Homesh settler was killed in an attack in 2021, the perverse logic of the entire settler enterprise ensnared the area in its death grip. The army couldn’t possibly forcibly evacuate the settlers during the mourning period; that would be giving into the terrorists. Settlers from around the West Bank paraded in their thousands to show solidarity, leaving the army no choice but to secure their passage, which necessitated road closures and checkpoints. The pretence of a seminary in Homesh was mostly dropped, and it began to look increasingly like a new settlement.

Tensions mounted and violence increased, between settlers and the local Palestinians, between Palestinians and the army, and between settlers and the army in the few cases where the latter did try to put the brakes on. The Jenin sector, for 15 years the quietest in the territories, was by 2022 the epicentre of a new wave of Palestinian terrorism, which was now spilling onto Israel’s streets — north, south, and in Tel Aviv. The army had no choice but to act, and the pace and aggression of raids and arrests took off. The link between the surge in violence and the sudden reluctance to deal with the squatters at Homesh is barely noted in Israel, and for the settler movement it is crucial that it remain so. For, amid the flurry of populist Right-wing legislation the new government has initiated, perhaps the most dangerous of all is the bill which will retroactively legalise the Homesh settlement.

It is worth pausing to consider all the various ways this unprecedented legislation would irreversibly damage the very foundations of liberal democracy in Israel. First, it would officially create a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank, something from which Israel has largely refrained for around three decades. Second, it would legalise settlement in the one place where Israeli law has explicitly forbidden it since the 2005 Disengagement. Third, it would effectively cancel part of the Disengagement, a major diplomatic initiative undertaken by the State of Israel after it had successfully defeated the Palestinians in the Second Intifada and for which it received real (and potentially reversible) benefits from the United States and the international community. Fourth, it would introduce a civilian Israeli presence into the one sector of the West Bank that has not had one for almost two decades and that, not coincidentally, managed to keep a comparatively low level of violence — with easily predictably grim results.

But fifth, it would formally void one of the central tenets of sovereign statehood, namely the monopoly on armed force and capacity to set foreign and security policy. The proposed law doesn’t change policy for the future; it legitimises the actions of settlers in the past. It essentially tells the armed thugs who violated Israeli law for the past few years, commandeered private property, engaged in violent scuffles with the Israel Police and the IDF, and were linked repeatedly to harassment of Palestinian civilians nearby, that this is and was a legitimate way to pursue political interests. There is no real looking back from this moment, not in a country where so many are armed and where the political divisions are so deep. And not when the Cabinet member who oversees the Israel Police, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is so closely identified with the groups that will have achieved their goals through these methods.

Ben-Gvir, for years a far-Right rabble rouser but now a minister, has never worn a uniform or served a day in his life. He orders the police to quickly demolish the homes of families of terrorists who are killed in their attacks against Israelis, though this tactic has been shown repeatedly to be worse than useless. Bereft of new ideas, he has been reduced to populist stunts, sharing videos of himself eating pitta bread after removing pitta bread from the mess halls of security prisons. Under his watch, a remarkable run of comparative peace and prosperity is coming to an end.

On the Palestinian side, the situation is even worse. The Israelis have an alternative if they ever choose to turn against the coalition currently in power. The Palestinians do not even have a vocabulary for connecting their actions to their outcomes.

Any serious discussion of the Palestinian state should ask whether or not life has improved since the Palestinians rejected statehood at the end of the Oslo process in 2000 and opted instead for violent confrontation with Israel. This isn’t a rhetorical question for Israeli public diplomacy, but one the Palestinians should be asking their leadership.

Yet to pose this question would be to acknowledge a kind of agency that exalted victimhood doesn’t allow for. It is now nearly 23 years since Yasser Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s Camp David Summit and instead gambled on a violent terror campaign in the hope of better terms. There was no way of knowing then that this gamble would turn out so badly. At the time, it wasn’t viewed as a particularly controversial decision; what’s striking, however, is how that perception hasn’t changed.

I’ve argued elsewhere that the entire Palestinian predicament is the outcome of three very different Arab-Israeli wars which began in 1947, 1967, and 2000. It’s not an intuitive historical argument to make, as these three wars have so little in common. The first began as an Arab-Jewish civil war fought village by village, which then expanded into a multi-state war across four borders lasting a year and a half. The second was a rapid but conventional military conflict fought in less than a week. And the third was a low-intensity armed conflict characterised by frequent terrorist attacks and counterinsurgency operations by an occupying army which took about five years to peter out.

All three were preceded by a wave of righteous ecstasy on the Arab side. All three ended in a disastrous defeat for the Arab side that irreversibly worsened the political and economic situation of the Palestinians. And all three defeats were followed by the collective erasure of any memory of the excitement before the conflict. They instead became stories of distilled victimisation, almost ensuring a repeat performance a generation later.

Why does this keep happening? It’s not that Palestinians are uniquely irrational; nor are the Palestinians the only nation birthed by the collapse of an old imperial order. The Irish, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Poles, Ukrainians and many others formed modern states on a mix of historical claims and very modern myth-making throughout the 20th century, frequently in conditions of war and displacement, and always with unanswered territorial claims. Some of these were the basis for lingering resentments and conflicts for generations.

Yet none except for the Palestinians rejected statehood when it was on offer because it didn’t include all their territorial claims. And this includes the Israelis who accepted the UN partition plan on roughly half of what was left of the original British Mandate. Zionists accepted a state that didn’t even include Jerusalem, the focal point of Jewish longing for two millennia and already then, as for a century before, home to a Jewish majority. This is the difference between a movement for national liberation and a movement for the elimination of another nation. In the former, even a very difficult compromise can be understood as an achievement (however partial or internally controversial). In the latter, a compromise that leaves this unwanted presence is still an unacceptable defeat.

The Arab war against Zionism has been a central organising political fact of Arab politics for over a century. This self-destructive passion hit its peak in the mid-20th century, dragged numerous Arab states into repeated military catastrophes and saw nearly every Jewish community in the Arab world completely erased, some after a continuous presence of more than 2,000 years. Anti-Zionism serves the same totemic function for broad circles of activists and intellectuals in the West too. Accepting that Israel is not a state whose policies may merit severe critique, but one whose existence is a crime, is now the price of entry to the community of the good.

This is how the “Arab-Israeli” conflict morphs into the “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict, which then morphs into just “the occupation” and now increasingly “apartheid”. The first transition denied the scope of the conflict and effaced the reality of a tiny Jewish minority being marked for destruction by the Arab world as a whole. The second denied that there was a conflict at all, and rendered the entire situation as an extended outcome of an Israeli sin. The third eliminates even the possibility that such a sin can be expiated; it instead holds Israel’s existence as inherently evil. Between these two external forces, and with all the internal dysfunction of Palestinian politics, it is nearly impossible to expect the Palestinians to do what every other national liberation movement has done: seek political freedom and build a society from there. After three catastrophes in three generations, there is not even a hint of an alternative.

Three destructive and unnecessary wars put the Palestinians in the lamentable place they now inhabit. It’s impossible to know what the fourth will look like, but it’s unlikely it will resemble that or any of the previous three. The current violence has not sparked that war yet, but unless something dramatic changes in the political trajectories of both parties, something eventually will. And when it does, Israelis will pay a heavy and avoidable price — and the Palestinians an even larger one.

unherd.com · by Shany Mor · February 20, 2023

22. Russia, China Challenge U.S.-Led World Order

What kind of world do we want to live in? An authoritarian regime dominated one or a rules based international order?

Russia, China Challenge U.S.-Led World Order

Biden’s Kyiv visit, Putin’s speech show two sides digging in for long fight in Ukraine as China also weighs in

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-china-challenge-u-s-led-world-order-3563f41d?utm_source=pocket_saves

By Stephen FidlerFollow

 and Michael R. GordonFollow

Updated Feb. 21, 2023 4:06 pm ET

A series of high-profile events on the international stage has laid bare the perilous state of great-power relations as Russia and China challenge the U.S.-led global order and raised the prospect that they could deteriorate further.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would suspend its participation in the last remaining nuclear-arms treaty between Moscow and Washington, a vestige of the security architecture that has helped keep the peace for decades.

With strains worse than at any time since the Cold War, Mr. Putin’s threat to arms control in a speech in Moscow came a day after President Biden traveled to Ukraine and vowed “unending support” for Kyiv in a fight Mr. Putin considers an existential one for Russia.

Also in the mix: China, whose top diplomat, Wang Yi excoriated the U.S. at a security conference in Germany before arriving Tuesday in Moscow to see Russian officials and, people familiar with the matter said, likely propose a summit between Mr. Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

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The developments signal greater stress for the international system as Washington and its allies contend with a rising China, which has provided an important economic lifeline to Moscow, and a revanchist Russia seeking to renegotiate the end of the Cold War.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would withhold cooperation on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

PHOTO: KREMLIN POOL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Speaking to a crowd Tuesday in Warsaw, Mr. Biden said “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed.”

Russia and China have a common interest in weakening U.S. dominance of the world order, which they likely assess has been strengthened by Western unity over Ukraine. An entente between the two would replicate their Cold War anti-Western partnership with one significant difference, that Beijing rather than Moscow would be the dominant partner.

The prospect of the two great autocratic powers that dominate the Eurasian landmass moving closer together carries risks for Beijing. It would probably force European countries that now are hoping to maintain close commercial ties with China to move more decisively toward Washington, on which they depend for security. If that happened, geopolitical competition between the West (along with Asian democracies such as Japan and South Korea) and the Moscow-Beijing axis would solidify.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also warned last weekend that China was considering sending weapons to Russia, a step he said would cause a “serious problem” in U.S.-China relations. 

American officials said Beijing hasn’t delivered lethal arms to Moscow but Western analysts said doing so would suggest a decision in Beijing that its strategic interests lie in Russia not being defeated in Ukraine, increasing the prospects for further extending the war.

China’s Top Diplomat Vows to ‘Firmly Defend’ National Territories With Russia

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Wang Yi, China’s most senior foreign-policy official, said Beijing is willing to work with Moscow to defend both countries’ national territories during talks with Russia’s security chief on Tuesday. Photo: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/Zuma Press

Russia has suffered losses of 200,000 or more men killed and wounded, according to Western estimates, and its equipment losses are so heavy that it is constraining its ability to wage the war.   

Vowing to continue the war in Ukraine which he blamed on the West, Mr. Putin told Russian lawmakers Tuesday that he would withhold cooperation on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. He stopped short of withdrawing from the pact, however, and other Russian officials made clear that Moscow would continue to adhere to core treaty limits on the number of warheads and the missiles and bombers that carry them. 

The New Start treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by the U.S. and Russia at 1,550 and provides for on-site inspections. 

The Biden administration said last month that Russia had violated the treaty by refusing to allow inspections and rebuffing the U.S. requests to meet to discuss its compliance concerns. U.S. officials said they were seeking clarification whether Mr. Putin now intends to expand Russia’s area of noncompliance by withholding data on Russia’s nuclear forces and refraining from notifying changes in the status and location of strategic weapons covered by the treaty.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Tuesday that Moscow would continue to observe “quantitative restrictions on strategic offensive arms.” It added that Russia will also continue to provide notification of ballistic missile test launches, which would provide a modicum of strategic stability, current and former U.S. officials said. 

Even so, the Russian president’s speech was a sign that the arms control was being buffeted by the two sides’ antagonism over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and that negotiating a follow-up agreement to New Start, which expires in February 2026, could be an uphill struggle.

“I am pessimistic on the prospect of further limitations on strategic offensive arms, though sometimes out of crisis comes new momentum,” said Rose Gottemoeller, who served as the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Start accord.

President Biden met with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw.

PHOTO: JAKUB SZYMCZUK/KPRP HANDOUT/SHUTTERSTOCK

Adding another somber note, China has refused to be drawn into discussions of its modest but growing nuclear arsenal. 

After visiting Kyiv, Mr. Biden traveled to Warsaw for talks Tuesday with leaders from the so-called Bucharest Nine, all countries that were occupied by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and are now most fearful of Russian expansionism. He also met with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who has accused Moscow of plotting to overthrow her pro-Western government, a claim Russia denies. 

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In Warsaw, Mr. Biden said support for Ukraine wouldn’t waver and that the U.S. and its allies would remain united. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never,” he said, hours after Mr. Putin had said Russia would never be defeated on the battlefield. 

The visit to Europe by Mr. Wang was the first by a senior Chinese official since Mr. Xi cemented his hold over the Chinese leadership at a Communist Party Congress late last year. His speech in Munich before a conference that included many European leaders and a large delegation of American officials and lawmakers contained a thinly disguised effort to open a rift between Europe and the U.S. 

He described China and Europe as “two major forces, markets and civilizations.” Echoing a phrase used by French President Emmanuel Macron to describe a still unrealized goal of European security independence from the U.S., Mr. Wang asked “What role should Europe play to display its strategic autonomy?” Meanwhile, in a clear reference to Washington, he said some actors “might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself.”

Mr. Wang also said China would soon disclose a plan for peace in Ukraine. It would be based, he said, on respecting territorial integrity and sovereignty, the purposes and principles of the United Nations charter. Legitimate security concerns must be taken seriously, he said, an apparent reference to Russia’s assertions that it invaded Ukraine because it was worried about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “Nuclear wars must not be fought and will not be won,” he said.

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In a speech to Parliament, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended the country’s participation in the last remaining major nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia. He also repeated his claim that Ukraine and the West provoked the war. Photo: Sergei Savostyanov/Associated Press

Ulrich Speck, a German foreign-policy analyst, said some European governments were cautiously interested in Chinese involvement in a peace proposal because of the sway Beijing now has in Moscow. There was also hope that China could be lured away from Russia that is openly hostile to the West, he said.

There are at least two problems with that approach, he said. “A quick cease-fire might benefit Russia by freezing territorial gains and giving Russia a break to replenish its stocks and prepare for the next attack,” he said. A second problem: “China might not really be ready for pushing Russia seriously—it may rather do fake diplomacy,” he said.

The harshness of Mr. Wang’s criticism of the U.S. and his refusal to rule out military escalation in Taiwan also left many listeners concerned. “Taiwan has never been a country and will not be a country in the future,” Mr. Wang said. Separatist forces on the island were entirely responsible for undermining peace and security on the Taiwan Strait, he said.

China has already provided significant support to the Russian economy, buying up Russian oil. It has also sold microchips and other advanced technologies that have military uses, a step that risks future Western sanctions that would further corrode relations with Beijing.

Beijing, however, faces a difficult balancing act. The greater its support for Russia’s war, the more it will tarnish its relationship with Europe. Moreover, the more frayed ties grow between Washington and Beijing, the more Europe may feel drawn to downscale economic and diplomatic engagement with China.

Laurence Norman contributed to this article.

23. Opinion | Why Ukraine will win the war by Mark Hertling

Opinion | Why Ukraine will win the war

The Washington Post · by Mark Hertling · February 20, 2023

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling commanded the 1st Armored Division during the Iraq surge and later commanded U.S. Army Europe.

Looks have always been deceiving when it comes to Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. From the start, Russia’s capacities were overestimated. Both the size of its army and the modernization it had supposedly undergone indicated to many observers that Russia would triumph easily. But since the invasion began, the Russian military has failed to adapt its strategy and operational objectives to battle conditions and circumstances.

One year into the conflict, coverage of the war’s battles mostly focuses on the fighting along the central and southern fronts, with cities such as Bakhmut and Vuhledar dominating headlines. Russia has been making small gains at great cost to its troops around the former, and has squandered thousands of its soldiers for nothing at the latter. This might look like an emerging stalemate, but it is anything but. It is, in fact, a slugfest.

The war has gone through five phases and, through each one, Ukraine’s forces have significantly outperformed Russia’s, in no small part because of a military culture of adaptability. Russian forces continue to be hampered by a lack of that very same culture, as well as by a lack of leadership and initiative.

During my time as commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, I got to know Ukrainian leaders and soldiers during various training missions, and saw this culture of adaptability grow and develop. I also had the opportunity to closely watch Russia “demonstrate” (but not properly train or exercise) its military capacity on several occasions, and frequently noted the deep and pervasive corruption that bedeviled its armed forces.

So, before even knowing the details of Putin’s strategy or his military’s operational objectives, I knew immediately the invasion would not end well for the Russian leader. “Ukraine will fight above its weight class,” I told a colleague on the first night of the war. “And Russia will be embarrassed.”

Opinions on the war in Ukraine after one year

One year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. Post Opinions is marking the anniversary with columns looking at all that has transpired and what may lie ahead.

Post Opinions partnered with the Brookings Institution to visualize the war’s effects on Ukraine’s economy, immigration trends and more. Together, these indicators suggest the fighting is unlikely to end anytime soon, write Michael O’Hanlon, Constanze Stelzenmüller and David Wessel of Brookings.

The Editorial Board looked for solutions, calling on the United States and its European allies to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv. Vladimir Putin hopes for a stalemate, the Editorial Board writes, and the West needs to fuel a game-changing shift in momentum.

In an op-ed adapted from her Feb. 9 speech at the “Rebuilding Ukraine, Rebuilding the World” conference at Harvard, Oleksandra Matviichuk writes that it is not only wrong but also immoral not to provide weapons for Ukraine.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling describes the Ukraine war as a slugfest, not a stalemate. He outlines five phases of the war and predicts that Ukraine’s forces will ultimately prevail.

Columnist Jason Willick looks at the war through the lens of U.S. politics. President Biden, he says, is positioned to take advantage of divided government by using as his foil Republicans who oppose continued support for Ukraine.

Antony Beevor, a former tank commander with the British Army, says the Ukraine war has revived the role of the main battle tank.

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Putin never officially announced his strategic goals. To try to understand what his generals might do, I tried to ascertain what those might be. He seemed to want regime change in Kyiv, the destruction of Ukraine’s army, the subjugation of Ukraine’s population, control of the Black and Azov Sea ports (and perhaps of Moldova, as well). It was obvious Russia didn’t have the number of soldiers or the combined arms effectiveness to achieve Putin’s ambitious war aims.

Worse, Putin’s army ignored one of the most important principles of war: unity of command. The generals planned an attack on nine different axes of advance but were never able to coordinate ample naval and air forces into a massed assault.

The war started on Feb. 24, 2022. It took about six weeks for Phase 1 of Putin’s campaign to fail.

On April 2, Putin was forced to try a different approach. He shifted Russian forces to the east, while placing new generals in charge. But he did little to address the damage inflicted on the army by such a catastrophic beginning. Estimates vary, but up to 40 percent of front-line Russian combat units appear to have been mauled, with supply lines and effective command decimated. Putin moved most of his army east and subsequently ordered his army to be rebuilt in weeks. Any general familiar with the physical and psychological demands associated with regeneration of a force this severely degraded would tell you this would not work.

On April 18, Putin launched a new Russian offensive in the east — the start of Phase 2 of the war. New arrows and circles were drawn on Russian maps, but the Russian generals and their troops on the ground continued to underperform. There was no meaningful adaptation and no attempt to learn hard lessons from earlier setbacks. Pieced-together, low-morale units were thrown into the fight with little planning, bad reconnaissance and ineffective battlefield leadership. Ukraine, on the other hand, was not complacent. Its generals were fast learners, and Ukrainian soldiers were innovative and adaptive. The Russian forces continued to suffer huge losses.

Phase 3 began in July and lasted through September. Ukraine’s army forced a large-scale withdrawal in the northeast in the Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts, using small-scale counterattacks directed at just the right locations, aided by a large-scale operational deception in the south. Ukrainian special operations forces also contributed significantly to this phase, using stealth and disciplined operational security to ensure that Russia was embarrassed behind its own lines. For most of the summer, the Russians sustained casualties that far exceeded those suffered during the disastrous Phase 1 and 2.

Phase 4 began in late September, when Putin announced that several of the partially occupied southern regions of Ukraine would be annexed. This was accompanied by Putin’s order to mobilize an additional 300,000 Russians for the fight. The referendums in the occupied territories, in preparation for months, were met with an effective insurgency by Ukraine’s population and territorial forces, and were delayed multiple times. And the mobilization, while successful in bringing a limited number of “fresh” but unwilling soldiers to the front line, was still plagued by the same deficiencies that characterized Russia’s war effort from the start. The mobilizations were rushed and improvised, recruits were poorly trained and equipped, and Russian leadership was still lacking.

In contrast, Ukraine’s actions during this period consisted of an impressively coordinated use of conventional forces that had successfully incorporated newly arrived Western weapons, most notably precision-guided artillery and rockets. In addition, this phase featured more Ukrainian special operations activity, and the continued use of territorial resistance fighters. Russia responded to all this by lobbing missiles into densely packed Ukrainian cities to target critical infrastructure and Ukrainian civilians. The war crimes committed by Russian leadership and their forces continued.

Since December, the war has been in Phase 5. Though the front might not have moved much, there has been significant fighting and extensive casualties on both sides. This phase is best understood not as a stalemate but as Ukraine struggling to survive a Russian onslaught. Putin continues his messy mobilization and is sending fresh cannon fodder (or “cannon meat,” as Russians call these wretches) at Ukrainian lines in assault waves.

Ukrainian generals have balanced limited but continuous counterattacks with an active defense, while also being forced to allocate scarce air-defense capabilities to protect civilians. Ukrainian forces are also continuing to conduct intelligence operations to identify targets they will likely strike in the near future. It’s a delicate balance for the decision-makers in Kyiv. They are trying to hold the defensive lines while training and equipping their forces with newly obtained, advanced Western materiel that will make a qualitative difference in the looming counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s armed forces have admirably adapted in each phase of this fight, learning lessons from training they received over the past decade, and from the scars earned on the battlefield itself. And Russia has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to do the same.

It will remain difficult for Russia to change — simply because it can’t. A nation’s army is drawn from its people, and a nation’s army reflects the character and values of the society. While equipment, doctrine, training and leadership are important qualities of any army, the essence of a fighting force comes from what the nation represents. Putin’s autocratic kleptocracy is thus far proving no match for Ukraine’s agile democracy.

The Washington Post · by Mark Hertling · February 20, 2023

24. Xi the Survivor

Excerpts:

The spy balloon episode offers just the latest example of the dangers of misreading Xi and his system. The state presidency is the least important of the Chinese leader’s main posts. His duties as head of the party and of the military come first, and Xi views his foreign and security agencies as instruments to be wielded in an unflinchingly hierarchical world of CCP power and control, not as empowered institutions contributing input to a collective policy framework. His National Security Commission is strategic and focused on achieving broad CCP goals, not on crisis management and preventing interagency friction, like its notional American analog. China’s top diplomat is not like the U.S. national security adviser, and its foreign and defense ministers lack the broad authority of their U.S. equivalents.

Yet U.S. President Joe Biden and his top officials repeatedly demonstrate little awareness of these critical differences between the American and Chinese systems. Biden tells Xi he wants competition instead of conflict but then repeatedly says publicly that the United States will defend Taiwan militarily and quips in his State of the Union address that no foreign leader wants Xi’s job. His secretary of defense is mystified that his Chinese counterpart will not answer the phone, and Biden’s advisers wonder why China will not discuss security guardrails. The answer is that Xi does not want them. His grip on the PLA is still firm, and he believes that such measures cast China as another Soviet Union and are formulated to determine how far the United States, as the superior power, can push without sparking a conflict.

These misunderstandings are hardening into resentments that risk tanking relations still further. Senior Biden officials have relished the opportunity to needle China over the spy balloon and expose the apparent sweep of its program to allies and others. But Xie Feng, China’s soon-to-be ambassador in Washington, has warned that such actions have “severely impacted and undermined the efforts and progress made by the two sides to stabilize China-U.S. relations” since Biden and Xi met in Bali in November. Indeed, the mostly performative meeting last weekend between the countries’ foreign ministers in Munich, echoed the toxic March 2021 exchange in Anchorage, Alaska. Consequently, the longer the Biden administration insists on prioritizing political point scoring at home the harder it will be to get relations back on track.

Xi the Survivor

How Washington Overestimates Chinese Weakness

By Christopher Johnson

February 22, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Christopher Johnson · February 22, 2023

After Chinese President Xi Jinping secured a historic third term in October 2022, many Western analysts heralded him as a modern-day emperor. But just four months later, a glance at the headlines suggests he is under pressure at home and his grip on power may be looser than many thought. A messy exit from China’s zero-COVID policy and a rogue spy balloon—allegedly the work of a Chinese military seeking to prevent Xi from stabilizing relations with Washington—are seen by some observers as evidence that the Chinese leader is suddenly on the back foot. But such analyses ignore both Xi’s ruthless political cunning and his efforts to better manage the intrinsic pathologies of a system whose flaws are viewed by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) magnates as acceptable risks as long as they remain in power.

A hallmark of Xi’s rule has been his propensity to make big bets that he thinks will pay off for him and for China. At the very beginning of his tenure, he launched a withering anticorruption purge that decimated once mighty barons of the Politburo, military, and security services. Many analysts thought such a move would be impossible at the time: they presumed that Xi was constrained by powerful interest groups, just as his two predecessors had been.

But Xi quickly outmaneuvered those alleged kingpins, allowing him to launch a transformative policy agenda comparatively early in his rule. What followed were other big bets, including his risky gambit to deleverage China’s debt-plagued financial sector, his unapologetic stance on the world stage, and his claim that China has a unique and effective development model—what Xi calls “Chinese-style modernization”—that may work for others. Western analysts roundly condemn these innovations as ruinous for China and threatening to other countries. But the hard truth is that it is too soon to make such confident judgments.

Most of Xi’s big bets share one thing in common: they keep his adversaries, both domestic and foreign, off balance. As a Leninist organization overseeing a continual revolution rooted in so-called contradictions and struggle, the CCP lacks, and even eschews, the legitimacy democratic systems derive from their institutions or from shared beliefs such as constitutionalism. In Xi’s eyes, that makes China’s bureaucracies possible rival centers of power, incentivizing him to keep them decoupled from—and perhaps even at odds with—one another.

But isolating the bureaucracies too much risks germinating autonomous fiefdoms that are only nominally loyal to their party masters. This dilemma has plagued each of China’s leaders since Mao Zedong, but Xi has turbocharged it with his obsessive emphasis on party dominance. His solution, “political shock and awe,” mixes raw power with new institutional arrangements that bolster that power. Because it keeps China’s major security organs under stricter civilian control, this developing approach may make Beijing less dangerous than those pushing the narrative of a new cold war with China want to acknowledge. Unfortunately, it will take patience, confidence, and a steely commitment to a China policy rooted only in the national interest to find out—all of which are in short supply in today’s Washington.

XI KEEPS SURPRISING

Many observers were shocked when China suddenly abandoned its zero-COVID policy in late 2022. They had thought Xi was fiddling while China’s economy burned in order to deny his rivals ammunition ahead of the 20th Party Congress, or that he was obsessed with building his surveillance-driven dystopian wonderland. Just before the congress, the consensus was that Xi might drop the policy after the conclave because it no longer made sense or that a “savior premier” from a rival leadership constituency might emerge and push back on Xi’s misguided approach. Those hopes were dashed when a supposedly sycophantic group of Xi’s yes men were appointed instead, leaving no one to tell the emperor he had no clothes. And yet, observers still interpreted Xi’s decision to scrap his zero-COVID policy as evidence that he was terrified by a few students holding blank pieces of paper. Such commentary, in turn, prompted more suggestions that Xi’s third term already lay in ruins.

Additional evidence of Xi’s chastening was said to be found in the adulatory funeral honors he gave to former President Jiang Zemin, who died just days after the street protests in November. A damaged Xi and his Politburo allegedly feared that Jiang’s death might provoke additional unrest, as the passing of other venerable CCP leaders had in the past.

Such analysis supposes Xi to be either a fool or a fanatic, when he clearly is neither. More likely, he began reconsidering his zero-COVID policy after the disastrous Shanghai lockdown last spring, which was overseen by his ally Li Qiang. Li obeyed orders, but he probably told Xi afterward that the policy was becoming untenable. The dilemma Xi faced, moreover, was different from the ones suggested by commentators. Months earlier, in another of his big bets, he appears to have decided to dump former President Hu Jintao’s allies from the Politburo in a surprise putsch as the party congress closed. That made it necessary to control as many risks as possible, and letting COVID-19 loose would mean a wave of deaths for which Xi and the party would risk being blamed. After all, the CCP’s mantra from the beginning of the pandemic had been “people first, lives first” and Xi had styled himself as “the people’s leader.”

Xi’s reopening bet has paid off.

The protests gave him just the out he was looking for. If abandoning zero-COVID went well, he could keep his new honorific and say he listened to the people. If it went poorly, he could blame the protesters and the “hostile foreign forces” that his top security chief publicly suggested were behind them. This calculus, the damage to China’s economy, and an awareness from his allies in the provinces that the Omicron variant had won, presumably encouraged Xi to make yet another big bet and let the disease rip. In that sense, Xi’s bet has paid off, because the outbreak, although messy and unnecessarily deadly, has spawned neither a new variant that might escape China nor the rebound wave that many experts predicted. That leaves the Chinese economy primed to return to growth much earlier than global investors anticipated.

Against this backdrop, the notion that Xi sought to tread carefully at Jiang’s funeral seems far-fetched. As David Bandurski of the China Media Project observed, the official treatment of Jiang’s death was far more ritualistic than revelatory, and it was nearly identical to the hagiography that followed Deng Xiaoping’s passing in 1997. As it did with Deng’s passing, the Politburo had ample time to prepare for Jiang’s demise, leaving it less concerned about protests than it was after the surprise death of former party boss Hu Yaobang in 1989, which touched off the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Likewise, Hu’s involvement in the mourning rituals, which some analysts have painted as evidence of Xi’s weakness, was predictable; as a former president and Jiang’s immediate successor, his absence would have signaled an insecure Xi.

BALLOON WARS

Senior Pentagon official Colin Kahl’s recent statement that “a major civil-military divide” in China lay behind the spy balloon that derailed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s scheduled visit to China is another troubling misreading of events. True, it seems strange that Xi would endorse such a risky operation when he presumably wanted the visit to help stabilize relations with Washington. But an understanding of Xi’s overall worldview, as well as the CCP system and Xi’s efforts to better manage some of its intrinsic shortcomings, can demystify the situation.

One piece of evidence for the rogue military theory cited by its proponents is that China’s Foreign Ministry seemed genuinely ignorant of the operation. But compartmentalization is a feature of CCP rule, not a bug. The Foreign Ministry’s role is to manage overseas perceptions of China and to defend the regime when embarrassments occur. In that sense, the Foreign Ministry is China’s “civilian army,” but it is also viewed with indifference, if not disdain, by its secretive CCP bosses. Not so the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which, given its role as the armed wing of the CCP (rather than the national military of China), is integral to regime survival. The PLA is the ultimate guarantor of CCP rule, as it ruthlessly demonstrated during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. It can also be an instrument in elite CCP conflict and was used to arrest various prominent figures in the 1970s. In short, the Foreign Ministry does not make policy and certainly does not tell the PLA what it should or should not do.

Still more misguided is the notion that the PLA or other regime hard-liners sought to sabotage Blinken’s visit to frustrate Xi’s interest in détente. Xi is a hard-liner. Watching the first two years of the Biden administration has affirmed his judgment that U.S. hostility to China is deeply bipartisan and that therefore the United States is China’s implacable enemy. After six years of a perceived de facto war launched and waged by Washington to deny Beijing its strategic ambitions and overthrow the CCP, spy balloons seem inoffensive in comparison. Xi probably does not see the balloon program as in conflict with wanting Blinken to visit.

The Politburo remains convinced that the people agree with its choices.

If not outright sabotage, then perhaps the balloon mission reflects another feature of the CCP ecosystem: bureaucratic stovepiping. After all, there were several instances during Hu’s tenure when it appeared that the Chinese president did not know what his military was up to. Although still under notional party control, the high command took advantage of certain intrinsic monopolies—such as intelligence flow and military-technical expertise—to expand its policy influence in areas touching on the PLA’s corporate interests.

But Xi is not Hu. Unlike his predecessor, Xi has some knowledge of the PLA’s internal workings from his stint as aide-de-camp to a senior figure in the CCP body overseeing the military and from fellow CCP blue bloods who serve as senior officers. His time as Hu’s understudy apparently confirmed his instinct to get the PLA back in line. From the moment he took power, he initiated an aggressive anticorruption purge of the senior officer corps in conjunction with a comprehensive force restructuring, which disrupted the PLA’s long-standing organizational networks. He also declared himself commander-in chief of the PLA and reworked the official lines of authority to emphasize his grip over the military. In this new ecosystem, it seems inconceivable that Xi was unaware of the balloon program, if not this specific mission.

A misguided desire to view China’s challenges and choices through the same lens as other foreign systems lies at the crux of these misperceptions. Because the West abandoned COVID-19 controls early in the pandemic, China’s strict adherence to them was deemed intrinsically foolish. When the Politburo clung on to these policies longer than apolitical foreign health officials thought reasonable, Western analysts assumed that Xi had to be either under pressure internally or a tyrannical madman. His decision to relax COVID-19 controls must, therefore, be deemed an embarrassing climbdown rather than a strategic gambit. No doubt, the regime badly erred in wasting the time its harsh approach bought to better prepare for the inevitable. In the aggregate, however, the outcome differed little from that in other countries: the disease won, prompting a messy exit resulting in preventable loss of life. The regime’s formal declaration of unqualified victory over COVID-19 this month underscores the Politburo’s conviction that China’s people largely agree with its choices.

WASHINGTON STUMBLES

The spy balloon episode offers just the latest example of the dangers of misreading Xi and his system. The state presidency is the least important of the Chinese leader’s main posts. His duties as head of the party and of the military come first, and Xi views his foreign and security agencies as instruments to be wielded in an unflinchingly hierarchical world of CCP power and control, not as empowered institutions contributing input to a collective policy framework. His National Security Commission is strategic and focused on achieving broad CCP goals, not on crisis management and preventing interagency friction, like its notional American analog. China’s top diplomat is not like the U.S. national security adviser, and its foreign and defense ministers lack the broad authority of their U.S. equivalents.

Yet U.S. President Joe Biden and his top officials repeatedly demonstrate little awareness of these critical differences between the American and Chinese systems. Biden tells Xi he wants competition instead of conflict but then repeatedly says publicly that the United States will defend Taiwan militarily and quips in his State of the Union address that no foreign leader wants Xi’s job. His secretary of defense is mystified that his Chinese counterpart will not answer the phone, and Biden’s advisers wonder why China will not discuss security guardrails. The answer is that Xi does not want them. His grip on the PLA is still firm, and he believes that such measures cast China as another Soviet Union and are formulated to determine how far the United States, as the superior power, can push without sparking a conflict.

These misunderstandings are hardening into resentments that risk tanking relations still further. Senior Biden officials have relished the opportunity to needle China over the spy balloon and expose the apparent sweep of its program to allies and others. But Xie Feng, China’s soon-to-be ambassador in Washington, has warned that such actions have “severely impacted and undermined the efforts and progress made by the two sides to stabilize China-U.S. relations” since Biden and Xi met in Bali in November. Indeed, the mostly performative meeting last weekend between the countries’ foreign ministers in Munich, echoed the toxic March 2021 exchange in Anchorage, Alaska. Consequently, the longer the Biden administration insists on prioritizing political point scoring at home the harder it will be to get relations back on track.

• CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON is President and CEO of China Strategies Group, and a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Foreign Affairs · by Christopher Johnson · February 22, 2023

25. Move Fast and Win Things

Eliot Cohen provides us the diplomatic and national security ideal.

Conclusion:

A statecraft in which leaders understand the world, size it up quickly and accurately, decide fast, and act with an extreme sense of urgency, at scale and with full commitment is what the United States and its allies need now. With it, a Ukraine that is free, whole, and secure can be rebuilt from the carnage. Without it, Russia can still pull some measure of success from a criminal war in which it has every chance of suffering a well-deserved and thorough defeat.

Move Fast and Win Things

What the War in Ukraine Has Revealed About Statecraft

By Eliot A. Cohen

February 22, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Eliot A. Cohen · February 22, 2023

The Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been less a problem of strategy than of tactics and execution. After one year of fighting, the basic idea—support Ukraine and defeat Russia—has held up well; the implementation has not. That holds especially true for the United States.

Successful statecraft has much in common with the concept of aerial combat formulated by twentieth-century U.S. Air Force pilot and military thinker John Boyd. From his experience in the Korean War and later studies, Boyd concluded that fighter pilots engage in combat in a four-stage cycle: a pilot observes what is going on, orients himself to the environment, decides what to do, and acts accordingly. The tighter the loop—the quicker and more efficiently each stage is mastered—the greater the chance of success, and, indeed, survival.

Throughout the war in Ukraine, the West has excelled at the first stage of Boyd’s cycle. It has closely tracked the Russian buildup around Ukraine. And beyond the first stage, the West has generally done the right thing—supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Russia. But again and again, it has taken far too long to execute, lacking urgency and agility. The path from observation and understanding to decision and action has been painfully slow. Along the way, there have been many missed opportunities to seriously weaken Russia and enable Ukraine to win. What a year of war has shown, then, are the limits of Western statecraft in the face of the greatest military challenge that Europe, and in some measure the entire free world, has faced since the Cold War.

WESTERN FUMBLES

When Russian forces began preparing for war, in January and February 2022, Boyd’s first stage, observation, was not difficult for the West: intelligence agencies and private analysts could see Russian forces deploying around Ukraine’s periphery and track Moscow’s preparations for war. But it was harder for some analysts to orient themselves to the idea of a full-scale invasion and to understand Russia’s reasons for the war. At the time, Western leaders treated Russia as a state with normal security concerns—partly because of the influence of apologists for Russia, who accepted the Kremlin’s stance that Russia had somehow been unfairly treated when its own leaders, not Americans or Europeans, destroyed the Soviet Union and dissolved its empire. In 1990, then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker carelessly remarked to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand one inch eastward. Russians have turned the United States’ failure to uphold that comment, which was not an official policy or document, into what they see as a legitimate grievance. It is not.

Moreover, few if any Western leaders paid adequate attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published in July 2021, more than six months before the Russian invasion. Fewer still saw how seriously Putin took the threat of democratic contagion to his regime. In December 2021, Putin called on Europe to dismantle its security order. Nonetheless, many Western leaders did not accept that they were dealing with a man who aimed at nothing less than restoring a Russian empire based on chauvinism, autocracy, and force. Some of them still struggle to see this.

Furthermore, when an invasion did become increasingly certain, Western officials failed to accurately assess the likely course of the impending war. They let themselves be convinced by experts (whose interpretations have yet to receive the critical examination they deserve) that Russian forces would quickly roll over at least the eastern half, if not all, of Ukraine. Some even doubted that guerrilla resistance could continue. They accepted the view that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would surrender or flee—indeed, according to the Associated Press, the United States offered Zelensky help to escape—and that most Ukrainians would accept, if unhappily, their reincorporation into the Russian empire.

EARLY BIRD GETS THE WIN

But there was one way in which U.S. leaders displayed exemplary statecraft at the beginning of the war—by exposing the Russian buildup along the Ukrainian border and warning both Ukraine and Western allies of Russian intent. It is no coincidence that this effort was led by William Burns, the director of the CIA and one of the finest diplomats of his generation. By publicly sharing intelligence and alerting the world of Russia’s military expansion, the U.S. government created a unified Western response to Russia, restored its own intelligence credibility after the failures of the Iraq War, and established a strong basis for arming Ukraine’s defense forces—forces that were, as many were surprised to discover, willing to fight to the death.

Over the course of the 12 months since the invasion, the West has generally taken the right course, but too slowly. Ukraine’s backers have repeatedly discovered that Ukrainians could quickly and effectively use the weapons that they were being given. That lesson was first learned with handheld antitank and antiaircraft weapons, which were supplied in small quantities in January 2022; then with U.S. heavy artillery, beginning in April 2022; then with medium-range rocket systems, first sent in June 2022; and finally, with main battle tanks. But in none of these cases were Ukraine’s needs adequately anticipated. Instead, the West dragged its feet in providing the necessary tools and training. For example, Germany and the United States did not agree to send tanks to Ukraine until January 2023, meaning that they will not be ready for use until late this spring—possibly too late for them to make a difference in Russia’s expected late-winter and early-spring offensives.

In war, sluggish decision-making kills. In every conflict, clocks are ticking in different places and at different paces. There are clocks determined by weather and muddy seasons, by the patience of besieged populations, by elections, by training cycles and mobilization of troops, by the ebbs and flows of public and military morale, and by the supply of weapons and ammunition. In the realm of decision and action, the West has consistently dawdled, undermining not only the Ukrainian cause but also its own.

For example, large-scale programs to train Ukrainian soldiers in Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom of the kind the British began in July 2022 could have been established on a large scale months earlier. The United States could have put High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) into the pipeline to Ukraine as soon as the war began, and Ukrainians, who are remarkably fast learners, could have been trained and ready to use them by the time the war shifted to the east last summer. A military assistance mission under U.S. command could have been stood up last spring, headquartered in eastern Europe. Western main battle tanks could have been delivered in the fall of 2022—when Ukraine was on the move and Russia had not yet assembled more forces—as could have the long-range missiles that Ukraine needs to destroy Russian logistics.

The Ukrainians, by contrast, have been fast and flexible, learning in a matter of weeks to use weapons systems that in peacetime require months of training. In this, as in certain other respects, their military resembles Israel’s of an earlier era—ingenious, adaptable, not always the most skilled or best equipped, but able to improvise. Furnished with the right weapons, Ukraine could have further exploited the collapse of Russian units near Kharkiv in September 2022 and weakened the entire Russian position in the south of Ukraine. And today, a Ukrainian military equipped with long-range missile systems could be already dismantling the logistical infrastructure on which the Russian invaders depend. But Ukraine has been held back by its patrons, which, alas, are far less nimble.

THE FEAR FACTOR

Western statecraft has stumbled, in part, because Western leaders have given too much credence to their fears of Russian escalation—and far worse, broadcast them. Since the early months of the war, officials in the United States and western Europe have repeatedly asserted the dangers of possible nuclear escalation by Moscow. These anxieties have been exaggerated. Using nuclear weapons would be illogical and unproductive from Russia’s point of view, and would violate the core interests of its only real ally, China. By advertising their worries, presidents and prime ministers—including French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden—have unintentionally invited Russia to manipulate them.

Western strategists have also failed to accurately assess Russia’s future. Even Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser and secretary of state, asserted in 2022 that despite Russia’s “propensity to violence,” the country has contributed “to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium.” To the contrary: historically, Russia has not only consistently expanded its empire but also has celebrated conquest. Such sentiment is indeed stronger than ever.

Dmitri Trenin, a former Russian military intelligence officer who led a U.S.-headquartered think tank in Moscow, was correct when he pointed out that Russia’s relationship with the West today has ruptured to a degree comparable to the split caused by the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1917. For a brief time after 1989, Russia looked as though it might join a more open and peaceful world order. But that period is over, and for the foreseeable future the West must deal with a Russia that is hostile, militarized, malevolent, and vengeful. That is an unpalatable conclusion for those in the West who prefer a different world order or a decisive pivot to Asia, but it is the reality.

Part of statecraft is about seizing opportunities. By the early fall of 2022, Ukraine’s surprising battlefield effectiveness and resilience had opened up a window in which one could imagine the liberation of much, if not all, of its territories. Had Ukraine managed to sever the land corridor between Russia and Crimea, for example, Russian forces would have struggled to maintain their hold not only on the parts of Ukraine that they had conquered since the invasion but also on Crimea itself. Such an outcome still may come to pass, but at an increasingly, and unnecessarily, high cost, now that Russia has had time to dig in and mobilize hundreds of thousands of additional troops.

The West must deal with a Russia that is hostile, militarized, malevolent, and vengeful.

The war raises the likelihood that Ukraine will, in the long run, be fully incorporated into NATO, armed largely at its allies’ expense. Some European politicians such as Petr Pavel, the new president of the Czech Republic, advocate for Ukraine’s integration into the West. At the very least, Ukraine can be armed and supported so strongly in the interim as to deter further Russian aggression. But it will require an overwhelming sense of urgency, commitment, and willingness to act on the right scale to make that happen. And creating a sense of urgency in turn will require a change in the style of U.S. statecraft vis à vis ambivalent allies such as Turkey or Switzerland. As hegemons go, the United States has been remarkably benign; indeed, it does not like to understand itself as a hegemon at all. But at this juncture in world history, when a great deal of prosperity and freedom depend on Ukrainian victory and—equally important—Russian defeat, it is time for the United States to get far more transactional.

In particular, Washington should become unbendingly tough with Russia-tilting European states, such as Hungary. It is often forgotten that Spain and Vichy France avoided joining Germany during World War II in part because the United Kingdom and the United States threatened to cut off their food shipments. The United States still has levers, such as trade and investment relationships, at its disposal. There are times to treat the antics of corrupt, irresponsible, or supine leaders of small but strategically placed countries with bemused detachment, and other times, like now, to twist their arms without compunction.

The United States urgently needs to send Ukraine a wide range of arms, including long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). The Biden administration should also use the powers of the Defense Production Act to mobilize domestic munitions industries and to eliminate bureaucratic obstacles, in addition to awarding the long-term defense contracts needed to expand capacity. It should begin long-term planning for Ukraine’s economic reconstruction and its arming against future threats. And the United States should launch a public information campaign, beginning with a presidential speech to explain the stakes for the United States in Ukraine.

A statecraft that is measured and seeks equilibrium and compromise has its place. But in a war it can be dangerous. Western, and in particular U.S., leaders picked up bad habits during the Cold War, in which incremental shifts and patient long-term engagement were the dominant note of security statecraft. During that period, too, a great deal of strategy played out through shadowboxing. That approach is less effective in today’s hot conflict. During the post-9/11 wars, in which the United States enjoyed a vast margin of conventional military superiority, U.S. leaders got used to having time to reconsider, study, plan, and negotiate. Convoluted alliances with gimcrack command structures were not immediately fatal. For example, NATO operated in Afghanistan while being nominally controlled by its headquarters in the Netherlands. And the United States could get by with a desire to succeed rather than to actually win. Such an approach would be feckless in Ukraine, the most serious European war since the end of World War II.

A statecraft in which leaders understand the world, size it up quickly and accurately, decide fast, and act with an extreme sense of urgency, at scale and with full commitment is what the United States and its allies need now. With it, a Ukraine that is free, whole, and secure can be rebuilt from the carnage. Without it, Russia can still pull some measure of success from a criminal war in which it has every chance of suffering a well-deserved and thorough defeat.

• ELIOT A. COHEN is Robert E. Osgood Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he served as Dean from 2019 to 2021, and Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Eliot A. Cohen · February 22, 2023

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