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“Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity--precisely the time when
you need strength. What best equips you to cope with the heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more
intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more
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it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering.”
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1. U.S. Considers Release of Intelligence on China’s Potential Arms Transfer to Russia
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 22, 202
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16. The balloon drama was a drill. Here’s how the US and China can prepare for a real crisis.
17. U.S. diplomatic counter-offensive targets China’s ‘false information’
18. Russia, China show off ties amid maneuvering over Ukraine
19. SOF Hyper-Connected and Hyper-Enabled Technology: SOF’s Strength or SOF’s Achilles’ Heel?
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22. Taiwan frustrated by weapons delays, key lawmaker finds in stealth visit
1. U.S. Considers Release of Intelligence on China’s Potential Arms Transfer to Russia
Recognize, understand, expose, and attack our adversary's strategy.
U.S. Considers Release of Intelligence on China’s Potential Arms Transfer to Russia
Western nations have intelligence that Beijing might end its self-imposed restraint on weapons supplies to Moscow
Feb. 22, 2023 6:31 pm ET
The Biden administration is considering releasing intelligence it believes shows that China is weighing whether to supply weapons to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
The discussions on public disclosure come ahead of Friday’s United Nations Security Council meeting marking one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. It follows a number of closed-door appeals to China—coordinated among North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies—that culminated in a formal warning delivered over the weekend in Munich to Wang Yi, China’s senior foreign-policy official, by a number of western officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
Mr. Blinken went public with his warning after the meeting, saying in an interview with CBS News that China is seriously exploring supplying arms to Russia.
The Blinken-Wang meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference ended with no sign of common ground on key issues, according to descriptions from people familiar with the sit-down. One of those sources described it as “tense,” with the recent shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon overshadowing the conversation.
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Mr. Blinken will address the Security Council to mark the anniversary of the Ukraine war. One year ago, Mr. Blinken also spoke to the council and shared U.S. intelligence that pointed toward Russia’s invasion.
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The White House National Security Council declined to comment.
In recent weeks, Western nations have picked up on intelligence that Beijing might end its previous self-imposed restraint on weapons supplies to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, although it appears that China hasn’t yet made a final decision. Beijing had previously been cautious to confine its support to financial assistance and oil purchases, the officials said, but that stance now appears to be shifting, according to the latest intelligence assessments.
“Until now,” a senior western official said, there “has been a certain amount of ambiguity about what practical help China might give Russia.” The official said that the intelligence the U.S. and its allies have now is “much less ambiguous.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, didn’t respond directly when asked on Wednesday whether China would supply lethal support for Russia’s war effort. “It is a known fact that NATO countries including the U.S. are the biggest source of weaponry for the battlefield in Ukraine, yet they keep claiming that China may be supplying weapons to Russia,” said Mr. Wang.
Aftermath of an attack on Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, as seen earlier this month.
PHOTO: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
There are no plans for a follow-up meeting between senior U.S. and Chinese officials at upcoming international gatherings. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday that Washington is “watching very closely to determine” if China was moving forward with lethal aid to Russia.
With the war approaching the one-year mark, the U.S. has been working with other Western countries to demonstrate its resolve to support Ukraine, increase pressure on Moscow and warn China against getting more involved in supporting Moscow. President Biden on Monday visited Kyiv for the first time since last year’s invasion, promising Washington’s support for Ukraine.
The potential confrontation with China over lethal aid comes amid escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington over the western campaign to pressure Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Over the past year, China has helped Moscow by buying Russian oil and selling commercial items, such as microchips and drones, that also have military applications.
Wang Yi, China’s senior foreign-affairs official, speaking at the Munich Security Conference Saturday.
PHOTO: JIN MAMENGNI/XINHUA/GETTY IMAGES
That China might provide lethal weapons to Russia—based on new intelligence—is a marked departure from the more general dual-use goods that Chinese companies have been providing over the past year, according to U.S. and European officials. The officials declined to detail what the intelligence said.
The latest intelligence assessments have also underscored Beijing’s growing concern over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threatened use of nuclear force, the officials said. Those worries represented the only area of common ground with Western envoys regarding Russia in the Munich meetings. While China has long been wary of emboldening Moscow, it also worries about the economic and political fallout of a failed Russia, the officials said.
The Biden administration, beginning with Russia’s preinvasion military buildup near Ukraine, has released a virtually unprecedented amount of declassified intelligence on Moscow’s military plans, its arms trade with Iran and related topics. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last week that while “it is way too early to tell,” officials so far haven’t seen any degradation of U.S. intelligence sources because of the releases.
The warning in Munich followed a number of private appeals to China. It was coordinated among the Western allies in the hope that it would stop Beijing from taking the irrevocable step of starting to supply weapons, the officials said.
Though the Biden administration has been working to declassify the intelligence for possible release, no final decision has been made on a public disclosure, or the timing of it, officials said.
The Chinese arms trade is shrouded in secrecy, and it is unclear what weapons Russia might receive. China is a world leader in the production of weapons that have been used heavily in the Ukraine war, including long-range artillery systems, precision multiple rocket launchers, antitank and surface-to-surface missiles and small, tactical drones and loitering munitions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last year.
PHOTO: POOL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russia’s military is suffering from a shortage of ammunition and weapons and is dogged by battlefield problems up and down the chain of command.
U.S. and European officials said Beijing wouldn’t necessarily provide advanced weapons, but would likely backfill what Russian forces have lost on the battlefield in Ukraine, such as ammunition, or have been unable to produce because of sanctions, such as electronics.
“It’s not an issue of technology,” said Vasily Kashin, a China specialist and the director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “It’s primarily an issue of production capacity. And in terms of production capacity, China, in many aspects, especially if we talk about ground-forces weapons, might be stronger than Russia and the whole of NATO combined.”
Mr. Blinken’s warning about potential weapons transfers came days before Mr. Wang visited Moscow, one of a number of top-level meetings between China and Russia, and as Beijing prepares to release its own blueprint for ending the war in Ukraine.
Beijing has said it would release on Feb. 24, the one-year anniversary of the invasion, details of a proposal to bring peace in Ukraine, though the notion of China acting as a mediator has been met with deep skepticism in the U.S. and Europe.
Mr. Putin announced on Wednesday that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, will visit Russia.
Western analysts doubt China’s ability to be a credible mediator in the conflict, pointing to its obvious bias toward Russia. Since the Russian invasion, Mr. Xi has yet to talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while he has spoken with Mr. Putin multiple times during the period.
At the U.N., Washington officials are backing a resolution demanding that Russia “immediately, completely, and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and calls for a cessation of hostilities.”
One Western official said U.S. allies are hoping to get more than 130 votes on Thursday.
Such resolutions in the General Assembly don’t have binding force, in contrast with Security Council resolutions. Still, U.S. officials hope that a message from the majority of U.N. member states will show broad opposition to Russia’s invasion and begin to outline a blueprint for peace that includes Russia’s withdrawal.
“They are a pariah state right now, and if they want to move forward in this world they have to end this war,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters. “A strong vote in the General Assembly will send that message to them in no uncertain terms.”
Warren P. Strobel, Brett Forrest and James T. Areddy contributed to this article.
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 22, 2023
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-22-2023
Key Takeaways
- Russian President Vladimir Putin revived his imperialistic narrative that Russia is fighting for Russia's "historic frontiers" on February 22, a narrative that he had similarly voiced in his speech before the re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
- Putin's speech also followed his February 21 decree revoking his May 2012 edict on Russia's position toward Moldovan territorial integrity.
- Ukrainian intelligence officials continue to assess that Russia lacks the combat power and resources necessary to sustain its new offensive operations in Ukraine.
- Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin directly accused the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) of mistreating Wagner forces, igniting intense backlash in the information space and supporting ISW's prior assessments of a growing Wagner-MoD fissure.
- US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price stated that the US government is concerned about the potential strengthening of Russia-China relations.
- Russian forces are likely attempting to increase the tempo of their offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Lyman line.
- Some Russian sources refuted other Russian claims about the intensification of offensive operations in western Luhansk Oblast.
- Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks throughout the Donetsk Oblast front line and secured marginal territorial gains around Bakhmut.
- Russian and occupation authorities continue to publicly indicate that Russian forces are focusing on defensive operations in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast and Crimea.
- US intelligence officials stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin may mobilize significantly more Russian personnel.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 22, 2023
Feb 22, 2023 - Press ISW
Download the PDF
Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan
February 22, 9 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin revived his imperialistic narrative that Russia is fighting for Russia's "historic frontiers" on February 22, a narrative that he had similarly voiced in his speech before the re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Putin gave a four-minute speech at the rally for the Defenders of the Fatherland Day in Moscow, stating that there is currently "a battle going on for [Russia's] historical frontiers, for [Russian] people."[1] Putin had similarly called territories adjacent to Russia "[Russian] historical land" when announcing Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[2] Putin did not offer other notable remarks on the progress of the war or discuss concrete frontline objectives. The concept of Russia's "historical frontiers" could be used to justify aggression against almost any of Russia's neighbors, as well as Moldova and the Central Asian states that do not share a border with Russia, since all of them contain territory that belonged at one point to either the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire or both.
Putin's speech also followed his February 21 decree revoking his May 2012 edict on Russia's position on Moldovan territorial integrity.[3] Putin revoked his 2012 orders to the Russian Foreign Ministry (MFA) to firmly uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter—which require the development of friendly relations between states on the basis of equality, respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity—and Russia's commitment to actively seek ways to resolve the Transnistria issue on the basis of respect for Moldovan territorial integrity. The revocation of the 2012 decree does not indicate that Putin intends to attack Moldova—an undertaking for which he lacks the military capability—although it does point toward an escalation in his ongoing efforts to undermine the Moldovan state.
The new decree also canceled the provision of "consistent implementation" of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (START) with the United States. Putin stated that he signed the decree "in order to ensure the national interest of the Russian Federation in connection with the profound changes taking place in international relations."
Ukrainian intelligence officials continue to assess that Russia lacks the combat power and resources needed to sustain its new offensive operations in Ukraine. Representative of the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Vadym Skibitsky told the AP that Russian forces intensified their offensive operations in at least four or five directions in Luhansk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts at the beginning of February but have yet to achieve any significant successes despite continuing to exhaust their personnel and resources.[4] Skibitsky added that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts on capturing Kupyansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Marinka, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar.
GUR Chief Kyrylo Budanov stated in an interview with Forbes that the Russian offensive is so ineffective as to be almost unnoticeable and noted that Russian forces have been rationing shells and ammunition to sustain assaults on the Bakhmut, Lyman, and Vuhledar directions while conserving shells in other areas.[5] Budanov's statement coincides with ISW's assessment that Russian forces are prioritizing the Bakhmut and Lyman directions and have yet to launch a significant push to advance in areas west of Donetsk City.[6] Budanov added that Russian artillery stocks decreased to 30 percent of the total number of shells. He claimed that Russia has imported a test batch of artillery shells from Iran and is currently attempting to procure another batch of 20,000 shells. Budanov previously estimated that Russian forces fired about 20,000 shells per day in late December 2022, down from 60,000 shells per day during the early stages of the war.[7] Budanov also observed that Russian tactics around Bakhmut and Vuhledar have largely shifted from artillery and mechanized attacks to infantry assaults due to the lack of shells and armored vehicles. Budanov noted that Russia had committed more than 90 percent of its 316,000 mobilized personnel to the frontlines, which further confirms Western and ISW's assessments that Russian forces do not have significant untapped combat-ready reserves.[8] Budanov noted that the Kremlin's stated objective of producing 800 tanks per year is unrealistic and stated that Russia can only produce 40 cruise missiles per month, which they use up in a single round of missile strikes. Russia has already lost at least 1,500 tanks and possibly as many as 2,000, as ISW has previously reported.[9]
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin directly accused the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) of mistreating Wagner forces, igniting intense backlash in the information space and supporting ISW's prior assessments of a growing Wagner-MoD fissure.[10] Prigozhin accused the MoD of lying about supplying all unconventional units with requested artillery ammunition, claiming instead that Wagner forces receive only 20 percent of the artillery ammunition promised to them.[11] Prigozhin claimed that the MoD's statement is "spitting at the Wagner private military company (PMC)" and an attempt to hide the MoD's "crimes against fighters" who achieve battlefield successes near Bakhmut.[12] Prigozhin published a dossier contrasting Wagner forces' artillery ammunition usage with what the MoD distributes to Wagner forces, an image showing Wagner fighters dead supposedly from the lack of artillery support during assaults, and an interview response claiming that the support of certain regional heads, including Crimean Occupation Governor Sergey Aksyonov, has helped raise awareness of Wagner forces' ammunition shortages.[13] Prigozhin called on the MoD to fulfill its promises rather than "deceiving" the Russian public.[14] Many prominent Russian milbloggers jumped to defend Prigozhin, spreading Prigozhin's claims and accusing the MoD of failing to support the supposedly most effective Russian forces in Ukraine.[15] One milblogger noted that the Russian MoD is now treating Wagner forces in the same way that the MoD treats its conventional forces in Ukraine, a clear step down from Prigozhin's prior posturing as the true victor near Bakhmut.[16] Prigozhin's complaints also confirm that his earlier boasts of Wagner's independence from the Russian MoD were lies.[17] Another Kremlin-affiliated milblogger criticized the rivalry between the Wagner Group and the MoD as counterproductive.[18]
US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price stated that the US government is concerned about the potential strengthening of Russia-China relations.[19] Price stated that the United States is concerned because "these two countries share a vision... in which big countries could bully small countries [and] borders could be redrawn by force."[20] Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office Director Wang Yi in Moscow on February 22.[21] Kremlin newswire TASS reported that Yi said "no matter how the international situation changes, China remains committed to... maintaining positive trends in the development of its relations with Russia."[22]
Key Takeaways
- Russian President Vladimir Putin revived his imperialistic narrative that Russia is fighting for Russia's "historic frontiers" on February 22, a narrative that he had similarly voiced in his speech before the re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
- Putin's speech also followed his February 21 decree revoking his May 2012 edict on Russia's position toward Moldovan territorial integrity.
- Ukrainian intelligence officials continue to assess that Russia lacks the combat power and resources necessary to sustain its new offensive operations in Ukraine.
- Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin directly accused the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) of mistreating Wagner forces, igniting intense backlash in the information space and supporting ISW's prior assessments of a growing Wagner-MoD fissure.
- US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price stated that the US government is concerned about the potential strengthening of Russia-China relations.
- Russian forces are likely attempting to increase the tempo of their offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Lyman line.
- Some Russian sources refuted other Russian claims about the intensification of offensive operations in western Luhansk Oblast.
- Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks throughout the Donetsk Oblast front line and secured marginal territorial gains around Bakhmut.
- Russian and occupation authorities continue to publicly indicate that Russian forces are focusing on defensive operations in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast and Crimea.
- US intelligence officials stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin may mobilize significantly more Russian personnel.
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 reportedly conducted reconnaissance and sabotage operations on the Ukrainian-Russian international border and northeast of Kupyansk on February 22. A Russian milblogger also claimed that some unnamed areas of the Russia-Kharkiv Oblast border are contested between Russian and Ukrainian forces.[23] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian reconnaissance-in-force in the vicinity of Bolohivka (about 40km northeast of Kupyansk), forcing the sabotage and reconnaissance group to retreat to Russia.[24] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that a Russian Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group attempted to infiltrate the Fyholivka area (approximately 22km northeast of Kupyansk).[25] Geolocated footage showed Russian SPETSNAZ of the 6th Combined Arms Army correcting artillery fire on Ukrainian positions near Fyholivka and Novomlynsk (approximately 20km northeast of Kupyansk).[26]
Russian forces are likely attempting to increase the tempo of their offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Lyman line. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces in the Kupyansk, Siversk, and Lyman directions went on the offensive and advanced up to 5km deep into some unnamed areas.[27] The milblogger added that the terrain, forest, and Ukrainian fortifications are complicating the Russian offensive on the western Luhansk Oblast frontline. The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces conducted several unsuccessful offensive operations in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions and that Ukrainian forces repelled assaults on Kuzemivka (17km northwest of Svatove) and Dibrova (about 10km southeast of Lyman).[28] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that two Russian tank and infantry companies unsuccessfully attempted to break through in the Kreminna direction.[29] Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik also announced that occupation officials turned off mobile internet due to "security issues," and a prominent nationalist source claimed that this announcement indicates that Russian forces have likely started an offensive in the Lyman direction.[30]
Some Russian sources refuted other Russian claims about the intensification of the offensive operations in western Luhansk Oblast on February 22. One Russian milblogger noted that elements of the Russian 144th Motorized Rifle Division, 3rd Motorized Rifle Division, and airborne forces are successfully conducting defensive operations in the Kreminna forest and have made some limited advances that cannot be categorized as a major offensive.[31] Another milblogger claimed that Russian forces launched preemptive strikes on Ukrainian forces that thwarted Ukrainian counteroffensive operations originating from Stelmakhivka, Myasozharivka, and Andriivka (all approximately 19km west or northwest of Svatove).[32] ISW had also not observed transfers of new units to the western Luhansk Oblast frontline and specifically has not observed the commitment of elements of the 2nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division that ISW assesses constitute the primary available reserve force of the Western Military District in Luhansk.
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 to make marginal advances near Bakhmut on February 22. Geolocated footage posted on February 22 shows that Russian forces advanced towards the E40 highway south of Zaliznyanske and north of Bakhmut.[33] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks near Bakhmut; northwest of Bakhmut near Dubovo-Vasylivka(6km northwest) and Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest); north of Bakhmut near Yahidne (less than 2km north), Fedorivka (17km north), and Berkhivka (4km north); and south of Bakhmut near Kurdyumivka (11km south).[34] Russian milbloggers continued to claim that Russian forces made marginal advances north of Bakhmut. Some milbloggers claimed that Wagner Group forces advanced from the Stupky rail station to the outskirts of Yahidne and entrenched along the E40 highway near Berkhivka.[35] Other milbloggers claimed that Wagner forces seized half of Berkhivka and that fighting continues in the centers of Berkhivka and Yahidne.[36] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces may capture the rest of Berkhivka soon but did not provide a timeline.[37] Other milbloggers claimed that Wagner forces are advancing on Zaliznyanske (10km north of Bakhmut).[38] Russian forces' continued focus on making territorial gains north of Bakhmut supports ISW's assessment that Russian forces may have given up on encircling Bakhmut and are instead attempting to enter Bakhmut from the north.[39]
Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited counterattacks against Wagner positions 3km southwest of Ivanivske (2km southwest of Bakhmut).[40] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that an unspecified Russian Airborne (VDV) Forces formation from Tula, likely an element of the 106th Guards Airborne Division, is operating in the Donetsk direction.[41] Some Russian milbloggers have previously claimed that Wagner Group units have embedded with the Russian 51st Guards Airborne Regiment (106th Guards Airborne Division) and that mobilized personnel from the 51st injured themselves in order to escape fighting alongside Wagner forces.[42]
Russian forces increased their tempo of operations around Avdiivka but did not secure significant territorial gains on February 22. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched an unsuccessful offensive against Novobakhmutivka, Vodyane, Nevelske, and Marinka.[43] Geolocated footage shows that Russian forces made slight advances north of Vesele (6km north of Avdiivka).[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made slight territorial gains towards the N20 highway west of Novobakhmutivka near Keramik.[45]
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on February 22. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched an unsuccessful offensive operation near Preshystiivka.[46] A Russian milblogger claimed that battles continue on the southern outskirts of Vuhledar and between Pavlivka and Mykilske and that Ukrainian forces control the dominant high ground in the area.[47]
Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces launched a large strike campaign against military targets in cities in occupied Donetsk Oblast overnight on February 21 and 22. Milbloggers posted footage purporting to show Ukrainian strikes against targets in Donetsk City, Makiivka, Horlivka, Khartsyzk, Debaltseve, Ilovaisk, and Mariupol—all within range of regular HIMARS rockets and most (apart from Mariupol) within range of rocket artillery.[48]
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Russian and occupation authorities continue to publicly indicate that Russian forces are still focusing on defensive operations in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast and Crimea. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that unspecified Southern Military District (SMD) tank units in east bank Kherson Oblast struck Ukrainian positions on the west (right) bank.[49] Russian milbloggers published footage on February 22 purportedly of the Russian 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, SMD) striking Ukrainian positions in Kherson Oblast, likely to demonstrate continued dedication to southern Ukraine amid reports of increasing combat operations in eastern Ukraine.[50] ISW previously observed the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade operating in Kherson Oblast in October 2022 before the Ukrainian liberation of Kherson City, suggesting that this unit remains committed to the Kherson Oblast frontline.[51] Crimean Occupation Governor Sergey Aksyonov announced that Russian forces will erect defensive fortifications along the Crimean administrative border as a preventative measure.[52] It is not clear what eventuality Aksyonov imagines these fortifications would prevent.
A Russian source claimed that Russian forces conducted a surprise attack near Kamianske (30km south of Zaporizhzhia City) on February 22.[53] Russian forces continued routine fire west of Huliapole in Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv oblasts.[54]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
US intelligence officials stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin may mobilize significantly more Russian personnel. The New York Times reported on February 20, citing US intelligence officials, that Russian President Vladimir Putin may mobilize hundreds of thousands more Russians in addition to the previously mobilized 300,000 personnel.[55] The New York Times connected the prospect of mass mobilization with Putin's doubling down on anti-West and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. ISW has previously assessed that Putin has delayed announcing the second mobilization wave out of concern for the stability of his rule and has continued to favor crypto-mobilization practices.[56] Putin has likely ordered Russian state organs to set all necessary conditions for a large-scale mobilization, as ISW has previously reported, but Russia lacks the capacity to train hundreds of thousands of new soldiers or mobilized reservists and will not be able to equip them with artillery or armored vehicles in 2023 barring implausible changes in the Russian defense industry or the willingness of Russian partners such as China to provide lethal aid on a massive scale.
US officials stated that Russian forces are struggling to replace heavy equipment losses due to effective sanctions. The US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo stated on February 21 that Russia has lost over 50 percent of its tanks and is running out of munitions. Adeyemo stated that US sanctions and export controls have degraded Russian forces' ability to replace over 9,000 pieces of lost military equipment, forced production shutdowns at key defense facilities, and caused shortages of essential components for tanks and aircraft production.[57]
Russians reportedly increased their migration to the United States after the Kremlin announced partial mobilization in September 2022. CNN reported that almost 22,000 Russian citizens have attempted to enter the United States through its southern border since Putin's partial mobilization announcement.[58] The report, which cites US Customs and Border Patrol data, stated that the number of Russian citizens attempting to enter the United States nearly tripled since the start of partial mobilization.[59]
The Kremlin continues to expand social benefit programs for the families of Russian soldiers who participate in the war in Ukraine in accordance with Putin's February 21 address. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin signed a decree on February 21 extending the same social support measures given to families of mobilized personnel to the families of contract and volunteer personnel.[60] Russian State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy, and Veterans Affairs Chairperson Yaroslav Nilov announced on February 21 that the State Fund for Assistance to the Families of Fallen Soldiers and Veterans of the "Special Military Operation" will operate in every region of Russia.[61]
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)
Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lyubinets accused Russian Ombudsperson Tatyana Moskalkova on February 22 of possible involvement in international schemes to remove Ukrainian children from other states to Russia.[62] Lyubinets stated that Moskalkova and her subordinates may have been involved in the forced removal of two Ukrainian children from Austria to Moscow in January 2023. Western Austrian authorities (Tyrol) announced in January the suspension and investigation of a Tyrol official accused of organizing the removal of two Ukrainian children from Austria to their mother in Moscow without coordinating with the responsible Ukrainian authorities.[63] Austrian authorities denied state involvement in the removal of these two Ukrainian children.[64]
Russian President Vladimir Putin promoted several Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) Ministry of Internal Affairs officials to senior police and military ranks on February 22.[65] Putin promoted DNR Internal Minister and Kaskad Operational Tactical Combat Formation (OTBF) commander Alexey Dikiy to police colonel general, several DNR Deputy Internal Ministers to police major generals, and DNR Internal Forces Commander Oleg Makarchenko to major general. Former DNR official Igor Girkin characterized Dikiy as inept and criticized Putin for promoting Dikiy.[66]
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.
Nothing significant to report.
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] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/02/22/putin-vystupil-na-mitinge-v-podderzhku-voyny
[2] http://en.kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/67843
[3] http://publication dot pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302210001; https://meduza dot io/feature/2023/02/21/putin-otmenil-svoy-ukaz-2012-goda-o-vneshnepoliticheskom-kurse-rossii
[4] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/aktyvizatsiia-okupatsiinykh-viisk-rozpochalasia-shche-na-pochatku-liutoho.html
[5] https://forbes dot ua/war-in-ukraine/rosiya-vzhe-rozpochala-velikiy-nastup-chi-zmozhe-rf-mobilizuvati-shche-500-000-moldativ-koli-zakinchitsya-viyna-velike-intervyu-kirila-budanova-21022023-11881
[6] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[7] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[8] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[9] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[10] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[11] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/488
[12] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/488
[13] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/495; https://t.me/concordgroup_official/492
[14] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/488
[15] https://t.me/epoddubny/14965; https://t.me/SolovievLive/159779; https:... https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2592; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8129; ht... https://t.me/grey_zone/17331; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8135; https:... https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19484; https://t.me/milinfolive/97259; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45546
[16] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2592
[17] https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-s-prigozhin-talks-up-wagner-role-amid-r...
[18] https://t.me/sashakots/38605
[19] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-new-agreements...
[20] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-new-agreements...
[21] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-new-agreements...
[22] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/17115493
[23] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8144; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8145; ht...
[24] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid021VibQvDJLsCzG5AwJV...
[25] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid021VibQvDJLsCzG5AwJV...
[26] https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628437457199833092?s=20; https...
[27] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8144; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8145; https://t.me/kommunist/16011
[28] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/videos/942148003445151/; https...
[29] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/8814
[30] https://t.me/rusbrief/95041; https://t.me/strelkovii/4036
[31] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10843
[32] https://t.me/russkiy_opolchenec/35892
[33] https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628401633284526081?s=20; https... https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628433338477293568?s=20; https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1628421685392076802?s=20
[34] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid021VibQvDJLsCzG5AwJV... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/videos/942148003445151/
[35] https://t.me/rybar/43833; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45550
[36] https://t.me/kommunist/16010; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/78781; https:/... https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19491; https://t.me/brussinf/5672 ; https://t.me/rlz_the_kraken/56571; https://t.me/razgruzka_vagnera/14
[37] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/494
[38] https://t.me/rlz_the_kraken/56571; https://t.me/razgruzka_vagnera/14
[39] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[40] https://t.me/rybar/43833
[41] https://t.me/mod_russia/24345
[42] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[43] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid021VibQvDJLsCzG5AwJV...
[44] https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628130856253501446?s=20; https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1628059198503235587?s=20
[45] https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628130856253501446?s=20; https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1628059198503235587?s=20
[46] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid021VibQvDJLsCzG5AwJV...
[47] https://t.me/readovkanews/53261
[48] https://t.me/readovkanews/53264; https://t.me/readovkanews/53265; http... https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22534; https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/15102;... https://t.me/rybar/43839; https://t.me/milinfolive/97239; https://t.me... https://t.me/milinfolive/97246
[49] https://t.me/mod_russia/24348
[50] https://t.me/rybar/43857; https://t.me/dva_majors/9547
[51] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[52] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/22/02/2023/63f5fde69a7947553cd4c8e1
[53] https://t.me/wargonzo/11031
[54] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/videos/942148003445151/; https...
[55] https://t.me/astrapress/21377; https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/us/po...
[56] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[57] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1286
[58] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/20/americas/russian-migrants-mexico-unit...
[59] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/20/americas/russian-migrants-mexico-unit...
[60] https://t.me/astrapress/21481; https://ria dot ru/20230221/sotspodderzhka-1853505286.html
[61] https://t.me/uranews/73834;
[62] https://suspilne dot media/393428-lubinec-ombudsmen-rf-moskalkova-moze-buti-pricetna-do-deportacii-ukrainskih-ditej/
[63] https://kurier dot at/politik/inland/junge-ukrainer-nach-moskau-verbracht-tirol-suspendiert-mitarbeiter/402291752
[64] https://kurier dot at/politik/inland/junge-ukrainer-nach-moskau-verbracht-tirol-suspendiert-mitarbeiter/402291752
[65] https://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202302210017
[66] https://t.me/strelkovii/4035
File Attachments:
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Zaporizhia Battle Map Draft February 22,2023.png
3. Our Best Look Yet At The Chinese Spy Balloon's Massive Payload
Photos at the link: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/our-best-look-yet-at-the-chinese-spy-balloons-massive-payload
Our Best Look Yet At The Chinese Spy Balloon's Massive Payload
A just declassified high-resolution image of the Chinese spy balloon taken from a U-2 shows what appear to be propellers and other features.
BY
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
|
PUBLISHED FEB 22, 2023 6:23 PM
thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · February 22, 2023
The Pentagon has now confirmed the authenticity of a picture taken from a U-2S Dragon Lady spy plane of the Chinese surveillance balloon that passed over parts of the United States and Canada earlier this month before being shot down. The U.S. military subsequently released a high-resolution copy of the image that gives us the best look to date at the balloon and the massive payload apparatus suspended below it.
At a press conference earlier today, Deputy Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters the picture was legitimate and that an official release would be coming. Chris Pocock, who runs the website Dragon Lady Today, and is a long-time aviation journalist, author, and expert on the U-2, posted a lower-resolution copy of the picture online yesterday. The War Zone was the first to report that at least two U-2Ss had been used to monitor the balloon and gather intelligence about it.
The official caption to this image reads: "A U.S. Air Force pilot looked down at the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovered over the Central Continental United States February 3, 2023." DOD
The high-resolution image offers a much better look at the balloon's payload, which consists of a center section flanked by two arrays of solar panels. U.S. officials had said previously that the entire assembly likely weighed two thousand pounds or more.
DOD
A closer look at the center section reveals additional notable details, including a relatively large white dish or platter-type antenna in the center. U.S. officials previously said that the balloon's payload had multiple antennas that could be capable of gathering various types of signals intelligence.
In addition, there are four symmetrically positioned white fixtures, which appear to be propeller hubs with propellers attached. The Pentagon previously confirmed that the balloon had the ability to maneuver, but had provided no details. Existing images taken from the ground had not clearly shown active propulsion features. The need to power four electric motors, as well as various other surveillance and communications systems, would help explain the need for the very large solar steerable arrays.
What may be four symmetrically positioned sets of propellers are visible here, as well as the large dish or platter-type antenna. DOD
A separate, but very similar balloon that passed over parts of Japan in 2020 had very visible propellers in similar positions, as can be seen in the video below. Authorities in that country now believe that balloon, as well as two others that were spotted in the country's airspace between 2019 and 2021, were likely part of a broader Chinese high-altitude balloon surveillance program that has been in operation for years now. In the past few years, Chinese spy balloons have also reportedly passed over other portions of the United States, as well as various other countries around the world.
The high-resolution image of the balloon offers a clearer look at the shadow cast by the U-2S, as well. The leaked copy of the picture had prompted a question about whether at least one of the Dragon Lady aircraft used to monitor and glean intelligence about the balloon was in fact a two-seat TU-2S trainer. After closely examining this high-resolution image, the position of the aircraft's right wing could explain this shadow, which was a possibility before, but seems more likely now. It also looks as if it was taken from the front cockpit of either U-2 variant. The War Zone is still working to get a definitive answer on the matter from the U.S. military.
The bulbous shape of the front end of this shadow had raised a question about whether the aircraft from which the selfie was taken could actually have been a two-seat TU-2S trainer. DODA picture showing the arrangement of the two separate cockpits on a TU-2S that gives these aircraft a very distinctive shape compared to standard U-2Ss. USAF / Airman 1st Class Luis A. Ruiz-Vazquez
As The War Zone has noted before, this relatively close-up, top-down view of the balloon and its payload already highlights the reasons why high-flying U-2Ss were tasked with this mission, to begin with. You can read more about the unique capabilities that the Dragon Lady offered in this instance in detail in our past reporting.
Altogether, the detail visible in this picture is remarkable for just a selfie taken with a wide-angle camera. The U-2S pilots should have been able to collect far better imagery with more capable cameras with telephoto lenses, as well as potentially the aircraft's very powerful electro-optical suite. The planes could have been able to collect valuable signals intelligence on the balloon, as well — that is if it was radiating any electromagnetic emissions at all.
The Pentagon's ability to so quickly release a higher-resolution copy of this picture after it had leaked online underscores entirely separate issues that have emerged about the U.S. government's transparency and overall messaging regarding this incident. Other questions remain about the response to this balloon, as well as to three other objects that were subsequently shot down in different areas within U.S. and Canadian airspace, which The War Zone has already explored in depth. Those latter three objects remain unidentified, and may well never be conclusively identified for various reasons. The searches for any physical remains from those shootdowns have been called off and the U.S. government's official stance is that they were very likely benign.
Regardless, the Chinese spy balloon does represent an adversarial capability and reflects broader worrying trends that The War Zone has been calling attention to for years now. American authorities are now picking over the remains of the balloon and more information about it and its capabilities. It is possible that the findings on China's high-altitude surveillance efforts may well be released in the future.
The high-resolution image of the Chinese spy balloon we now have has already given important additional insights into its design and just what it might have been capable of.
The War Zone is continuing to analyze the details that are visible in the picture in greater depth. We will update this story with any additional insights or other information that may become available.
UPDATE: 7:40 P.M. EST:
Open-source intelligence enthusiasts on Twitter have been working to try to geolocate the image. There are indications that it may have been taken above the state of Missouri to the west of the city of St. Louis. This would align with the path that the balloon is known to have followed as it crossed over the midwestern United States.
Observers have also pointed out that the U-2S's shadow on the balloon's envelope helps provide a good sense of its overall size. Using a length of 65 feet for the U-2S, this would indicate the diameter of the balloon is approximately 130 feet, according to Chris Combs, the Dee Howard Endowed Assistant Professor at the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He further noted that the size of the payload seemed to align with previous reports that U.S. officials had described it as being as long as between “two to three school buses.”
As an interesting aside, Dan Bowen, a stratospheric balloon expert, says that U-2s were previously known to check out balloons belonging to Loon, a now-defunct subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet. Loon's primary focus was on using high-altitude balloons to provide internet service to remote areas.
Contact the author: [email protected]
thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · February 22, 2023
4. Countering China’s coercive diplomacy
The report can be accessed here: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/countering-chinas-coercive-diplomacy
Excerpts:
Building resilience is essential to counter coercion, but it isn’t a complete solution, so we must look at interventions that enhance deterrence by denial and punishment. States must engage in national efforts to build deterrence but, alone, it’s unlikely that they’ll prevail against more powerful aggressors, so working collectively with like-minded partners and in multilateral institutions is necessary. It’s essential that effective strategic communications accompany these efforts.
The report makes 24 policy recommendations. It recommends, for example, better cooperation between government and business and efforts to improve the World Trade Organization. The report argues that a crucial—and currently missing—component of the response is for a coalition of like-minded states to establish an international taskforce on countering coercion. The taskforce members should agree on the nature of the problem, commit to assisting each other, share information and map out potential countermeasures to deploy in response to coercion. Solidarity between like-minded partners is critical for states to overcome the power differential and divide-and-conquer tactics that the PRC exploits in disputes. Japan’s presidency of the G7 presents an important opportunity to advance this kind of cooperation in 2023.
Countering China’s coercive diplomacy | The Strategist
aspistrategist.org.au · by Fergus Hunter · February 21, 2023
‘We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns.’
— Gui Congyou (桂从友), former Chinese ambassador to Sweden, 2019
The People’s Republic of China is increasingly using a range of economic and non-economic tools to punish, influence and deter foreign governments. Coercive actions have become a key part of the PRC’s toolkit as it takes a more assertive position on its ‘core interests’ in its foreign relations and seeks to reshape the global order in its favour.
A new ASPI report, Countering China’s coercive diplomacy: prioritising economic security, sovereignty and the rules-based order, finds that the PRC’s use of such tactics is now sitting at levels well above those seen a decade ago. The year 2020 marked a peak, and the use of trade restrictions and threats from official state sources have proven the most favoured methods. Coercive tactics have been used in disputes over governments’ decisions on human rights, national security and diplomatic relations.
Over the past three years, the Chinese government has used coercive economic and non-economic tactics against at least 19 countries. The dominance of trade restrictions, followed by state-issued threats, reflects the PRC’s abuse of its global trading power and its exploitation of state-controlled media and ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’.
Australia was the most targeted country as the PRC mounted a wide-ranging coercive campaign following a deterioration in bilateral relations, especially over Canberra’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19. Lithuania was the next most targeted, primarily because of the opening of a ‘Taiwanese representative office’ in Vilnius. In the dataset, Taiwan was the most common issue in disputes triggering coercive actions.
Advanced economic modelling, applied to this issue for the first time in a public research report, demonstrates how a flexible economy allows a state to be resilient and resist coercion. Markets adapt and sectors targeted by economic coercion can recover strongly as a result.
The PRC’s tactics have had mixed success in affecting the policies of target governments; most have stood firm, but some have acquiesced. Undeniably, the tactics are harming certain businesses, challenging sovereign decision-making and weakening economic security. The tactics undermine the rules-based international order and probably serve as a deterrent to governments, businesses and civil-society groups that have witnessed the PRC’s coercion of others and don’t want to become future targets. This can mean that decision-makers, fearing that punishment, are failing to protect key interests, to stand up for human rights or to align with other states on important regional and international issues.
Governments must pursue a deterrence strategy that seeks to change the PRC’s thinking on coercive tactics by reducing the perceived benefits and increasing the costs. The strategy should be based on policies that build deterrence in three forms: resilience, denial and punishment. This strategy should be pursued through national, minilateral and multilateral channels.
Building resilience is essential to counter coercion, but it isn’t a complete solution, so we must look at interventions that enhance deterrence by denial and punishment. States must engage in national efforts to build deterrence but, alone, it’s unlikely that they’ll prevail against more powerful aggressors, so working collectively with like-minded partners and in multilateral institutions is necessary. It’s essential that effective strategic communications accompany these efforts.
The report makes 24 policy recommendations. It recommends, for example, better cooperation between government and business and efforts to improve the World Trade Organization. The report argues that a crucial—and currently missing—component of the response is for a coalition of like-minded states to establish an international taskforce on countering coercion. The taskforce members should agree on the nature of the problem, commit to assisting each other, share information and map out potential countermeasures to deploy in response to coercion. Solidarity between like-minded partners is critical for states to overcome the power differential and divide-and-conquer tactics that the PRC exploits in disputes. Japan’s presidency of the G7 presents an important opportunity to advance this kind of cooperation in 2023.
aspistrategist.org.au · by Fergus Hunter · February 21, 2023
5. Poland is on a quest to have Europe’s strongest military — with U.S. arms
And South Korean arms as well (tanks and artillery).
Poland is on a quest to have Europe’s strongest military — with U.S. arms
The Washington Post · by Loveday Morris · February 22, 2023
At Poland’s Rzeszow airport, where President Biden’s plane touched down this week on his way to Kyiv, U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries point toward the skies. The first American M1A2 Abrams battle tanks are expected to arrive by train this spring, with hundreds of U.S.-manufactured rocket artillery systems to follow.
It is part of a mammoth military spending spree spurred by the war in neighboring Ukraine. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak hopes the influx of arms will help build “the largest land force in Europe,” and he sees Warsaw signing billions in weapons contracts with U.S. suppliers.
“This modern weaponry will elevate our armed forces to a completely new level of defense capabilities,” Blaszczak said in a written interview with The Washington Post. With relations between Warsaw and Washington at a high when materiel can’t be manufactured in Poland, it’s only natural “we look at our closest ally,” he added.
The buying spree comes as Poland attempts to solidify a position as a leading pillar of European relations with the United States, with the war in Ukraine shifting the balance of political power in Europe further to the east. That was hammered home this week as Biden — who has yet to visit Paris or Berlin during his term — made his second visit to Warsaw since the war began.
Germany — a traditional bulwark of the transatlantic relationship — has shied away from a military leadership role. And Poland, which is losing out on $37 billion in European Union cash because of its democratic backsliding, can claim moral high ground when it comes to security and its long-standing skepticism toward Moscow.
For years, Polish politicians “have been insisting that Russia is a real, existential and civilizational threat,” Blaszczak said. He cited a warning from Poland’s late president Lech Kaczynski in the wake of Moscow’s 2008 invasion of Georgia: “Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, and then it well may be my homeland — Poland.”
So Poland is now on a quest to create a military so mighty that Moscow would not dare attack it.
President Vladimir Putin’s war accelerated Poland’s plans to modernize and expand its military. This year, Poland is expected to spend 4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, double its requirements under NATO. Blaszczak said the aim to double the size of the military to 300,000 troops is “within reach and realistic,” though he did not give a time frame.
Older, Soviet-era weapons donated to Ukraine, including 240 T-72 tanks, are being replaced with more technologically advanced systems.
A $4.75 billion deal to buy 250 M1A2 Abramses was in the works before Russia’s invasion a year ago, while Poland signed another deal, worth $1.4 billion, to buy 116 older M1A1s in January.
Earlier this month, the United States gave the green light to another package of up to $10 billion, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and 185-mile long-range tactical missile systems. Poland has also signed a deal with South Korea to buy 980 K2 Black Panther tanks.
“There is no other option for Poland other than to increase money on defense,” said Jacek Siewiera, head of the National Security Bureau. “A country in our geographic position has little choice.”
In addition to the access it gives Poland to high-technology systems, the decision to turn to the United States is also a “strategic choice,” Siewiera said. “The most important part is the strategic alliance,” he said, pointing to the fact that Poland is also boosting ties in other key arenas such as energy.
In October last year, Poland picked the U.S. firm Westinghouse Electric to build its first nuclear power plant, in a project that the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw said “represents 100 years of new strategic cooperation between the United States and Poland.”
“What we see in Poland is the usual frontier state reaction,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, comparing it to West Germany’s reliance on the United States during the Cold War. “They’ve seen what Russian occupation looks like,” he said, with a nod to the Soviet Union’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Poland during World War II.
But Poland is also reacting to its political isolation from allies in Europe, with unresolved disputes with the E.U. and thorny relations with Germany, said Gressel, who questioned whether some of Poland’s aims are economically feasible.
The export misbalance is putting the currency under pressure, he added. “One wonders economically how a lot of the stuff that’s been announced will be achievable,” he said.
“Somebody has to pay for all that, and you really wonder who it will be. The issue of economic sustainability is there,” Gressel said.
The Polish government, led by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party, has failed to unlock $37 billion in E.U. pandemic relief funds held up until it enacts changes related to the rule of law. It is also being fined $1 million a day for not complying with an E.U. court order related to judicial changes.
Last year, the U.S. Congress approved $288.6 million in military financing for Poland to “deter and defend” against the increased threat from Russia. The cash would relieve some of the economic pressures of Poland’s spending, amid sharply slowing economic growth and 17 percent inflation.
With such high spending, one can’t “just be a client,” said Siewiera, citing plans to step up the domestic Polish defense industry.
Against that backdrop, some of the decisions on buying arms from the United States appear “over-ideological” said Gressel, given that European manufacturers are more open to joint ventures that would help develop Poland’s arms industry.
“The Americans have no interest in cooperating much beyond exporting ready-made stuff to Poland,” he said, noting the size of the market.
But new U.S. weapons aren’t the only additions. The United States has around 11,000 troops stationed in Poland. In the country’s east, the Fifth Corps Forward Headquarters is being made “permanent,” becoming the U.S. Army’s most easterly presence on NATO territory.
A base near Rzeszow, the Polish city where Biden landed this week, is home to hundreds more U.S. troops. The city’s restaurants have started putting steak on the menu to cater to their new customers, Mayor Konrad Fijolek said. There are daily flights of humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine, and military production in the area is taking off.
“In the past, we used to be a city on the outskirts of Poland and the E.U.,” said Fijolek. “Right now, we’re in the center.”
The Washington Post · by Loveday Morris · February 22, 2023
6. How Poland, Long Leery of Foreigners, Opened Up to Ukrainians
How Poland, Long Leery of Foreigners, Opened Up to Ukrainians
By Andrew Higgins
Reporting from Wroclaw, Poland
Feb. 22, 2023
The New York Times · by Andrew Higgins · February 23, 2023
The country, once one of the world’s most ethnically and culturally homogeneous, has accommodated far more refugees from neighboring Ukraine than any other nation.
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The Goncharuk family arrived in Wroclaw, Poland, from Kharkiv, Ukraine. They live in a single room at a former college dormitory.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
By
Reporting from Wroclaw, Poland
Feb. 22, 2023
A year ago, Russia’s military onslaught on Ukraine sent millions of refugees fleeing west, often to countries wary of taking in foreigners, raising fears of a repeat of the political convulsions set off by a migration crisis in 2015 that involved far fewer people.
But the paradox of foreigner-leery governments taking in huge numbers of Ukrainians has been especially stark in Poland, long one of the world’s most ethnically homogeneous countries with a deep-seated mistrust of outsiders and a tangled, often painful history with Ukraine.
Since Feb. 24 last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Poland has recorded nearly 10 million crossings across its frontier with Ukraine into Polish territory. President Biden, on a visit to Poland on Tuesday, paid tribute to its open-armed response in a speech in Warsaw. “God bless you,” he said.
To understand this approach in a country that just before the war started was beating back asylum seekers trying to sneak in from neighboring Belarus, consider the change of heart Ryszard Marcinkowski, 74, a retired Polish railway worker, experienced.
He grew up with horror stories about the brutality of Ukrainian nationalists told by his parents and aunt, all refugees from formerly Polish lands in what, since World War II, has been western Ukraine.
Yet when millions of Ukrainians started arriving in Poland last February, Mr. Marcinkowski drove to the border to deliver food and other supplies.
“I had a very bad image of Ukrainians from my family but realized that I had to help them,” Mr. Marcinkowski said. “For Poland,” he added, “Russia has always been the bigger evil.”
Ryszard Marcinkowski, a retired railway worker, at a memorial for those killed in massacres perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalist forces during World War II.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
Since the war began, the Polish authorities have recorded 9.8 million crossings into Poland from Ukraine. That includes multiple crossings back and forth by some people and others who left quickly for other countries. But Poland, according to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, is now sheltering around two million Ukrainians, down from more than five million last year but still more than the population of Warsaw, the Polish capital.
Some far-right politicians, Mr. Morawiecki said in an interview on Tuesday, “are trying to create noise and animosity between Poles and Ukrainians” but “they failed.” Instead of being a burden or a threat, he said, the influx “will strengthen Poland demographically” and “enrich our culture.”
The State of the War
“I wish Ukraine well, but if people who came here would like to stay, they will after some time have permanent documents and will be able to stay and will make us stronger from many different angles,” the prime minister said.
Rebuilt from ruins after 1945 amid seething hostility to Germans, Russians and Ukrainians, Poland has accommodated far more refugees from neighboring Ukraine than any other country. Germany is next with about a million.
Poland’s response to the refugee situation in Ukraine has won plaudits from the European Union and has given its right-wing government more clout, offsetting its previous reputation as a troublemaker because of what the bloc’s executive arm in Brussels views as moves to undermine the independence of the Polish judiciary and discriminate against L.G.B.T. people. But long-running disputes with Brussels still rumble on.
In the early days of the war, those fleeing the war in Ukraine, mostly women and children, surged into eastern Polish towns across the border. But as hopes of a swift end to the fighting faded, nearly all moved farther west, eager to find a place to live and work.
Refugees, largely dependent on the charity of strangers for food and shelter, are now often residents fending for themselves. Few have permanent residency status but many have jobs with Polish companies and children in Polish schools. All have access to Polish health care and other services.
The scale of change in Poland is particularly evident in the western city of Wroclaw (pronounced VROTZ-waf), the formerly German city of Breslau. Ethnically cleansed of Germans after 1945 and repopulated with ethnic Poles, many of them refugees from lost territory in Ukraine, the city long boasted that “every stone in Wroclaw speaks Polish.”
Now, local officials say, more than a quarter of Wroclaw’s population speaks Ukrainian and or Russian, and around 20 percent of school students are from Ukraine. It has more than a half-dozen grocery stores and two supermarkets run by Ukrainians that sell mostly Ukrainian food, like Kyiv cake and patriotic boxes of candy called “Everything Will be Ukraine.”
The presence of what officials put at around 250,000 Ukrainians in a city that before the war had a population of 640,000 has not gone down well with everyone.
At a soccer game in the Wroclaw stadium in October, a group of fans hoisted a big banner reading: “Stop the Ukrainization of Poland.”
Around 250,000 Ukrainians live in Wroclaw, a city that before the war had a population of around 640,000, officials say.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
But this, said Radoslaw Michalski, the official coordinating Wroclaw’s refugee response, reflected only a “marginal fringe.” He said the public had mainly rallied to support Ukrainians, an outpouring of generosity he compared to the grass-roots mobilization during catastrophic floods that engulfed the city in 1997, a calamity featured in the Netflix series “High Water.”
“As happened during the flood, people mobilized spontaneously not to fight someone but to help their city,” he said. In the early days of the war, more than 4,000 Wroclaw residents volunteered to help Ukrainians arriving by rail.
“Nobody coordinated things in the beginning,” Mr. Michalski said. “It was spontaneous.”
New arrivals by train in Wroclaw from Ukraine, which peaked at 12,000 on a single day last March, have slowed to a trickle of around 20 people a day, said Yurii Matnenko, who oversees a reception center at a station run by Fundacja Ukraina, a charity that has shifted from focusing on finding Ukrainians shelter to helping them find work and navigate Polish bureaucracy.
“Everyone thought the war would end in a month or two but now sees this did not happen, so they need to get jobs,” he said.
An Orthodox church service in Wroclaw this month. Such services are attended by Poles and Ukrainians.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
Most Ukrainians say they eventually want to go home, a desire encouraged by the government in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, which offers online learning for refugee children so they can keep up with the Ukrainian curriculum.
Veronika Goncharuk, who arrived in Wroclaw in April from Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine with her husband and three children, is keeping her options open, enrolling her two sons and her daughter in a Polish state school and also in online Ukrainian classes.
But she said it probably made more sense “for the sake of my children” to settle in Poland because “with a neighbor like Russia, Ukraine will never be at peace.” Her husband has found a job as an electrician.
For the moment, the family lives for free in a single room at a former college dormitory.
The children have learned Polish, though Anastasia, 10, lamented that her only friend at school was a fellow Ukrainian girl, Katya, who got sick recently and left her friendless in class. Polish classmates, she said, do not pick on her for being Ukrainian but “leave me sitting alone. I really miss Katya.”
Children at a shelter in Wroclaw. The government in Kyiv offers distance learning programs to refugee children so that they can keep up with the Ukrainian curriculum.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
Igor Czerwinski, a Polish language teacher at a Wroclaw school that has taken in 150 Ukrainian students in addition to 250 Polish pupils, said he had heard grumbling from fellow staff members about the strain brought on by the influx of foreigners.
An ethnic Pole born in Kazakhstan, he speaks Russian as well as Polish, attends an Orthodox church in Wroclaw filled with Ukrainian worshipers and celebrates the “positive energy” brought to the city by so many refugees hungry to succeed. Ukrainians, he said, are among his best students.
As the war grinds on, Ukrainians in Wroclaw are no longer fleeing for their lives but, often helped by Polish-speaking compatriots who emigrated before the war, trying to settle down. At the city’s civil affairs office last week, two Ukrainians from Odesa got married in a ceremony presided over by a Polish clerk assisted by a Ukrainian translator. Both the bride and the groom found work at a battery factory and, according to the bride, Elena Poperechna, “have decided we want to live in Poland.”
A Ukrainian couple getting married in Wroclaw. Both the bride and the groom found work and, according to the bride, “have decided we want to live in Poland.”Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
Grzegorz Hryciuk, a history professor at the University of Wroclaw, said the influx of Ukrainians mirrored the arrival in Wroclaw more than eight decades ago of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Poles from lost Polish territories in western Ukraine, formerly eastern Poland.
Many of these Polish refugees, he said, harbored a deep hatred of Ukrainians, whom they blamed for massacres before and during the war, as well as hope of returning swiftly to their former homes in and around formerly Polish cities like Lviv. Slowly though, “they adjusted to reality,” the professor said, and made new lives in exile.
That pattern is now starting to repeat, only with ethnic Ukrainians instead of ethnic Poles, raising questions about whether and how long cities like Wroclaw and the Polish state can handle a drastic demographic and ethnic shift. Poland, which has long resisted taking in people from the Middle East and Africa, has mostly welcomed Ukrainians, who, said Professor Hryciuk, benefit from the fact that “in their appearance and customs they are not that different from Poles. They are not an other.”
There is still some concern that the influx could create an opening for extremist nationalist groups to the right of Poland’s governing Law and Justice party, itself a deeply conservative political force that campaigned in the past on promises to keep out foreigners.
An exhibition in Wroclaw featuring Ukrainian cultural and political posters created by Polish art students and some Ukrainian artists.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
But Przemyslaw Witkowski, an expert on far-right extremism from Wroclaw who teaches at Collegium Civitas, a private university in Warsaw, said Poland’s extreme nationalist fringe was currently split over the war and refugees from Ukraine.
Ultrareligious groups like one called Confederation, he said, look to Russia as a bulwark against secular Western values and denounce the “Ukrainization” of Poland, while groups with neo-Nazi, pagan leanings support Ukrainians “because they are white, they are Slavs and they are against Russia.”
Neither, he added, has gained much traction with the general public, in part because “it is hard to create serious tension when people have jobs.” The unemployment rate in Wroclaw is under 2 percent.
Lukasz Kaminski, the director of the National Ossolinski Institute, an institution promoting Polish culture that moved from Lviv to Wroclaw in 1945, said the nationalist ideal of an entirely Polish Poland was now finished.
“Everything has changed because of the war,” he said, describing the influx of Ukrainians as a return to Wroclaw’s roots in the Middle Ages as a “mixed land” of Germans, Poles, Jews and other ethnic groups. “Single nation Poland was always artificial — against our history and against our past experience,” he said.
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.
Arrivals by train in Wroclaw from Ukraine have slowed to a trickle of around 20 people a day, a charity worker said.Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
The New York Times · by Andrew Higgins · February 23, 2023
7. Philippines eyes South China Sea patrols with US, Australia
Philippines eyes South China Sea patrols with US, Australia
AP · by JIM GOMEZ and EDNA TARIGAN · February 22, 2023
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippines is in talks with the United States as well as Australia on future joint patrols in the South China Sea, where China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed waters are causing concern, top defense officials in the three nations said Wednesday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jr., to reiterate Washington’s support and commitment to help defend its oldest treaty ally in Asia after a Chinese coast guard aimed a military-grade laser at a Philippine patrol vessel near a disputed shoal.
The Feb. 6 incident off Second Thomas Shoal briefly blinded some of the Filipino crew and prompted Manila to file a strongly worded diplomatic protest. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. also summoned China’s ambassador to express his concern.
“The two leaders discussed proposals to deepen operational cooperation and enhance the United States and the Philippines’ shared security, including the recent decision to resume combined maritime activities in the South China Sea,” according to details of the phone conversation provided by Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.
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During Austin’s visit to Manila this month, Galvez and U.S. officials had said the allies agreed to carry out joint patrols.
Separately, Galvez and visiting Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a news conference on Wednesday that they were looking at Australian and Philippine forces possibly carrying out their joint patrols in the busy waterway.
As countries asserting the rule of law, including the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, in the South China Sea, where a bulk of Australia’s trade traverses, “we did talk today about the possibility of exploring joint patrols,” Marles said, without elaborating.
Australian and Philippine forces have undertaken joint patrols off the southern Philippines in the past to counter terrorist threats, Galvez said, and added, “We can do it again.”
Aside from the United States, Australia is the only other country that struck a defense agreement with the Philippines for joint combat exercises in the country. The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat.
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Austin announced after meeting Marcos on Feb. 2 that the Philippines had approved an expanded U.S. military presence by allowing rotating batches of U.S. forces to stay in four more Philippine military camps, in addition to five others.
It was the latest move by the Biden administration to strengthen an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in any future confrontation over Taiwan.
Austin reaffirmed in his talk with Galvez on Wednesday the U.S. Defense Department’s “commitment to bolstering the Philippines’ defense capabilities and capacity to resist coercion as the allies develop a security-sector assistance roadmap.” No details of the mutual security plan were immediately provided.
China opposes military activities involving the U.S. and its allies, especially in the South China Sea, and has warned Washington not to meddle in what it says is a purely Asian dispute.
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Chinese forces have protested the presence of U.S. Navy ships and fighter jets that have been enforcing freedom of movement in the contested waters. The U.S. military insists it would exercise its rights under international law to sail and fly in international waters.
In Jakarta, visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on Wednesday that China would work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is currently led by Indonesia, to hasten negotiations on a proposed nonaggression pact, which is designed to avoid armed confrontations in the South China Sea.
“China and Indonesia will work with other ASEAN countries to … accelerate consultations on a code of conduct in the South China Sea, and jointly maintain the peace and stability in the South China Sea fully and effectively.” Gang said in an online press conference.
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The highly secretive talks between China and the 10-nation ASEAN, whose four members are locked in territorial conflicts with Beijing over the strategic waterway, have faced years of delay, including during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
China and the regional bloc have agreed to speed up the negotiations this year but it’s unclear how they can overcome key differences, including which areas should be covered by the pact and whether the agreement should be legally binding.
___
Tarigan reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.
AP · by JIM GOMEZ and EDNA TARIGAN · February 22, 2023
8. U.S. to Expand Troop Presence in Taiwan for Training Against China Threat
I hope we can eventually re-establish the Special Forces Taiwan Resident Detachment that was in Taiwan from 1958-1973.
U.S. to Expand Troop Presence in Taiwan for Training Against China Threat
The small contingent of American troops will be more than quadrupled in coming months
By Nancy A. YoussefFollow and Gordon LuboldFollow
Feb. 23, 2023 7:00 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-expand-troop-presence-in-taiwan-for-training-against-china-threat-62198a83
WASHINGTON—The U.S. is markedly increasing the number of troops deployed to Taiwan, more than quadrupling the current number to bolster a training program for the island’s military amid a rising threat from China.
The U.S. plans to deploy between 100 and 200 troops to the island in the coming months, up from roughly 30 there a year ago, according to U.S. officials. The larger force will expand a training program the Pentagon has taken pains not to publicize as the U.S. works to provide Taipei with the capabilities it needs to defend itself without provoking Beijing.
The number of American troops, which has included special-operations forces and U.S. Marines, has fluctuated by a handful during the past few years, according to Defense Department data. The planned increase would be the largest deployment of forces in decades by the U.S. on Taiwan, as the two draw closer to counter China’s growing military power.
Beyond training on Taiwan, the Michigan National Guard is also training a contingent of the Taiwanese military, including during annual exercises with multiple countries at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan, according to people familiar with the training.
An aerial view of the Michigan National Guard’s training center in Grayling, Mich.
PHOTO: JOHN L. RUSSELL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The expanded training, both in the U.S. and in Taiwan, is part of a gathering U.S. push to help a close partner prepare to thwart a possible invasion by China. The U.S. officials said the expansion was planned for months, well before U.S.-China relations plummeted anew this month after a suspected Chinese spy balloon traversed North America for more than a week before being shot down by the Air Force.
With a decades-old military buildup gaining momentum, China’s People’s Liberation Army is increasingly engaging in aggressive maneuvers, sending planes and ships near Taiwan. Following Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine last year, the Pentagon has redoubled efforts to get Taiwan to adopt what some military specialists call a “porcupine” strategy, focusing on tactics and weapons systems that would make the island harder to assault.
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The additional troops will be tasked with training Taiwan forces not only on U.S. weapons systems but on military maneuvers to protect against a potential Chinese offensive, the U.S. officials said. The officials declined to provide other details about the deployment, which hasn’t been previously reported.
Beijing has been unnerved by the U.S. and Taiwan’s greater coordination on defense, accusing Washington of undermining previous commitments to maintain unofficial relations with Taipei. When The Wall Street Journal first reported in 2021 on the previously unpublicized training of Taiwan’s forces by a small American military contingent, China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing would take unspecified steps to protect its interests.
“One of the difficult things to determine is what really is objectionable to China,” said one of the U.S. officials about the training. “We don’t think at the levels that we’re engaged in and are likely to remain engaged in the near future that we are anywhere close to a tipping point for China, but that’s a question that is constantly being evaluated and looked at specifically with every decision involving support to Taiwan.”
A spokesman at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific, declined to comment. The White House had no immediate comment, and the Pentagon declined to comment about the additional forces.
After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last summer, China sent warplanes and warships around the island, intended to register protest.
PHOTO: TAIWAN PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE/VIA REUTERS
“We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Army Lt. Col. Marty Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman said. “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region.”
Taiwan is a long-running flashpoint in U.S.-China relations. After then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) visited Taiwan last summer, becoming the highest level U.S. political leader to travel there in 25 years, China sent warplanes and warships and fired missiles around the island in exercises meant to register protest and display capabilities it might potentially use to stage a temporary blockade.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a part of China and has vowed to take control of the island, by force if necessary, while Washington is committed under U.S. law to assist Taiwan in maintaining its defenses.
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What level of support should the U.S. give to Taiwan? Join the conversation below.
The U.S. maintained a large military presence in Taiwan during much of the Cold War. In establishing formal relations between the U.S. and China in 1979, Washington agreed to sever formal ties with Taiwan, terminate a defense agreement and withdraw its forces from the island.
China’s more aggressive military pressure campaign and U.S. moves to bolster the island’s defenses in recent years have further raised tensions. U.S. defense and intelligence officials have said that Beijing has set a goal for the Chinese military to be prepared to forcibly take the island by 2027, though some experts and officials believe the PLA could be ready sooner than that.
The additional U.S. forces going to Taiwan are the latest in a steady increase in numbers since 2019. According to the Defense Manpower Data Center, which produces quarterly reports on the U.S. presence worldwide, 30 U.S. troops were deployed in Taiwan as of spring 2022, dwindling to 26 by last summer and 23 as of the fall.
Likewise, the training by the Michigan National Guard has been low-profile. The head of the Michigan National Guard, Maj. Gen. Paul Rogers, told reporters last year that the training is mutually beneficial.
“We are one aspect of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship that just I think helps both countries,” he said in an interview with the Sinclair Broadcast Group. “We understand how they prepare, and they understand how we prepare.”
Write to Nancy A. Youssef at [email protected] and Gordon Lubold at [email protected]
9. Ukraine Needs More Weapons and Support From the West
Ukraine Needs More Weapons and Support From the West
Making sure that Russia loses is the best long-term investment we can make in global security.
By Boris Johnson and Lindsey Graham
Feb. 22, 2023 12:56 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-needs-more-from-the-west-missiles-tanks-planes-training-putin-crimea-sanctions-wagner-group-terrorism-c007b9c4?page=1
It has been a year since Vladimir Putin launched his vicious and unnecessary war in Ukraine. So far he has failed. He has failed to take Kyiv. He has failed to occupy the Kharkiv region. He has failed to remain in Kherson.
Mr. Putin’s war has cost the lives of at least 60,000 Russian troops. In the areas he has occupied, he has created a new Flanders fields of trenches and blasted trees, where months of effort and bloodshed produce gains that can be measured in yards. He has been forced to such desperate expedients as sending prisoners to the front and is running low on the technically advanced weaponry he needs.
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The seemingly unstoppable force of the Russian military is breaking on the immovable object of Ukrainian resistance. We—elected representatives of the U.S. and the U.K.—remain lost in admiration for Ukrainian heroism and leadership.
Yet it remains possible for Mr. Putin to achieve something he can call victory. By hanging onto some pieces of land he has conquered, he shows the world that borders can be changed by force. All Mr. Putin needs to do to claim victory is continue the cynical policy he has followed since his first invasion of 2014—to use his foothold in Ukraine to destabilize the whole country.
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Unless Russian troops are purged from Ukrainian territory Mr. Putin will bide his time, waiting to attack again. He will continue to menace the Georgians, Moldovans, Balts and everyone living in the periphery of the old Soviet empire. Unless he is fully defeated in Ukraine, Mr. Putin’s revanchist ambitions won’t be checked.
We must accelerate Western support for the Ukrainians and give them what they need to finish the job. Ukraine’s armed forces have fought and continue to fight like lions, and the credit belongs to them. But there is no doubt that Western equipment has been invaluable. The story of the past year is that sooner or later we must give them what they need—from antitank missiles to rocket launchers to tanks.
It’s absurd for Western supporters to keep asking the Ukrainians—as they did at the Munich Security Conference—“How long is this war going to take?” The answer to that question is, to a large extent, determined by the West.
There is no conceivable reason to delay getting weapons to Ukraine. Those machines—Abrams, Challengers and Leopard tanks—are needed to make a difference now, not next year. Training Ukrainian fighters to fly advanced NATO jets is admirable, but why are we doing it before we’ve even decided to give them the planes? Let’s cut to the chase and give them the planes, too.
The Ukrainians have shown what they can do. They have the energy and courage to sweep Mr. Putin from their lands, and they have the inestimable psychological advantage that they are fighting for hearth and home. With the right tools, including more long-range artillery, they can punch through the land bridge, cut off Crimea, and deal a knockout blow to Russian forces.
After a year of slaughter, the West needs to do more to show the people of Russia what they are losing under Mr. Putin’s misrule. We should be tightening sanctions on oil and gas. We should be making it clear to Mr. Putin’s entire war machine—as well as the regime in the Kremlin—that they will be held accountable for their crimes. The torture, rape and indiscriminate killing the Russians have sponsored won’t be ignored. We must show them that the mills of justice may grind slowly, but they grind small.
President Biden made clear on his trip to Kyiv that Russia has committed crimes against humanity. Vice President Kamala Harris said the same at Munich. For these statements to have meaning, we must act swiftly and decisively.
We should designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, placing that country where it now rightly belongs—on a list including Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Syria. We should designate the infamous and bloodthirsty Wagner Group as a foreign terrorist organization. It is a badge that is now richly deserved and long overdue.
But above all we must give the Ukrainians what they need to win this year. By ensuring that Ukraine wins and that Mr. Putin finally fails, we are making the best and most financially efficient investment in the long-term security not only of the Euro-Atlantic area, but of the whole world.
The Ukrainians are fighting for more than their own freedom. They are fighting for the cause of freedom around the world. We should give them what they need. Not next month or next year, but now.
Mr. Johnson served as British prime minister, 2019-22. Mr. Graham, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from South Carolina.
10. Ukraine Fatigue Is Not an Option
But instead of failing, what will happen when we pass the test?
Ukraine Fatigue Is Not an Option
Russia and China are making the conflict a test. They think the West is going to fail.
By Daniel HenningerFollow
Feb. 22, 2023 4:59 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-fatigue-is-not-an-option-west-freedom-leadership-russia-iran-china-putin-invasion-nato-34ed8bd7?page=1
This week is the Ukraine war’s first anniversary, but it feels like 10 years, not one. Ukraine “fatigue” is understandable. But let’s try to put the sensation of war fatigue in context.
Vietnam came to be known in the 1960s as the television war, shown on the TV news every night. News programs then lasted a half-hour, with Vietnam usually just a segment. Still, the unsettling daily footage eroded public support for the war.
Today, with all media on all the time, we are saturated with Ukraine’s war, as we are with mass murders, weather disasters or a train derailment. The sense of feeling worn down by events has become the natural order of things. I had Super Bowl fatigue before the opening kickoff.
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In recent months, the argument over Ukraine has been about its importance for the U.S. Is this really “our” war? It is almost eerie that an answer to that legitimate question is emerging almost at the moment of the war’s first anniversary.
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It has become clear in the past several weeks that the tectonic plates of global power are shifting. The autocratic alliance of China, Russia and Iran is signaling it’s no longer content to accept an indefinite standoff of competing ideologies and commercial interests as the status quo. They have decided to make Ukraine a singular test, which they believe the U.S., Europe and Asia’s democracies will fail.
I’m not predicting World War III, at least not as conventionally understood. This new alliance—two significant nuclear powers and Iran on the brink of becoming one—seems to recognize that the self-destruction of nuclear war means they have to win on a series of conventional fronts, such as Ukraine, Taiwan or the Baltics.
Nor should we forget history’s lesson that unlikely events can push an already tense world off the rails. The assassination in 1914 of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo tipped the world toward war. A Chinese spy balloon, presumably pushed off course by the weather and floating across the U.S. land mass, may prove to be such an event. It’s hard to ignore that China’s response to the U.S.’s pro forma shooting down of the balloon has been unapologetic belligerence.
On Tuesday this newspaper reported that Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to visit Moscow in the spring. China wants us to believe that Mr. Xi will use the visit to push Vladimir Putin toward a peace settlement. More credible is the assertion by the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that China may be about to send lethal war materiel to Russia, joining Iran as an active equipper of Mr. Putin’s long war.
As in the past when an alliance of adversaries turned more aggressive, some Republicans have rediscovered the centuries-old belief that the U.S. can insulate itself from the tides of history. On the same day this week that President Biden went to Kyiv to join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis aligned himself with the Republicans’ isolationist minority in Congress, criticizing Mr. Biden’s “blank-check policy” and saying “we have a lot of problems accumulating here in our own country” that Mr. Biden is neglecting.
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A political realist would view Mr. DeSantis’s statements on Ukraine as mainly an attempt to peel off more of a Trump base that may be open to alternatives. Like some of the other neoisolationists in Congress, Gov. DeSantis did add that he considers China a more important threat than Russia. This has become a distinction without a difference.
Messrs. Xi and Putin have been explicit in citing the restoration of nationalistic and territorial glory as justification for their jacked-up militarism. The West, properly understood as the world’s determinedly free peoples, has spent much of the past several centuries defeating messianic nationalists content to spill buckets of blood beyond their borders. History’s greatest killer is unchecked xenophobia.
The bet being made in Moscow and Beijing is that their will to win can eventually cause American and European leadership to break. That “win” isn’t about merely defeating the Ukrainians. It’s about finally proving to the other nations these two have courted—in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and in resource-rich Africa—that the time has arrived to join the world’s winners and pull back from the losers.
If several Republican presidential candidates as well as Germany and France look willing ultimately to abandon the Ukrainians, similar recalculations will be made in India, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
The U.S.’s strategic objective in Ukraine is to prevent Russia, China and Iran from being able to declare persuasively to the watching world that they are winning.
Only one nation in the whole world is actively fighting to stop this alliance from winning. Ukraine merely wants the U.S. and Europe to send them the necessary instruments of war—not next summer, but now—with which, as the last year has proved, they will fight to the last man, woman and child. The Ukrainians have already written their blank check. Our fatigue is not an option.
Write [email protected]
Appeared in the February 23, 2023, print edition as 'Ukraine Fatigue Is Not an Option'.
11. How the West Hunts for Soviet Arms
Bulgarian Factories and Secret Task Forces: How the West Hunts for Soviet Arms
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Justin Scheck and Boryana Dzhambazova
Feb. 23, 2023,
5:30 a.m. ET
The New York Times · by Boryana Dzhambazova · February 23, 2023
Bulgarian Factories and Secret Task Forces: How the West Hunts for Soviet Arms
Ukraine has long relied on Russian weapons for its armed forces. Now it is scrambling to get Soviet-era ammunition for those weapons, with the help of manufacturers even in rural corners of Eastern Europe.
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The small mountain town of Kostenets, Bulgaria, will soon start producing shells for Soviet-era artillery for use by Ukraine’s military.Credit...Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
Feb. 23, 2023, 5:30 a.m. ET
KOSTENETS, Bulgaria — The job is straightforward, dangerous and will soon be open to applicants: filling a 122-millimeter Soviet-style artillery shell with explosives that will turn it into a lethal projectile.
For the residents of Kostenets, a dying mountain town in western Bulgaria, it’s a welcome opportunity despite the risk of death. It means more jobs at the Terem ammunition plant on the outskirts of town.
The factory stopped making the 122-millimeter shells in 1988 as the Cold War came to a close. But soon the assembly lines will be running again. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has turned Soviet-era arms and ammunition into critically important matériel as western nations seek to supply Ukraine with the munitions it needs to foil Moscow’s assault.
And so in January, 35 years after the last 122-millimeter shells left the Terem plant, the company recommissioned production.
Small towns in Bulgaria, with its large pro-Russian population, might seem unlikely linchpins of Ukraine’s military effort. But one year into the war, despite an influx of sophisticated western arms, the Ukrainian military still relies primarily on weapons that fire Soviet-standard munitions. The United States and its NATO allies don’t produce those munitions, and the few countries outside Russia that do are mostly in the former Soviet orbit.
That has Western countries scrambling to find alternative sources, pouring millions of dollars into workarounds that keep the transactions quiet and avoid political fallout and Russian retaliation. And that brings them to some of the more remote areas of Eastern Europe, like Kostenets, and the small town of Sopot, roughly 50 miles to the northeast, which is home to another state-run arms factory.
Representatives from the U.S. embassy quietly attended the ribbon-cutting last month for the new production line in Kostenets, which took place outside the plant, a rundown low-slung building in a corner of the town. With the new jobs it’s adding, the plant could become one of Kostenets’s biggest employers.
“This is a big deal for the town,” said Deputy Mayor Margarita Mincheva.
Margarita Mincheva, deputy mayor of Kostenets.Credit...Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
Sopot, too, has seen its fortunes improve since the invasion. It is home to VMZ, an arms company that employs much of the local work force. On a recent Friday the dull thud of explosions rattled windows — they were likely tests of freshly made munitions, the town’s mayor said.
Over the years VMZ has been a main source of income for Sopot’s residents, the mayor, Deyan Doinov, added. “Probably there isn’t a single family in town whose members haven’t worked or are not working at the plant,” he said. “Virtually we have no unemployment — only those who do not want to work are jobless.”
The State of the War
Bulgaria has historically close ties to Moscow, though it has been part of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since the early 2000s. Last summer, revelations that Bulgaria supplied weapons to Ukraine, despite a strong opposition toward arming Kyiv, ignited a furor in the country’s politics.
Bulgaria’s projected arms exports last year soared, exceeding $3 billion, around five times the sales abroad in 2019, according to government estimates from data gathered in October.
But it is hardly the only country quietly contributing to Ukraine’s war effort. Luxembourg is supplying Ukraine with arms that originate in the Czech Republic. Brokers with cash from the U.S. are scouring factories in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Romania for shells. And Britain has formed a secret task force to arm Ukraine, according to a document The New York Times obtained and officials familiar with the task force’s work.
The importance of such sources is growing as Ukraine burns through ammunition at an unsustainable rate — one that Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, said last week was “many times higher than our current rate of production.”
“This puts our defense industries under strain,” he added.
The entrance to the VMZ munitions factory in Sopot, Bulgaria, this week.Credit...Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
In recent months, Ukraine has fired between 2,000 and 4,000 artillery shells daily, but would like to fire more so it can retake territory captured by Russia. At one point last summer Russia was firing as many as 50,000 shells a day. But that number has dropped since then, and Russia, too, is suffering from an ammunition shortage.
The U.S. is boosting its own production of artillery shells sixfold to fill the gaps. But it mostly makes ammunition for the NATO-standard howitzers it has sent to Ukraine.
Once the invasion began last year, Ukraine and its allies started buying up Soviet-style arms wherever they could find them. State-owned Ukrainian companies asked brokers in the U.S. and elsewhere for tanks, helicopters, planes and mortars, according to documents obtained by The Times.
Would-be suppliers emerged from the recesses of the global weapons trade to meet demand. Last June, a Czech arms seller offered Ukraine ammunition and a dozen Soviet-model ground-attack jets built between 1984 and 1990 for about $185 million, the documents show.
Both Britain and the U.S. have financed deals using third-party countries and brokers in cases where manufacturing countries don’t want to be publicly identified as providing weapons to Ukraine, people familiar with the effort say.
The secret task force created by the British defense ministry focused on getting Soviet-style ammunition, say people familiar with the effort, a task that became harder as the war went on and big suppliers ran out of stock.
Last June, Britain made a deal with to buy 40,000 artillery shells and rockets made by the government-owned Pakistan Ordnance Factories. Under the terms of the deal, Britain would pay a Romanian broker to buy the Pakistani weapons, documents show. The transaction’s official paperwork said the weapons would be transferred from Pakistan to Britain, with no mention of Ukraine, a document obtained by The Times shows.
The deal fell apart after the Pakistani supplier was unable to deliver the ammunition, said Marius Rosu, the export chief of the Romanian broker, Romtehnica.
An artillery piece on display in front of the VMZ factory in Sopot.Credit...Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
Such problems are common in deals relying on brokers and far-flung manufacturers. Mr. Rosu said his company does not send weapons to Ukraine. He said customers elsewhere may buy weapons from Romtehnica and later send them to Ukraine.
“That is not our problem,” he said.
Officials from Pakistan Ordnance and the government ministry that oversees it did not respond to questions about the proposed deal.
Bureaucratic loopholes and pass-through arrangements give Bulgarian officials political cover while fueling Ukraine’s war effort — though the cover is thinly veiled.
“Given that the war in Ukraine is still raging, where do we think that the shells are going to be exported to?'‘ said Lyuba, a 41-year old grocery store saleswoman in Kostenets who declined to provide her last name. “It’s not rocket science to figure out that its production is going to Ukraine.”
Bulgaria’s arms industry has occupied a peculiar role since the waning days of the Soviet Union. It provided arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war and to Libya, among other customers, and after the Soviet Union fell it supplied rebels in Angola and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
Even after Bulgaria joined the European Union and NATO, its arms industry continued pumping out Soviet-caliber ammunition. That created opportunity after the U.S. sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. American allies in those countries used Soviet-era weapons, and the U.S. bought ammunition from Bulgaria to supply them.
After Syria’s civil war began in 2011, Bulgarian munitions appeared there — likely part of the campaign to arm groups fighting the Syrian regime.
That put Bulgaria at odds with Russia, which supported the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russian assassins poisoned a Bulgarian arms dealer in 2015, and since then a series of unexplained explosions have rocked Bulgarian arms companies.
A flower shop in Kostenets. Some residents fear the production of munitions used in Ukraine might make the town a target for Russian reprisals.Credit...Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
Lyuba, the saleswoman, said the presence of the Terem arms factory, which was shaken by an accidental explosion in 2014, makes Kostenets a Russian target.
“We are ordinary people; we will probably never know what exactly they are making there,” she said.
A fortuitously timed election helped ease the way for Bulgaria to become a major supplier to Ukraine. In the fall of 2021, during Russia’s buildup to the invasion, a new, reform-oriented party took power. Kiril Petkov, the Harvard-educated prime minister, decided it was a moment that Bulgaria could turn away from Russia and toward the west.
“We wanted to be on the right side of history,” he said in an interview this month.
Mr. Petkov’s governing coalition included an historically Russia-friendly party that balked at sending arms to Ukraine, so they came up with a workaround that would let Bulgaria deny, officially, that it was arming Ukraine: The government would approve exports to other European Union countries, including Poland. Once there, the weapons could travel to Ukraine without Bulgaria being involved.
Sales picked up and factories boosted their output. Bulgarian ammunition soon accounted for one-third of Ukraine’s supplies, Mr. Petkov said.
Mr. Petkov’s government fell a few months later, when another party left his coalition. But by then, there was enough momentum that exports continued, even as other politicians in Bulgaria criticized the decision to help fight Russia.
A Russian-made Lada car in Kostenets. Credit...Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
Across the jagged snow-covered mountains in Sopot, residents who worked there said VMZ has increased production since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the plant now runs from Monday through Saturday.
“VMZ has been and is an integral part of the town’s life,” said a 63-year-old employee who has been working there for more than four decades and who declined to provide his name for fear of retribution. After all that time, he said, his body still tenses up on days the company tests explosives.
And like VMZ, whether the people of Sopot decide to acknowledge it or not, the war in Ukraine has become a part of their day-to-day lives.
“It’s going to sound cynical if I tell you that I want peace,” he said solemnly. “But at the same time I work at an arms factory.”
The New York Times · by Boryana Dzhambazova · February 23, 2023
12. The Return of the Russia Question
Excerpts:
Some Russians are beginning to lay out a vision for what this democratization might look like. This week, imprisoned opposition activist Alexey Navalny outlined a 15-point plan that starts with the obvious: recognizing Putin’s criminal invasion as unwinnable, pulling out of Ukraine (including Crimea), paying reparations to Ukraine, and cooperating with international institutions to punish Russian war criminals. Next, Navalny explicitly called out Russian imperialism as the culprit: Russia, he writes, is a “vast country with a shrinking population” that does not need even more territory. Russia’s political future, Navalny said, is as a federal, parliamentary republic with authority devolved to the regions. To that end, Navalny called for a constitutional assembly. Russia’s ultimate path, in his view, is to join the family of European nations.
Navalny’s proposals, perhaps the most clear-eyed and concrete coming from a prominent Russian so far, seem like an incredibly far-off prospect today. But they are not inherently impracticable. Only one generation ago, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, Russian society came out of more than seven decades of near-total repression to hold its first semi-free elections in 1989 and thwart a violent coup attempt by Communist Party hard-liners in 1991. The Soviet Union’s first legal opposition was dominated by Russians, but it was explicitly post-imperialist. In Moscow, more than one hundred thousand demonstrators expressed solidarity with the Baltic States’ independence. Russia’s democrats ultimately failed; many of them opposed, but could not prevent, two horrific wars to crush the seeds of independence in Chechnya. Most of Russia’s democrats were later co-opted by the Kremlin, assassinated, or pushed into political obscurity. Today’s generation of democrats is facing not a decrepit Soviet bureaucracy but an overwhelming force of repression. But as soon as Putin starts to falter—and with Russians willing to sacrifice their freedom and even lives for their ideals—it’s not unrealistic to imagine a scenario where democracy finally wins.
The Return of the Russia Question
What kind of country do Russians want to live in after the war?
By Alexey Kovalev, an investigative editor at Meduza.
Foreign Policy · by Alexey Kovalev · February 22, 2023
What is Russia? Today’s Russians can’t even be sure where their country’s borders lie. Newly issued maps of Russia include regions of Ukraine that are not even controlled by the Kremlin’s army, and Kremlin propagandists flood the airwaves with pronouncements of territories to be seized from various countries.
There’s also no definite answer to the question “What kind of Russia are we fighting for?” It’s asked by demoralized Russian conscripts in the trenches, millions of Russians looking in vain for guidance, and Kremlin propagandists visibly struggling to explain the war to their television audiences. If Russians thought that yesterday’s state-of-the-nation speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin would finally bring some clarity on the eve of the war’s first anniversary, they were disappointed. In his 105-minute address—eagerly awaited by his most ardent loyalists, who had expected him to explain his war goals and announce a major escalation—Putin rattled off his usual litany of rants about the West’s supposed perfidies, including his bizarre obsession with sexuality and gender. (This time, it was about gender-neutral pronouns for God.)
But Russians’ confusion extends far beyond their national borders and the goals of the war. The problem is a much more existential one: Russia simply doesn’t know what it is and why it exists at all.
What is Russia? Today’s Russians can’t even be sure where their country’s borders lie. Newly issued maps of Russia include regions of Ukraine that are not even controlled by the Kremlin’s army, and Kremlin propagandists flood the airwaves with pronouncements of territories to be seized from various countries.
There’s also no definite answer to the question “What kind of Russia are we fighting for?” It’s asked by demoralized Russian conscripts in the trenches, millions of Russians looking in vain for guidance, and Kremlin propagandists visibly struggling to explain the war to their television audiences. If Russians thought that yesterday’s state-of-the-nation speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin would finally bring some clarity on the eve of the war’s first anniversary, they were disappointed. In his 105-minute address—eagerly awaited by his most ardent loyalists, who had expected him to explain his war goals and announce a major escalation—Putin rattled off his usual litany of rants about the West’s supposed perfidies, including his bizarre obsession with sexuality and gender. (This time, it was about gender-neutral pronouns for God.)
But Russians’ confusion extends far beyond their national borders and the goals of the war. The problem is a much more existential one: Russia simply doesn’t know what it is and why it exists at all.
This, therefore, is the modern Russia question. Is it an empire to be restored, as Putin seems to think? Is its destiny to be an oligarchic autocracy, a kind of modern version of tsarist rule? Is it a post-Soviet society inching toward better infrastructure and perhaps even democracy? A former empire struggling to come to terms with a post-imperial future? Or something else entirely? This question will be all the more urgent when the war ends, Putin’s malevolent pall over Russia is lifted, and Russians try to figure out a common future within their own borders. Whatever the answer is, it will have to be more inspiring than “a large country that no longer invades its former colonies”—even if that definition would be just fine for all of Russia’s neighbors. As the layers of Russian imperial and post-imperial identity are peeled away like those of an onion, will there be anything left to form a Russian national idea, something the country has conspicuously lacked since it emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991?
Putin’s answer to the Russia question has been clear for all. His national idea is openly imperialist: By invading Ukraine, he wants to restore Kremlin control over a former tsarist and Soviet colony by taking its lands, erasing its national identity, and turning its inhabitants into Russians by merciless repression and reeducation. Ukrainians and their supporters have a keen interest in making sure Putin’s idea of Russia’s future doesn’t become reality.
For Europe and much of the world, an acceptable postwar Russia is one that doesn’t invade its neighbors. But what else? For 30 years Russia has tried, and failed repeatedly, to come up with anything resembling a national idea. There’s no contemporary Russian version of the “American dream,” no “liberté, egalité, fraternité,” no “workers of the world, unite.” Nor is there a quieter constitutional patriotism that might allow Russians to take pride in their rights and the way their society is run.
For the first time after the tumultuous Soviet collapse, something resembling a Russian national idea emerged when Putin, during his first presidential term, proclaimed an era of stability. An unspoken social contract emerged between the ruler and the ruled: As long as they stayed out of politics and didn’t threaten the regime and its kleptocratic friends, Russians would enjoy an economic stability and prosperity their forefathers had never known. That stability was predicated on citizens not challenging the emerging “managed democracy,” which observed the bare minimum of political rituals like regular elections but was tightly orchestrated to preserve Putin’s and his cronies’ power.
But when Russians protested in previously unseen numbers in late 2011 and early 2012 following elections so fake that they were openly exposed as a sham, Putin cracked down on protests before shifting to another national idea: Russia would henceforth be a bulwark of so-called traditional values against an ungodly, decadent West. Since then, this has been Putin’s consistent idée fixe, outlined yet again in yesterday’s state-of-the-nation speech. But unlike the old social contract promising “stability,” the idea of a Russian identity built around traditional values has no basis in reality. Neither the traditional family nor the church—the two lodestars of the Kremlin’s current propaganda—are particularly important to Russians. Of the 72 percent of Russians who identified as Russian Orthodox in a 2014 Pew survey, for example, less than 10 percent made it to church once a month. A national identity based on Russia as a bastion of conservative values stands on very shaky ground.
When Putin announced his partial mobilization in September 2022, the last vestiges of the old social contract based on stability and relative prosperity in exchange for nonparticipation went out the window. Now Putin’s only vision of the future for Russians is a blood oath: Fight in the war and share the responsibility for my crimes or be publicly ostracized and possibly jailed. The only escape has been to leave one’s life behind and emigrate, as hundreds of thousands have chosen to do, including my wife and I. Putin still has the option of closing that avenue for those we left behind by shutting the country’s borders.
One year into this war, it is now clear that even if Putin tries to secure some kind of propaganda victory in Ukraine, Russia has already suffered a crushing defeat. Like Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his defeat in the First Gulf War, Putin and his regime may survive for a few years or more. But his version of Russia’s future is finished. A new vision of Russia—shorn of its imperialist ambitions without spiraling into dark revanchist fantasies—is needed to prevent another tragedy in the future.
But what might such a Russia look like? As one peels away the defunct layers of Russia’s imperial identity, sooner or later the question of imperialism within Russia’s own borders will come up. Today’s Russia, after all, is a vast multiethnic state, the result of centuries of imperial conquest, subjugation, colonization, resettlement, and genocide. Some have even suggested Russia be decolonized, breaking it up along ethnic boundaries to liberate its captive minorities.
Navalny’s proposals are perhaps the most clear-eyed and concrete vision for the country coming from a prominent Russian so far.
These ideas are wildly impractical. With a few exceptions such as Tuva and Ingushetia, most of Russia’s national republics are far from ethnically homogenous. In fact, most are dominated by a solid majority of ethnic Russians, the consequence of centuries of colonization.
Only a few of these republics, like Tatarstan, have a historical record of statehood or forays toward full independence. For others, a non-Russian ethnic identity is more complicated: Dagestan, for example, contains myriad ethnicities speaking dozens of languages, the result of administrative borders arbitrarily drawn long ago. Separating these regions from some kind of historical Russia—presumably, something along the lines of the 16th-century Grand Duchy of Moscow before the great imperial conquests of non-Russian peoples all way to the Pacific Ocean—can only result in calamity. It would be much like the Partition of India, including forced population exchanges and border conflicts. With local elites fully integrated into the Kremlin’s system of governance, there is little indication that any such push for separation is at hand.
Just as a partition of Russia is a bad idea, so is the radical nationalist vision of Russia as belonging to ethnic Russians. The country’s non-Russian population is simply too large, and it would take too much repression and violence to deprive them of their rights. More sensible proposals for internal decolonization include granting Russia’s regions significantly more political and economic autonomy than they have now, with real representation at the national level. (Right now, despite what it says on paper, political and economic control in Russia is extremely centralized.) As Russian political scientist Grigory Golosov argues, devolution of authority would be more likely to result from a general democratization, not the other way around.
Some Russians are beginning to lay out a vision for what this democratization might look like. This week, imprisoned opposition activist Alexey Navalny outlined a 15-point plan that starts with the obvious: recognizing Putin’s criminal invasion as unwinnable, pulling out of Ukraine (including Crimea), paying reparations to Ukraine, and cooperating with international institutions to punish Russian war criminals. Next, Navalny explicitly called out Russian imperialism as the culprit: Russia, he writes, is a “vast country with a shrinking population” that does not need even more territory. Russia’s political future, Navalny said, is as a federal, parliamentary republic with authority devolved to the regions. To that end, Navalny called for a constitutional assembly. Russia’s ultimate path, in his view, is to join the family of European nations.
Navalny’s proposals, perhaps the most clear-eyed and concrete coming from a prominent Russian so far, seem like an incredibly far-off prospect today. But they are not inherently impracticable. Only one generation ago, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, Russian society came out of more than seven decades of near-total repression to hold its first semi-free elections in 1989 and thwart a violent coup attempt by Communist Party hard-liners in 1991. The Soviet Union’s first legal opposition was dominated by Russians, but it was explicitly post-imperialist. In Moscow, more than one hundred thousand demonstrators expressed solidarity with the Baltic States’ independence. Russia’s democrats ultimately failed; many of them opposed, but could not prevent, two horrific wars to crush the seeds of independence in Chechnya. Most of Russia’s democrats were later co-opted by the Kremlin, assassinated, or pushed into political obscurity. Today’s generation of democrats is facing not a decrepit Soviet bureaucracy but an overwhelming force of repression. But as soon as Putin starts to falter—and with Russians willing to sacrifice their freedom and even lives for their ideals—it’s not unrealistic to imagine a scenario where democracy finally wins.
Foreign Policy · by Alexey Kovalev · February 22, 2023
13. How to beat Russia - What armed forces in NATO should learn from Ukraine’s homeland defense
The 40 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.globsec.org/sites/default/files/2023-02/How%20to%20beat%20Russia%20by%20Nico%20Lange%20v7%20web.pdf
10 key lessons summarized below from the EXSUM.
How to beat Russia
What armed forces in NATO should learn from Ukraine’s homeland defense
by Nico Lange
Executive Summary
Russia continues its war of aggression against
Ukraine, yet its forces are already defeated. Against
the resistance of Ukrainians and its allies’ support,
Russia has achieved almost none of its military
goals. Evidently, Ukraine will prevail.
The Ukrainians have made it clear: Russian
aggression is defeatable. This is due to two main
reasons: the involvement of the entire Ukrainian
society in homeland defence and the Ukrainian
Armed Forces’ excellent military and leadership
skills. Extraordinary bravery, creativity, astonishing
pragmatism, and improvisational skills have been at
the forefront of the Ukrainian homeland defenders.
Around the world, all actors can and should learn
from Ukrainians about future military and civil
defence.
This report identifies initial lessons for armed forces
in NATO countries and politics and society from
observing the course of the war and the defence
of Ukrainians. Drawing lessons from Ukranian
homeland defence since February 2022, the
report offers possible applications to doctrine,
structures, and training for the armed forces
of NATO member states. Moreover, it provides
political recommendations derived from Ukrainian
experiences.
The report is based on open-source intelligence
information and a series of 20 extensive interviews
with combat-experienced Ukrainian commanders
and soldiers. The observation of the war and
discussions with Ukrainian forces revealed ten
areas in which the Ukrainians are particularly
innovative and unusual in their use of strategies
and tactics, at least some of which are new to the
armed forces in NATO.
This report pursues two simple questions
throughout ten dimensions: What are the
Ukrainians doing particularly well? And what can we
in NATO, the EU, and beyond learn from them?
1. Ukraine is engaging its entire society
in total defence.
The recommendations to the armed forces in NATO
are to:
● Provide basic military training and basic
medical training to large parts of society
● Develop strategies for the military reserve
capitalizing on civil life qualifications
● Hold regular simulations and exercises at local
and regional levels
● Build communities for homeland defence
● Train mayors, governors, and decision-makers,
by making crisis and defence training a
prerequisite for holding office
● Build infrastructures to collect and use data
provided by civil society
2. The fight is data-based in the newest
of ways.
The recommendations include to:
● Introduce full and continuous data connectivity
on the battlefield
● Collect all data on all levels of command and
innovate on data analysis
● Setup low orbit satellite constellations as
strategic enablers
● Build an embedded “data force”
● Improve operational speed, especially on timesensitive targeting
● Radically speed up innovation and procurement
cycles
● Open up to civic innovation and ease access
for new companies and start-ups
3. Ukrainian forces often operate as
decentralized networks with much
command-and-control responsibility
at lower and intermediate levels.
The recommendations include to:
● Have agile staff and more troops focused on
speed and adaptability
● Avoid highly detailed military planning and too
rigid command and control
● Rely more on oral agreements and verbal
decision making
● Promote thinking and acting in network and
matrix structures, breaking out of rigid formal
corsets
● Transfer more responsibility to noncommissioned officers
● Investigate further if fundamentally different
modes of operation require different sets of
forces to be successful
4. Ukraine is shaping the battlefield
through a consistent focus on attacks
on logistics, command and control,
and communications.
The recommendations include to:
● Improve military mobility
● Further emphasize medium and light forces
● Increase speed and precision to beat
superiority in mass
● Train and exercise “shaping operations” as a
special, resource-efficient form of attack
5. Ukrainian soldiers are using drones
ubiquitously and en masse for many
operational purposes.
The recommendations include to:
● Introduce drones en masse into all branches of
the armed forces
Utilize inexpensive commercial drones for
military purposes in addition to speciallydeveloped military drones
● Quickly develop and deploy new and simple,
cost-efficient drone solutions
● Reduce dependencies on the Chinese
commercial drone production
● Introduce and train military competence in the
operation of drones in all branches and at all
levels
● Procure cost-efficient anti-drone systems
6. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have
achieved successes with minimal
units in an astonishing revival of
Jagdkampf
The recommendations include to:
● Reintroduce light infantry battalions or
companies with capabilities for asymmetrical,
highly mobile combat
● Retrain infantry units in commando operations
and urban warfare tactics
● Increase equipment, stocks, and production
capacities of mobile anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and
anti-drone weapons
● Strengthen granular logistics and
prepositioning, also using standard containers
and drones
● Establish a system of constant, high-intensity
training and exercise for dismounted infantry
7. Ukraine is leading the renaissance
of artillery but in an expanded,
advanced form.
The recommendations include to:
● Redeploy significantly larger wheeled and
tracked, towed and self-propelled artillery
forces
● Increase production capacity for artillery pieces
and ammunition
● Research and evaluate the knowledge
gathered in Ukraine on different guns and
ammunition
● Transform artillery into software and an AIdriven system
● Integrate drones for target acquisition and fire
control
● Improve counter-battery capabilities
● Equip, train, and exercise toward high-speed kill
chain, high mobility, and maximum precision
● Build more ammunition storage and improve
standardized, fast ammunition logistics
8. Complex logistics, especially on rails,
form a stable backbone for the
fighting forces.
The recommendations include to:
● Create considerable redundancies and crisis
capabilities in commercial transport
● Develop and stack deep reserves of
equipment, trained personnel, capabilities for
emergency repairs, and stocks of spare parts, if
necessary, fully financed by government crisis
provision funds
● Provide the legal framework and financing for
the extensive use of civilian infrastructures for
defence logistics
● Intensively practice night-time logistic
operations under realistic conditions
9. High operational security, tight
secrecy, and successful deception
make decisive differences.
The recommendations include to:
● Exercise regularly and intensively under entirely
realistic conditions of operational security
● Keep closely up-to-date with the opponents’
sensor capabilities
● Include more in-depth language skills, regional
knowledge, and cultural knowledge
Review internal bureaucratic procedures
and increase an institutional culture of broad
participation and CC culture from a strict
operational security perspective
● Address the balance between tight operational
security and civil or parliamentary oversight
10. The best stories win the strategic
information war.
The recommendations include to:
● Radically transform structure and content
production of strategic communications in
armed forces in NATO countries
● Establish more media production capabilities
and more extensive communication capabilities
● Produce much more quality output across many
different channels
● Reform toward rapid decision-making
procedures and ample freedom for
communicators
● Embed creative partners and creative
professionals
● Anchor strategic communications structurally
on the highest political level
This report aims to be accessible to a broader
audience beyond the narrow circle of pronounced
military experts. We urgently need broad debates
involving the military and experts to strengthen
defence capabilities and resilience in our states.
Above all else, we need the participation of political
leaders, the media, and citizens at large.
Armed forces in NATO countries, the EU, and
beyond should learn essential lessons from the
course of this war. The analysis and study of this
war will undoubtedly continue - this report is meant
as the start of a necessary debate.
14. Uncovering the Wagner Group
A number of very useful reports and resources at New America here: https://www.newamerica.org/future-frontlines/uncovering-the-wagner-group/
Utilizing a mix of investigative reporting, open source research, and large-scale data science, Future Frontlines has been investigating Russia's Wagner Group since 2018. Our work focuses on exposing the web of special forces veterans, military intelligence officers, separatist provocateurs, business interests, and geostrategic calculations amid which the Wagner Group emerged and which it was created to obscure.
Putin’s Stealth Mobilization
Russian Irregulars and the Wagner Group’s Shadow Command Structure
By: Candace Rondeaux
,
Ben Dalton
Last updated on February 22nd, 2023
Rebranding the Russian Way of War
The Wagner Group’s Viral Social Media Campaign and What It Means for Ukraine
By: Ben Dalton
,
Candace Rondeaux
Last updated on February 16th, 2023
Building the Wagner Group Brand
How Yevgeny Prigozhin Sold a Battlefield Rumor to the World
By: Candace Rondeaux
Last updated on February 16th, 2023
Chasing the Wagner Group
Why It’s So Hard to Get a Handle on Putin’s Ghost Army
By: Candace Rondeaux
Last updated on February 13th, 2023
A Field Guide to Wagner Group Bloggers
Russia’s New Mercenary Media Elite
By: Ben Dalton
Last updated on February 14th, 2023
AND MORE. https://www.newamerica.org/future-frontlines/uncovering-the-wagner-group/
15. 193rd SOW Welcomes New Aircraft and Mission | SOF News
No more Commando Solo. I guess we no longer need an airborne broadcasting platform.
193rd SOW Welcomes New Aircraft and Mission | SOF News
sof.news · by Guest · February 23, 2023
By Master Sgt. Alexander Farver.
The first MC-130J Commando II aircraft arrived at Middletown, Pa., Feb 2, 2023, achieving a major milestone in the 193rd Special Operations Wing’s mission conversion. The 193 SOW is the first, and currently the only, Air National Guard unit to receive the Commando II mission, a flagship mission of Air Force Special Operations Command.
“This is a monumental day for the 193rd, ANG, and AFSOC. The Commando II mission will ensure the 193rd SOW remains not only relevant, but also at the forefront of the battlespace for years to come,” said Col. Edward Fink, 193rd SOW commander.
Led by the efforts of unit conversion officer, Lt. Col. Benton Jackson, the wing has been preparing for its mission conversion since 2021. Jackson believes the hard work of 193rd SOW Airmen and the support of the community ultimately led to completion of this successful first step.
“Seeing the Commando II on our flightline is a tangible symbol of the progress we’ve made as a wing in bringing this versatile mission to central Pennsylvania,” Jackson said. “It’s an exciting time to be a part of this team, and I have the utmost confidence we have the right culture and people to continue with a successful mission conversion.”
For decades, the wing operated the EC-130J Commando Solo as part of the only airborne Military Information Support Operations broadcasting platform in the U.S. military. Col. Jaime Ramirez, 193rd Special Operations Maintenance Group commander, sees the move to the Commando II as a major shift in the unit, AFSOC and ANG.
“The Commando II is the special operations workhorse, in that it performs many different types of missions, and performs them well,” Ramirez said. “There is no doubt in my mind the aircraft that landed here today will be integral in any future conflict.”
Ramirez added that the wing’s mission conversion is unprecedented, in that it was able to maintain full operating capabilities of the outgoing aircraft while simultaneously preparing for the arriving mission.
“We were ready to maintain the Commando II well before it arrived, all while never losing a step in maintaining and launching EC-130s.” Ramirez said. “That only happens if you have the best people. I’d put our maintainers up against anyone.”
While the 193rd SOMXG is prepared to maintain the aircraft, the 193rd Special Operations Group is postured to fly them immediately. Col. Gordon Frankenfield, 193rd SOG commander suggests that many of his airmen have a deep familiarity with the aircraft and mission set.
“We’ve executed similar mission sets for years, which likely contributed to AFSOC trusting us with this critically valuable aircraft,” Frankenfield said. “Our goal from day one has been to operate the Commando II with the same potency as an active duty unit, and our aircrews are trained and ready to make that a reality.”
Frankenfield sees the Commando II’s arrival to Pennsylvania as an important strategic move both domestically and abroad.
“The 193rd now offers something the U.S. military didn’t have before,” Frankenfield said. Special Operations Forces based in the northeast now have a crucial air asset right in their backyard to build their combat readiness. Combatant commanders have a much more robust and versatile capability to project air power in different geographic regions.”
The aircraft’s arrival under the cloak of night was perhaps appropriate given the nature of its mission. The Commando II flies clandestine – or low visibility – single or multi-ship, low-level infiltration, exfiltration and resupply of special operations forces, by airdrop or airland and air refueling missions for special operations helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft, intruding politically sensitive or hostile territories.
“The Commando II is the embodiment of Agile Combat Employment, and will present complex dilemmas to our adversaries. It’s a shadow in the dark, and sends a clear message that the U.S. military owns the night,” Fink said. “The 193rd is ready today to add to the impressive lineage of the Commando II.”
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This article by Master Sgt. Alexander Farver was first published by the 193rd SOW on February 7, 2023. The photo is of an MC-130J Commando II arriving at the 193rd Special Operations Wing on February 2, 2023. Photo by Master Sgt. Alexander Farver.
sof.news · by Guest · February 23, 2023
16. The balloon drama was a drill. Here’s how the US and China can prepare for a real crisis.
But it does seem that China does not want such contacts and communication.
Conclusion:
All of this argues strongly for Beijing and Washington to reestablish regular formal contacts to expand capacity for direct conversations in the event of increased tensions, and the possibility of major crises. The alternative is even greater miscalculation, potentially under circumstances where the stakes are even higher.
The balloon drama was a drill. Here’s how the US and China can prepare for a real crisis.
By John K. Culver
atlanticcouncil.org · by jcookson · February 22, 2023
February 22, 2023
The Chinese surveillance balloon incident highlighted a central problem for Washington and especially Beijing: the need for their leaders to talk tough in public while retaining the opportunity to seek progress—or prevent worse—in private. This was hard in 2001, when the Chinese held twenty-four crew members of a US EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft that made an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island after a Chinese fighter collided with it in international airspace, resulting in the loss of the Chinese pilot. Then, the United States skillfully used public rhetoric and private diplomatic and military dialogue to give Chinese President Jiang Zemin a path to resolution just eleven days after the airborne collision. Today, that kind of deft solution is far less likely. The two nations’ communication breakdown could prove disastrous if a crisis arises that’s bigger than a balloon—which is why they need to start talking now.
The parallels to 2001 go beyond the fact that the surveillance balloon was launched from Hainan Island. Indeed, in the first statement on the balloon issued by the Chinese foreign ministry, one can hear echoes of US President George W. Bush’s 2001 statement of regret—short of the apology that Jiang had publicly demanded:
“I regret that a Chinese pilot is missing. Our prayers go out to the pilot, his family. Our prayers are also with our own servicemen and women, and they need to come home… Our relationship with China is very important, and—but they need to realize that it’s time for our people [to] be home.” —Remarks by President Bush, April 5, 2001
“The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure.” —Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement, February 2, 2023
But in the more recent case, the United States was still building an understanding of what had happened, as new revelations of past and ongoing Chinese surveillance balloons surfaced daily in the US media. Washington was not prepared to publicly reciprocate until after a US Air Force F-22 shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean on February 4. Once President Joe Biden had demonstrated resolve by ordering the shootdown, and after US air defenders spent the next week chasing floating objects—likely hobbyist balloons—across North American skies, unnamed administration officials acknowledged Beijing’s initial claim that unusual upper-level winds and rare polar vortices may have been responsible for the balloon’s path, rather than Chinese recklessness.
Nonetheless, it’s clear today that China’s high-altitude balloon surveillance is significant, with operations dating since at least 2018. One question this raises is: What additional intelligence could China gain from high-altitude overflight of the continental United States, Hawaii, Guam, or US bases in Japan? After all, China is a major spacefaring power that, according to the most recent Department of Defense annual report to Congress on the Chinese military, has some 260 military or intelligence satellites in orbit. Experts have noted that high-altitude balloon collection could benefit China’s investment in hypersonic weapons or improve the accuracy of its rapidly expanding intercontinental ballistic missile force. But there’s likely also a political dynamic. From Beijing’s perspective, the United States flies numerous intelligence collection aircraft on China’s periphery, especially over the South China Sea and off its east coast. The United States strictly abides by international law and does not violate China’s twelve-mile limit over its airspace. But this has long been a sore point for Beijing and could have led China to send high-altitude balloons near or over the United States as a way to reciprocate.
Seeds of another Cuban Missile Crisis
As the balloon episode demonstrated, it is much harder today for Beijing and Washington to untangle a serious incident, even without the loss of life and detention of twenty-four US service members that greatly complicated the 2001 affair. At the time of Bush’s crisis, he was barely two months into his administration after a bruising election outcome resolved in his favor by the US Supreme Court. It also was the first interaction with China for his new national security team, many of whom had been critical of China during the presidential election campaign. This made the stakes unusually high for China’s Jiang, who had been seeking a reset in relations that were severely disrupted by the accidental US bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999, which killed three Chinese nationals. Jiang could not be seen as backing down to the United States unless Washington offered him a face-saving way to resolve the impasse. Bush’s non-apology statement of regret opened the door to resolution. In the next nineteen months, the two leaders would meet twice—at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit hosted by Jiang in Shanghai just weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States, and a year later when Bush hosted Jiang at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The most critical goal should be to avoid having to create communications in the midst of an actual crisis.
Today, the regular communication channels and personal familiarity between senior US and People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials have broken down. The two sides depend to a dangerous degree on direct, irregular conversations between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Even worse is when the two leaders talk to each other in public through the media and, therefore, are more focused on domestic audiences and their bottomless appetite to show resolve and thrust the burden for resolution on the other side. Much of the fault for this falls on Beijing’s shoulders since it frequently retaliates for events such as then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan by further curtailing even meager scheduled security dialogue. This reinforces the current dynamic that all initiatives must percolate from the top down, rather than from the bottom up, a reversal of normal productive diplomacy and crisis communication.
Washington’s goal now should be to take advantage of the balloon incident not only to prevent recurrences, but also to rebuild critical communication pathways. The main lesson to be drawn so far is that US-China strategic rivalry overshadows the practice of effective diplomacy and, in a real crisis, public opinions and partisan rancor (on the United States’ side) will tend to accelerate escalation well before the facts can be ascertained by either side. The most critical goal should be to avoid having to create communications in the midst of an actual crisis. Otherwise, as the balloon incident demonstrates, it is only a matter of when, not if, a serious crisis descends to something far worse—perhaps a Gulf of Tonkin situation on steroids, more reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis than any other incident in recent US-PRC relations.
The United States—aided by allies and partners, who have largely maintained regular diplomatic and security dialogue with China—must build on its successful management and, for now, resolution of the mini-crisis caused by China’s balloon surveillance over the United States. Regular, official meetings at appropriate levels are not a favor that the United States grants China for good behavior. Rather than meetings for meetings’ sake, they ensure that US officials are heard directly, not filtered via the US or Chinese press. They expand direct personal knowledge of counterparts, which will be even more important with pending senior Chinese government personnel changes in early March. And most importantly, they provide a basis for regular interactions even in the case of new incidents.
The next flashpoints
This year and next will see significant events that can further deepen misunderstanding and increase the prospect for serious crises—even beyond the potential volatility of the Taiwanese and US elections in 2024, or the chance that China again, errantly or otherwise, penetrates US air space with another surveillance balloon. For example:
-
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has been invited to attend a summit of Taiwan’s international friends and few remaining diplomatic partners next month in Guatemala. To do so, she probably would transit the United States, and the Taiwanese press has reported that she may visit Cornell University in New York (her law school alma mater). It was a visit to Cornell in 1995 by the then president, Lee Teng-hui, that precipitated the last major US military crisis with China.
- US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may fulfill his pledge to visit Taiwan later this year. China greatly resented Pelosi’s visit last August and responded by conducting missile launches surrounding Taiwan and increased air incursions into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone. Its response to another speaker visit is likely to exceed its 2022 response, which was itself unprecedented.
All of this argues strongly for Beijing and Washington to reestablish regular formal contacts to expand capacity for direct conversations in the event of increased tensions, and the possibility of major crises. The alternative is even greater miscalculation, potentially under circumstances where the stakes are even higher.
John K. Culver is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and a former Central Intelligence Agency senior intelligence officer with thirty-five years of experience as a leading analyst of East Asian affairs, including security, economic, and foreign-policy dimensions.
atlanticcouncil.org · by jcookson · February 22, 2023
17. U.S. diplomatic counter-offensive targets China’s ‘false information’
Recognize, understand, expose, and attack the enemy's strategy with superior political warfare and information.
U.S. diplomatic counter-offensive targets China’s ‘false information’
By ERIN BANCO and PHELIM KINE
02/22/2023 06:44 PM EST
Politico
The Biden administration is aggressively calling out Beijing’s surveillance program and warning of serious consequences if it aids Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia-China ties had reached “new frontiers” and announced that Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia later this year. | Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo
02/22/2023 06:44 PM EST
The Biden administration isn’t just calling China out in public. It has embarked on an extensive private pressure campaign to rally allies to its side and make it clear to Chinese officials that the U.S. has proof of their nefarious actions.
Over the past few weeks, the U.S. has sent detailed talking points to allies, held more than a dozen meetings with Chinese officials and — most recently — shared new intelligence with both to up pressure on Beijing, according to interviews with three officials and a diplomatic cable obtained by POLITICO.
While early conversations focused mostly on the spy balloon that transited the U.S. in early February, more recent warnings have turned to the possibility of China supplying weapons to Russia to use against Ukraine — a defiant violation of what the Biden administration has called a “red line” in its relationship with Beijing.
The new details about Washington’s messaging strategy, including the extent to which the administration is pushing back on Beijing behind the scenes through diplomatic outreach to allies and partners, illuminates the lengths to which Washington feels it needs to go to counter China.
Those efforts also underscore the Biden administration’s resolve to hold Beijing accountable for the incident and to use it as an exemplar of the long international reach of China’s malign activities, even as China tries to woo Europe and other regional blocs.
The Biden administration has reacted strongly “because it’s so clearly a case where the Chinese should just have admitted that they took an action that they should not have taken,” said Zack Cooper, former assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council.
“And rather than just owning up to what was pretty obvious for all to see, [Beijing] launched into a whole propaganda campaign that was pretty frustrating for the administration, especially given that they were heading into what would have been [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken’s first trip to Beijing.”
The National Security Council declined to comment on the record for this story.
China has continued to push back against the U.S. allegations, deflecting questions about its surveillance activities and the extent to which it is planning on supporting Russia in Ukraine. Now, the two countries are engaged in an intense public standoff, and neither side is indicating that it’s ready to back down anytime soon.
It started with the spy balloon. On Feb. 5 — the day after the U.S. shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina — the Biden administration sent out an “action request” to U.S. diplomatic posts across the globe telling them to push the message that China “is attempting to change the narrative by providing false information.”
The cable included 28 concise talking points for U.S. representatives from Brussels to Grenada and Frankfurt to Busan to share with foreign government officials “in private diplomatic engagements.” The U.S. had several key demands for Beijing, according to the cable, including that the airship “cease operations” and “immediately” leave U.S. airspace.
The State Department pushed its diplomats to move fast. Beijing was mobilizing state media to accuse the U.S. of overreacting in its decision to destroy the balloon in a bid to paint the Chinese government as “the responsible actor in the dispute.” Diplomats were directed to emphasize that the U.S. “is not looking to escalate the situation.”
“We thought it was the responsible thing to do on our part to share as much as we could. Our presentations have been fact-based. This is not an effort to engage in a messaging exercise or to put spin on the ball,” said a State Department official who was granted anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on the record.
The U.S. was just as persistent with China. Officials from the top tiers of the Biden administration down to the embassy level of the State Department have engaged with their counterparts in China in more than a dozen meetings since the balloon was first detected in late January, according to two of the U.S. officials. The officials, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions.
There’s been little to show for that outreach, however. Beijing rejected an offer to get on the phone with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Feb. 4, the day the balloon was shot down. It wasn’t until several days later that the Chinese embassy called to lay out the country’s official response, one it had already given publicly: The balloon had merely been dispatched to monitor the weather, one of the U.S. officials said.
Then, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this weekend, both had sharp words for their counterparts. And Blinken didn’t limit himself to the balloon. He also directly warned the Chinese about taking the step to send weapons to Russia to aid its Ukraine war effort — a prospect the U.S. is increasingly worried about.
“I was able to share with [Wang], as President Biden had shared with President Xi, the serious consequences that would have for our relationship,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation.
Beijing has responded with provocations of its own.
“It’s the U.S. side, not the Chinese side, that’s providing an endless flow of weapons,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Monday. “The U.S. side isn’t qualified to point fingers at China or order China around.”
U.S. officials say they’re trying to force Beijing to back down, in part, by detailing the intelligence they have against them.
Over the last several weeks, administration officials have downgraded the classification level on certain intelligence regarding the balloon and China’s plans regarding support for Russia in order to share that information with their Chinese counterparts, two of the officials said.
The officials said that though the U.S. has long been concerned about China and Russia’s alliance, new details about their economic and military partnership have emerged in recent days, putting the administration on edge.
The U.S. has also briefed allies about that intelligence and is requesting diplomats across the world push back against both Beijing’s false narrative about the balloon and its consideration of sending lethal weapons to Russia, two of the officials said.
If messages coming from Europe this week are any indication, the outreach to allies, at least, is creating a united front.
On Monday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said it would be a “red line” for the European Union if China sends arms to Russia. Top diplomats from Sweden and Lithuania voiced similar sentiments. And NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg followed suit on Tuesday.
China’s Wang Yi, meanwhile, arrived in Russia Wednesday where he met with President Vladimir Putin and the head of Russia’s National Security Council. Putin declared that Russia-China ties had reached “new frontiers” and announced that Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia later this year.
POLITICO
Politico
18. Russia, China show off ties amid maneuvering over Ukraine
Russia, China show off ties amid maneuvering over Ukraine
AP · by The Associated Press · February 22, 2023
Russia and China showcased their deepening ties Wednesday in meetings others are watching for signs that Beijing might offer the Kremlin stronger support for its war in Ukraine.
The visit by Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, to Moscow comes as the conflict in Ukraine continues to upend the global diplomatic order.
Relations between Russia and the West are at their lowest point since the Cold War, and ties between China and the U.S. are also under serious strain. Moscow suspended its participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with Washington this week. And the U.S. expressed concern that China could provide arms and ammunition to Russia.
Speaking at the start of talks with Wang, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed ties between the two countries and added that the Kremlin expects Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Russia.
The Russian leader, whose own rule over Russia is imperiled by the war, noted escalating international tensions, adding that “in this context, cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on the global arena is particularly important for stabilizing the international situation.”
While Wang said “Chinese-Russian relations aren’t directed against any third countries and certainly can’t be subject to pressure from any third countries,” the specter of the war and how it has galvanized the West and deepened its divide with Russia hung over his meeting with Putin.
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For instance, Wang emphasized that Moscow and Beijing both support “multipolarity and democratization of international relations” — a reference to their shared goal of countering the perceived U.S. dominance in global affairs.
Earlier Wednesday, Wang held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “Our ties have continued to develop dynamically, and despite high turbulence in the global arena, we have shown the readiness to speak in defense of each other’s interests,” Lavrov said.
Wang responded in kind, underlining Beijing’s focus on deepening ties with Russia — a relationship it has said has “no limits.”
China has pointedly refused to criticize the invasion of Ukraine while echoing Moscow’s claim that the U.S. and NATO were to blame for provoking the Kremlin . The government in Beijing also has blasted the sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
Russia, in turn, has staunchly supported China amid tensions with the U.S. over Taiwan.
The two nations have held military drills showcasing their defense ties. China, Russia and South Africa are holding naval drills in the Indian Ocean this week.
A Russian frigate, the Admiral Gorshkov, arrived in Cape Town in recent days sporting the letters Z and V on its sides, letters that mark Russian weapons on the front lines in Ukraine and are used as a patriotic symbol in Russia.
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The rapprochement has worried the West. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said any Chinese involvement in the Kremlin’s war effort would be a “serious problem.”
Asked Wednesday whether NATO has any indication that China might provide arms or other support to Russia’s war, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also told The Associated Press in Warsaw, Poland:
“We have seen some signs that they may be planning for that and of course NATO allies, the United States, have been warning against it because this is something that should not happen. China should not support Russia’s illegal war.”
Stoltenberg said potential Chinese assistance would amount to providing “(direct) support to a blatant violation of international law, and of course (as) a member of the U.N. security council China should not in any way support violation of the U.N. charter, or international law.”
Government-backed scholars in China shrugged off Washington’s warnings over Beijing’s relationship with Moscow as a reflection of what they described as a polarizing and distorted U.S. view.
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The Global Times quoted Zhang Hong, associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying the U.S. and its allies have looked at the Russia-Ukraine conflict through “colored glasses.”
“It seems like anyone who talks with Russia will be seen as siding with Moscow in Russia-Ukraine conflict,” the English-language Chinese newspaper quoted Zhang as saying.
Wang’s talks with Lavrov followed his meeting Tuesday with Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, who called for closer cooperation with Beijing to counter what he described as Western efforts to maintain dominance by thwarting an alliance between China and Russia.
While China recently has emphasized its close ties with Moscow, it also has to tread carefully to avoid an escalation of tensions with the West as it looks to stimulate its economy following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Isolation from the West is not something (Beijing) wants to risk,” Yu Jie, senior research fellow for China in the Asia-Pacific program at Chatham House, a British think tank, said in comments published Wednesday. “President Xi and his colleagues have begun to realize that cooperation with Russia comes with substantial limits to avoid undermining China’s own political priorities and longer-term economic interests.”
Wang’s trip to Moscow took place against a backdrop of grinding battles in Ukraine, with neither side appearing to gain momentum. Ukraine’s presidential office said at least seven civilians were killed between Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
During a speech at a patriotic concert, Putin on Wednesday hailed Russia’s “heroic” troops and claimed Moscow’s forces were fighting for the country’s “historic frontiers” to protect its “interests, people, culture, language and territory.”
“When we stand together, we have no equals,” he shouted to enthusiastic crowds at a Moscow sports arena.
The growing relationship between China and Russia is another example of how the war could spread into perilous new terrain.
Another was Putin’s announcement Tuesday that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START Treaty, raising new concerns about the fate of the arms pact, which was already on life support.
Last fall, Moscow decided to allow the resumption of U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites but refused to hold a scheduled round of consultations under the pact.
The lower house of Russia’s parliament on Wednesday quickly endorsed Putin’s move to suspend the treaty, with officials and lawmakers casting it as an 11th-hour warning to Washington.
Reflecting Beijing’s cautious stance, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the treaty was key to peace and stability and that China hopes “the two sides will properly resolve their differences.”
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Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.
Follow the AP’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
AP · by The Associated Press · February 22, 2023
19. SOF Hyper-Connected and Hyper-Enabled Technology: SOF’s Strength or SOF’s Achilles’ Heel?
An important critique here. I still see too many staffs focused on procurement and development of equipment and things at the expense of education, training, critical thinking, etc. And there is too much outsourcing rather than the development of organic capabilities within organizations. ( We talk the talk on SOF Truth #1 but we do not walk the walk)
I am sure these efforts will result in superb operators for counter terroroism and hyper conventional direct action raids.
But there is not a one size fits all for SOF. Some of this may have applications for Special Forces and Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs forces in unconventional warfare missions and irregular warfare environments but I doubt very much the developers of the hyper enabled systems are thinking about those types of environments and missions.
While we move forward we also need to go back to the future in developing personal and face to face relationships and be able to employ non-technical communications especially as our enemies' capabilities improve.
SOF Hyper-Connected and Hyper-Enabled Technology: SOF’s Strength or SOF’s Achilles’ Heel? — The Kingston Consortium on International Security (KCIS)
SOF’s Strength or SOF’s Achilles’ Heel?
Col (Ret’d) Derek Jones
LTC (Ret’d) Dan Leaf
thekcis.org
Technology has historically provided significant advantages for Special Operations Forces (SOF). The two decades after 9/11 witnessed the emergence of myriad technologies that enabled an unprecedented level of SOF operations against non-state actors, such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Today, as SOF transitions from the war on terrorism to great power competition (GPC) and potential future great power conflict, SOF is turning to technology once again as the main tool for maintaining its competitive advantage over near-peer threats. The primary technology-driven SOF concepts for this “new” competition and conflict space are hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF. These concepts use technology to ensure SOF has the situational awareness to outmaneuver its adversaries both physically and cognitively to achieve what the US Army calls “decision dominance.”
However, this policy paper argues SOF’s desire for technology-driven, hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF is not a panacea. The technologies to enable these two concepts also emit signals and digital signatures which allow near-peer foes to detect and target SOF and disrupt or defeat special operations missions. Thus, like a double-edged sword, the same technology that SOF seeks to use in order to gain a competitive advantage over its near-peer adversaries is also potentially its Achilles’ heel. This policy paper will offer six implications of hyper-connectivity and enablement and provide seven policy recommendations to minimize the risks to SOF of the above threats.
Background
The US military has spent two decades attempting to network the joint force and achieve decision dominance to “develop the situation out of contact, engage the enemy in unexpected ways, maneuver to positions of advantage with speed and agility, and engage enemy forces beyond the range of their weapons systems.” Today, the newest version of this concept in the US is known as joint all-domain command and control (JADC2).
Likewise, SOF leaders envision a similar capability for SOF, placing technology as the key to dominance in the GPC to allow SOF operators and units to “see themselves; see the environment; and see the threat.” The goal is to allow SOF the ability to observe, orient, decide, and act faster than their adversaries.
Central to the vision is the hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF operator with near-perfect, data-driven situational awareness and understanding as one part of the collective whole of similar operators, systems, and sensors. It envisions that the large-scale, interconnected sensor-operator combination will continually collect vast amounts of data from a variety of sensors, and rapidly analyze, compile, and turn the data into actionable intelligence helped by artificial intelligence and machine learning. In turn, SOF will use the finished intelligence to deliver multi-domain dilemmas against the adversary.
The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) director of the hyper-enabled joint acquisition task force describes the technologies needed to achieve this vision including, “Edge computing and analytics…human-machine interfaces…adaptable and flexible sensors;…social network mapping…probabilistic techniques…that can speed and enhance decision-making; intuitive mobile applications that support data aggregation…and enhanced stand-off identification.” This compelling vision equips the practitioner with a panoply of capabilities at the forward edge of operations instead of at HQs and rear areas where such technologies are usually kept. As described, pushing these capabilities down to the “ground level” is attractive while the accompanying increased illumination of tactical elements expected to operate with a low signature is not.
USSOCOM’s hyper-enabled operator is based on “four pillars of technology including communications, computing, data/sensors[,] and human-machine interfaces.” The goal is to ensure SOF operators or units are enabled with the information they need at the so-called “tactical edge.” Conceptually, it is difficult to argue against this hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF vision since it makes sense in a perfect world. However, the hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF concepts do not account for the reality of the threat environment and the capabilities of the near-peer adversaries to detect and target electromagnetic and digital signatures.
To work as advertised, the hyper-enabled operator must have secure, resilient, and sustained connections to the network and the bandwidths to send and receive substantial amounts of data. The scale of this hyper-connected network consisting of equally hyper-enabled operators and SOF units within a theater or globally is immense. The question is not if this hyper-connected network is secure—secure as in the data is secure from being decrypted—but whether it is detectable and targetable due to the immense electronic and digital signatures that such a network must emit. In the zero-sum game of state competition, to expect or assume a large-scale, hyper-connected network consisting of hyper-enabled operators will not emit significant amounts of detectable and targetable signatures is unrealistic.
The points of greatest detectability and vulnerability are where the data intersects with the nodes—the nodes being the hyper-connected and enabled SOF operators and at SOF headquarters at all levels. The detection and then targeting of these nodes by near-peers, especially at scale and across multiple nodes simultaneously, will result in disruption or destruction of the hyper-connected and enabled SOF networks. Given the inherent risks of detection and targetability, it bears remembering that hyper-connectivity and enablement work both ways.
This risk does not go unacknowledged by SOF, but it tends to be assumed away. The USSOCOM Director of Science and Technology admits signatures are the norm in the future, “SOCOM will not be able to operate without an electronic signature….Going forward, operators will need to consider what type of signatures they use and how long they can use it without being detected [authors’ emphasis].” However, how will the operators know if they have been detected, or will the gut-wrenching sound of an inbound precision missile, rocket, or artillery round on their position be the only indicator?
Given the lethality, precision, range, and ubiquity of modern weapons, the risk of underestimating this threat is high. Capabilities touted as “Low probability of intercept” expose the stark limitations of the technologies that SOF is expected to rely upon. Until there are “no-probability-of-detection” technologies, SOF will have significant exposure problems. This situation will get exponentially worse with the continued technological innovations to detect signatures and anomalies by near-peer powers.
Additionally, sensor technology abounds which will contribute to the exposure of SOF operators and operations. In the past, the various intelligence collection capabilities of near-peer adversaries were known and accounted for in mission planning. However, today, there are too many sensors to fully understand the threat. For example, publicly available data can expose SOF operators at home and abroad based on changes in their digital patterns of life.
This trend is especially disconcerting for clandestine SOF operators or operations as SOCOM’s Science and Technology Director rightly notes, “An interconnected world also means less ‘invisibility’ for special operators who are accustomed to conducting clandestine missions.”
SOF must also be careful in employing what seems like sound solutions against unwanted detection and targeting. For example, US SOF’s naked operator concept envisions deploying SOF “overseas with absolutely no electronic signature on them.… [procuring] local indigenous equipment[,] and then [blending] into the information environment, while still communicating back to their higher headquarters without raising a signature.” Although the recognition of the problem is the first step and should be applauded, the solution may be insufficient to protect operators operating in countries where our adversaries are hunting them but may fail to account for the realities of the big data world.
For example, entering a country with no signature is a signature. New signals from locally obtained equipment can be correlated with the arrival of foreigners whose actual identity and digital histories will be betrayed by big data. Smart city technology will quickly lead to the association of a “naked” operator and their devices via facial recognition. Data aggregation will make it difficult to obfuscate communication with higher headquarters. And lastly, if the adversary is tracking known or suspected SOF operators’ digital patterns of life (POL) at home, they will be able to detect changes in their digital POLs when they are abroad.
Historical Vignettes
Modern SOF’s forebearers, the World War II British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also experienced technology’s benefits and risks. Long-range wireless communications were developed to support SOE and OSS efforts to organize, train, equip, and advise resistance elements and transmit critical human-intelligence reporting from occupied territories. This approach was a groundbreaking technological leap over traditional, non-technical clandestine communications means, such as couriers and carrier pigeons.
In response to the wireless, the Germans quickly developed a suite of counter-technologies—including fixed, vehicle, and later man-portable direction-finding capabilities that allowed the Germans to discretely find the exact building and floor of transmission and interdict the operator. Despite efforts by SOE and OSS to adapt faster, the Germans relentlessly adapted their counter-technology and operating procedures to effectively reduce the time needed to find and interdict transmissions.
Jump ahead six decades, and in 1997, an operation in Ansariya, Lebanon by the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) maritime SOF unit, Flotilla 13, provides a catastrophic example of adversary exploitation of intercepted technology-emitted signatures. While executing a nighttime over-the-beach infiltration to conduct a raid, Flotilla 13 was ambushed by Lebanese Hezbollah, who killed 11 IDF SOF. Before the ambush, the IDF used cutting-edge drones to collect intelligence on the target. Underestimating Hezbollah’s capabilities, the IDF repeatedly sent drones over the target not knowing that Hezbollah was able to intercept the unencrypted imagery transmission from the IDF drone and figured out the target of the raid.
After the events of 9/11, the next decade saw a highly technology-driven SOF find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate (F3EAD) targeting process, fueled by insurgent and terrorist electronic and digital signatures. Throughout this period, SOF mastered the employment of counter-technologies at historic levels with agility and precision to relentlessly hunt the technology-emitted signatures of insurgent and terrorist leaders and their followers. However, these low-tech adversaries quickly learned to deny their high-tech Western rivals a decisive victory by negating the West’s technological advantage. Successful groups never allowed the Western coalition to decisively detect and engage their resilient clandestine insurgent and terrorist networks and threaten their overall ambiguity.
While the coalition celebrated the death or capture of high-value targets, the clandestine networks simply replaced their losses, an accepted occupational hazard expected in their line of work, per their succession plans. This fact allowed these groups to protract conflicts and win by not losing in what they view as a multi-generational conflict where the goal is to not be decisively defeated or destroyed.
Further examples abound. In a repeat of the signals compromise that led to the Flotilla 13 ambush, a similar compromise happened more than a decade later when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq reportedly used a $26 off-the-shelf software package to monitor US Predator drone feeds. In the fall of 2011, Lebanese Hezbollah reportedly correlated cellphone data to expose cellphone connections between US intelligence officers and their agents in Lebanon. In 2018, reporting showed that US SOF among others had their operational bases compromised and patterns of life tracked by innocuous electronics, such as Fitbits, smart watches, and smartphone applications. Also in 2018, it was reported that eight years earlier the Chinese government had begun to hunt and eliminate US-recruited agents in China by combining a tip from an espionage target with deep data analysis of aggregated historical data to detect and expose U.S. Government covert communications with their agents in China. China’s use of data, including stolen data, was further reported to have been the source of other exposures of US intelligence officers in Africa and Europe over the last decade as well.
In 2020, cyber-sleuths or so-called “tail watchers” exposed the US SOF hostage rescue operation in Nigeria by identifying known US SOF aircraft departing the continental US and then staging and executing the rescue operations out of Europe. Although they did not know the actual target, they quickly identified unusual activity and posted this information on social media, generating additional attention.
The continued clashes and short war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh from 2020 to 2022 exposed the world to the realities of high-tech war, even for small states. One lesson that should have been learned was the impact of technology, including signals emission detection, and the resultant exposure of forces on the modern battlefield. As Jack Watling noted, “Dependency upon radio in Western operations is a hard habit to kick….Western forces tend to leave a tell-tale map of electronic signatures….For a competent adversary [sic] these signatures offer another potent tool to map Western forces’ movements.”
Cyber-sleuths are also exposing Russian nefarious activities and forces involved in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, both of which provide current examples that foretell the future for SOF in these environments. For example, the data analytics company Bellingcat successfully acquired data to piece together Russian activities, from identifying the team that poisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny to the exposure of Russian undercover operatives who spent years building and living their covers. Additionally, in support of Ukraine’s efforts to defeat the Russian invasion, hacktivists have used honeytraps, the allure of romantic encounters, to trick Russian troops into sharing their locations on social media sites, information later used for targeting.
Lastly, like the way non-state actors used decentralization and mission command to remain resilient during the war against terrorism, the Ukrainian conventional and irregular ground forces are proving once again that asymmetries can be used to defeat more technologically capable foes. The Ukrainians are employing decentralized small units, using hit-and-run tactics and mission command, which can effectively attrit a technologically capable adversary. Stand-off weapons, whether remotely detonated improvised explosive devices or precision-guided munitions, increase the effectiveness and survivability of these small, decentralized forces by ensuring they do not become decisively engaged.
This sampling of historic vignettes begins to shed light on the threat of detectable signals or data of technology-emitted signatures, as well as potential means to counter more technologically capable adversaries. Although these vignettes do not show the impact of hyper-connectedness or hyper-enablement, they show the catastrophic results of even minor signal and data emissions and detection.
Risk of Technology Literature Review
Four recent articles raise similar alarms about the risks of signals and digital signatures and the use of other technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), in the GPC.
The first, Chris Cruden’s 2021 “Manhunting the Manhunters: Digital Signature Management in the Age of Great Power Competition” highlights a general lack of understanding of the impacts of digital signatures by SOF and the need to “secure SOF operations now and in the future.”
The second article by Dr. Peter Roberts and Dr. Sandor Fabian, “More Odysseus, Less Achilles: Developing Special Operations Forces for the Challenges Ahead” addresses some of the inherent risks of focusing on technology instead of on SOF operators, which the authors surmise is likely to lead to nothing more than tactical success based on history.
Third, is Dennis Murphy’s “Sorting Through the Noise: The Evolving Nature of the Fog of War” which highlights the risks to the joint force (equally appliable to SOF) as it adopts AI to process mass data and AI’s “inherent fallibility.” He also notes the need for military commanders and strategists to be comfortable with this reality and its implication.
Lastly, Matthew Moellering’s article focused on SOF and irregular warfare (IW), “Hiding in the Noise: Preparing the Irregular Warfare Community for the Age of AI,” discusses similar issues with both the positives and negatives of AI as applied by SOF and its adversaries and the need for SOF and IW practitioners to adapt to the realities and risks of big data.
These articles, published in the last 16 months are indicative of the increasing awareness of these issues and the need to heed these warnings. The services, led by the US Marine Corps (USMC), are also trying to understand and adapt to the threat of signature and data detection. Since 2016, the USMC has been preparing to fight in degraded or denied command, control, and communications environments. Their clearly articulated goal is to “minimize signatures” in what they call the “battle of signatures” where “’ to be detected is to be targeted is to be killed.’”
Although not as far-reaching as the Marine Corps, the US Army has recently begun to understand the realities of the GPC and the threats of signals and digital technology-emitted signatures, addressing these risks in the recently released October 2022 Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations. It accounts for managing technology-emitted signatures as part of its acceptance of “constant enemy observation” and the resultant need to disperse and remain as mobile as possible. Finally, it stresses the need for leaders at all levels to be able to exercise “disciplined initiative cultivated through mission command,” to over overcome uncertainty, dispersion of forces, and degraded communications.
The Key Takeaways.
The above highlights several trends and unintended outcomes related to overreliance on technology by SOF and the joint force as the means to gain an advantage over their adversaries. While theoretically the technology-driven concepts are well reasoned, technology continues to be a double-edged sword where the very same technology SOF looks to gain an advantage over an adversary can also be SOF’s Achilles’ heel. The adversary gets a vote and will not simply allow SOF and the joint force to gain an advantage without trying to counter it, negate it, or use it for their own advantage.
Based on the above, policymakers should consider the following six implications of SOF’s efforts to achieve hyper-connectedness and hyper-enablement, including:
- Providing near-peer adversaries the signals and digital signatures needed to detect, target, and achieve hyper-disruption or destruction of the SOF network;
- Inadvertently tipping the balance from SOF being the hunter of the war on terrorism to SOF being the hunted in the great power competition or conflict;
- Technology acquisition efforts resulting in greater, not lesser risk to SOF, and potentially higher SOF casualties when competition transitions to conflict against a near-peer adversary;
- Challenging, at scale, the first SOF truth that people are more important than hardware where investment in and overreliance on technology overshadows efforts to recruit, assess, select, train, and retain the best SOF operators;
- Raising the question of the viability of SOF’s historical roles, missions, capabilities, and reliance on technology in the great power competition and conflict continuum; and
- Demonstrating that more technology is not always the answer—dispersed and decentralized small units using mission command to mitigate and deny targetable signatures may be more practical in future near-peer fights.
Policy Recommendations.
Based on the above implications, seven policy recommendations emerge if hyper-connected and hyper-enabled technology proves to be SOF’s Achilles’ heel:
- Review hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF concepts and other technology-driven SOF concepts and capabilities to determine their applicability and risk to mission and risk to force in a great power competition or conflict.
- Clearly define SOF’s great power competition and conflict roles, missions, and the technologies required to identify and articulate the related risks to force and risk to mission.
- Prepare SOF leaders and operators to be comfortable with operating without connectivity and tech-enabled situational awareness at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, and to be able to seamlessly transition from digital to analog at the speed of war.
- Take a page from the playbooks from clandestinely networked insurgent and terrorist adversaries and the Ukrainian conventional and irregular ground forces resisting the Russian invasion which have effectively avoided decisive action by disaggregating and dispersing their forces, used decentralizing command and control, to:
- Refocus on the first SOF truth—people are more important than hardware—and invest in SOF leader and operator training, education, and professional development to prepare and empower this and future generations of SOF to operate and thrive in a near-peer, high-threat, high-tempo, and disconnected environments of great power competitions and conflicts.
- Fully accept mission command principles and practices which will require a complete cultural shift across the entire SOF chain of command from today’s risk-averse and micromanagement culture.
- Exercise decentralized and dispersed operations using SOF maturity, expertise, competence, cultural awareness, and ability to operate in austere and denied areas.
- Establish unbiased and continual red teaming to the SOF acquisition process and employment of SOF technology to assess the integrity, strength, and signatures of the technology throughout its life cycle.
- Train SOF leaders and operators to understand and employ continuous signature assessments, management, and reduction at all levels to deny exploitable signatures to the adversary.
- Consider similar policies for the joint force which will face similar risks but at a much large scale than SOF when developing and employing similar hyper-networked and hyper-enabled joint force concepts.
Conclusion.
The goal of this policy paper was to challenge the traditional premise that technology is the answer to SOF’s great power competition or conflict challenges. While the concepts challenged in this paper would be ideal in the perfect world, warfare is far from perfect or controllable, and thus the fog and friction of war, and near-peer adversaries with equal or greater technological abilities drastically increase the risk due to overconfidence in technological solutions.
Historically, while technology has offered many advantages to SOF and the joint force, adversaries have found its weaknesses, such as signal emissions, to turn the technology against its user. The technology-related risks increase with the threat’s continued mastery of big data using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing which could correlate complex data streams even more rapidly in the future. Given these trends, it is difficult to see how SOF is going to hide in the digital and physical space without adapting current concepts to the realities of the threat environment.
This policy paper outlines six implications of SOF hyper-connectivity and enablement and seven policy recommendations to minimize the risks to SOF of the above threats. This paper, as well as the others mentioned above, should drive renewed interest in understanding the inherent risks related to hyper-connected and hyper-enabled SOF, and finding viable solutions to reduce the risks to SOF and SOF missions. If SOF finds its reliance on technology has surpassed its ability to operate without it to reduce signatures to a manageable level, then SOF will be relegated to non-near peer operations rather than against near-peers in great power competition and conflict.
Colonel (Retired) Derek Jones is the Vice President of Valens Global and a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer who served for 26 years in numerous special operations assignments including 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, U.S. Special Operations Command Central, and the interagency. He holds master’s degrees from the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S Army Command and General Staff College, and the American Military University.
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Dan Leaf is a visiting Fellow of Vision Foresight, LLC, and served over 25 years as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer in command and staff positions in 20th, 7th, and 3rd Special Forces Groups (Airborne), the Joint Special Operations Command, an Army Special Mission Unit, and the interagency. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech.
End Notes:
Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 3-0 Operations, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2022), https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN36290-FM_3-0-000-WEB-2.pdf, accessed October 4, 2022, 3-13.
Donald Schenk, Daniel Bourgoine, and Brian Smith, “Unit of Action and Future Combat Systems – An Overview,” Army AL&T Magazine, January to February 2004, https://asc.army.mil/docs/pubs/alt/2004/1_JanFeb/articles/03_Unit_of_Action_and_FCS_200401.pdf, accessed August 10, 2022, 4-5.
Meredith Roatan, “Special Ops Software Office Takes on Pentagon Bureaucracy,” National Defense Magazine, May 2022, https://digital.nationaldefensemagazine.org/publication/?m=46185&i=745186&p=24&ver=html5, accessed August 8, 2022, 37.
Andrew White, "Special Forces Keep ‘Eyes On’ New Technology,” ARMADA International, May 8, 2020, https://www.armadainternational.com/2020/05/special-forces-keep-eyes-on-new-technology/, accessed August 8, 2022.
Ibid.
Stavros Atlamazoglou, “Why American Special Forces are on the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence Technology,” The National Interest, December 25, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-american-special-forces-are-cutting-edge-artificial-intelligence-technology-198503, accessed August 8, 2022.
Yasmin Tadjdeh, “SOCOM Warrior: ‘Hyper-Enabled Operator’ Concept Inches Closer to Reality,” Special Report: Special Operations Tech Review, National Defense Magazine, 2020, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/-/media/sites/magazine/ebook/specialops_ebook.ashx, accessed August 8, 2022, 18-19.
Ibid, 16.
Ibid.
Leonardo DRS, “Special Forces SATCOM for the Most Dangerous Missions in the World,” SITREP: Review of DoD Technology Advancements, Q2 2020, https://www.leonardodrs.com/sitrep/q2-2020-evolving-technology-keeping-sof-at-the-cutting-edge/special-forces-satcom-for-the-most-dangerous-missions-in-the-world/, accessed August 8, 2022.
Connie Lee, “The Quest for the ‘Cyber-Secure’ Hyper-Enabled Operators,” Special Report: Special Operations Outlook, National Defense Magazine, 2020, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/-/media/sites/magazine/ebook/sofic_ebook_layout_2020.ashx, accessed August 8, 2022, 16.
Stew Magnuson, “Special Ops Tech Pulled in Different Directions,” National Defense, June 28, 2022, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/6/28/special-ops-tech-pulled-in-different-directions, accessed August 8, 2022.
Kimberly Underwood, “Special Forces Command Seeks Key Data Aggregation, Cyber Tools,” SIGNAL, February 17, 2021, https://www.afcea.org/content/special-forces-command-seeks-key-data-aggregation-cyber-tools [Accessed September 11, 2022]
M.R.D. Foot, SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940-46, (University Publications of America, Inc., 1986), 107-108.
Yaakov Katz, “IDF encrypting drones after Hizballah accessed footage,” The Jerusalem Post, October 27, 2010,
https://www.jpost.com/Israel/IDF-encrypting-drones-after-Hizbullah-accessed-footage, accessed October 5, 2022; and Siobhan Gorman, Yochi J. Dreazen, and August Cole, “Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones: $26 Software is Used to Breach Key Weapon In Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected,” The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB126102247889095011, accessed October 3, 2022.
Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir, (New York: Penguin Group, 2013), 152-153.
Derek Jones, A Military Theory for Destroying Clandestine Insurgent and Terrorist Organizations, (Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States Army War College, 2017), https://vdocuments.site/a-military-theory-for-destroying-clandestine-insurgent-and-terrorist-organizations.html?page=1, accessed October 3, 2022, 11-15.
Derek Jones, Understanding the Form, Function, and Logic of Clandestine Insurgent and Terrorist Networks: The First Step in Effective Counternetwork Operations. JSOU Report 12-3, (MacDill Air Force Base: The JSOU Press, 2012), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA572767.pdf, accessed on September 17, 2022, 71-72.
Greg Miller, “Hezbollah damages CIA spy network in Lebanon,” The Washington Post, November 21, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hezbollah-damages-cia-spy-network-in-lebanon/2011/11/21/gIQA5uCEjN_story.html, accessed August 8, 2022.
Liz Sly, “U.S. soldiers are revealing sensitive and dangerous information by jogging,” The Washington Post, January 29, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-map-showing-the-users-of-fitness-devices-lets-the-world-see-where-us-soldiers-are-and-what-they-are-doing/2018/01/28/86915662-0441-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e_story.html, accessed August 8, 2022.
Zach Dorfman, “Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents,” Foreign Policy, August 15, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/, accessed August 9, 2022.
Zach Dorfman, “China Used Stolen Data to Expose CIA Operatives in Africa and Europe,” Foreign Policy, December 21, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/china-stolen-us-data-exposed-cia-operatives-spy-networks/, accessed August 9, 2022.
Chris Cruden, “Manhunting the Manhunters: Digital Signature Management in the Age Of Great Power Competition,” Modern War Institute, May 3, 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/manhunting-the-manhunters-digital-signature-management-in-the-age-of-great-power-competition/, accessed August 8, 2022; Tom Demerly, “’SEAL Team Six’ Makes Dramatic Predawn Hostage Rescue of American in Nigeria,” The Aviationist Blog, October 31, 2020, https://theaviationist.com/2020/10/31/seal-team-six-makes-dramatic-predawn-hostage-rescue-of-american-in-nigeria/, accessed August 8, 2022; and David Cenciotti, “Dissecting the U.S. Hostage Rescue Operations In Nigeria: Here Are All The Assets That Took Part In The Raid,” The Aviationist Blog, November 9, 2020, https://theaviationist.com/2020/11/09/dissecting-u-s-hostage-rescue-operation-in-nigeria-here-are-all-the-assets-that-took-part-in-the-raid/, accessed August 8, 2022.
Jack Watling, “The Key to Armenia’s Tank Losses: The Sensors, Not the Shooters,” RUSI, October 6, 2020, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/key-armenias-tank-losses-sensors-not-shooters, accessed November 2, 2022.
Aurelie Carabin, “How Bellingcat Became Russia’s ‘Biggest Nightmare,’” International Business Times, September 7, 2022, https://www.ibtimes.com/how-bellingcat-became-russias-biggest-nightmare-3610435, accessed September 8, 2022; Bellingcat Investigation Team, “An Officer and a Diplomat: The Strange Case Of the GRU Spy With A Red Notice,” Bellingcat.com, February 25, 2020, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/02/25/an-officer-and-a-diplomat-the-strange-case-of-the-gru-spy-with-a-red-notice/, access August 8, 2020; Bellingcat Investigation Team, “The Brazilian Candidate: The Studios Cover Identity of an Alleged Russian Spy,” Bellingcat.com, June 16, 2022, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2022/06/16/the-brazilian-candidate-the-studious-cover-identity-of-an-alleged-russian-spy/, accessed August 9, 2022; and Christo Grosev, “Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy: How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy,” Bellingcat.com, 25 August 2022, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-jeweller-spy-how-a-gru-agent-charmed-her-way-into-nato-circles-in-italy/, accessed August 26, 2022.
Giulia Carbonaro, “Hackers Honeytrap Russian Troops Into Sharing Location, Based Bombed: Report,” Newsweek, September 6, 2022, https://www.newsweek.com/hackers-honeytrap-russian-troops-sharing-location-base-bombed-report-1740070, accessed September 9, 2022.
Cruden, “Manhunting the Manhunters.”
Peter Roberts and Sandor Fabian, More Odysseus, “Less Achilles: Developing Special Operations Forces for the Challenges Ahead,” Modern War Institute, West Point, January 13, 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/more-odysseus-less-achilles-developing-special-operations-forces-for-the-challenges-ahead/, accessed August 8, 2022.
Dennis Murphy, Sorting Through the Noise: The Evolving Nature of the Fog of War,” The Strategy Bridge, September 10, 2022, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2022/9/10/sorting-through-the-noise-the-evolving-nature-of-the-fog-of-war, accessed September 11, 2022.
Ibid.
Headquarters United States Marine Corps, The Marine Corps Operating Concept: How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century, Department of the Navy, September 2016, https://www.mcwl.marines.mil/Portals/34/Images/MarineCorpsOperatingConceptSept2016.pdf, accessed August 8, 2022, 6.
Ibid, 14; and Headquarters United States Marine Corps, Force Design 2030, Department of the Navy, March 2020, https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC38%20Force%20Design%202030%20Report%20Phase%20I%20and%20II.pdf?ver=2020-03-26-121328-460, accessed August 8, 2022, 13.
Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 3-0 Operations, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2022), https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN36290-FM_3-0-000-WEB-2.pdf, accessed October 4, 2022, 3-2, 3-11, and 3-12.
United States Special Operations Command, SOF Truths, USSOCOM Webpage, https://www.socom.mil/about/sof-truths, accessed on November 3, 2022.
thekcis.org
20. Twelve Months of War in Ukraine Have Revealed Four Fundamental Lessons on Urban Warfare
The four:
1. In war, cities are important—even the ones with no military value.
2. The foundational task of urban warfare is not clearing.
3. In cities, armies must be able to defend and attack—and switch between the two rapidly.
4. An army that cannot execute combined arms maneuver will suffer.
Twelve Months of War in Ukraine Have Revealed Four Fundamental Lessons on Urban Warfare - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by John Spencer, Liam Collins · February 23, 2023
This week marks one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kicked off a war that has offered up a wide range of lessons on the conduct of large-scale combat operations in the twenty-first century. In those twelve months, the war has touched all corners of Ukraine and yet its most defining features have been fights for control of cities. But while urban areas may be the war’s most important environment, at least to this point, no two urban battles have been the same. The battles in Kyiv, Mariupol, and Kherson, and the ongoing battle in Bakhmut have taken very different forms. This fact offers a valuable opportunity: by searching for elements common to each of these battles, despite the different contexts in which they occurred, we can illuminate fundamental lessons on urban warfare.
Four particular lessons stand out. Most of them are not new. Rather, they have been on display in previous wars, but too often ignored or forgotten. This is a mistake we should not make again. The US military must learn from the current war in Ukraine to avoid paying the penalty, in blood and treasure, when it finds itself in its own urban battles in the future.
1. In war, cities are important—even the ones with no military value.
Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrates that cities often present strategic, operational, and tactical objectives in major land wars. Since the start of this war, urban areas have been the focal points—the places where much of the most intense fighting has occurred. When asked to identify one of the war’s major battles, most observers are likely to name one of the urban fights listed above—Kyiv, Mariupol, or Kherson. Others who have watched the conflict especially closely may even name Severodonetsk or Lysychansk, which Russia seized earlier in the war. In fact, most would be hard-pressed to name a major battle that did not occur in, or for, a city. Neither side has been able to avoid or bypass urban areas because they are tactically, operationally, and sometimes strategically important.
Kyiv, for example, is the most strategically important terrain in the country. As the capital city, it houses Ukraine’s national government, giving it obvious political significance. Ukraine successfully defended its capital in the opening month of the war and achieved its vital goal: survival of the nation and its government. Russia, by contrast, failed to achieve its strategic goal: the rapid overthrow the Ukrainian government and the installation of a Russian proxy in its place.
Kherson is an operationally important city (and arguably a strategically significant one, as well). It is a critical Black Sea port and a gateway to Crimea. Controlling this provincial capital means controlling Ukraine’s south. Russia seized the city in the opening days of the war but was forced to withdraw in October. By liberating Kherson city, Ukraine prevented Russia from achieving its stated strategic objective of annexing the entire Kherson region as Russian territory.
Yet not all cities are strategically or operationally significant; many, in fact, do not even offer much tactical value from a strictly military perspective. Cities such as Severodonetsk, which Russia seized in June, and Bakhmut, where the fighting continues today, represent little military value on their own. Controlling them does not offer either side a marked military advantage. Yet the fighting for both was—and in the case of Bakhmut, remains—extremely intense.
Why are the militaries of each nation fighting so hard for seemingly insignificant terrain? It is because they are symbolically important, and their control consequently has political value. Ukraine does not want a city of seventy thousand (Bakhmut) or one hundred thousand (Severodonetsk) to fall into Russian hands. Likewise, Russia wants to seize these cities to demonstrate progress in a war that has not gone well. Seizing thousands of rural square miles in the Zaporizhzhia region simply does not have the same political effect. Because war is inherently political, these seemingly insignificant pieces of terrain become tactically and operationally important and yet another reason why fighting in urban areas cannot be avoided.
2. The foundational task of urban warfare is not clearing.
The many urban battles of Ukraine consistently show that the foundational task of high-intensity warfare against a peer enemy in dense urban terrain is not clearing—not clearing rooms, not clearing buildings, and not clearing cities. While very limited methodical clearing operations have been observed, conducting them has not been the dominant requirement for either side.
The more crucial tasks in these battles were placing either the defender or attacker at a disadvantage through fire and maneuver: finding, fixing, and destroying a hidden or embedded enemy; holding or seizing key urban terrain features such as strongpoints, bridge and river crossing, streets, and high ground; or, as was the case for Ukrainian forces in Kherson, placing the adversary in such an untenable position that they were forced to flee the city without even attempting to defend it.
During the Battle of Kyiv, Ukrainian defenders, both military and civilian, emplaced barriers, flooded rivers, and employed other techniques to canalize mounted Russian formations into narrow, dense urban avenues of approach where they were ambushed and defeated in detail. In the battles of Severodonetsk and Kherson, whichever side controlled or influenced the river crossings—something present in most major cities—had the advantage by cutting off one side of the river from resupply or reinforcements.
The vital task of modern urban warfare is the ability to combine arms—fires (rocket, artillery, and mortars), armor, infantry, engineers, aerial strike and reconnaissance platforms, as well as cyber, space, and other capabilities—at a precise time and location to achieve key tasks like identifying and destroying enemy personnel or their critical capabilities to hold or attack urban terrain. A military force, like Russia, that attempts to deploy individual arms independently and without mutual support—first artillery, then armor, followed by infantry, for instance—will continue to pay extremely high costs in casualties and will fail to achieve its military mission in urban terrain.
3. In cities, armies must be able to defend and attack—and switch between the two rapidly.
As this war has shown, cities cannot be bypassed. As such, one side must defend and the other attack. But wars and battles are fluid, so militaries must be capable of doing both and of moving between offense and defense seamlessly and quickly. In the opening days of the war, the Ukrainians were largely defending and the Russians attacking. But even on the war’s very first day, Ukraine conducted at least one counterattack against which the Russians defended poorly: the battle of Hostomel Airport. It is but one example that demonstrates how militaries must be capable of not just defending and attacking in urban terrain, but also switching between the two more quickly than the adversary.
In the opening hours of the war, Russia sent at least thirty helicopters carrying up to three hundred Russian airborne soldiers to seize the airport, located on the outskirts of Kyiv, and establish an airbridge to support the assault on the capital. Within hours, the Russian forces’ attack had secured the airport—but they failed to defend it. That evening, a force consisting of Ukraine’s 4th Rapid Reaction Brigade and other units counterattacked and seized the airfield because the Russian airborne troops had failed to establish an effective defense and lacked the capabilities necessary to hold it. Ukrainian forces recognized that they were in an untenable position and withdrew that same night, but the damage they sought to inflict had been done. They had cratered the runway, thwarting Russia’s plan to use it as a key bridge to rapidly bring in the forces needed to take the city.
In September, Ukrainian forces liberated the towns of Izyum and Kupiansk, both of which had been captured during the war’s first two months. These urban areas were key to Russian forces in the region because they were both vital logistical hubs, as urban areas often are because they sit along transportation and rail lines that military forces need to resupply forward troops and project power. Russia had fought a bitter battle to seize Izyum, and like the Hostomel Airport, failed to defend it.
At the battle of Mariupol, just a few thousand Ukrainian defenders held the city, which had a prewar population of five hundred thousand, for over eighty days against a Russian force five to eight times larger. The Ukrainians varied their defenses and how they used the complex, dense urban terrain to hold off the larger force. They leveraged the city’s heavy-clad, industrial buildings and its subterranean network very effectively. The tactical battle for Mariupol had important operational impacts: by holding out as long as they did, Ukrainian defenders prevented up to forty thousand Russian forces from fighting on other fronts where they may have shifted the tide of the war.
4. An army that cannot execute combined arms maneuver will suffer.
This war is being fought by two very different militaries using very different strategies. After committing itself to a massive reform in 2016, Ukraine’s military entered the war very different from the one Russia and Russian-led separatists had faced in 2014–15. Ukraine’s military had the doctrine, leadership, training, culture, and morale necessary to effectively employ combined arms maneuver at scale. While combined arms maneuver is important for any environment, it is especially important in cities.
Urban warfare is the ultimate test of combined arms maneuver. The side that can better integrate fires, armor, infantry, engineers, and intelligence has an advantage. The history of urban warfare consistently proves this to be a fundamental reality. Over twelve months of war, Ukrainian forces have simply been better at conducting combined arms maneuver than their Russian counterparts.
Russia’s military, by contrast, underwent its own reforms over the past decade, but has proven itself to be poorly led, poorly trained, poorly motivated, even lacking adequate arms like infantry in its base formations. Unsurprisingly, as a result, Russian forces have often proven themselves incapable of executing complex maneuvers on the battlefield. Lacking the ability to effectively employ combined arms maneuver, Russia’s primary method to attack cities is to leverage its one advantage: mass.
In Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Bakhmut, and other cities, Russia’s approach has been a crude one: conduct large artillery barrages and throw thousands of soldiers into the city to dislodge a much smaller Ukrainian force. At times, this has been effective—but even these successes have come at a great cost, forcing Russia to tie up manpower, accept large numbers of casualties, and expend huge numbers of munitions for only incremental territorial gains of seemingly little military value. Given the sheer size of Russia’s military, it is safe to say that if Russia was employing effective combined arms maneuver in Ukraine’s cities, it would be having much greater success.
Ukraine is a vast country of almost a quarter of a million square miles. And yet it is the small percentage of Ukrainian territory covered by cities that has disproportionately characterized the conduct of the war over the past year. For those searching for lessons on the future of warfare, this fact is telling. The lessons offered up by the past twelve months of the war in Ukraine must be identified, and they must inform the ways the US military conceives of, plans and prepares for, and conducts urban warfare.
John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector ofMWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. In June 2022, he and Liam Collins traveled independently to Ukraine to research the defense of Kyiv. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.
Liam Collins, PhD was the founding director of the Modern War Institute at West Point and served as a defense advisor to Ukraine from 2016 to 2018. He is a retired Special Forces colonel with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Horn of Africa, and South America. He is coauthor of the book Understanding Urban Warfare.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
mwi.usma.edu · by John Spencer, Liam Collins · February 23, 2023
21. Special Operations Forces Require Greater Proficiency in Artificial Intelligence
Conclusion:
While this article focuses on the special operations community, this recommendation should not be considered a special operations-exclusive endeavor. Other units should also explore ways to generate more advanced AI proficiency, down to the lowest level possible, to increase the resiliency of the force as AI becomes an integral part of a warfighter’s kit. Attracting technical talent to the Department of Defense remains an important priority, but the reality in the near term is that the military is unlikely to fill tactical-level teams with these experts. Hence, the military should look to its existing talent pool to augment this expertise. Ultimately, understanding one’s own tools and equipment is the responsibility of the individual warfighter.
Special Operations Forces Require Greater Proficiency in Artificial Intelligence - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Kelley Jhong · February 23, 2023
I tried to be an AI whiz,
But tech knowledge I did lack;
So all day long I sat and cried
As I stared at the AI stack.
A one-sentence prompt is all it took for an artificial intelligence model, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, to craft a poem about my struggle to understand AI. Recent advances in AI have generated intrigue about its potential impact across a wide range of applications. More notably, the technology is increasingly accessible, which is exciting for non-technical people like me. Since its release in November 2022, ChatGPT — a specialized version of the bot that created the above stanza — has become an internet sensation. Anyone can use AI to summarize, translate, and generate human-like texts or write code in various programming languages. Because of this ease, technical knowledge seems less necessary for general users of AI.
This assumption carries over to the military, where operations are increasingly rife with AI. Warfighters are seen as general users without technical knowledge, while technical experts are tasked with managing and evaluating the technology. However, with AI increasingly pervasive in military operations, the Department of Defense will not be able to rely solely on these experts to understand AI systems. AI is intimidating, but non-technical professionals should still strive for a more intricate understanding of the technology. Warfighters, particularly those within special operations, should acquire greater in-depth knowledge of AI to effectively and responsibly use military technologies that will increasingly fuse with decision-making processes.
Many have written about the need for general AI education within the military, but this article takes this argument a step further and asserts that AI education is particularly important for special operations forces, who serve as incubators of new ideas, products, and processes. Special operations forces are not only positioned to be at the cutting edge of testing and evaluating AI, but they will be among the first to deploy these technologies in the operational environment. Therefore, the special operations community should advance greater AI competency at the tactical level.
Beyond One AI Archetype
Now is the time to seriously consider the inclusion of AI education across the special operations enterprise as the command conducts a review of professional military education opportunities as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. The importance of “cultivating Special Operations Force technical skills” was already identified in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which states that “certain niche technical skills,” including machine learning and artificial intelligence, “are essential to the conduct of irregular warfare.” The act further calls for the Department of Defense to assess “efforts to grow the training infrastructure for their STEM [and especially AI] workforce.”
To this end, the 2020 Department of Defense AI Education Strategy serves as an important reference to identify appropriate AI education requirements within special operations forces. The AI Education Strategy outlines six archetypes within the Department of Defense workforce to tailor education and training requirements based on their AI-related role: Lead AI, Drive AI, Create AI, Embed AI, Facilitate AI, and Employ AI. For the majority of these archetypes, the roles are relatively straightforward. The Lead AI archetype is composed of senior leaders who determine the policies and doctrine necessary for responsible AI deployment. The Drive AI archetype consists of the acquisition, capability, and product managers who ensure the delivery of appropriate AI capabilities. The Create AI archetype includes AI engineers and data scientists who build the AI tool. Finally, the Employ AI archetype comprises end-users of the technology, representing most of the Department of Defense workforce.
The Embed and Facilitate AI archetypes are a bit more nuanced. These two archetypes lie between the Employ AI archetype (end-users) and the Create AI archetype (AI developers). The Embed AI archetype “deploys, maintains, adapts, and collects data for AI/ML systems at the tactical edge.” They “support use case development” and “solve AI application issues down-range to maintain functionality.” Those within the Facilitate AI archetype represent the end user’s needs and work with AI developers to refine requirements. While the Department of Defense AI Education Strategy lists technicians, product owners, user experience designers, and other technical experts as individuals who would fall within the Embed and Facilitate AI archetypes, these roles do not directly translate into the current military workforce. In other words, it is not always clear who can or should bridge the gap between AI developers and general users.
Nonetheless, what is clear is that special operations forces require skills, education, and knowledge beyond those of a general user within the Employ AI archetype. With greater access to rapid prototyping and testing, these warfighters often interact directly with product developers to iterate upon the design, functionality, and usability of new tools and equipment. They also often operate at the tactical edge in semi- to non-permissive environments and, thus, require the ability to troubleshoot their equipment unassisted. In these situations, the operator will require the skills that pertain to the Embed and Facilitate AI archetypes. They will need to understand data streams, troubleshoot machine learning models, and communicate end users’ needs to technical experts supporting them from the rear.
Further, as the special operations community continues to experiment, test, and acquire a growing number of AI-enabled systems, more individuals will be involved in AI projects. These projects are more fluid and iterative than traditional project lifecycles. As AI permeates more aspects of special operations, operators may be called upon to assist with project planning, including defining the problem and determining the most appropriate AI approaches. Additionally, they may be involved in testing and evaluating an AI system, which will require more in-depth knowledge than a typical user. Therefore, special operations teams should understand AI project management, data management, and performance metrics.
An understanding of AI and its metrics does require a foundation in math and statistics. Concepts such as true/false positives and negatives, confidence intervals, and error metrics should be familiar friends. Special operations users need to be able to assess whether the data being fed into the AI system is relevant, current, and representative of the actual operational environment. When AI developers discuss the performance and maintenance of the system, special operations personnel should be knowledgeable enough to work with the developer to fix unaddressed concerns. This competency will help the rapid and efficient development and improvement of AI systems and tools for the military.
Of course, the responsibility for making AI performance metrics comprehensible for users is not the sole responsibility of special operations personnel. AI developers have an obligation to make the technology as transparent and explainable as possible. AI systems should be able to provide context or accompanying reasons for their outputs. However, despite the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency’s efforts to put forward new explanation techniques, determining how much to explain to a user remains an intractable challenge. Moreover, how best to display the results of an AI system will likely vary by use case and intended users. Therefore, close collaboration between AI developers and special operations forces is necessary to ensure that AI technologies are being used as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Although soldiers may be able to drive tanks or fire artillery without any mechanical expertise, special operations forces will require sufficient technical knowledge when using AI-enabled systems because the technology offers a fundamentally unique capability. Special consideration is required given the significant impact that AI can have on human decision-making and the way wars are carried out. With AI becoming increasingly complex and ubiquitous, users will find that examining only the output or, more simply, whether the tool works is an inadequate evaluation of the AI system.
AI technology cannot be evaluated based simply on whether it seems to work. Ascertaining whether AI is “working” can be very difficult, especially when dealing with massive amounts of data at machine speed. While an AI-enabled tool may be able to generate a visually stimulating briefing product that depicts narrative trends and sentiment analysis, its analysis might be useless or, worse, inaccurate. Underlying data and decision thresholds shape these assessments. Further, model drift — degradation in performance due to changes in the environment — and adversarial manipulation can further complicate the use of AI. Algorithms can be brittle. Data can get stale. Adversarial attacks may poison data and cause imperceptible but consequential changes to an AI model. These challenges are yet another reason why the effective use and maintenance of AI systems call for an understanding of data and model performance.
AI performance metrics, of course, can get rather complicated. Complex AI systems involving multiple models or foundation models can introduce new challenges in evaluating performance. Further research is needed to determine appropriate methods of communicating to users how to operate these more complex systems. No matter how “indistinguishable from magic” the AI may seem, operators should never blindly trust the system’s performance. Even with “simpler” metrics, users may not understand the full context of what the metric is assessing. Nonetheless, an understanding of these performance metrics is critical for operators because they provide some level of standardization and objective measure to determine the value and status of an AI tool. While higher quantitative metrics do not necessarily mean that a tool is better, low performance scores do hint at a diminished value.
Formalizing Required AI Skills Within Special Operations Teams
Admittedly, ensuring that every single operator has the necessary level of AI knowledge to supplement technical expertise will be difficult. At the very least, the military should ensure that each special operations team has at least one individual with more advanced AI knowledge who can, at a minimum, fulfill the tasks of a Facilitate AI archetype and take on some of the responsibilities of an Embed AI archetype. These operators do not need to be full-scale programmers. Rather, they should be “maintainers” of the technology to ensure the continued functionality of the AI system downrange. This skill set will become increasingly necessary for special operations forces as they use more advanced AI-enabled systems requiring human-machine teaming in deployed environments.
These AI-focused team members should be able to identify key areas of concern when using and evaluating emerging AI tools and provide informed feedback to AI developers to facilitate continual improvement. Individuals with more advanced AI knowledge can act as a bridge between technical experts, often embedded in headquarters, and other members of their special operations team at the edge. Even as the military pushes for greater integration of data scientists at lower levels to provide direct assistance, there will be a steep learning curve for all parties as they try to understand their respective roles. Having someone in the operational team who understands the language of data, algorithms, and models will be critical to working with data scientists.
The inevitable challenge is finding the time, personnel, and resources to educate and train warfighters toward this higher level of AI competency. In addition to a lengthy qualification pipeline, special operations forces have to complete a laundry list of training mandated by the Department of Defense, their service component, and occupational specialty. Adding another training requirement may lead to frustration within the community. Nonetheless, leaders should view AI training and education as a priority because it will be an intrinsic part of warfare. Advantage on the battlefield is not generated solely by technology but also by the ability of warfighters to use this technology. If special operations forces want to fully employ AI applications in the military and drive their evolution, a deeper understanding of the technology is needed.
While there is a push for increased AI training and education across the Department of Defense, this initiative has yet to be implemented fully at the tactical level. Currently, individuals with an interest in AI can take the initiative to educate themselves on the technology, but broader access to AI educational opportunities remains limited. Rather than relying on ad hoc initiatives, special operations forces should create an additional skill identifier or certification requirement for those selected to work more intimately with the technology. Formalizing and expanding technical understanding at the unit-of-action level is critical to maintaining an advantage in future warfare.
As the Department of Defense AI Education Strategy outlines, AI training and education can be a combination of asynchronous and synchronous learning. Therefore, building advanced AI skills does not necessarily mean lengthening the special operations qualification pipeline. Instead, select personnel would undergo self-paced AI courses supplemented with boot camps and workshops. The key is to define a position at the team level that requires advanced AI skills, which would then allow selected individuals to pursue AI education, rather than requiring the competency across the board.
Some may argue that rather than establishing AI knowledge as a core competency within the special operations forces, AI skills should come from “enablers” who directly support these teams. This argument is valid, and special operations should continue to attract technically savvy personnel into its organization. Reliance on enablers, however, does not address two enduring issues. First, teams do not always deploy with their enablers to the theater of operation and special operations teams may find themselves separated from their AI enabler. While AI experts could potentially troubleshoot issues from afar, access and connectivity to forward-deployed teams are not guaranteed. In these situations, a member of the special operations team should be able to assess and mitigate any issues with the AI systems they are using.
The second issue is that demand for AI talent is widespread across both the Department of Defense and other industries. U.S. Army Special Operations is exploring changes in force structure and a new warrant officer career field to add technology-oriented roles and enable tactical-level “tech integration,” but there are simply not enough technical experts to fill these enabler roles for all tactical teams. Furthermore, institutional constraints such as limitations on personnel can hinder efforts to hire and train AI enablers. The integration of advanced AI technologies into military operations will likely occur faster than the special operations force’s ability to grow a new cadre of AI experts. While AI becomes a part of nearly all defense applications, the military will likely retain AI expertise at higher levels rather than at the company, detachment, or team level due to AI talent shortages in the foreseeable future. Given this plausible scenario, special operations forces should invest in training and educating its existing workforce to address this gap in AI knowledge.
The military has access to more talent than it may realize. Although it would be ideal for an individual with a formal science, technology, engineering, or math background to take on more advanced AI knowledge, a lack of a technical degree should not be a disqualification. With the right level of guidance, training, and exposure to technology, individuals without a technical degree can gain enough knowledge to identify and troubleshoot issues of a particular AI application. A trained operator should supplement, not supplant, a technical expert, particularly when access to expertise is not readily available. Hiring only those with technical backgrounds to fulfill these roles would limit special operations forces’ ability to generate AI skills at the team level, which is a growing necessity as AI becomes an indispensable part of how teams plan and conduct operations.
Conclusion
The excitement over AI is palpable. From the “hyper-enabled operator” working at the tactical edge to the analyst assessing social dynamics and trends within the operational environment, AI is touted as a transformative technology that will impact every facet of warfare. Yet, broad adoption of the technology is still in its embryonic stages. If special operations wants to be adequately poised for an AI-driven future, it should recognize the need to build a cohort of operators who are able to identify and diagnose the more complex issues posed by AI.
While this article focuses on the special operations community, this recommendation should not be considered a special operations-exclusive endeavor. Other units should also explore ways to generate more advanced AI proficiency, down to the lowest level possible, to increase the resiliency of the force as AI becomes an integral part of a warfighter’s kit. Attracting technical talent to the Department of Defense remains an important priority, but the reality in the near term is that the military is unlikely to fill tactical-level teams with these experts. Hence, the military should look to its existing talent pool to augment this expertise. Ultimately, understanding one’s own tools and equipment is the responsibility of the individual warfighter.
Kelley Jhong is a U.S. Army Psychological Operations officer with operational experience in the Indo-Pacific region. A recent graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School, she researched how special operations forces should evaluate AI for operations in the information environment.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of Defense, or any other entity within the U.S. government.
Image: Alexander Gago
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Kelley Jhong · February 23, 2023
22. Taiwan frustrated by weapons delays, key lawmaker finds in stealth visit
Stealth visit.
Taiwan frustrated by weapons delays, key lawmaker finds in stealth visit
Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the new House select committee on China, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a ‘wake-up call’ for Taipei
By Ellen Nakashima
February 22, 2023 at 8:00 a.m. EST
The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · February 22, 2023
The war in Ukraine has impressed on Taiwan’s leaders the need to acquire and stockpile more weapons — a lesson that’s become increasingly urgent in recent months as China’s provocations accelerate, said the chairman of the new House select committee on China following a stealth trip to Taipei.
“Almost every Taiwanese official I met with mentioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a wake-up call,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), in an interview Monday upon his return from the self-governing democracy. China claims Taipei as its own — and has vowed it will be united with the People’s Republic one day — by force if necessary.
Taiwan faces a $19 billion arms backlog, awaiting crucial weapons — such as Harpoon anti-ship missiles and F-16 fighter jets — that in many cases aren’t due to arrive for years. In the case of Harpoons, one congressional aide said, the missiles aren’t likely to begin arriving in real numbers until 2027 at the earliest.
“That was the biggest thing we heard from every major Taiwanese leader — concerns over delays,” said Gallagher, who met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, her vice president, defense minister, intelligence chief and other top security officials in a four-day trip. “That’s troubling the Taiwanese, and I think that’s unacceptable.”
Gallagher, who had never visited Taiwan before, said he came away impressed by the urgency with which the government took the threat posed by Communist Party-led China and its fast-growing military.
“Our best chance of preventing an invasion of Taiwan, and of essentially preventing World War III, is to put actual hard power on Taiwan … and, to paraphrase President Tsai, to ensure that every day, when she wakes up, we are increasing the cost of an invasion for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping,” he said.
Gallagher, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who deployed twice to Iraq, said he intends to use the committee to draw attention “to the urgency of arming Taiwan” robustly.
An invasion or even a blockade of Taiwan, which makes a quarter of the world’s semiconductors and more than 90 percent of the most advanced chips, could trigger immense disruptions to the global economy leading to a recession that could rival the 2008 financial crisis, some experts warn.
While Taiwanese officials do not say they believe a Chinese invasion is imminent, they are nonetheless aware of how difficult it would be to defend their island against a powerful potential adversary just across a 100-mile strait. Resupplying Taiwan with weapons in a conflict would be near impossible, experts warn, and so equipping it before the need arises is key.
“We need to be moving heaven and earth to arm Taiwan to the teeth to avoid a war,” Gallagher said. “Nobody knows if and when Xi Jinping wakes up and decides to do this but all the more reason to put in place a denial posture as quickly as possible.”
Ground-launched Harpoon missiles that are capable of hitting ships with a 500-pound warhead from more than 70 miles away are considered a critical capability for Taiwan in a conflict with China, which has the world’s largest navy. The first announcement of an intent to sell Harpoons to Taiwan came at the tail end of the Trump administration. The second came in September.
But Saudi Arabia paid for an earlier order of Harpoons and are thus ahead of Taiwan in the delivery queue. “Taiwan should be moved to the front of the line for the Harpoons,” Gallagher said. For Saudi Arabia to receive the missiles first “doesn’t make any strategic sense to me,” he said.
Riyadh’s purchase essentially allowed Boeing to restart a dying production line, according to the congressional aide and other people familiar with the matter. The cost of restarting the line was about $500 million, said one person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Complicating matters, the Saudis paid for sea-based launchers, which is not what Taiwan needs. But “someone would have to reimburse the Saudis for those launchers” even if the Saudis were willing to step aside and let the Taiwanese receive the missiles first, the aide said.
Experts say the slow pace of arms deliveries is a function of structural challenges arising out of how foreign military sales are completed. In the Harpoon instance, even though Taiwan paid the U.S. Navy $1.6 billion in May 2021 for 400 Harpoon missiles and 100 coastal-defense launchers, the Navy still has not entered into a contract with Boeing to begin missile production, the person familiar with the matter said.
Gallagher said he came away from his four-day visit with a sense that “the Taiwanese are doing everything we could ask of them” in terms of boosting their own defense.
He noted that they are increasing their defense spending by a record 14 percent to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product; many NATO countries still fall below the 2 percent of GDP guideline. The spending hike followed China’s aggressive response to the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan in August, firing ballistic missiles over the island and apparently simulating a maritime blockade of Taiwan.
Gallagher, well aware of the furor caused by Pelosi’s visit, said he deliberately kept his own visit quiet to have more productive meetings. A senior U.S. defense official made a visit at the same time, which leaked and was front-page news in Taiwan.
There has been speculation about a potential visit by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), which would raise Beijing’s ire. But, Gallagher said, “I don’t know of any active plans by Speaker McCarthy to go. If he wants to go, he certainly can.” It’s not for the Chinese to “veto” any lawmaker’s plans, he added.
Gallagher said he intends to hold a select committee hearing in Taiwan — hopefully before summer and then report back to McCarthy on its findings. That would better inform the speaker’s plans, and he and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) could visit possibly after Taiwan’s next presidential election in early 2024.
China has already begun to cast a shadow over the election, Gallagher said he was told. It’s part of what Tsai, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, calls “cognitive warfare” — an effort to mold the narrative to suit its aims, he said.
The opposition Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, is in favor of warmer cross-strait relations and benefits by such a narrative, he said.
Beijing is attempting to “convince the people of Taiwan that the DPP is going to recklessly take them into war, and that the Americans are just using Taiwan as a pawn — that when the fighting starts, we’re content to let the Taiwanese die in order just to slow down China and we won’t do any of the fighting,” Gallagher said.
Christian Shepherd contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · 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: [email protected]
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