Quotes of the Day:
“[Strategy] is more than a science: it is the application of knowledge to practical life, the development of thought capable of modifying the original guiding idea in the light of ever-changing situations; it is the art of acting under the pressure of the most difficult conditions."
- Helmuth von Moltke
“Chaos—where brilliant dreams are born."
- The I Ching
“The years teach much which the days never know."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. Why Taiwan must prepare for war
2. 5 more military COVID-19 deaths as active-duty force inches toward 100% vaccination
3. US Troops Have Hundreds of Relatives Still Stuck in Afghanistan, and Congress Is Trying to Help
4. 'Absolutely Not True': Army CIO Answers Claim US Has Already Lost To China In AI
5. FDD | Remember Lepanto – A great battle in a war not yet ended
6. Al Qaeda successfully played ‘long game’ in Afghanistan, FBI and UN officials say
7. The University of Hong Kong Takes a Page From the Taliban’s Playbook
8. Order Before Peace – Kissinger’s Middle East Diplomacy and Its Lessons for Today
9. Schrodinger’s Military? Challenges for China’s Military Modernization Ambitions
10. With an eye on China, Japan’s ruling party makes unprecedented defense spending pledge
11. Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations”
12. China's Taiwan Plan Is Clear (And Looking Pretty Dangerous)
13. Small numbers of military extremists can still pose a large threat, experts warn
14. Why Is China Looking to Establish Banks in Nigeria?
15. Will America Come to Taiwan’s Defense?
16. Analysis | The WHO has a bold new plan to find covid-19’s origins. China could get in the way.
17. Head of Pentagon Foreign Arms Sales Division Stepping Down After 15 Months on the Job
18. SFAB soldiers are heading out in smaller teams to more places
19. The Flawed Tzu of ATP 7-100_3 Chinese Tactics
20. U.S., Philippines Eye Return to Full Military Drills in 2022
21. How to Get Congress to Dump Old U.S. Military Equipment for Good
22. Will Americans Buy into Biden’s Ambitious Domestic Terrorism Plan?
23. Cultural Intelligence: More than Materiel
1. Why Taiwan must prepare for war
Thu, Oct 14, 2021 page8
- Why Taiwan must prepare for war
- By Jerome Keating
An old Latin adage reads: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Translated it means: “If you wish peace, then prepare for war.” This adage has many variants and claims to authorship, but what is most important is its message for a peaceful Taiwan.
Why should Taiwan prepare for war? The reasons are many and obvious.
Certainly, such preparation is not because Taiwan wants war or is a warlike nation. Instead, the answer is found in its neighbor, China.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a one-party state, is ambitious and troubled — and that combination makes war a viable option, as the above Latin adage ironically has a flip side.
That flip-side is similar in phrasing, but different in application. It comes from Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. In critiquing imperialism, Lenin translated certain lines from a novel and misattributed them to the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. They read: “The empire, as I have always said is a bread and butter question... If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialist.”
For imperialists, war can serve to distract from troubles within. Thus, together, these two sayings emphasize Taiwan’s situation and why it must prepare for war.
Examine the first, Taiwan must see preparation as a deterrent. Any nation, large or small, must demonstrate its ability to defend itself. If it does not, it will be seen as the desirable and easily plucked proverbial fruit. Taiwan certainly does not want that.
The second saying applies to Taiwan’s hegemonic neighbor, China. While Lenin was speaking against imperialism, he failed to see that any state, even those formed by “proletariat revolutions” can easily become imperialist.
In this, British author George Orwell demonstrated through his novel Animal Farm that he had much greater vision and insight into human nature than Lenin.
Taiwan possesses a hard-won democracy. It knows well the history of how its democracy was achieved. It also knows that the CCP needs to deny that reality and twist it to its own advantage, especially when the CCP faces internal problems.
In short, in addition to Taiwan’s strategic location and wealth being advantageous for China, China and its president, Xi Jinping (習近平), also realize that they must become imperialist in this matter because Taiwan distracts from China’s increasing internal problems. When you understand this, you understand Taiwan’s situation.
Xi clearly has a life goal of wanting to enter the Chinese pantheon; he sees himself as the successor to Mao Zedong (毛澤東). With no heirs on whom to bestow his presidency, whatever Xi does must be done in his lifetime, and time is running out. To this end, he has already laid the ground work for him to have an unprecedented third term, something normally forbidden by CCP rules.
Further, in true Animal Farm fashion, the CCP has already become capitalist in its means if not in its admitted profession. However, all is not well internally. The once famed double-digit GDP growth that the CCP achieved is a thing of the past. In its place, China’s rich private sector is becoming at odds with the CCP, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed that the party is not a “team player” in world health.
These are not the only internal problems. China’s imprisoned Uighurs are not becoming model citizens. Tibet and Inner Mongolia are not happy to see their cultural identity erased. Even Hong Kong has become “unappreciative” of how the CCP does not keep its promises.
The growing troubles in the energy and the coal market have already led to “brownouts” in China akin to the Philippines in the 1990s. Climate change and a coming cold winter are at the doorstep. And finally, even Beijing hosting next year’s Winter Olympics is posing more problems than relief.
If Xi wants his portrait hung in Tiananmen Square, he and the CCP are desperately in need of “imperialist distractions.”
As a long-term insider of the CCP, Xi certainly understands Mao’s playbook. Mao was a master of distraction and was able to twist the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to his advantage. Throughout that turmoil, he always managed to be seen as a hero, even though he ironically was responsible for it and for more Chinese deaths than the “villainous” Japanese.
In doing this, Mao knew how to find “perceived enemies” both within and without.
Unfortunately for Xi, the present times are not the times of Mao. In today’s age, instant communication and awareness are more readily available; things cannot be hidden as they were in the past.
Xi faces other problems. Mao had abundant human resources to sacrifice at his disposal. The China he directed did not yet face the effects of the one-child policy. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese died in the Korean War and afterwards, but they were “expendable.”
However, with the one-child policy reaching its zenith, too many parents and grandparents are dependent on “one child.” Xi does not have Mao’s luxury. Returning body bags from war would impact China’s whole society.
Furthermore, war would not just involve Taiwan. Japan and the US have finally begun to see that their lucrative trade with China might now have too high a cost if China gains control of strategic Taiwan.
In past decades, Japan and the US had done little when Taiwan suffered under the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) martial law and White Terror, but that was because such tolerance allowed them to also court the beneficial trade deals of working with China as well as Taiwan. Now, however, all those circumstances have changed.
Japan and the US will help defend Taiwan, not so much because they believe in Taiwan’s democracy, but more because of self-interest. In a shrinking world of many influences, they recognize that the freedom of the seas and the freedom of their own democracies are inevitably linked to the democracy of Taiwan. Hegemonic China will always remain imperialist.
On Taiwan’s side, its people have additional intrinsic motivation to prepare for war. They have already been through the KMT’s one-party state, martial law and the White Terror. Thus, what Xi is offering, or even threatening, is simply a return to that past, but with different masters.
Taiwanese will therefore ask: Did our ancestors die to overcome the one-party KMT state only to exchange it for that of the CCP? Did our ancestors risk all for such an end as this?
This is the mentality and message that Taiwan and its president sense that they must develop and convey to China: “Any victory you achieve would be a Pyrrhic victory. We endured 40 years of KMT occupation when we were unarmed and unprepared at the end of World War II. This time we are ready and prepared. As a bonus, because of our chip production, we even have allies you do not imagine.”
Instability in the Taiwan Strait will benefit no one. Taiwan understands this and the others are beginning to see it as well.
Pundits may comment on whether war with China is or is not inevitable, but the ball is really in China’s imperialist court and how desperate it is. Taiwanese know where they stand. They must be ready. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
2. 5 more military COVID-19 deaths as active-duty force inches toward 100% vaccination
"Inching toward?"
Not enough vaccinated yet (and I guess even worse in the reserve components).
Excerpt:
As of Wednesday, 60 percent of the total force is fully vaccinated ― 1,383,388 troops ― with another 15 percent ― 338,000 troops ― who have received the first of a two-dose regimen.
5 more military COVID-19 deaths as active-duty force inches toward 100% vaccination
Military COVID-19 deaths are continuing to trend upward, even as more of the force gets vaccinated. The five most recently reported deaths all came in members of the Army’s reserve component, whose organizations are among the least vaccinated in the military.
In the 36 deaths reported since August, 19 ― or 53 percent ― were among Army Reserve and Army National Guard soldiers, though they make up roughly 20 percent of the military overall. Since the pandemic began, they have made up 26 of 67 total deaths, or 39 percent.
Of those 67, 66 were completely unvaccinated, while one had received a first dose of a two-dose vaccine, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Charlie Dietz confirmed to Military Times on Wednesday.
The most recently reported deaths include:
- An Army National Guard sergeant, 49, died Aug. 14. He was assigned to the 2225th Transportation Company in Jacksonville, Alabama. As of Wednesday afternoon, his family had not agreed to release his name.
- Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Matthew E. Harmon, 51, died Oct. 1. He was assigned to 8th Battalion, 104th Regiment in Salt Lake City, Utah.
- Army Reserve Sgt. Yancy Williams, 54, died Oct. 5. He was assigned to the 451th Civil Affairs Battalion in Houston, Texas.
- An Army National Guard master sergeant , 53, died Oct. 6. He was assigned to Joint Force Headquarters at Camp Mabry, Texas. The Texas Military Department had not confirmed his identity by Wednesday afternoon.
- An Army National Guard sergeant first class, 53, died Oct. 7. His family declined to release his name, according to Tennessee Military Department spokesman Lt. Col. Marty Malone.
Those deaths bring the total in October so far to eight, less than half-way into the month. September saw 14 deaths while August saw 15, up from an average of one or two deaths a month previously.
As of Wednesday, 60 percent of the total force is fully vaccinated ― 1,383,388 troops ― with another 15 percent ― 338,000 troops ― who have received the first of a two-dose regimen.
That number belies a significant chasm between the active-duty and reserve components.
On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that just under 97 percent of active-duty troops are at least partially vaccinated, while just under 84 percent are fully vaccinated.
The first active-duty deadline drops Nov. 2, for the Air Force and Space Force, followed by Nov. 28 for the Navy and Marine Corps, then Dec. 15 for the Army.
The reserve component is lagging much more behind. While the Army has given its Reserve and National Guard until the end of June 30 to both get its troops vaccinated and update their files to reflect that, the other services have deadlines closing in more quickly.
The Marine Corps Reserve, for example, is only 38 percent vaccinated, the Washington Post reported Friday, with a Dec. 28 vaccination deadline. The Army Reserve and National Guard are also roughly 40 percent vaccinated, according to that data.
“Commands will try to get these troops to make the right decision based on information and education,” Kirby said. “And for somebody that refuses, they’ll be given a chance to get more context from medical service providers, as well as their chain of command.”
If that doesn’t work, discipline comes into play, though not necessarily criminal charges. Commanders have the ability to involuntarily separate troops without getting the law involved.
“It’s a lawful order. So obviously, if after all that effort, the lawful order is disobeyed, there could be disciplinary action,” Kirby said. “But the secretary believes that there’s lots of tools available to leaders, short of using the Uniform of Code of Military Justice, to get these troops to do the right thing for themselves and for their units.”
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
3. US Troops Have Hundreds of Relatives Still Stuck in Afghanistan, and Congress Is Trying to Help
Excerpts:
"These brave men and women have volunteered to risk their lives to protect our country," McCaul wrote. "Yet, now, when they need us the most, the federal government has turned our backs on them. If we abandon the family members of our service men and women in Afghanistan, they will certainly be slaughtered by the Taliban."
While lawmakers can prod the administration to do more, the retired officer who spoke to Military.com argued the biggest help would be to pass a law granting family members of troops special status since many do not fall into existing priority groups for evacuation, such as Special Immigrant Visa applicants or the Priority-1 and Priority-2 refugee programs.
"It is nearly impossible for me to ask a young Marine to put his life on the line and do exactly as I asked when he is thinking about his mom, dad, brother, sister being in harm's way," the retired officer said. "They're not even on a list of people we're even concerned about."
In addition to the 509 family members still in Afghanistan that outside groups are tracking, 129 people from eight families have been able to be evacuated on charter flights, the retired officer said.
US Troops Have Hundreds of Relatives Still Stuck in Afghanistan, and Congress Is Trying to Help
military.com · by Rebecca Kheel,Travis Tritten · October 13, 2021
At least 48 service members in the Army and Marine Corps are trying to help 509 relatives evacuate Afghanistan more than a month after a U.S. military withdrawal, a retired Marine Corps officer, working with several private veterans groups trying to evacuate Afghans, told Military.com.
Many of the troops are former Afghan interpreters who immigrated to the U.S. well before the U.S. evacuation in August and then enlisted in the military they once assisted. They are getting help from outside groups and congressional offices, which have morphed into coordinating cells for evacuation flights after being flooded with pleas for assistance.
"There is no recognition that this is the mother of a U.S. soldier who's putting his ass on the line for us every single day," said the retired officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern about being contacted by more people than they'd be able to help. "The one thing we always understand, and any branch of service you understand, is you always take care of your troops. To keep them in the game, you also assure them that no matter what, we're going to take care of your family as well."
The lawmakers' efforts on Capitol Hill specifically to help troops' families were first reported by The New York Times.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "remains committed to do everything we can to get our Afghan allies who want to leave Afghanistan, to help get them out," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday when asked about the stranded relatives.
Kirby said the State Department is still working hard on evacuations, which have become dramatically more difficult after the military withdrawal, and that there is coordination between federal agencies and the private groups urging evacuations.
"The military component of our presence in Afghanistan, that is over, but the mission itself to try to get people out is not over," he said.
After the Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan over the summer, the administration scrambled to evacuate as many U.S. citizens and vulnerable Afghans as possible before President Joe Biden's deadline to withdraw fully by Aug. 31.
The administration framed its efforts as a success after it airlifted more than 124,000 people. But a couple of hundred U.S. citizens and thousands more Afghans who helped the U.S. military or are otherwise at risk of Taliban retribution were left behind.
The State Department has pledged to continue facilitating evacuations on commercial and charter flights, including announcing Tuesday it appointed veteran diplomat Elizabeth Jones to coordinate Afghan relocation efforts.
But lawmakers in both parties have complained the administration has provided few details on how it will help those left behind.
Among the lawmakers working specifically to help service members' families flee Afghanistan is House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, whose office said it is in touch with five service members trying to get their families out.
McCaul was first contacted by an active-duty soldier in Texas who needed help getting his parents, siblings and some of his in-laws out of Afghanistan, an aide told Military.com. The office tried to get the family out, but was unsuccessful before the military evacuations ended.
Later, amid the military evacuation, McCaul also was approached by six people holding signs and wearing fatigues while he was hosting a press conference with actors and writers from CBS's "United States of Al," a sitcom about an Afghan interpreter. The group was composed of active-duty service members trying to get their families out, and McCaul's office is now working with them, too, the aide said.
In September, McCaul sent a letter to Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asking for details on how many service members have families trapped in Afghanistan.
"These brave men and women have volunteered to risk their lives to protect our country," McCaul wrote. "Yet, now, when they need us the most, the federal government has turned our backs on them. If we abandon the family members of our service men and women in Afghanistan, they will certainly be slaughtered by the Taliban."
While lawmakers can prod the administration to do more, the retired officer who spoke to Military.com argued the biggest help would be to pass a law granting family members of troops special status since many do not fall into existing priority groups for evacuation, such as Special Immigrant Visa applicants or the Priority-1 and Priority-2 refugee programs.
"It is nearly impossible for me to ask a young Marine to put his life on the line and do exactly as I asked when he is thinking about his mom, dad, brother, sister being in harm's way," the retired officer said. "They're not even on a list of people we're even concerned about."
In addition to the 509 family members still in Afghanistan that outside groups are tracking, 129 people from eight families have been able to be evacuated on charter flights, the retired officer said.
-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.
-- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten.
military.com · by Rebecca Kheel,Travis Tritten · October 13, 2021
4. 'Absolutely Not True': Army CIO Answers Claim US Has Already Lost To China In AI
Excerpts:
The authors project that “China’s relative share of power will increase relative to the United States and Russia at least through 2022 and that aggregate Chinese and Russian power will continue to approach, but not exceed, U.S. power through 2022.”
Such a prediction to 2022, only a few months away, may not be very illustrative of farther down the road. RAND’s authors said, “We do not attempt to project our military and technology indexes beyond 2022 because linear projections could become increasingly misleading. However, based on the longer-term economic projections […], we expect China’s economic capacity to level out after 2030, which could mean that whatever U.S. advantage remains (if any) at that point could persist as China’s economic growth slows.”
But all is not sweetness and light, as anyone who read the report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence knows. It says: “China possesses the might, talent, and ambition to surpass the United States as the world’s leader in AI in the next decade if current trends do not change.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean they will.
'Absolutely Not True': Army CIO Answers Claim US Has Already Lost To China In AI - Breaking Defense
"If you looked at both what we have in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, across the federal government and our industrial partners, we have the best AI technology," Army CIO Ray Iyer said.
Marines with Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command pose for photos in cyber operations room at Lasswell Hall aboard Fort Meade, Maryland, Feb. 5, 2020. (Via DVIDS)
AUSA: In the face of bold claims by a former senior Air Force official that the United States has “no competing fighting chance” against the Chinese military, the Army’s CIO rejected the idea when asked about it here.
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” the former first chief software officer of the Air Force, Nicolas Chaillan, in an interview with the Financial Times.
Chaillan told the FT that the US failure to tackle Chinese advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cyber capabilities was “putting his children’s future at risk.” Some US cyber defense efforts were, he said, at “kindergarten level.” (Chaillan later took to social media to say he “never said [the US] lost” already, but would if it didn’t take action.)
“It’s absolutely not true,” the Army CIO, Raj Iyer, said, rejecting Chaillan’s assessment.
He pointed to the Pentagon’s “tight integration” with industry and “our coalition partners.” The US and its partners share “trade intelligence information and other things,” helping both sides.
“I can tell you the Chinese don’t have that. They’re operating in a vacuum, and they’re relying on nefarious methods and cyberattacks to be able to get to, you know, what they think they know that we have,” he said.
There is one area where Iyer said the Chinese do excel in: the actual use of AI. “They do a really good job of maintaining control people using AI. Obviously, we don’t do that in United States, but if you looked at both what we have in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, across the federal government and our industrial partners, we have the best AI technology.”
Chinese hackers publicly named as suspects by the FBI
More broadly, the RAND Corp. issued a report today, coincidentally, saying that Russia and China combined will “approach, but not exceed” US power through the next year.
The authors project that “China’s relative share of power will increase relative to the United States and Russia at least through 2022 and that aggregate Chinese and Russian power will continue to approach, but not exceed, U.S. power through 2022.”
Such a prediction to 2022, only a few months away, may not be very illustrative of farther down the road. RAND’s authors said, “We do not attempt to project our military and technology indexes beyond 2022 because linear projections could become increasingly misleading. However, based on the longer-term economic projections […], we expect China’s economic capacity to level out after 2030, which could mean that whatever U.S. advantage remains (if any) at that point could persist as China’s economic growth slows.”
But all is not sweetness and light, as anyone who read the report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence knows. It says: “China possesses the might, talent, and ambition to surpass the United States as the world’s leader in AI in the next decade if current trends do not change.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean they will.
5. FDD | Remember Lepanto – A great battle in a war not yet ended
Excerpts:
In Congressional testimony last week, Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at FDD and senior editor of FDD’s Long War Journal, noted that Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has led al Qaeda since Osama bin Ladin’s death, “has described the Taliban’s ‘blessed emirate’ as the ‘core’ or ‘nucleus’ of the jihadists’ effort ‘to reestablish their caliphate according to the Prophetic methodology.’”
He observed, too: “The resurrection of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, which was deposed during the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, is a boon for the global jihadist movement. … [T]he Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s interactions with other nations and international institutions will continue to serve as a model for jihadists around the globe.”
Americans and Europeans might want to consider that before seating the Taliban at the United Nations and providing economic assistance.
A second point I’m hoping you’ll take away: Those who contend that “endless wars” can be ended by ceasing to fight enemies who have not ceased fighting us serve only to encourage and embolden those enemies. That’s true not just of the modern jihadis but also the empire-builders of Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang.
Branding isolationism and appeasement as “restraint” and “responsible statecraft” does not make them so, any more than slapping a Chateau Mouton Rothschild label on a bottle of hemlock transforms poison into wine. We took a big sip in Afghanistan. Those acquainted with history will want to think hard before continuing to imbibe.
FDD | Remember Lepanto
A great battle in a war not yet ended
fdd.org · by Clifford D. May Founder & President · October 13, 2021
Last week, Oct. 7 to be precise, was the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. Why should you give a flying fig? Because it was a pivotal clash in a war that has not yet ended, a war in which the United States recently lost a significant battle. Perhaps I better back up.
In the 7th century, Islamic armies sprang from Arabia and began conquering and colonizing. Fearless troops marched west across north Africa and up into Spain. They ventured east through Central Asia, and deep into India.
Over the centuries that followed, wars raged, on and off – more on than off. Then, in 1453, the armies of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic Caliphate conquered Constantinople, the Christian capitol of Byzantium, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire. (The Western Roman Empire had fallen a millennium earlier.)
Less than a century later, in 1529, Islamic forces attempted to take Vienna. Their failure, historian Bernard Lewis wrote, “was seen on both sides as a delay, not a defeat, and opened a long struggle for mastery in the heart of Europe.”
The Ottomans soon turned their attention to the eastern Mediterranean. To defend themselves, Venice and several other Italian city-states allied with Habsburg Spain, forming what became known as the Holy League.
On Oct. 7, 1571, one of the great naval battles of all time took place off southwestern Greece near the town of Lepanto. The decks of oar-propelled galleys became burning battlefields. The blood of tens of thousands of Christian and Muslim warriors turned the sea red.
Though the Ottomans were more numerous, the Holy League prevailed. Among the fruits of victory: the liberation of 15,000 Christian slaves.
Prof. Lewis wrote: “All Christendom exulted in this victory. …The Turkish archives preserve the report of the Kapudan Pasha, the senior officer commanding the fleet, whose account of the battle of Lepanto is just two lines: ‘The fleet of the divinely guided Empire encountered the fleet of the wretched infidels, and the will of Allah turned the other way.’”
Despite this setback, Prof. Lewis added, by the 17th century, Ottoman pashas were “ruling in Budapest and Belgrade, and Barbary Corsairs from North Africa were raiding the coasts of England and Ireland and even, in 1627, Iceland, bringing back human booty for sale in the slave-markets of Algiers.”
A few decades later, an enormous Islamic army again attempted to take Vienna. A terrible siege began in July of 1683. But in September, the Holy League came to the rescue. Jan Sobieski, the king of Poland, led 20,000 horsemen in the largest cavalry charge in history, driving the invaders from the gates of Vienna.
Prof. Lewis quotes a candid Muslim chronicler: “This was a calamitous defeat, so great that there has never been its like since the first appearance of the Ottoman state.” In the Muslim world, it is generally agreed that this defeat took place on Sept. 11.
Fast forward to the 20th century: The Ottoman Empire and Caliphate aligns with Germany in what we now call World War I. Defeat results in the empire’s collapse and the caliphate’s abolition by Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, the secularist father of modern Turkey. The victorious British and French appropriate Ottoman possessions, including lands that would be transformed into the nation-states now known as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel.
I’ve summarized only a few of the many significant clashes between Islamic and Christian empires. The point I’m trying to convey: While three American presidents in a row were persuaded that a couple of decades of low-intensity conflict amounted to an unsustainable and intolerable “endless” or “forever” war, those who proclaim themselves jihadis have never been so easily daunted.
The leaders of the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas do not have identical theologies. Nor would it be accurate to see them as neo-Ottomans – an adjective that has been applied with some justification to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
But they do have in common the conviction that they are “divinely guided” to wage Holy War; to restore to Islam the power, supremacy, and dominance that is its due – however many decades or centuries that may require. Retribution against Muslims who refuse to submit also is on their to-do list.
In Congressional testimony last week, Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at FDD and senior editor of FDD’s Long War Journal, noted that Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has led al Qaeda since Osama bin Ladin’s death, “has described the Taliban’s ‘blessed emirate’ as the ‘core’ or ‘nucleus’ of the jihadists’ effort ‘to reestablish their caliphate according to the Prophetic methodology.’”
He observed, too: “The resurrection of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, which was deposed during the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, is a boon for the global jihadist movement. … [T]he Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s interactions with other nations and international institutions will continue to serve as a model for jihadists around the globe.”
Americans and Europeans might want to consider that before seating the Taliban at the United Nations and providing economic assistance.
A second point I’m hoping you’ll take away: Those who contend that “endless wars” can be ended by ceasing to fight enemies who have not ceased fighting us serve only to encourage and embolden those enemies. That’s true not just of the modern jihadis but also the empire-builders of Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang.
Branding isolationism and appeasement as “restraint” and “responsible statecraft” does not make them so, any more than slapping a Chateau Mouton Rothschild label on a bottle of hemlock transforms poison into wine. We took a big sip in Afghanistan. Those acquainted with history will want to think hard before continuing to imbibe.
Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Clifford D. May Founder & President · October 13, 2021
6. Al Qaeda successfully played ‘long game’ in Afghanistan, FBI and UN officials say
Excerpts:
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley warned last month, “The Taliban was and remains a terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with al Qaeda."
“Al Qaeda is still in Afghanistan," Milley added. “I believe they have aspirations to reconstitute, and if they develop the capability, I believe they have aspirations to strike … I think al Qaeda is at war with the United States still.”
Intelligence officials from the DIA and CIA said last month that al Qaeda could become a threat to the U.S. homeland within a year, using Afghanistan as a base once again.
Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser for former President Donald Trump, also spoke at the forum Tuesday.“I’m deeply skeptical that the Taliban would ever live up to its agreement to sever ties with al Qaeda,” Pottinger said. “I mean, they didn’t sever ties with them right after 9/11, which cost them 20 years of time in Afghanistan. They certainly didn’t sever their ties during these 20 years that we were at war against them.”
Al Qaeda successfully played ‘long game’ in Afghanistan, FBI and UN officials say
Al Qaeda has been "strategically patient" and successfully "played the long game" in Afghanistan through its close relationship with the Taliban and Haqqani network, according to two key international security officials from the FBI and the United Nations.
Charles Spencer, the assistant director of the FBI’s international operations division, and Edmund Fitton-Brown, coordinator of the UN’s analytical support and sanctions monitoring team concerning the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and the Taliban, made their comments about al Qaeda’s resilience during an interview with U.S. journalist Peter Bergen at the Soufan Center’s Global Security Forum on Tuesday.
“I think they are smart. They played the long game. They did play the long game, I think, knowing — I mean, if you go all the way back to the ‘90s, I mean, bin Laden pledged allegiance to the Taliban, and I think the Taliban has been a support of al Qaeda for all this time,” Spencer said. “And they knew if the Taliban came back in, I believe those allegiances, I believe those understandings will still be there. I think externally, whether the Taliban says it will embrace it or not, I think the underlying, the long-standing relationship they’ve had, will carry through.”
He added that al Qaeda "have made steady gains coming back, but I think they are gaining strength, and I think this [Taliban takeover] will reinvigorate them to a significant amount.”
Fitton-Brown had similar thoughts, saying, “I would characterize them as having been strategically patient over the years, which was not always a good look compared to the rapid expansion and the sort of spectacular successes that ISIL had for a while, but I think that that looks more like a source of strength now in the sense that al Qaeda has survived, its brand has survived, and it remains embedded in a number of conflict zones around the world, which has given it a locus and the opportunity to train and sustain its popularity.”
A number of members of the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network have received top positions in the Taliban’s “caretaker” government, including leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is now acting interior minister. Haqqani, who is also the “deputy emir” of the Taliban, "currently leads the day-to-day activities of the Haqqani Network," according to the State Department's website. Haqqani has been designated as a terrorist by the United States, and the State Department’s Reward for Justice program is offering $10 million for his arrest.
The U.N. official was asked about Sirajuddin’s role in the new Taliban government, and Fitton-Brown said he is "assessed to be a member of the wider al Qaeda leadership.”
“Sirajuddin Haqqani embodies the organic link between the Taliban and al Qaeda, and his appointment into that role leads us to believe that al Qaeda has a secure safe haven in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future,” he added.
The State Department insisted just last month that it believes the Taliban and the Haqqani network are “distinct” groups. Anas Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s brother, said last month, “We are the Taliban.”
Bergen described the interior minister role as the equivalent of someone running both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI and asked Spencer what he made of Sirajuddin’s key position.
“I think it’s going to be interesting how the United States government interacts with the new government of Afghanistan based on that, because so many members of the government are from the Taliban or from al Qaeda or have this background,” Spencer said. “How are we going to get around that? Because here you have members of a designated terrorist organization that are now essentially running a government.”
Hibatullah Akhundzada, considered the “emir” of Afghanistan by the Taliban, is a strong al Qaeda ally. Current al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri reportedly swore allegiance to Akhundzada as the “emir of the believers” in 2016.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley warned last month, “The Taliban was and remains a terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with al Qaeda."
“Al Qaeda is still in Afghanistan," Milley added. “I believe they have aspirations to reconstitute, and if they develop the capability, I believe they have aspirations to strike … I think al Qaeda is at war with the United States still.”
Intelligence officials from the DIA and CIA said last month that al Qaeda could become a threat to the U.S. homeland within a year, using Afghanistan as a base once again.
Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser for former President Donald Trump, also spoke at the forum Tuesday.
“I’m deeply skeptical that the Taliban would ever live up to its agreement to sever ties with al Qaeda,” Pottinger said. “I mean, they didn’t sever ties with them right after 9/11, which cost them 20 years of time in Afghanistan. They certainly didn’t sever their ties during these 20 years that we were at war against them.”
7. The University of Hong Kong Takes a Page From the Taliban’s Playbook
Provocative headline but a sad situation with American "complicity" though of course the law firm denies their services are a "commentary on current or historical events."
Excerpts:
Today, the sculpture Pillar of Shame, a monument to the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that rises more than 26 feet and features the bodies of 50 protesters mowed down by Chinese troops, is slated to be removed by the University of Hong Kong, where it is housed.
The university, which is state-run and, for all intents and purposes, an extension of Beijing, is represented by the Hong Kong office of Mayer Brown, headquartered in Chicago.
Most American firms that do business in China sell things like cars or iPhones or sneakers or movies to ordinary Chinese. By contrast, Mayer Brown is selling its services to the Chinese state.
In a statement, the law firm said: “We were asked to provide a specific service on a real estate matter for our long-term client, the University of Hong Kong. Our role as outside counsel is to help our clients understand and comply with current law. Our legal advice is not intended as commentary on current or historical events.”
The Mayer Brown statement on Pillar of Shame sidesteps the obvious: Last year, when China took over Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s legal system — the “current law” to which Mayer Brown refers — was effectively incinerated. Today, the law in Hong Kong, like everywhere else in China, is subservient to the party. And the party wants the Chinese, and especially Chinese students, to forget that there were ever people who believed in a free country with due process, civil liberties, the rule of law, and a system of checks and balances.
The University of Hong Kong Takes a Page From the Taliban’s Playbook
And it is getting support from Mayer Brown, a law firm based in Chicago.
In June 2019, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, students clean the “Pillar of Shame” statue, an art piece dedicated to the victims of the massacre at the University of Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
The Chinese Communist Party — with the help of an international law firm headquartered in the United States — is erasing the history of the Chinese democracy movement and the countless students, writers, artists and underground activists who gave their lives for the cause of freedom.
Today, the sculpture Pillar of Shame, a monument to the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that rises more than 26 feet and features the bodies of 50 protesters mowed down by Chinese troops, is slated to be removed by the University of Hong Kong, where it is housed.
The university, which is state-run and, for all intents and purposes, an extension of Beijing, is represented by the Hong Kong office of Mayer Brown, headquartered in Chicago.
Most American firms that do business in China sell things like cars or iPhones or sneakers or movies to ordinary Chinese. By contrast, Mayer Brown is selling its services to the Chinese state.
In a statement, the law firm said: “We were asked to provide a specific service on a real estate matter for our long-term client, the University of Hong Kong. Our role as outside counsel is to help our clients understand and comply with current law. Our legal advice is not intended as commentary on current or historical events.”
Students stand in front of “Pillar of Shame,” an art piece dedicated to the victims of the 1989 Beijing Tiananmen Square massacre at the University of Hong Kong on June 4, 2019. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
The Mayer Brown statement on Pillar of Shame sidesteps the obvious: Last year, when China took over Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s legal system — the “current law” to which Mayer Brown refers — was effectively incinerated. Today, the law in Hong Kong, like everywhere else in China, is subservient to the party. And the party wants the Chinese, and especially Chinese students, to forget that there were ever people who believed in a free country with due process, civil liberties, the rule of law, and a system of checks and balances.
(The fate of China’s pro-democracy movement notwithstanding, Mayer Brown does take great pride in its respect for those who it feels have not been sufficiently centered. “Diversity and inclusion have always been moral imperatives at our firm, and in today’s multicultural world, they are also critical to our ability to provide clients with the level of service they deserve and demand,” the firm’s chairman, Paul Theiss, said in July 2020.)
The Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt, who took three years to make Pillar of Shame, has been waging a one-man campaign to stop the authorities from destroying his artwork. “If you help the Chinese government in their crimes, and you say on your website you have American values, well, you have corrupted your morals,” Galschiøt said, referring to Mayer Brown.
The sculptor donated his work, in 1997, on the eighth anniversary of the Tiananmen uprising, to the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements. Today, there is hardly anyone left to defend it. Most alliance members have been arrested for illegally commemorating Tiananmen. Galschiøt did find a lawyer willing to fight the order to remove his sculpture, but she requested that her name stay out of print. His previous Hong Kong attorney is in jail.
The sculptor, who spoke to me by phone from the sprawling Gallery Galschiøt, on the island of Funen, said that he had in mind Cathe Kollwitz’s drawings and The Scream, Edvard Munch’s iconic painting, when he set to work on Pillar of Shame. “I was diving in my darkness when I made the sculpture,” he said.
On October 7, Mayer Brown informed the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China that it had until Wednesday to remove the statue, which is made of clay and cast in bronze and concrete. If the alliance does not comply, “the Sculpture will be deemed abandoned,” and the University of Hong Kong “will deal with the Sculpture at such a time and in such a manner as it thinks fit without further notice.”
In an email Tuesday, Galschiøt urged supporters to go to Hong Kong University if his pillar is smashed and collect the remnants. He hopes to use them to make something new that conveys the message that “empire passes away, but art persists.”
Students place flowers in front of the “Pillar of Shame”. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who, last year, introduced legislation calling for sanctions should China fail to provide a full accounting of the events leading up to the outbreak of Covid-19, lashed out at Mayer Brown: “It is even worse American law firms are doing the bidding of the Communist Party to erase the memory of the brave, young Chinese students who gave their lives for freedom in Tiananmen Square.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz, whom China sanctioned last year for attacking China over its handling of the pandemic and treatment of the Uighurs, said, “American firms should be ashamed to be complicit” in the removal of the monument.
What is happening right now in Hong Kong is not that different from the Taliban destroying two Buddhas carved in limestone off the cliff of a mountain. Today, the Chinese regime is using the cover of Hong Kong’s once-independent legal system to airbrush an image and an idea that it believes — for good reason — is dangerous. It is scared of its recent past, just as the neanderthals who took over Afghanistan were scared of theirs. It is state-sponsored iconoclasm, and its victims are not just the Chinese coerced to forget their history and heritage, but all of us, who are being led, gradually, to forget that things were different once upon a time and that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Eli Lake is a columnist for Bloomberg and a fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, Austin.
8. Order Before Peace – Kissinger’s Middle East Diplomacy and Its Lessons for Today
Conclusion:
In the aftermath of the pullout from Afghanistan, Biden is unlikely to overreach in the Middle East. But as Kissinger could tell him, it would also be a mistake for him to turn his back on it.
Order Before Peace
Kissinger’s Middle East Diplomacy and Its Lessons for Today
The ignominious end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan dramatically underscored the complexity and volatility of the broader Middle East. Americans may try to console themselves that at last they can turn their backs on this troubled region since the United States is now energy self-sufficient and thus much less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Washington has learned the hard way not to attempt to remake the region in the United States’ image. And if American leaders are tempted to make war there again, they are likely to find little public support.
Nevertheless, pivoting away from the broader Middle East is easier said than done. If Iran continues to advance its nuclear program to the threshold of developing a weapon, it could trigger an arms race or a preemptive Israeli strike that would drag the United States back into another Middle Eastern war. The region remains important because of its geostrategic centrality, located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Israel and Washington’s Arab allies depend on the United States for their security. Failing states such as Syria and Yemen remain a potential breeding ground for terrorists who can strike the United States and its allies. And although the United States no longer depends on the free flow of oil from the Gulf, a prolonged interruption there could send the global economy into a tailspin. Like it or not, the United States needs to devise a post-Afghanistan strategy for promoting order in the Middle East even as it shifts its focus to other priorities.
In crafting that strategy, there is a precedent that can serve as a useful template. It comes from the experience of Washington’s preeminent strategist, Henry Kissinger. Although he is little remembered for it, during the four years he served as secretary of state to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger presided over a successful effort to build a stable Middle Eastern order, one that lasted for 30 years. Kissinger managed to achieve that while the United States was withdrawing all its troops from Vietnam and pulling back from Southeast Asia. It was a time, like today, when diplomacy had to substitute for the use of force. It coincided with the Watergate scandal, which plunged the United States into a deep political crisis and forced Nixon from office, creating a potential vacuum in U.S. leadership on the world stage. And yet during this period of American malaise, in the midst of the Cold War, Kissinger’s diplomacy managed to sideline the Soviet Union and lay the foundations for an American-led peace process that effectively ended the conflict between the Arab states and Israel, even though it failed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One of the most important lessons from the Kissinger era is that an equilibrium in the regional balance of power is insufficient for maintaining a stable order. To legitimize that order, Washington needs to find ways to encourage its allies and partners to address the region’s grievances. Although policymakers should be circumspect in their peacemaking efforts, prioritizing stability over end-of-conflict deals, they should also avoid underreaching, because that can destabilize the order, too. While there is little appetite in Washington to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Biden administration should resist the temptation to neglect the issue. As Kissinger learned the hard way, conflicts that appear dormant can erupt into full-blown crises at unexpected moments. Dealing with one of the central conflicts in the Middle East by employing a Kissingerian strategy of incremental steps is the best way to avoid yet another conflagration in this combustible region.
Order, Not Peace
It was order, not peace, that Kissinger pursued, because he believed that peace was neither an achievable nor even a desirable objective in the Middle East. In Kissinger’s view, preserving Middle Eastern order required the maintenance of a stable balance of power. In his doctoral dissertation, which was subsequently published in 1957 as A World Restored, Kissinger demonstrated how the Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich and the Anglo-Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh produced 100 years of relative stability in Europe by artfully tending to the balance of power and skillfully manipulating those who tried to disrupt it.
Kissinger sought to replicate that approach in the Middle East when he had the opportunity. But he understood that an equilibrium in the balance of power was not enough. For the order to be sustainable, it also had to be legitimate, meaning that all the major powers within the system had to adhere to a commonly accepted set of rules. Those rules would be respected only if they provided a sufficient sense of justice to a sufficient number of states. It did not require the satisfaction of all grievances, he wrote, “just an absence of the grievances that would motivate an effort to overthrow the order.” A legitimate order, Kissinger argued, did not eliminate conflict, but it did limit its scope.
This conclusion also came from what he observed during World War II, when the Wilsonian idealism that sought a peace to end all wars had instead led to appeasement and Hitler’s conquest of Europe. As Kissinger noted in his memoirs, “For most people in most periods of history, peace had been a precarious state and not the millennial disappearance of all tension.” Consequently, in his diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Kissinger would consistently avoid the pursuit of peace treaties, instead seeking agreements that would give all sides a stake in preserving the existing order. As he told me decades later, “I never thought there could be a moment of universal reconciliation.”
Kissinger’s skepticism first found expression in the subtitle he chose for A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace. The fact that after years of deep research, he concluded that peace was problematic would have a formative influence on his approach to diplomacy in the Middle East. On the first page of the introduction to A World Restored, Kissinger explains why he came to this conclusion. “The attainment of peace,” he writes, “is not as easy as the desire for it.” Eras like the period he had studied turned out, paradoxically, to be the most peaceful because the statesmen involved were not preoccupied with brokering peace.
Pivoting away from the broader Middle East is easier said than done.
The eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant was another influence on Kissinger’s Middle East policymaking. Kant believed that peace was inevitable. But what Kissinger took away from the philosopher’s essay “Perpetual Peace” was that conflict between states would lead over time to the exhaustion of their powers. Eventually, they would prefer peace to the misery of war. In other words, peacemaking was a gradual process that could not be rushed. As Kissinger noted, Kant understood that “the root dilemma of our time is that if the quest for peace turns into the sole objective of policy, the fear of war becomes a weapon in the hands of the most ruthless; it produces moral disarmament.”
When Kissinger applied this prism to the Middle East, he assumed that the Arabs were not ready to reconcile with the Jewish state and that Israel was unable to make the territorial concessions they demanded without jeopardizing its existence. So he developed a peace process that provided for Israel to withdraw in small, incremental steps from the Arab territory it had occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War. The legitimizing principle for this approach was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242, which provided for an exchange of territory for peace.
Kissinger’s peace process, however, was designed to buy time rather than peace: time for Israel to build its capabilities and reduce its isolation, and time for the Arabs to tire of the conflict and recognize the advantages of working with an increasingly powerful Israeli neighbor. In the meantime, he would pursue Middle East peace with caution, skepticism, and gradualism, which is why he labeled it “step-by-step diplomacy.”
Equilibrium and legitimacy in the pursuit of order and incrementalism in the pursuit of peace were the basic concepts of Kissinger’s strategic approach. He managed to negotiate three interim agreements among Egypt, Syria, and Israel and laid the foundations for the subsequent peace treaties that Israel forged with Egypt and Jordan. His process began to unravel, however, when U.S. President Bill Clinton ignored Kissinger’s emphasis on caution and tried and failed to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And then President George W. Bush launched his ill-fated invasion of Iraq, destabilizing Kissinger’s order by making it possible for revolutionary Iran to challenge U.S. dominance in the Sunni Arab world.
With A Little Help From Our Friends
Kissinger’s approach to the Middle East is particularly relevant in the present moment. The United States is pulling back from the region in an obvious parallel to the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in Kissinger’s time. Then, as now, the aftermath of a botched, long-running war meant there was a strict limit on Washington’s ability to deploy force in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Kissinger knew that a stable equilibrium depended on the United States backing up its diplomacy with the credible threat of military action. He squared this circle by relying on and working with capable regional partners.
For example, in September 1970, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sought to overthrow King Hussein in Jordan. Three Soviet-backed Syrian armored tank brigades supported the organization’s attempt by occupying the northern Jordanian city of Irbid. Fearing they would advance on Amman, Hussein called on Washington to intervene. The United States, however, could not do so quickly and risked getting stuck there if it did.
So Kissinger, on Hussein’s urging and with Nixon’s eventual support, turned to Israel to deter the Syrians. Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered the Israel Defense Forces to mobilize on the Golan Heights and on the Jordanian border adjacent to Irbid. Meanwhile, to deter the Soviets, Kissinger deployed two U.S. carrier battle groups off the Lebanese coast and ordered a third into the Mediterranean. Emboldened by Israeli and American backing, the Jordanian army inflicted heavy losses on the Syrian tank brigades, and the Syrians withdrew. Within days, the crisis was over, without one American boot on the ground.
Washington needs to encourage its allies and partners to address the region’s grievances.
Kissinger also harnessed the support of regional allies in dealing with Egypt’s nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. When Kissinger entered the White House as Nixon’s national security adviser, in 1969, Nasser fit the mold of a revolutionary seeking to disrupt the existing Middle Eastern order in much the way that Napoleon had challenged the European order at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In dealing with Nasser’s Soviet-backed gambit, Kissinger eschewed regime change, a policy pursued by France and the United Kingdom during the 1956 Suez crisis with disastrous results. Instead, he sought to contain Nasser by promoting a balance of power tipped in favor of the regional defenders of the status quo: Israel in the heartland of the Middle East and Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. The détente that Nixon and Kissinger developed with the Soviet Union bolstered that balance because it involved, among other things, a joint commitment by the two superpowers to maintain stability in the region.
Kissinger recognized that Washington had to address the Arab states’ demand for justice in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, in which they lost significant territory to Israel. Neglecting to do so would threaten the legitimacy of the new Middle Eastern order. Nevertheless, he assumed that as long as the superpowers maintained an equilibrium in the regional balance of power, justice could be delayed. He badly miscalculated, as the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War demonstrated.
In the lead-up to that conflict, Kissinger relied on Israeli and U.S. intelligence assessments that Egypt would never risk war because a militarily superior Israel, bolstered by sophisticated U.S. weapons systems, would rapidly defeat it. That analysis led Kissinger to ignore Nasser’s successor, Anwar al-Sadat, when he warned repeatedly that he would go to war if Egypt’s aspirations to regain the territory it had lost were disregarded. Kissinger brushed aside Sadat’s pronouncements even when they assumed an apocalyptic tone: in one interview, for example, the Egyptian leader declared, “Everything in this country is now being mobilized in earnest for the resumption of the battle, which is now inevitable.”
Still, in 1973, when Egypt invaded the Sinai Peninsula and Syria attempted to retake the Golan Heights on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Kissinger sprang into action with the confidence that his study of the nineteenth-century European order had provided. His objective was to adjust the prewar arrangements in a way that the Middle East’s major players would view as more just and equitable. He also wanted to position the United States to play the role of the predominant manipulator of the competing forces in the region.
Israeli soldiers during the Yom Kippur War, 1973
Avi Simchoni / Israel Defense Forces Archives
To back his diplomacy with force, Kissinger encouraged Israeli counteroffensives. When that military pressure helped persuade the Egyptians and the Soviets to accept his cease-fire conditions, he demanded that Israel stop its assault. In particular, he prevented the Israel Defense Forces from destroying the Egyptian Third Army, which it had surrounded at the end of the war. That enabled Sadat to enter peace negotiations with his regime—and his dignity—intact.
Kissinger then seized on the plasticity of the moment to launch his peace process with the aim of keeping Egypt—the largest and militarily most powerful Arab state—from joining any future Arab war coalition. That would render another war between the Jewish state and the Arab countries impossible. An unmistakable parallel exists between Kissinger’s approach to Egypt and the way that Metternich and Castlereagh handled France after Napoleon’s defeat, incorporating it into the new order rather than punishing it—and thereby converting it from a revolutionary, revisionist state into a status quo power.
Today, Kissinger would likely use a similar blueprint in dealing with Iran, the country that most clearly threatens what is left of his U.S.-led Middle Eastern order. He does not advocate the overthrow of the regime. Rather, he would seek to persuade Iran to abandon its quest to export its revolution and instead return to more state-like behavior. In the meantime, Washington should pursue a new equilibrium in which Iran’s revolutionary impulses are contained and balanced by an alliance of Sunni states cooperating with Israel and the United States. Once Iran decides to play by the rules, however, Kissinger believes the United States needs to act as the balancer, positioning itself closer to all the contending Middle Eastern powers than they are to one another. “Pursuing its own strategic objectives,” Kissinger says, “the United States can be a crucial factor—perhaps the crucial factor—in determining whether Iran pursues the path of revolutionary Islam or that of a great nation legitimately and importantly lodged in the Westphalian system of states.”
Beware of Aiming Too High
Because he was operating in an environment of retrenchment, Kissinger was deeply aware of the dangers of overreach. But as he notes in A World Restored, “It is not balance which inspires men but universality, not security but immortality.” And as he detailed in his monumental book Diplomacy, published in 1994, American statesmen rarely understand or respect the rules of the game that his conception of international order requires. Their idealism is often driven by a sense of divine providence, especially when it comes to the Middle East. They imagine that pursuing peace and nation building are not only desirable but achievable and that the only problem is coming up with the right formula. Herein lies the dilemma at the heart of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. As Kissinger understood, the maintenance of order requires a credible effort to resolve the region’s conflicts, but the scale of the statesman’s ambition can end up destabilizing that order.
Consider how Nixon’s first instinct was to work with the Soviet Union to impose peace on their recalcitrant Middle Eastern clients. In the middle of the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger flew off to Moscow to negotiate the terms of a cease-fire with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. En route, he received explicit instructions from Nixon to “go all out” to achieve a just settlement “now” and to work with Brezhnev to “bring the necessary pressure on our respective friends.” This threatened to upend Kissinger’s more modest strategy for a cease-fire followed by direct Egyptian-Israeli negotiations. Furious, he ignored the president’s instructions. He was able to do so because Nixon sent this message just as he was ordering the firing of Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor. The ensuing “Saturday Night Massacre”—in which two top officials from the Justice Department resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order—led congressional leaders to initiate the impeachment of the president. With all attention on U.S. domestic politics, Kissinger was able to pursue his own priorities in the Middle East.
He managed a similar feat under Nixon’s successor, Ford. When negotiations between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin broke down in February 1975, Ford wanted to convene a conference in Geneva with the Soviet Union to impose a comprehensive peace settlement on Israel and its Arab neighbors. Kissinger headed that initiative off in favor of a return to his shuttle diplomacy, which brought Egypt and Israel closer to their eventual peace deal.
In Kissinger’s view, preserving Middle Eastern order required the maintenance of a stable balance of power.
U.S. presidents who came after Nixon and Ford also tended to pursue their idealistic objectives for the Middle East with insufficient concern for maintaining the regional order that Kissinger had established. President Jimmy Carter resurrected the idea of working with the Soviet Union in reconvening the Geneva Conference to impose a comprehensive peace. This time it was Sadat who headed off the American president, with his trip to Jerusalem in November 1977. At Camp David a year later, a chastened Carter pursued a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace deal rather than a comprehensive settlement that would have included a resolution of the Palestinian problem.
More than two decades later, however, Clinton acceded to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s insistence on an attempt to reach a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Camp David in July 2000, abandoning the Kissingerian step-by-step process that Rabin had introduced in the Oslo accords. The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat understood that Barak and Clinton intended to impose a final resolution on the Palestinians, and he refused to go along. It was a short step from there to the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada and the ensuing Israeli crackdown, a violent conflagration that lasted for five years, led to the deaths of thousands, and destroyed all trust between the two parties. Nevertheless, U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump would later both try and fail to produce conflict-ending agreements.
Bush resisted the siren song of comprehensive peacemaking but succumbed to the urge for what Kissinger had long ago dubbed “immortality.” After toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he announced a “freedom agenda” in the Middle East, declaring that promoting democracy across the region “must be a focus of American policy for decades to come.” The result was a disaster, serving mostly to pave the way for an Iranian bid for dominance in Iraq and across the region. Bush also shifted the U.S. objective in Afghanistan from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency and nation building. That decision, too, produced failure and humiliation. Twenty years later, it was left to the nonagenarian Kissinger to point out that “the military objectives [had] been too absolute and unattainable and the political ones too abstract and elusive.”
The Danger of Aiming Too Low
Unlike the American policymakers who came after him, Kissinger was determined to avoid overreaching in the Middle East. But there were several instances when his caution and skepticism led him to underreach. That is the danger that President Joe Biden also faces in the Middle East now that he has ended the war in Afghanistan.
For Kissinger, the first instance of aiming too low came in July 1972, when Sadat suddenly announced the expulsion of 20,000 Soviet military advisers from Egypt. That was something Kissinger had called for two years earlier. But when it happened, Kissinger felt no need to respond.
Sadat was disappointed. Five days before he announced the expulsion, he had sent a message to Kissinger expressing his desire to dispatch a special envoy to Washington. It would take seven months for Kissinger to arrange a meeting with Hafez Ismail, Sadat’s national security adviser. Ismail’s presentation captured Kissinger’s interest. The Egyptian envoy explained that his country was ready to move quickly, ahead of the other Arab states, and would even countenance an Israeli security presence remaining in Sinai provided that Israel recognized Egyptian sovereignty in the area.
Yet when Kissinger briefed Rabin, who was then Meir’s ambassador in Washington, the Israeli dismissed Ismail’s offer as “nothing new.” Meir also rejected it, and Kissinger quietly dropped the idea. Ismail met Kissinger again in May but came away from the meeting believing that only a crisis would change Kissinger’s calculus. Four months later, Sadat launched the Yom Kippur War.
Kissinger’s approach to the Middle East is particularly relevant in the present moment.
Whether a more active response from Kissinger would have headed off the war is unknowable. What is clear is that he underreached because of his mistaken confidence in the stability of the equilibrium that he had established. He had overlooked in practice something he had recognized in theory: the stability of any international system depended “on the degree to which its components feel secure and the extent to which they agree on the ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ of existing arrangements.” That is why, after the war, he resolved to address the justice deficit by launching direct negotiations to produce Israeli withdrawals from Arab territory.
Justice for the Palestinians, however, was not on Kissinger’s agenda, because they were represented by the PLO, which was then an irredentist nonstate actor deploying terrorist tactics in an effort to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan and replace the Jewish state. He preferred to leave the Palestinian problem to Israel and Jordan. In this case, his caution led him to miss an opportunity that arose in 1974 to promote Jordan’s role in addressing Palestinian claims. That was the last moment when the Palestinian problem might have been tackled in a state-to-state negotiation between Israel and Jordan.
At the time, Jordan had a special relationship with the West Bank Palestinians, who were its citizens. Thanks in part to the British, the Hashemite Kingdom also had functioning government institutions, including a reliable army and an effective intelligence organization. Unlike the PLO, which entered the peace process in 1993 with no government institutions, Jordan could have ensured the implementation of any agreement reached with Israel, as it has done with its own peace treaty obligations. And from there, a confederation between a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Hashemite Kingdom on the East Bank could have evolved.
Sadat and Nixon in Egypt, June 1974
U.S. National Archives
To achieve that, Kissinger would have had to pursue a disengagement agreement between Israel and Jordan after he concluded the agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria. King Hussein was eager to regain a foothold in the West Bank, and the Israelis were willing to engage and even show some flexibility. But Kissinger repeatedly avoided involvement in the effort. He encouraged Hussein to deal directly with the Israelis, which the king did. Kissinger warned the Israelis that if they didn’t respond, they would end up having to deal with the PLO—a prescient prediction. But then, he repeatedly insisted that there would be no pressure from him and “no reason for [the United States] to be an intermediary.”
Without American engagement, the Israelis and the Jordanians were unable to reach an agreement. And in October 1974, at its summit in Rabat, Morocco, the Arab League declared the PLO “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” thereby putting an end to the chance of resolving the Palestinian problem in a Jordanian context. Subsequently, Kissinger candidly admitted he had made “a big mistake.”
He had his reasons. Although he liked the king, he didn’t view Jordan as a major player in the Middle East, and he thought that meant he did not need to make diplomatic exertions on its behalf. Instead, he devoted himself to a second Egyptian-Israeli agreement, because removing Egypt from the conflict with Israel was his overriding strategic objective. Pursuing a Jordanian option would have interfered with that endeavor, would have possibly provoked conflict between Jordan and the PLO, and would have brought up the question of who would control Jerusalem, an extremely contentious issue that he sought to avoid at all costs. Kissinger’s belief in a hierarchy of power helped him establish priorities, but it also meant that he paid too little attention to the way less powerful states and even nonstate actors could disrupt his hard-won order if the system he helped coax into place could not provide them with at least a modicum of justice.
Warning Signs Ahead
Kissinger’s missteps and achievements can provide valuable lessons for Biden as he deals with the Middle East in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. As Biden shifts his attention to more pressing priorities elsewhere, the goal of his Middle East diplomacy should be to shape an American-supported regional order in which the United States is no longer the dominant player, even as it remains the most influential. At its core, that order will need a balance of power maintained through U.S. support for its regional allies, namely Israel and the Sunni Arab states.
But Biden will also need to work with actors willing to play constructive roles in stabilizing the Middle Eastern order. That will make for some strange and uncomfortable bedfellows, as it will involve cooperating with Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Gaza, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Syria, with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Gulf, and with all of them to contain Iran’s hegemonic ambitions and advancing nuclear program.
Few of these allies and partners will comport themselves according to U.S. values. Nevertheless, as Kissinger’s experience in the Middle East demonstrates, the United States will need to promote a sufficient sense of justice and fairness to legitimize the emerging order. Across the region, people are crying out for accountable governments. The United States cannot hope to meet those demands. That would be to overreach again. But it cannot ignore them, either.
Kissinger’s missteps and achievements can provide valuable lessons for Biden.
Similarly, promoting a peace process that ameliorates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be important in addressing the region’s grievances. That is far down on Biden’s list of priorities. In 2014, as vice president, he witnessed firsthand the unwillingness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders alike to take reasonable risks for peace, and he does not imagine that he will find immortality by trying to force them to do so. He accepts Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s argument that Israel’s left-right coalition government could not survive a peace process requiring the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Like Kissinger in 1973, Biden assumes that the status quo is stable. And like Kissinger in 1974, he sees the Palestinian problem as Israel’s to deal with and will tend to brush aside any pressure to try to resolve it.
But the warning signs are there. The Palestinian Authority is near collapse: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has lost all credibility among the Palestinian people, whereas Hamas—with its doctrine of violent resistance—is gaining popularity. The Taliban victory in Afghanistan will boost Hamas’s argument that its strategy is the only way to liberate Palestinian territory. Moreover, Palestinian deaths from confrontations with the Israeli army are rising at an alarming rate, and for the first time, the Israeli government is permitting Jewish prayer on what is known as the Temple Mount to Jews and Haram al-Sharif to Muslims—a highly inflammatory move. The tinder is so dry that even a simple jailbreak by six Palestinian prisoners in September risked sparking another uprising.
For years, American policymakers have warned that the Israeli-Palestinian status quo is unsustainable—and yet it seems to sustain itself. Experts cautioned against moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but when Trump did it, nothing happened. It feels just like the 1970s, when, for years, Sadat threatened war, and nothing happened—until one day it did. To minimize the potential for an explosion of violence, Biden will need to encourage an incremental Israeli-Palestinian peace process to rebuild trust and promote practical coexistence, just as Kissinger did in his efforts to remove Egypt from the conflict with Israel. Bennett has proposed economic changes, such as permitting more Palestinians to work in Israel, as an initial step. Moves such as that alone, however, will be insufficient to give credibility to a process that has been so denigrated by past failures. The effort requires a political process, too, albeit a modest and realistic one that could include a long-term cease-fire in Gaza and the transfer of some more territory in stages to full Palestinian control in the West Bank.
In the aftermath of the pullout from Afghanistan, Biden is unlikely to overreach in the Middle East. But as Kissinger could tell him, it would also be a mistake for him to turn his back on it.
9. Schrodinger’s Military? Challenges for China’s Military Modernization Ambitions
Excerpts:
The PLA needs to attempt intelligentization to mitigate some of its own shortcomings, particularly for command and control, and to compete with other efforts underway by its rivals, principally the United States. Even if successful, however, achieving intelligentization will open the PLA to an entirely new set of vulnerabilities that may reduce any effective advantage attained. Although the PLA will continue to demonstrate some limited combined arms operations, holistic jointness is likely to remain a mirage for the foreseeable future due to the services’ deep-seated cultures and rivalries.
Even if the PLA can overcome its internal challenges, success in war will remain uncertain. Ultimately, victory on the battlefield depends on where the battle is fought and against whom. China is increasingly becoming a formidable military adversary in the Western Pacific. Although the possibility of the PLA becoming “world class” by Xi’s own criteria seems unlikely, the U.S. military and key allies will have their hands full in a contingency inside the first and second island chains of the Indo-Pacific. Perhaps only opening Schrodinger’s box, with real combat experience, will reveal the PLA’s actual progress in achieving its modernization goals.
Schrodinger’s Military? Challenges for China’s Military Modernization Ambitions - War on the Rocks
Xi Jinping wants China to have a “world-class military” by the middle of the century. While the country has undergone a historic military modernization effort in the last two decades, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) remains a regional military power, albeit one with growing ambitions to achieve regional dominance and expand its ability to project power around the globe.
Is Xi’s dream of a world-class PLA realistic? His vision largely depends on PLA efforts to increase jointness and achieve intelligentization.
By all accounts, the Chinese military is on the march. The PLA’s annual budget grows at a rapid pace year after year. The PLA Navy is now larger than the U.S. Navy. “Carrier-killer” missiles attempt to threaten America’s ability to project power in the Indo-Pacific. The PLA’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal grows at an alarming pace. But these raw numbers alone do not capture some of the more subtle measures of warfighting capabilities, such as organization, training, education, and doctrinal concepts. These seldom noted yet critical measures of military power may tell a different story about the PLA’s pace of growth and ability to achieve its ambitions.
A close look at some aspects of military modernization progress that are harder to measure shows that the PLA still faces some significant, but not insurmountable, issues in catching up with the U.S. military. Specifically, the PLA’s ongoing struggles to embrace jointness among the service branches, as well as the challenge of updating doctrine to reflect the implications of their belief in a military revolution through artificial intelligence, reveal nuances that are crucial for a broader understanding of the Chinese military. Despite its continued growth, the extent to which the PLA can handle the less tangible side of military modernization will be vital for the Chinese military’s future warfighting capabilities.
The PLA’s apparently growing prowess coupled with persistent challenges leaves a Chinese military akin to Schrodinger’s cat. In the famous physics thought experiment, a hypothetical cat located inside a box with poison may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead until confirmed by observation, made when opening the box. The rapidly-expanding PLA remains untested on the modern battlefield, leaving both internal and external observers uncertain about China’s true warfighting capabilities. This dilemma means that analysts should carefully watch for any signs of progress in the Chinese military’s continued development, beginning with the PLA’s commentary about itself.
Ongoing Difficulties with Jointness
Since his ascent to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA, some of Xi’s primary governing priorities have been to complete the PLA’s modernization by 2035 and become a “world-class military” by 2049. Jointness is at the core of these efforts. “Jointness” refers to the process of integrating each of the military services together into a cohesive whole with the sum greater than its parts. Effective joint operations allow the service branches to emphasize their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses. Promoting jointness, however, requires cultivating a joint culture, breaking through parochial service interests, and coordinating disparate operational efforts, among other challenges.
Beginning in 2015, Xi unveiled sweeping military reforms that sought to prepare the PLA institutionally for a joint future. These reforms included creating a new command-and-control structure, replacing regional commands with a theater command system, shrinking the size and influence of the army, establishing the Strategic Support Force, and enhancing cadre training and education, and other efforts. These changes have been well-documented and are a crucial foundation for the PLA’s fighting abilities.
However, Chinese strategists believe that the PLA is having a difficult time integrating jointness into the force despite continued efforts. For the past five years, Chinese commentators have written in academic journals, news sources, and popular media about Xi’s efforts to make the PLA into a truly joint force, and they conclude that China still has a long way to go to achieve its ambitions. They complain about interservice rivalry, technological issues, and ineffective operational commanders.
Chinese authors write consistently that the PLA’s services are at each other’s throats. This diagnosis is captured with pithy phrases like “mountain-stronghold mentality [山头主义]” or “each fights the others [各自为战].” These complaints point to the ongoing importance and difficulty for the PLA of shrinking the size and influence of the ground forces, especially since the army is notoriously parochial and views itself as the preeminent branch. Chinese strategists know how daunting it will be to encourage the services to get along.
Additionally, Chinese authors see ongoing technical challenges in advancing a joint force. One of the most important steps to ensure the services can work together is guaranteeing that technologies among the services are compatible, resulting in improved interoperability. Chinese strategists write that the PLA needs a “unified information technology system standard” to achieve its jointness goals.
Lastly, Chinese commentators believe that mid-level operational commanders are not properly equipped for modern warfare. This worry is captured by the phrase, “Five Incapables [五个不会].” This official Chinese slogan declares that officer cadres cannot correctly judge battle situations, do not understand central leadership intentions, are unable to make operational decisions, cannot deploy troops, and are unable to deal with emergencies. Xi himself has emphasized this theme, and he believes this problem is of paramount importance for the PLA to overcome. In fact, it has been the most frequently used slogan in the PLA since 2015. This shows the extent to which diagnoses of PLA limitations predominantly come from the political leadership instead of from the military itself.
These concerns about the PLA reflect real issues. There are many observable symptoms of the PLA’s jointness challenges that confirm party leadership suspicions. For example, one of the PLA’s foremost military institutions, the National Defense University, recently launched a Joint Operations Academy that appears to be undergoing a kind of curriculum revolution. The academy is meant to be on the cutting edge of training cadres for joint warfighting. In practice, this means that it is undergoing immense change at a rapid pace. The curriculum has changed constantly since its founding in 2017. This pace of change has irritated students and teachers alike, with professors complaining that they no longer know what to teach their military students about joint warfare. If the National Defense University is having a difficult time training its students for jointness, then the other military universities and training commands likely face similar problems.
Another example comes in the promulgation of new jointness doctrine. In November 2020, the PLA unveiled what it called an “outline” for joint operational guidelines, regulation, and doctrine moving forward. While the document is not public, the government has made clear that the outline is meant to establish basic rules and guidelines for joint warfighting. The outline is a sign that the PLA continues to take jointness reforms seriously, although they remain only in the preliminary stages of implementation. Most of the PLA’s officers have limited actual experience with conducting joint operations. It will be years until most PLA soldiers are intimately familiar with the other service branches and can determine how to work well together.
A Chinese military that diagnoses and confronts its own clear flaws may well be able to summon the necessary efforts to enact the difficult changes it needs to achieve jointness. Thus far, the PLA appears to have messaged that it is advancing necessary reforms. Much will depend on its ability to continue the pace and depth of reforms, even as it attempts to increase use of AI for future warfare.
Visions of a Military Revolution via AI: A Risky Approach
As Chinese officials, military strategists, and analysts admit, the PLA has a long way to go to become a joint force, but not for lack of effort. Many Chinese strategists are looking toward the future for new operational concepts and theories to help the army accelerate its efforts to become a world-class military. At the center of these public discussions is a new and little-understood concept called “intelligentization (智能化),” which represents a new goal for the PLA’s progress in modernization.
Chinese discussion of intelligentization reveals the seemingly boundless hopes that Chinese analysts have for the potential of futuristic technology. They call for the integration of AI to give superior decision-making capabilities to the operational commander, and for enlightened autonomous weapons systems to replace humans on the battlefield. The PLA believes not only intelligentization could provide the solution to its difficulties with jointness, but also that it will fundamentally change future warfare and provide a rare opportunity to leapfrog its development over that of Beijing’s adversaries. However, hidden behind Chinese analysts’ hopes to achieve their own revolution in military affairs are multiple potential and real challenges that could complicate Chinese technologically based military dominance.
First, Chinese theorists’ discussions about intelligentization overwhelmingly call for highly centralized decision-making structures. These strategists want operational commanders advised by advanced algorithms to perfectly direct intelligent swarms of autonomous battle systems to achieve campaign objectives. Chinese theorists believe this approach will consolidate command responsibility onto a few generals who can remain safely away from the frontlines of the battlefield, which is antithetical to the modern concept of mission command. In this situation, though, the failure of any operational commander could be crippling in a wartime scenario, and Chinese theorists do not appear to recognize this risk — at least compared to the perceived gains.
Second, theorists of intelligentization seem to miss the inherent fragility that remains in AI and autonomous systems. The future PLA that Chinese strategists describe is based almost entirely on advanced technology, with little discussion about potential risks and mitigation approaches. If these ambitions are realized, a well-placed electronic warfare attack from an adversary could severely hamper the PLA’s command of its forces.
Lastly, Chinese strategists discussing intelligentization appear to have too much faith in the capabilities of AI and advanced technologies. These writers argue that autonomous systems will eventually be better at making decisions than humans. They go so far as to claim that future warfare will come to closely resemble depictions from the Star Wars movies.
Although advancements continue, many non-technologists continue to overestimate the ability of AI to make decisions. While AI hype may be starting to wane amidst the recognition that AI is “neither artificial nor intelligent,” the PLA does not yet seem to have acknowledged or digested this skepticism. Future Chinese autonomous systems will inevitably reflect the designers’ biases of what a war would look like, as well as the training data used to develop underlying rulesets. In the chaos of combat operations in future warfare, autonomous systems will face unexpected challenges that will not be fully accounted for by the AI’s designers, and that can only be properly addressed through human ingenuity. As intelligentization efforts proceed and more command decisions can be delegated to machines, the PLA will also need to enhance the technical proficiency of its officer and enlisted corps to continue developing and applying AI to warfare. Paradoxically, this could result in a greater split among the PLA’s manpower, with corps members underqualified for the technical aspects and underutilized because of automated decision-making.
PLA overconfidence in the potential of futuristic technology carries various risks that could weigh on the its warfighting capabilities. Whereas popular discussion within China heralds the PLA’s technological capabilities and advancements as a game-changing shift in future warfare, these new technologies are only as useful as they are manifested and effectively applied in Chinese warfighting doctrine. It is important for outside observers to understand that intelligentization may not deliver all the advantages the PLA hopes for.
An Uncertain Future
So, ultimately, which is it? Is the PLA on the verge of regional (and eventually global) dominance based on advancing military effectiveness? Or is it still struggling to advance its most basic jointness goals and overplaying its reliance on technology? The answer is uncertain. Observing and measuring the progress of development for any military is a difficult proposition, but it is substantially more challenging due to the opacity of China’s Leninist one-party system. Understanding the future warfighting ability of the PLA requires parsing the often inconsistent, contradictory, and confusing environment that China offers to outside observers. These challenges are further multiplied by the fact that the Chinese army has no real-world options to truly test its advancing capabilities while still ensuring necessary battlefield successes.
It is nonetheless clear that the PLA still lags in a couple of key metrics of warfighting capabilities. Its attempts to integrate jointness into the force are still nascent and largely without tangible successes to help accelerate further change. Chinese military theorists’ visions of intelligentization appear to overestimate the transformative potential of AI and could set the army up for failure in the long-term. Both jointness and intelligentization will be an albatross on the PLA as its responsibilities and mission sets widen to reflect the communist party’s rapidly expanding global ambitions.
The persistent challenges and ambiguities in China’s military development illustrate the importance of understanding the oftentimes underrated, and more difficult to measure, aspects of military power. The PLA’s ability to manage these contradictions will be crucial as it continues its modernization efforts to achieve its future warfighting ambitions. Western analysts should closely watch the subtle measures of military power to see past the often-simplistic headlines of the PLA’s modernization.
The PLA needs to attempt intelligentization to mitigate some of its own shortcomings, particularly for command and control, and to compete with other efforts underway by its rivals, principally the United States. Even if successful, however, achieving intelligentization will open the PLA to an entirely new set of vulnerabilities that may reduce any effective advantage attained. Although the PLA will continue to demonstrate some limited combined arms operations, holistic jointness is likely to remain a mirage for the foreseeable future due to the services’ deep-seated cultures and rivalries.
Even if the PLA can overcome its internal challenges, success in war will remain uncertain. Ultimately, victory on the battlefield depends on where the battle is fought and against whom. China is increasingly becoming a formidable military adversary in the Western Pacific. Although the possibility of the PLA becoming “world class” by Xi’s own criteria seems unlikely, the U.S. military and key allies will have their hands full in a contingency inside the first and second island chains of the Indo-Pacific. Perhaps only opening Schrodinger’s box, with real combat experience, will reveal the PLA’s actual progress in achieving its modernization goals.
Ben Noon is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a former research assistant at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Chris Bassler, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He formerly served as a civilian in the Department of Defense.
10. With an eye on China, Japan’s ruling party makes unprecedented defense spending pledge
Doubling its defense budget by going to 2 percent of its GDP:
An unprecedented election pledge by Japan’s ruling party to double defense spending underscores the nation’s haste to acquire missiles, stealth fighters, drones and other weapons to deter China’s military in the disputed East China Sea.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) included a goal of spending 2 percent of GDP--about $100 billion--or more on the military for the first time in its policy platform ahead of a national election this month.
...
The United States has been pushing key allies to spend more on defence; an increase to 2 percent of GDP would put Japan in line with pledges by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members.
...
“The real question is whether Japan can absorb another $50 billion in a way that measurably improves Japan’s defense,” said Chuck Jones, a former defense industry executive familiar with Japan’s military policy. “The concern is that large sums will be wasted on programs and projects doomed to failure or irrelevance.”
With an eye on China, Japan’s ruling party makes unprecedented defense spending pledge
REUTERS
October 13, 2021 at 15:30 JST
An F-35A stealth jet similar to this one crashed off Aomori Prefecture on April 9, 2020. (Captured from the Air Self-Defense Force website)
An unprecedented election pledge by Japan’s ruling party to double defense spending underscores the nation’s haste to acquire missiles, stealth fighters, drones and other weapons to deter China’s military in the disputed East China Sea.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) included a goal of spending 2 percent of GDP--about $100 billion--or more on the military for the first time in its policy platform ahead of a national election this month.
Experts don’t expect new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to double spending anytime soon, given Japan’s debt-saddled public finances and a pandemic-stricken economy. But it is a sign that the pacifist nation could over time abandon a commitment to keep military budgets within 1 percent of GDP--a number that for decades has eased concern at home and abroad about any revival of the militarism that led Japan into World War II.
“LDP conservative leaders want the party to give it up,” said Yoichiro Sato, an international relations professor at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, referring to the de facto spending cap, which he called “sacrosanct for Japanese liberals.”
“They are setting the direction, that is what conservatives want to do,” he added.
The United States has been pushing key allies to spend more on defence; an increase to 2 percent of GDP would put Japan in line with pledges by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members.
The hawkish notes from the LDP come as Japanese public sentiment shifts away from concerns about rearming to growing alarm over China’s military assertiveness in Asia, particularly toward Taiwan.
In a survey of 1,696 people conducted by the Nikkei business daily at the end of last year, 86 percent of respondents said China posed a threat to Japan, more than the 82 percent who expressed concern about nuclear-armed North Korea.
“Putting this in the manifesto is a recognition of the need to garner public support for required defense policy changes,” said Robert Ward, a London-based researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The direction of travel is now set.”
SOUTHWEST THEATRE
Japan’s military strategy is focused on defending territory along the edge of the East China Sea, where Tokyo is locked in a dispute with Beijing over a group of uninhabited islands.
The Okinawan chain, Taiwan, and islands stretching down through the Philippines form what military planners dub the First Island Chain, a natural barrier to Chinese operations in the Western Pacific.
With an additional $50 billion a year, Japan could buy more American equipment, including F-35 stealth fighters, Osprey tilt-rotor utility aircraft and surveillance drones, as well as domestically made equipment such as amphibious landing craft, compact warships, aircraft carriers, submarines, satellites and communications gear to fight a protracted war.
“The Self Defense Force is well trained and well equipped, but its sustainability and resilience is one of the most serious problems,” former Maritime Self Defense Force admiral and fleet commander Yoji Koda told Reuters.
Japan’s defense ministry also wants money for an indigenous stealth fighter, and missiles that can strike enemy ships and land bases more than 1,000 kilometers away. The country is also building up cyber, space and electromagnetic warfare capabilities.
“Japan wants to acquire very sophisticated capabilities in a variety of areas,” Thomas Reich, the country manager for BAE Systems PLC, said during a briefing on Tuesday. “What’s in the budget and where it’s going are the things that really attract us.”
Britain’s biggest defense company is part of the consortium led by Lockheed Martin Corp that builds the F-35 fighter.
CARRYING ABE’S TORCH
The speed at which once-dovish Kishida has fallen in line with the national security agenda of conservatives has surprised some observers. But he is carrying on policies pursued by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and supported by conservative lawmakers who helped him win the party leadership election last month.
By pursuing a policy of similar small steps, Abe enacted security laws to allow Japanese troops to fight on foreign soil, ended a ban on military exports and reinterpreted the country’s war-renouncing constitution to allow missile strikes on enemy territory.
For now, however, the LDP defense spending pledge does not say how any extra money would be spent or indicate when the 2 percent goal would be reached.
“The real question is whether Japan can absorb another $50 billion in a way that measurably improves Japan’s defense,” said Chuck Jones, a former defense industry executive familiar with Japan’s military policy. “The concern is that large sums will be wasted on programs and projects doomed to failure or irrelevance.”
The lack of detail gives the ruling group room to alter course, analysts say.
“There is opposition even inside the LDP,” said Tetsuo Kotani, a senior research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. “We are going to have an election and we will see if the general public supports the LDP’s proposal.”
11. Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations”
Excerpts:
The list and associated rules appear to be a clear embodiment of American anxieties, political concerns, and foreign policy values since 9/11, experts said, even though the DIO policy is meant to protect all Facebook users and applies to those who reside outside of the United States (the vast majority). Nearly everyone and everything on the list is considered a foe or threat by America or its allies: Over half of it consists of alleged foreign terrorists, free discussion of which is subject to Facebook’s harshest censorship.
The DIO policy and blacklist also place far looser prohibitions on commentary about predominately white anti-government militias than on groups and individuals listed as terrorists, who are predominately Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim, or those said to be part of violent criminal enterprises, who are predominantly Black and Latino, the experts said.
The materials show Facebook offers “an iron fist for some communities and more of a measured hand for others,” said Ángel Díaz, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law who has researched and written on the impact of Facebook’s moderation policies on marginalized communities.
Facebook’s policy director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations, Brian Fishman, said in a written statement that the company keeps the list secret because “[t]his is an adversarial space, so we try to be as transparent as possible, while also prioritizing security, limiting legal risks and preventing opportunities for groups to get around our rules.” He added, “We don’t want terrorists, hate groups or criminal organizations on our platform, which is why we ban them and remove content that praises, represents or supports them. A team of more than 350 specialists at Facebook is focused on stopping these organizations and assessing emerging threats. We currently ban thousands of organizations, including over 250 white supremacist groups at the highest tiers of our policies, and we regularly update our policies and organizations who qualify to be banned.”
Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations”
Experts say the public deserves to see the list, a clear embodiment of U.S. foreign policy priorities that could disproportionately censor marginalized groups.
To ward off accusations that it helps terrorists spread propaganda, Facebook has for many years barred users from speaking freely about people and groups it says promote violence.
The restrictions appear to trace back to 2012, when in the face of growing alarm in Congress and the United Nations about online terrorist recruiting, Facebook added to its Community Standards a ban on “organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity.” This modest rule has since ballooned into what’s known as the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, a sweeping set of restrictions on what Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users can say about an enormous and ever-growing roster of entities deemed beyond the pale.
In recent years, the policy has been used at a more rapid clip, including against the president of the United States, and taken on almost totemic power at the social network, trotted out to reassure the public whenever paroxysms of violence, from genocide in Myanmar to riots on Capitol Hill, are linked to Facebook. Most recently, following a damning series of Wall Street Journal articles showing the company knew it facilitated myriad offline harms, a Facebook vice president cited the policy as evidence of the company’s diligence in an internal memo obtained by the New York Times.
Facebook’s DIO policy has become an unaccountable system that disproportionately punishes certain communities.
But as with other attempts to limit personal freedoms in the name of counterterrorism, Facebook’s DIO policy has become an unaccountable system that disproportionately punishes certain communities, critics say. It is built atop a blacklist of over 4,000 people and groups, including politicians, writers, charities, hospitals, hundreds of music acts, and long-dead historical figures.
A range of legal scholars and civil libertarians have called on the company to publish the list so that users know when they are in danger of having a post deleted or their account suspended for praising someone on it. The company has repeatedly refused to do so, claiming it would endanger employees and permit banned entities to circumvent the policy. Facebook did not provide The Intercept with information about any specific threat to its staff.
“Facebook puts users in a near-impossible position by telling them they can’t post about dangerous groups and individuals, but then refusing to publicly identify who it considers dangerous,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program, who reviewed the material.
The list and associated rules appear to be a clear embodiment of American anxieties, political concerns, and foreign policy values since 9/11, experts said, even though the DIO policy is meant to protect all Facebook users and applies to those who reside outside of the United States (the vast majority). Nearly everyone and everything on the list is considered a foe or threat by America or its allies: Over half of it consists of alleged foreign terrorists, free discussion of which is subject to Facebook’s harshest censorship.
The DIO policy and blacklist also place far looser prohibitions on commentary about predominately white anti-government militias than on groups and individuals listed as terrorists, who are predominately Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim, or those said to be part of violent criminal enterprises, who are predominantly Black and Latino, the experts said.
The materials show Facebook offers “an iron fist for some communities and more of a measured hand for others,” said Ángel Díaz, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law who has researched and written on the impact of Facebook’s moderation policies on marginalized communities.
Facebook’s policy director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations, Brian Fishman, said in a written statement that the company keeps the list secret because “[t]his is an adversarial space, so we try to be as transparent as possible, while also prioritizing security, limiting legal risks and preventing opportunities for groups to get around our rules.” He added, “We don’t want terrorists, hate groups or criminal organizations on our platform, which is why we ban them and remove content that praises, represents or supports them. A team of more than 350 specialists at Facebook is focused on stopping these organizations and assessing emerging threats. We currently ban thousands of organizations, including over 250 white supremacist groups at the highest tiers of our policies, and we regularly update our policies and organizations who qualify to be banned.”
Though the experts who reviewed the material say Facebook’s policy is unduly obscured from and punitive toward users, it is nonetheless a reflection of a genuine dilemma facing the company. After the Myanmar genocide, the company recognized it had become perhaps the most powerful system ever assembled for the global algorithmic distribution of violent incitement. To do nothing in the face of this reality would be viewed as grossly negligent by vast portions of the public — even as Facebook’s attempts to control the speech of billions of internet users around the world is widely seen as the stuff of autocracy. The DIO list represents an attempt by a company with a historically unprecedented concentration of power over global speech to thread this needle.
Harsher Restrictions for Marginalized and Vulnerable Populations
The list, the foundation of Facebook’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, is in many ways what the company has described in the past: a collection of groups and leaders who have threatened or engaged in bloodshed. The snapshot reviewed by The Intercept is separated into the categories Hate, Crime, Terrorism, Militarized Social Movements, and Violent Non-State Actors. These categories were organized into a system of three tiers under rules rolled out by Facebook in late June, with each tier corresponding to speech restrictions of varying severity.
But while labels like “terrorist” and “criminal” are conceptually broad, they look more like narrow racial and religious proxies once you see how they are applied to people and groups in the list, experts said, raising the likelihood that Facebook is placing discriminatory limitations on speech.
The tiers determine what other Facebook users are allowed to say about the banned entities.
Regardless of tier, no one on the DIO list is allowed to maintain a presence on Facebook platforms, nor are users allowed to represent themselves as members of any listed groups. The tiers determine instead what other Facebook users are allowed to say about the banned entities. Tier 1 is the most strictly limited; users may not express anything deemed to be praise or support about groups and people in this tier, even for nonviolent activities (as determined by Facebook). Tier 1 includes alleged terror, hate, and criminal groups and alleged members, with terror defined as “organizing or advocating for violence against civilians” and hate as “repeatedly dehumanizing or advocating for harm against” people with protected characteristics. Tier 1’s criminal category is almost entirely American street gangs and Latin American drug cartels, predominantly Black and Latino. Facebook’s terrorist category, which is 70 percent of Tier 1, overwhelmingly consists of Middle Eastern and South Asian organizations and individuals — who are disproportionately represented throughout the DIO list, across all tiers, where close to 80 percent of individuals listed are labeled terrorists.
Chart: Soohee Cho/The Intercept
Facebook takes most of the names in the terrorism category directly from the U.S. government: Nearly 1,000 of the entries in the dangerous terrorism list note a “designation source” of “SDGT,” or Specially Designated Global Terrorists, a sanctions list maintained by the Treasury Department and created by George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In many instances, names on Facebook’s list include passport and phone numbers found on the official SDGT list, suggesting entries are directly copied over.
Other sources cited include the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, a private subscription-based database of purported violent extremists, and SITE, a private terror-tracking operation with a long, controversial history. “An Arabic word can have four or five different meanings in translation,” Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, told the New Yorker in 2006, noting that he thinks SITE typically chooses the “most warlike translation.” It appears Facebook has worked with its tech giant competitors to compile the DIO list; one entry carried a note that it had been “escalated by” a high-ranking staffer at Google who previously worked in the executive branch on issues related to terrorism. (Facebook said it does not collaborate with other tech companies on its lists.)
There are close to 500 hate groups in Tier 1, including the more than 250 white supremacist organizations Fishman referenced, but Faiza Patel, of the Brennan Center, noted that hundreds of predominantly white right-wing militia groups that seem similar to the hate groups are “treated with a light touch” and placed in Tier 3.
Tier 2, “Violent Non-State Actors,” consists mostly of groups like armed rebels who engage in violence targeting governments rather than civilians, and includes many factions fighting in the Syrian civil war. Users can praise groups in this tier for their nonviolent actions but may not express any “substantive support” for the groups themselves.
Tier 3 is for groups that are not violent but repeatedly engage in hate speech, seem poised to become violent soon, or repeatedly violate the DIO policies themselves. Facebook users are free to discuss Tier 3 listees as they please. Tier 3 includes Militarized Social Movements, which, judging from its DIO entries, is mostly right-wing American anti-government militias, which are virtually entirely white.
“The lists seem to create two disparate systems, with the heaviest penalties applied to heavily Muslim regions and communities.”
“The lists seem to create two disparate systems, with the heaviest penalties applied to heavily Muslim regions and communities,” Patel wrote in an email to The Intercept. The differences in demographic composition between Tiers 1 and 3 “suggests that Facebook — like the U.S. government — considers Muslims to be the most dangerous.” By contrast, Patel pointed out, “Hate groups designated as Anti-Muslim hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center are overwhelmingly absent from Facebook’s lists.”
Anti-government militias, among those receiving more measured interventions from Facebook, “present the most lethal [domestic violent extremist] threat” to the U.S., intelligence officials concluded earlier this year, a view shared by many nongovernmental researchers. A crucial difference between alleged foreign terror groups and say, the Oath Keepers, is that domestic militia groups have considerable political capital and support on the American right. The Militarized Social Movement entries “do seem to be created in response to more powerful organizations and ethnic groups breaking the rules pretty regularly,” said Ángel Díaz, of UCLA School of Law, “and [Facebook] feeling that there needs to be a response, but they didn’t want the response to be as broad as it was for the terrorism portion, so they created a subcategory to limit the impact on discourse from politically powerful groups.” For example, the extreme-right movement known as “boogaloo,” which advocates for a second Civil War, is considered a Militarized Social Movement, which would make it subject to the relatively lenient Tier 3 rules. Facebook has only classified as Tier 1 a subset of boogaloo, which it made clear was “distinct from the broader and loosely-affiliated boogaloo movement.”
Do you have additional information about how moderation works inside Facebook or other platforms? Contact Sam Biddle over Signal at +1 978 261 7389.
A Facebook spokesperson categorically denied that Facebook gives extremist right-wing groups in the U.S. special treatment due to their association with mainstream conservative politics. They added that the company tiers groups based on their behavior, stating, “Where American groups satisfy our definition of a terrorist group, they are designated as terrorist organizations (E.g. The Base, Atomwaffen Division, National Socialist Order). Where they satisfy our definition of hate groups, they are designated as hate organizations (For example, Proud Boys, Rise Above Movement, Patriot Front).”
The spokesperson framed the company’s treatment of militias as one of aggressive regulation rather than looseness, saying Facebook’s list of 900 such groups “is among the the most robust” in the world: “The Militarized Social Movement category was developed in 2020 explicitly to expand the range of organizations subject to our DOI policies precisely because of the changing threat environment. Our policy regarding militias is the strongest in the industry.”
On the issue of how Facebook’s tiers often seem to sort along racial and religious lines, the spokesperson cited the presence of the white supremacists and hate groups in Tier 1 and said “focusing solely on” terrorist groups in Tier 1 “is misleading.” They added: “It’s worth noting that our approach to white supremacist hate groups and terrorist organization is far more aggressive than any government’s. All told, the United Nations, European Union, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and France only designate thirteen distinct white supremacist organizations. Our definition of terrorism is public, detailed and was developed with significant input from outside experts and academics. Unlike some other definitions of terrorism, our definition is agnostic to religion, region, political outlook, or ideology. We have designated many organizations based outside the Middle Eastern and South Asian markets as terrorism, including orgs based in North America and Western Europe (including the National Socialist Order, the Feurerkrieg Division, the Irish Republican Army, and the National Action Group).”
On Facebook’s list, however, the number of listed terrorist groups based in North American or Western Europe amounts to only a few dozen out of over a thousand.
Though the list includes a litany of ISIS commanders and Al Qaeda militants whose danger to others is uncontroversial, it would be difficult to argue that some entries constitute much of a threat to anyone at all. Due to the company’s mimicry of federal terror sanctions, which are meant to punish international adversaries rather than determine “dangerousness,” it is Facebook policy that the likes of the Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company and the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, a U.K.-based aid organization, are both deemed too much of a real-world danger for free discussion on Facebook and are filed among Tier 1 terrorist organizations like al-Shabab.
“When a major, global platform chooses to align its policies with the United States — a country that has long exercised hegemony over much of the world (and particularly, over the past twenty years, over many predominantly Muslim countries), it is simply recreating those same power differentials and taking away the agency of already-vulnerable groups and individuals,” said Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who also reviewed the reproduced Facebook documents.
Facebook’s list represents an expansive definition of “dangerous” throughout. It includes the deceased 14-year-old Kashmiri child soldier Mudassir Rashid Parray, over 200 musical acts, television stations, a video game studio, airlines, the medical university working on Iran’s homegrown Covid-19 vaccine, and many long-deceased historical figures like Joseph Goebbels and Benito Mussolini. Including such figures is “fraught with problems,” a group of University of Utah social media researchers recently told Facebook’s Oversight Board.
Troubling Guidelines for Enforcement
Internal Facebook materials walk moderators through the process of censoring speech about the blacklisted people and groups. The materials, portions of which were previously reported by The Guardian and Vice, attempt to define what it means for a user to “praise,” “support,” or “represent” a DIO listee and detail how to identify prohibited comments.
Although Facebook provides a public set of such guidelines, it publishes only limited examples of what these terms mean, rather than definitions. Internally, it offers not only the definitions, but also much more detailed examples, including a dizzying list of hypotheticals and edge cases to help determine what to do with a flagged piece of content.
“It leaves the real hard work of trying to make Facebook safe to outsourced, underpaid and overworked content moderators who are forced to pick up the pieces and do their best.”
Facebook’s global content moderation workforce, an outsourced army of hourly contractors frequently traumatized by the graphic nature of their work, are expected to use these definitions and examples to figure out if a given post constitutes forbidden “praise” or meets the threshold of “support,” among other criteria, shoehorning the speech of billions of people from hundreds of countries and countless cultures into a tidy framework decreed from Silicon Valley. Though these workers operate in tandem with automated software systems, determining what’s “praise” and what isn’t frequently comes down to personal judgment calls, assessing posters’ intent. “Once again, it leaves the real hard work of trying to make Facebook safe to outsourced, underpaid and overworked content moderators who are forced to pick up the pieces and do their best to make it work in their specific geographic location, language and context,” said Martha Dark, the director of Foxglove, a legal aid group that works with moderators.
In the internal materials, Facebook essentially says that users are allowed to speak of Tier 1 entities so long as this speech is neutral or critical, as any commentary considered positive could be construed as “praise.” Facebook users are barred from doing anything that “seeks to make others think more positively” or “legitimize” a Tier 1 dangerous person or group or to “align oneself” with their cause — all forms of speech considered “praise.” The materials say, “Statements presented in the form of a fact about the entity’s motives” are acceptable, but anything that “glorifies the entity through the use of approving adjectives, phrases, imagery, etc” is not. Users are allowed to say that a person Facebook considers dangerous “is not a threat, relevant, or worthy of attention,” but they may not say they “stand behind” a person on the list they believe was wrongly included — that’s considered aligning themselves with the listee. Facebook’s moderators are similarly left to decide for themselves what constitutes dangerous “glorification” versus permitted “neutral speech,” or what counts as “academic debate” and “informative, educational discourse” for billions of people.
Determining what content meets Facebook’s definitions of banned speech under the policy is a “struggle,” according to a Facebook moderator working outside of the U.S. who responded to questions from The Intercept on the condition of anonymity. This person said analysts “typically struggle to recognize political speech and condemnation, which are permissible context for DOI.” They also noted the policy’s tendency to misfire: “[T]he fictional representations of [dangerous individuals] are not allowed unless shared in a condemning or informational context, which means that sharing a Taika Waititi photo from [the film] Jojo Rabbit will get you banned, as well as a meme with the actor playing Pablo Escobar (the one in the empty swimming pool).”
These challenges are compounded because a moderator must try to gauge how their fellow moderators would assess the post, since their decisions are compared. “An analyst must try to predict what decision would a quality reviewer or a majority of moderators take, which is often not that easy,” the moderator said.
The rules are “a serious risk to political debate and free expression,” Patel said, particularly in the Muslim world, where DIO-listed groups exist not simply as military foes but part of the sociopolitical fabric. What looks like glorification from a desk in the U.S. “in a certain context, could be seen [as] simple statements of facts,” EFF’s York agreed. “People living in locales where so-called terrorist groups play a role in governance need to be able to discuss those groups with nuance, and Facebook’s policy doesn’t allow for that.”
As Patel put it, “A commentator on television could praise the Taliban’s promise of an inclusive government in Afghanistan, but not on Facebook.”
The moderator working outside of the U.S. agreed that the list reflects an Americanized conception of danger: “The designations seem to be based on American interests,” which “does not represent the political reality in those countries” elsewhere in the world, the person said.
Particularly confusing and censorious is Facebook’s definition of a “Group Supporting Violent Acts Amid Protests,” a subcategory of Militarized Social Movements barred from using the company’s platforms. Facebook describes such a group as “a non-state actor” that engages in “representing [or] depicting … acts of street violence against civilians or law enforcement,” as well as “arson, looting, or other destruction of private or public property.” As written, this policy would appear to give Facebook license to apply this label to virtually any news organization covering — that is to say, depicting — a street protest that results in property damage, or to punish any participant uploading pictures of these acts by others. Given the praise piled onto Facebook a decade ago for the belief it had helped drive the Arab Spring uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, it’s notable that, say, an Egyptian organization documenting violence amid the protests in Tahrir Square in 2011 could be deemed a dangerous Militarized Social Movement under 2021’s rulebook.
Díaz, of UCLA, told The Intercept that Facebook should disclose far more about how it applies these protest-related rules. Will the company immediately shut down protest organizing pages the second any fires or other property damage occurs? “The standards that they’re articulating here suggest that [the DIO list] could swallow up a lot of active protesters,” Díaz said.
Related
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
It’s possible protest coverage was linked to the DIO listing of two anti-capitalist media organizations: Crimethinc and It’s Going Down. Facebook banned both publications in 2020, citing DIO policy, and both are indeed found on the list, designated as Militarized Social Movements and further tagged as “armed militias.”
A representative for It’s Going Down, who requested anonymity on the basis of their safety, told The Intercept that “outlets across the political spectrum report on street clashes, strikes, riots, and property destruction, but here Facebook seems to be imply if they don’t like what analysis … or opinion one writes about why millions of people took to the streets last summer during the pandemic in the largest outpouring in U.S. history, then they will simply remove you from the conversation.” They specifically denied that the group is an armed militia, or even activist or a social movement, explaining that it is instead a media platform “featuring news, opinion, analysis and podcasts from an anarchist perspective.” A representative of Crimethinc likewise denied that the group is armed or “‘militarized’ in any sense. It is a news outlet and book publisher, like Verso or Jacobin.” The representative requested anonymity citing right-wing threats to the organization.
Facebook did not address questions about why these media organizations had been internally designated “armed militias” but instead, when asked about them, reiterated its prohibition on such groups and on Groups Supporting Violent Acts Amid Protests.
Facebook’s internal moderation guidelines also leave some puzzling loopholes. After the platform played a role in facilitating a genocide in Myanmar, company executive Alex Warofka wrote, “We agree that we can and should do more” to “prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence.” But Facebook’s ban against violent incitement is relative, expressly permitting, in the policy materials obtained by The Intercept, calls for violence against “locations no smaller than a village.” For example, cited as fair game in the rules is the statement “We should invade Libya.” The Facebook spokesperson, said, “The purpose of this provision is to allow debate about military strategy and war, which is a reality of the world we live in,” and acknowledged that it would allow for calls of violence against a country, city, or terrorist group, giving as an example of a permitted post under the last category a statement targeting an individual: “We should kill Osama bin Laden.”
Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on May 10, 2021.
Photo: Nina Riggio/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Harsh Suppression of Speech About the Middle East
Enforcing the DIO rules leads to some surprising outcomes for a company that claims “free expression” as a core principle. In 2019, citing the DIO policy, Facebook blocked an online university symposium featuring Leila Khaled, who participated in two plane hijackings in the 1960s in which no passengers were hurt. Khaled, now 77, is still present in the version of Facebook’s terrorism list obtained by The Intercept. In February, Facebook’s internal Oversight Board moved to reverse a decision to delete a post questioning the imprisonment of leftist Kurdish revolutionary Abdullah Öcalan, a DIO listee whom the U.S. helped Turkish intelligence forces abduct in 1999.
In July, journalist Rania Khalek posted a photo to Instagram of a billboard outside Baghdad International Airport depicting Iranian general Qassim Suleimani and Iraqi military commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, both assassinated by the United States and both on the DIO list. Khalek’s Instagram upload was quickly deleted for violating what a notification called the “violence or dangerous organizations” policy. In an email, Khalek told The Intercept, “My intent when I posted the photo was to show my surroundings,” and “the fact that [the billboard is] so prominently displayed at the airport where they were murdered shows how they are perceived even by Iraqi officialdom.”
More recently, Facebook’s DIO policy collided with the Taliban’s toppling of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. After the Taliban assumed control of the country, Facebook announced the group was banned from having a presence on its apps. Facebook now finds itself in the position of not just censoring an entire country’s political leadership but placing serious constraints on the public’s ability to discuss or even merely depict it.
Other incidents indicate that the DIO list may be too blunt an instrument to be used effectively by Facebook moderators. In May, Facebook deleted a variety of posts by Palestinians attempting to document Israeli state violence at Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, because company staff mistook it for an unrelated organization on the DIO list with “Al-Aqsa” in its name (of which there are several), judging from an internal memo obtained by BuzzFeed News. Last month, Facebook censored an Egyptian user who posted an Al Jazeera article about the Al-Qassam Brigades, a group active in neighboring Palestine, along with a caption that read simply “Ooh” in Arabic. Al-Qassam does not appear on the DIO list, and Facebook’s Oversight Board wrote that “Facebook was unable to explain why two human reviewers originally judged the content to violate this policy.”
While the past two decades have inured many the world over to secret ledgers and laws like watchlists and no-fly bans, Facebook’s privatized version indicates to York that “we’ve reached a point where Facebook isn’t just abiding by or replicating U.S. policies, but going well beyond them.”
“We should never forget that nobody elected Mark Zuckerberg, a man who has never held a job other than CEO of Facebook.”
12. China's Taiwan Plan Is Clear (And Looking Pretty Dangerous)
Excerpts:
“No one should underestimate the Chinese people’s strong determination, will and capability to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Xi.
However, public opinion on the island shows that the vast majority of Taiwanese are in favor of maintaining their de facto independent status. On Sunday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen even vowed to defend the island from China’s rising pressure after a week of unprecedented tensions with Beijing.
Taipei maintains that it is a functionally independent state under the formal name “Republic of China,” and therefore doesn’t see the need to declare actual independence. While the United States does not officially recognize the Republic of China, it has continued to support Taiwan’s democracy. Washington broke formal ties with Taiwan’s government in 1979, yet remains Taipei’s strongest international back, and that includes contributing to the island’s self-defense capabilities via arms sales and technical assistance.
“We will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues, consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan,” said Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby on Tuesday. “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the strait and within the region, again, in keeping with that ‘one China’ policy.”
China's Taiwan Plan Is Clear (And Looking Pretty Dangerous)
China’s Taiwan plan seems pretty clear: intimidation. Beijing has said that its recent military exercises near Taiwan were intended to be a warning to both the island nation and to the United States. The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) sent 56 combat aircraft near the southwest coast of Taiwan on a single day earlier this month, a single-day record.
That sortie also capped off five days of a sustained pressure campaign that totaled nearly 150 flights. While all the PLAAF aircraft remained in international airspace, the flights were meant to send a strong measure of the island’s independence supporters as well as “external forces” – the latter directed squarely at the United States.
“The PLA training activities target ‘Taiwan independence’ splittism and interference by external forces,” Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) in Beijing, said on Wednesday, and added that the maneuvers were also conducted to main peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
China’s Taiwan Plan: Increased Pressure
The presence of PLAAF aircraft near Taiwan has steadily increased since March 2019, while the dramatic spike in activity this month coincided with the deployment of U.S. Navy and Royal Navy aircraft carrier strike groups sailing into the South China Sea. The resource rich waters are highly contested by several Pacific Rim nations, while Beijing has laid territorial claims to much of the region.
Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told legislators last week that cross-strait tensions were now at their “most severe” in the four decades since he enlisted in the military, Newsweek reported. The defense chief also warned that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could possess the capability to invade Taiwan with minimal costs by 2025.
Taiwan has remained a close U.S. ally, and has responded to the PLAAF sorties by scrambling its own jets to intercept the Chinese aircraft, while Taiwan’s missile air defense system has also been activated. Taipei has sought to further boost the island’s defenses by buying new technology from the United States, while it has invested in new domestic systems including submarines.
China’s Taiwan Plan: One China?
Beijing has long maintained that Taiwan is a breakaway territory that will be returned to mainland control, by force if necessary. Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said that the annexation of Taiwan “must be realized” but said that it would be best brought about through peaceful means.
“No one should underestimate the Chinese people’s strong determination, will and capability to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Xi.
However, public opinion on the island shows that the vast majority of Taiwanese are in favor of maintaining their de facto independent status. On Sunday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen even vowed to defend the island from China’s rising pressure after a week of unprecedented tensions with Beijing.
Taipei maintains that it is a functionally independent state under the formal name “Republic of China,” and therefore doesn’t see the need to declare actual independence. While the United States does not officially recognize the Republic of China, it has continued to support Taiwan’s democracy. Washington broke formal ties with Taiwan’s government in 1979, yet remains Taipei’s strongest international back, and that includes contributing to the island’s self-defense capabilities via arms sales and technical assistance.
“We will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues, consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan,” said Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby on Tuesday. “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the strait and within the region, again, in keeping with that ‘one China’ policy.”
Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.
13. Small numbers of military extremists can still pose a large threat, experts warn
Excerpts:
“These extremist groups recruit veterans because they believe their combat experience, weapons training and leadership skills add credibility and authenticity to their operation,” said. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif. “We need to understand that these factors are some of the reasons that extremist groups recruit veterans.”
Over Republican objections, the committee is planning follow-up hearings on the issue of extremism in coming months. Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., said those events will focus on specific recruiting methods and resources for veterans to avoid being victimized by the groups.
“We are not here to condemn or vilify any veterans engaged with these groups, but rather to draw attention to what these groups actually represent and to highlight the lurking threat posed by these groups,” he said.
“Only by understanding who these groups are, what they believe, and what violent or illegal activities they encourage from their members, can we begin to assess our ability to intervene and to help these veterans and their families reclaim their lives.”
Small numbers of military extremists can still pose a large threat, experts warn
Experts studying violent, extremist organizations warned that even if the number of veterans and military members who participate in such groups is small, they can still be very dangerous to the country.
“Extremist ideas and groups cannot be left to operate unchecked within the very organizations charged with protecting the population, including its most vulnerable citizens,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab at American University.
“The future of multicultural democracy from extremism in the military and the veterans communities must be treated like the threat to national security that it is.”
The comments came at a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday on the targeting of veterans by extremist groups, an issue that drew national headlines after a significant percentage of rioters involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol Building were found to have military experience.
RELATED
Experts in homegrown extremism have warned for years about efforts by far-right militants and white-supremacist groups to radicalize and recruit people with military and law enforcement training.
Democratic organizers said the goal of the hearing (originally scheduled for earlier this summer) was to look at long-standing problems within the veterans community with violent or anti-government ideologies, not to focus on the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
But Republican lawmakers questioned that intent, accusing Democrats of trying to paint all veterans as radicals and criminalize certain political views.
“Free speech must be protected,” said committee ranking member Mike Bost, R-Ill. “It is every veteran’s right to have an opinion – even one I find radical. However, if that opinion is acted on with violence, it is another thing altogether.
“Violence cannot be tolerated, it is undemocratic and anti-American.”
Witnesses at the hearing said the only way to settle the distinction between unpopular views and violent intentions is to focus more closely on the problem.
A recent survey by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America officials found that about one-third of their members personally witnessed extremism in the military ranks. A separate report from the Anti-Defamation League found that at least 133 individuals used military email accounts to participate in events with the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group.
“The question is not whether domestic violent extremist groups are recruiting and organizing veterans to commit violence. We already know this to be true,” said retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joe Plenzler, who has researched the issue of extremism for years.
“The questions are how extensive the problem is, and what we are going to do about it.”
He referenced individuals such as Marine Corps veteran Lee Harvey Oswald, who assasinated President John F. Kennedy, and Army veteran Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as veterans who used their military skills to cause harm to the entire nation.
Several lawmakers pushed for more data on the pervasiveness of the problem. Defense Department officials have already begun investigations into the issue within the military ranks, but Veterans Affairs officials have not announced similar initiatives.
Witnesses said combating the extremist views will require involvement not just from federal resources, but from veterans service groups and community organizations as well.
RELATED
The Pentagon is signaling a crackdown on extremists in the ranks. But it won't be easy.
“These extremist groups recruit veterans because they believe their combat experience, weapons training and leadership skills add credibility and authenticity to their operation,” said. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif. “We need to understand that these factors are some of the reasons that extremist groups recruit veterans.”
Over Republican objections, the committee is planning follow-up hearings on the issue of extremism in coming months. Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., said those events will focus on specific recruiting methods and resources for veterans to avoid being victimized by the groups.
“We are not here to condemn or vilify any veterans engaged with these groups, but rather to draw attention to what these groups actually represent and to highlight the lurking threat posed by these groups,” he said.
“Only by understanding who these groups are, what they believe, and what violent or illegal activities they encourage from their members, can we begin to assess our ability to intervene and to help these veterans and their families reclaim their lives.”
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
14. Why Is China Looking to Establish Banks in Nigeria?
Perhaps because "Nigerian princes" are so good at scamming money over the internet? (note sarcasm).
Excerpts:
Meanwhile, China has been in a Cold War-style battle with the U.S. and the West for global dominance. That puts Nigeria and other African countries indirectly in the middle of a power contest between China and the United States.
The gains from a potential intertwining of Nigeria’s financial system with China’s are still years away from being realized. China has shown and proven that it is interested in playing the long game. Dong believes that the United States should not be underestimated in its ability to maintain its status as a world power, but very recently, China has made significant inroads on the African continent, especially with its soft power initiatives.
Still, the problems with Chinese investment and funding on the continent are regular talking points. One charge commonly laid against China is the problem of debt traps on the continent. However, the state of many African economies as well as the lack of political and economic savvy by leaders on the continent points to a much larger problem. As long as those issues, remain unresolved, even if the West increased its investment on the continent, it would still be seen as a debt trap. Future African leaders and generations will have to deal with the potential economic fallout, regardless of who they partner with.
While there are growing sentiments in Nigeria and around the continent that China is turning Africa into an annex, there is a good faith argument to be made for China in Africa. As the latest proposal shows, China has identified Africa as a business opportunity, beating the West’s short-sighted approach to the continent.
Why Is China Looking to Establish Banks in Nigeria?
Advertisement
During the commemoration of the 2021 Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria Cui Jianchun announced that he was in talks with some of China’s big banks to establish operations in Nigeria. Cui talked up Nigeria and China’s growing links and spoke about the importance of banking and banking systems in the development of both countries. He then spoke about potential conversations with Nigeria’s Central Bank and the Nigerian central government in Abuja about establishing a substantial banking presence in Nigeria.
This new proposal of deeper financial links is a solidification of China-Nigeria relations. In 2018, Nigeria and China signed an initial three-year currency swap agreement that saw Nigeria move some of its foreign reserves to China. The size of the swap deal was put at 15 billion renminbi or 720 billion naira.
The currency swap deal was the beginning of a change in relations between Nigeria and China, and in fact a change in relations between China and the African continent as a whole, where financial deals had long centered on loans for infrastructure and trade. In 2020, Zimbabwe became the fourth African country after South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana to sign a currency swap agreement with China.
In recent times, the African trade landscape has seen a large and monumental shift from colonial trade routes to majority trade with China. China is now sub-Saharan Africa’s most visible and biggest trade partner.
Since the early 2000s, China’s trade with Africa has increased by over 2,000 percent, reaching $200 billion in 2019. China has since announced its $1 billion Belt and Road Africa infrastructure development fund to help build roads and necessary infrastructure to aid trade on the continent. But the African continent has also seen a change in its business landscape. As of 2017, there were reportedly over 10,000 Chinese-owned firms operating across the continent. These Chinese businesses are valued at over $2 trillion.
China has been positioning itself as a growing superpower offering an equal economic partnership different from the West. But its presence in Africa is strategic. While providing loans and investments to African countries in accordance with its non-interference policy, which means these investments have no strings attached, it is able to develop new allies.
Nigeria, at least on paper, has been a leader on the African continent. Thus, this new proposal by China presents an opportunity for China to further integrate itself with the financial system of the continent. But for Nigeria, it is also a chance to lead, perhaps as a financial hub for the continent – something like a pre-Brexit London. For China, the establishment of banks in Nigeria and subsequently on the continent is meant to help achieve its goal of becoming a global reserve currency.
“This is all part of a carefully constructed strategy by China to broaden the acceptance of the yuan as a global reserve currency,” Arthur Dong, a teaching professor of strategy and economics at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, told The Diplomat. “China has chosen Nigeria for a specific reason. It’s oil. Nigeria being an OPEC member state records its oil sales in dollars. This move is to persuade the energy sector in Nigeria to accept payments for its oil in yuan.”
Advertisement
Looking at the conversations around climate change, the rest of the world is moving on from the petroleum driven economy. The world, however, is still decades or even a century away from shifting completely away from petroleum and fossil fuels. Meanwhile, China is a big and growing player in the supply of rare earth elements, the very elements that are supposed to take over from petroleum.
For sustained clean energy and growth in the world today, materials like lithium, cobalt, praseodymium, and other resources essential for the production of electric cars, cloud and quantum computing, medical and telecom devices, are crucially important. To this end, China has been making inroads in Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
“Petroleum is not a good growth opportunity. While for the rest of our lifetime, it will remain a commodity, it is far more likely that the points for growth will be in education, healthcare, and agriculture,” Matthew Page, an expert on Nigeria at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explained to The Diplomat. “The Chinese financial, banking and trade relationships will be a more serious driver for global importance especially in Africa.”
Through its spending sprees, China has been able to adjust African policy in its favor. After a $40 billion pledge in Chinese investments to Nigeria, the Nigerian government adjusted its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan and ordered its trade mission out of Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. In the U.N., 25 African countries backed Beijing during a recent vote about the Hong Kong national security law.
These spending sprees have also offered China the opportunity to gain concessions and rights to mine in African countries. In 2008, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s national mining company gifted concessions to Chinese miners. In Nigeria, the Chinese government has made solid inroads with the state governments, giving Chinese companies access to mine gold in the country.
A closer look at Africa’s trade balance with China reveals the downside of the current relationship, however. In 2019, Africa’s trade deficit with China was over $17 billion. Due to the nature of African markets, in which exports are dominated by primary goods, countries like Nigeria have a heavy trade imbalance with China. The production value of goods is often not high enough to create local jobs, so they are shipped off to China for processing and then reimported back into the country.
This deficit has basically shifted Africa’s economic dependence from its older colonial partners to China.
At the same time, financial intertwining of this scale will definitely help Nigeria, especially in the short term. This move will allow for Nigeria and Nigerians to tap into Chinese capital beyond government loans and aid for development. Chinese banks and an expansion of the currency swap between both countries will help stabilize Nigeria’s forex market. The establishment of new Chinese banks in Nigeria will provide more jobs and new businesses in the country.
That said, the proposal for Chinese banks is not a magic wand that the government can simply wave in order to change its fortunes. The Nigerian government has in recent times positioned itself as anti-investment and business; it recently froze the bank accounts of a number of fintech companies.
Nigeria does not exactly present as a great investment opportunity at the moment. The quality of the market as well as the government’s many missteps regarding its economic policy makes it volatile.
Advertisement
“The crackdown on fintech companies has done a lot of damage to Nigeria’s status in finance in the world. The potential alliance with China is not sufficient to make Nigeria a major financial fighter beyond what it currently is,” Page said.
But China still sees a valuable opportunity in Nigeria and, by proposing an intertwining of financial futures, is getting more skin in the game.
Meanwhile, China’s economic stability has also been called into question. China’s recent crackdown on its rich and wealthy makes it an unlikely destination for wealth flow. “The U.S. is still the world’s safe haven. It offers a stability that China does not. When things get tough, people and their capital moves to the United States and not to China,” Dong explains.
In other words, China and Nigeria are both fighting uphill battles in their respective races to global and regional dominance.
Meanwhile, China has been in a Cold War-style battle with the U.S. and the West for global dominance. That puts Nigeria and other African countries indirectly in the middle of a power contest between China and the United States.
The gains from a potential intertwining of Nigeria’s financial system with China’s are still years away from being realized. China has shown and proven that it is interested in playing the long game. Dong believes that the United States should not be underestimated in its ability to maintain its status as a world power, but very recently, China has made significant inroads on the African continent, especially with its soft power initiatives.
Still, the problems with Chinese investment and funding on the continent are regular talking points. One charge commonly laid against China is the problem of debt traps on the continent. However, the state of many African economies as well as the lack of political and economic savvy by leaders on the continent points to a much larger problem. As long as those issues, remain unresolved, even if the West increased its investment on the continent, it would still be seen as a debt trap. Future African leaders and generations will have to deal with the potential economic fallout, regardless of who they partner with.
While there are growing sentiments in Nigeria and around the continent that China is turning Africa into an annex, there is a good faith argument to be made for China in Africa. As the latest proposal shows, China has identified Africa as a business opportunity, beating the West’s short-sighted approach to the continent.
15. Will America Come to Taiwan’s Defense?
Is US military power declining? I am concerned about the size of our Navy.
Will America Come to Taiwan’s Defense?
Beijing’s growing belligerence coincides with declining U.S. military power.
WSJ · by William A. Galston
The 39th fleet of the Chinese Navy sets out from Qingdao, China, to conduct a mission in the Gulf of Aden, Sept. 26.
Photo: Liu Zaiyao/Zuma Press
The West won the Cold War without firing a shot, but the intensifying struggle with China may not end so well. The record number of Chinese military aircraft flying near Taiwan last week raised alarm bells—and questions.
For decades China’s leaders bided their time, knowing that a military confrontation with the U.S. would end badly. But during the past quarter-century, China steadily ramped up its investment in the People’s Liberation Army. Between 2010 and 2020, spending rose by 76%, and the PLA’s war-fighting ability has vastly improved. In recent years, the Pentagon has staged multiple war games testing U.S. ability to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The American team has lost nearly all of them.
This increase in China’s capabilities has coincided with shifts in outlook. Statements from President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders characterize the U.S. as a declining power mired in division and dysfunction. They doubt America’s will to use force overseas, a mindset not discouraged by our disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Beijing believes that China is within reach of replacing the U.S. as the world’s dominant power.
In this context, a once-unthinkable event—a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan—has become possible, perhaps even likely. Senior U.S. naval officials have been especially blunt about this. “To us, it’s only a matter of time, not a matter of if,” Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, director of intelligence for the Indo-Pacific command, said earlier this year.
Not surprisingly, a multi-front debate has broken out about the future of U.S.-China relations. Optimists believe China has more to lose than to gain from a military conquest of Taiwan—and that Beijing’s leaders understand this. International trade, still their economic lifeblood, would be hurt, and countries who have stayed on the sidelines would take America’s side.
Pessimists retort that Mr. Xi has infused a new sense of urgency into reunifying his country and that it won’t be easy to walk back the nationalism he has spread.
For decades the U.S. has preserved “strategic ambiguity” about its response to a prospective Chinese attack on Taiwan. A public announcement that the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense would blow up the terms of the Shanghai Communiqué that began the process of normalizing the U.S.-China relationship in 1972 and of the Joint Communiqué re-establishing full diplomatic relations in 1979.
On the other hand, stating that America views this issue as an internal matter would encourage China’s leaders to treat Taiwan as a “breakaway province” and to reunify their country through any means necessary.
Many experts argue that the policy of strategic ambiguity has outlived its useful life and should be replaced with a hard guarantee to defend Taiwan from attack. Others reply that ending the policy would inflame nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and encourage Beijing to escalate.
This is a tough call that rests on an assessment of Mr. Xi’s intentions. If he is considering military action in the belief that the U.S. would not come to Taiwan’s aid, an explicit statement of our commitment to Taiwan’s security could act as a deterrent. On the other hand, if Mr. Xi is bluffing by whipping up nationalist sentiment for domestic purposes, an explicit security guarantee could make him lose control of the sentiments he has roused.
The disquieting outcome of the Pentagon’s war games has sparked another debate: If the U.S. lacks the military wherewithal to deter China from invading Taiwan, what should we do about it? If current trends continue, China’s navy will be more modern and significantly larger than America’s by 2030.
The Hudson Institute’s Seth Cropsey has characterized the U.S. Navy’s current “divest to invest” strategy as misguided: Reducing the fleet of older, larger vessels to build smaller, more numerous ones will leave us dangerously exposed in the middle of this decade, the moment when many analysts believe the danger to Taiwan will be at its peak.
Instead, Mr. Cropsey argues, we should retain most of the current surface fleet and supplement it with items we can build—or buy from allies—fast enough to make a difference, a strategy that would require an annual increase of about 30% in the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies can improve Taiwan’s defense capabilities, and Taiwan can do more to defend itself.
No sane person wants war between China and the U.S., but a combination of clashing ambitions, strategic miscalculations and mutual misperceptions could land us in one, particularly if America doesn’t take the necessary steps to persuade Mr. Xi that we are not what he believes us to be—a declining power lacking the means and the will to defend our friends.
WSJ · by William A. Galston
16. Analysis | The WHO has a bold new plan to find covid-19’s origins. China could get in the way.
Excerpts:
Gaining knowledge of how covid-19 began without China’s help has yielded few results so far. A U.S. intelligence review came out inconclusive. Most proposals for further investigation rely on pressuring China into further cooperation, a measure that may result in only more pushback from Beijing. Such moves could also disrupt tentative signs of detente between China and the United States.
SAGO will not be able to overrule Chinese interests — indeed, it is likely to be partially bound by them. One of the 26 members of the body is Yungui Yang of the Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yang was also a group leader on the controversial WHO-China mission and in interviews has called for “origins-tracing work in other countries,” echoing Beijing’s line.
But scientific collaboration could yield results. WHO officials are particularly interested in testing blood bank samples from Wuhan to see when the virus first started to spread. In an apparent contradiction of Beijing’s own statements that the investigation within China is over, CNN reported Wednesday that an unnamed Chinese official said that up to 200,000 blood samples that could reveal clues about covid-19 from 2019, identified for further investigation by the WHO-China mission, will be tested soon.
It’s also the only option for WHO. “We have to work with countries and collaborate with them and we need their cooperation to go in,” Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging disease and zoonosis unit, said this week. “That has to happen. There can be no ambiguity.”
Analysis | The WHO has a bold new plan to find covid-19’s origins. China could get in the way.
You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest, including news from around the globe, interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.
The World Health Organization has a bold plan to better investigate the origins of covid-19 and other new outbreaks. It has assembled 26 highly respected scientists from around the world, carefully checked to be representative and free from conflicting interests, to form an independent group and consider not just how this pandemic started, but how other, future outbreaks might begin.
And yet this new plan is already encountering an old and familiar problem: the Chinese government. Without Beijing’s acquiescence, the hunt for the origins of covid-19 is likely to remain unresolved. It’s a conundrum that has raised serious questions about the WHO’s structure and whether it needs reform to better deal with the realities of a complex, divided world.
The proposed list of experts in WHO’s new group, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), was announced Wednesday after a long period of development. The group is designed to avoid some of the issues that plagued the previous WHO-backed study of covid-19 origins, which saw a team of 10 international experts partner with Chinese researchers during a visit to Wuhan, where the first cases of covid-19 were reported.
WHO officials have framed the new body as a correction to the hyper-politicization of the issue of covid-19’s origin. Experts say the world needs to understand the origins of covid-19 — not to assign blame, but to ensure a disease doesn’t wreak such global havoc again. Setting up SAGO as a permanent entity that meets regularly could create a formula to make sure mistakes aren’t repeated.
But SAGO’s impact will be limited by default, given its nature as an advisory committee. If something merits further research, it will only be empowered to bring recommendations to the WHO. The WHO can, in turn, ask its member states to turn over records or allow an investigation on their soil. But the body has no ability to compel member states to do anything — especially not if a member state is one of the most powerful nations.
China has repeatedly said it considers the international investigation into covid-19’s origins on Chinese soil over.
China has not been an easy partner for the WHO. Though the global health body and its leader, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, were initially criticized for being too close to Beijing, the dispute between them became clear in March when the joint WHO-China mission to Wuhan concluded that the suggestion that the coronavirus that causes covid-19 escaped from a lab in the city was “extremely unlikely” and not worthy of further investigation.
“Laboratory hypotheses must be examined carefully, with a focus on labs in the location where the first reports of human infections emerged in Wuhan,” the officials wrote.
The idea of a laboratory leak has attracted global attention. And new revelations that suggest gaps in information about what work was pursued at facilities in Wuhan make it appear there is far more work needed to be done to rule the hypothesis out.
But there is plenty more that could be investigated outside of laboratories, too. Reporting for The Post this week, Michael Standaert and Eva Dou took a look at the caves of Enshi prefecture, an agricultural corner of China’s Hubei province, a roughly six-hour drive west of Wuhan.
Enshi contains a karst cave system with numerous bats in its 37 miles of passages. The caves are visited by tourists and locals. Nearby small farms once housed hundreds of thousands of wild animals (authorities began clamping down on the wildlife trade in Enshi in December 2019). But the Chinese government has offered little public information about the work done, if any, to see whether the bats or animals on the farms ever had SARS-CoV-2.
“We really need to find out more about what viruses are circulating in those bats,” Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, told The Post. “That kind of proximity of farmed animals and bats that could be carrying coronaviruses is exactly the kind of thing we worry about.”
The WHO-China mission had included scores of recommendations for further study. Though Chinese officials have made statements that imply they are ongoing, WHO officials are still waiting for an update.
There is little sign so far that China will give SAGO an easy ride. People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote earlier this month that China could not trust the WHO expert body, which had been announced but not filled, until it sought an investigation of Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army base and research center in Maryland that Chinese officials have claimed, without evidence, could be linked to the origin of covid-19.
China may have little reason to hope the truth comes out, even if the lab leak theory is unfounded. In the New Yorker this week, Carolyn Kormann noted that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had personally promoted the intensive farming practices that pushed people into closer contact with wild animals — potentially creating the circumstances for a virus to zoonotically spread from bats to humans via an unknown third animal.
“From one perspective, proving the virus has a natural origin is even worse for China. If wildlife farms were responsible for the pandemic, that would implicate the policies of President Xi Jinping. If there was a lab leak, just one, or a few, scientists are culpable of an accident,” Kormann writes.
Gaining knowledge of how covid-19 began without China’s help has yielded few results so far. A U.S. intelligence review came out inconclusive. Most proposals for further investigation rely on pressuring China into further cooperation, a measure that may result in only more pushback from Beijing. Such moves could also disrupt tentative signs of detente between China and the United States.
SAGO will not be able to overrule Chinese interests — indeed, it is likely to be partially bound by them. One of the 26 members of the body is Yungui Yang of the Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yang was also a group leader on the controversial WHO-China mission and in interviews has called for “origins-tracing work in other countries,” echoing Beijing’s line.
But scientific collaboration could yield results. WHO officials are particularly interested in testing blood bank samples from Wuhan to see when the virus first started to spread. In an apparent contradiction of Beijing’s own statements that the investigation within China is over, CNN reported Wednesday that an unnamed Chinese official said that up to 200,000 blood samples that could reveal clues about covid-19 from 2019, identified for further investigation by the WHO-China mission, will be tested soon.
It’s also the only option for WHO. “We have to work with countries and collaborate with them and we need their cooperation to go in,” Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging disease and zoonosis unit, said this week. “That has to happen. There can be no ambiguity.”
Read more:
17. Head of Pentagon Foreign Arms Sales Division Stepping Down After 15 Months on the Job
Excerpts:
While the White House and State Department make arms sales decisions, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency is in charge of administering and executing the sales. The director typically has a demanding travel schedule, meeting with allies and regularly attending arms and air shows all over the world.
“Grant had been considering this transition for some time and believed the moment was right after successfully leading DSCA to its full operational capability phase of organizational transformation on October 1,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “DSCA’s new organizational model will enable DSCA to operate more efficiently and continuously meet the emerging needs of its stakeholders in service of U.S. and partner national security objectives.”
Grant will remain director through Nov. 6. Jed Royal, her deputy, is expected to become acting director on Nov. 7.
Head of Pentagon Foreign Arms Sales Division Stepping Down After 15 Months on the Job
Heidi Grant was the first civilian to lead the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
The top Pentagon official overseeing foreign arms sales announced her resignation after just 15 months on the job.
The announcement was posted on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency website after Grant spoke Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington. Earlier Tuesday, Grant said the U.S. needs to weigh whether blocking an arms sale to an ally would prompt that nation to buy from a “strategic competitor”—alluding to China and Russia, which she did not mention by name.
“We have to look at this and say, if we're not there, our strategic competition is going to fill the void,” she said. “And is that riskier than transferring our high-end technologies?”
Grant, a career civil servant who has spent the past decade working on foreign arms sales and technology transfer to allies, specifically called out the U.S. decision not to sell drones to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.
“Our policies of the time were, we're not going to transfer that technology. So guess what? Our strategic competitor transferred that technology, and have a significant footprint of training bases for unmanned ISR in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE,” Grant said. “It could have been us, we could be there, we could be training and advising, have that access.”
With the U.S. unwilling to sell drones in the Middle East, allies there instead bought from China.
“Considering strategic competition was not a focus,” Grant said. “It was about building partner capability and capacity to get after global challenges.”
After taking control of the White House in January, the Biden administration froze a number of Trump administration-approved arms sales to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates over the countries’ role in the Yemen civil war. In August, Reuters reported the Biden administration would consider human rights concerns when deciding whether to sell weapons to an ally.
In August 2020, Grant became the first civilian to lead the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which had previously been helmed by generals and admirals. As recently as last month, Grant was telling colleagues that being DSCA director was her “dream job,” according to an industry source.
While the White House and State Department make arms sales decisions, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency is in charge of administering and executing the sales. The director typically has a demanding travel schedule, meeting with allies and regularly attending arms and air shows all over the world.
“Grant had been considering this transition for some time and believed the moment was right after successfully leading DSCA to its full operational capability phase of organizational transformation on October 1,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “DSCA’s new organizational model will enable DSCA to operate more efficiently and continuously meet the emerging needs of its stakeholders in service of U.S. and partner national security objectives.”
Grant will remain director through Nov. 6. Jed Royal, her deputy, is expected to become acting director on Nov. 7.
18. SFAB soldiers are heading out in smaller teams to more places
Excerpts:
There have been senior NCOs and officers who led units in early SFABs, and then left for a time, before returning to the enterprise, Jackson told Army Times after the presentation. But Jackson doesn’t want to see overspecialization — soldiers who spend their careers inside SFABs.
“I am totally against a career path,” he said.
SFABs want troops who are proficient in their own areas of work, whether that’s squad tactics or logistics or maintenance. To retain that expertise, soldiers need to be able to rotate back to regular Army units and training schools after serving stints in an SFAB.
A success in strategic competition? This looks good. But what is the real strategic effect that was achieved? Only time will tell. These activities are a long term investment and it will be some time before there may be a "payoff." And there is no way to predict what form that "payoff" will take.
Then there’s the tactical nature of what the teams are doing that can have a strategic impact.
Jackson referenced Col. David Rowland, with 5th SFAB. Rowland took the first team deployment to Mongolia.
The host nation officials were glad to have them, but being sandwiched between Russia and China, they were a little wary of the optics. They asked the American team to keep a low profile, Jackson said.
“For four months, these guys stayed out of sight, out of mind, they trained field artillery, helped build a training center for the Mongolian army,” Jackson said. “They had [a] huge tactical impact.”
When the Mongolian chief of land forces held a ceremony to honor the work of his soldiers, he asked the SFAB team to present awards publicly to the Mongolian soldiers.
Sitting in the seats? The Russian and Chinese delegation officials.
It was a soft blow that falls in line with Jackson’s push to use the SFAB teams to slowly woo foreign partner forces.
SFAB soldiers are heading out in smaller teams to more places
Maj. Gen. Scott A. Jackson, head of Security Force Assistance Command, said that when 1st SFAB deployed to Afghanistan shortly after its 2017 inception, all 800 soldiers went to focus on that one country.
Now, they’re dispatching teams of four to 12 soldiers, headed by a captain, to work in one location for months or even a year at a time. This past fiscal year, SFAB soldiers were deployed to 41 countries.
“And that was a building year,” Jackson said.
The SFABs had about 800 soldiers deployed on any given day, year-round. Those numbers will likely grow to 1,000 soldiers deployed at any one time in the coming years.
RELATED
Power, water, medical care and tactical mobility top the list of problems in need of inovative solutions.
SFABs were regionally aligned 18 months ago to all of the geographic combatant commands, except U.S. Northern Command.
“We’ve decentralized it around the world,” Jackson said Wednesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting.
There have been senior NCOs and officers who led units in early SFABs, and then left for a time, before returning to the enterprise, Jackson told Army Times after the presentation. But Jackson doesn’t want to see overspecialization — soldiers who spend their careers inside SFABs.
“I am totally against a career path,” he said.
SFABs want troops who are proficient in their own areas of work, whether that’s squad tactics or logistics or maintenance. To retain that expertise, soldiers need to be able to rotate back to regular Army units and training schools after serving stints in an SFAB.
An advisor with 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade receives instruction from a Senegalese soldier on an RPG-7 during exercise African Lion 21 in Tan Tan, Morocco, June 10, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Jeron Walker/Army)
Though the expertise in fundamentals “is what gets you in the door,” Jackson said, keeping soldiers humble in the host nation is what keeps them there. And the goal isn’t to build a template and just drop in U.S. military procedures on a foreign force that has its own way of doing things.
Jackson provided examples.
About 18 months ago, leaders in Djibouti wanted help building “Rapid Intervention Battalions.” Jackson said that foreign military sales approved the proper gear to build what ended up being well-equipped light infantry battalions — but without the training. That soon changed.
The SFAB command dispatched Capt. Justin Shaw, who was given 30 days to engage, assess and come up with a five-year training plan for the new battalions.
Now, instead of soldiers sitting around in the sand learning to disassemble weapons, they’re running complex mounted and dismounted live-fire exercises and have already been deployed to the Djibouti border, Jackson said.
In summer 2020, a team of four soldiers, including their captain, deployed to Honduras following the first of what would be two major hurricanes. The initial mission was to train up the nation’s engineer battalion.
Soldiers from Djibouti's Rapid Intervention Battalion wait in a makeshift trench before moving towards an objective during training, Sept. 28, 2020, in Djibouti. (Tech. Sgt. Peter Thompson/Air Force)
But when the second hurricane hit, the team went out with the engineers and, for a month, went sector by sector, reporting back to the U.S. ambassador the conditions and needs on the ground, Jackson said.
Then there’s the tactical nature of what the teams are doing that can have a strategic impact.
Jackson referenced Col. David Rowland, with 5th SFAB. Rowland took the first team deployment to Mongolia.
The host nation officials were glad to have them, but being sandwiched between Russia and China, they were a little wary of the optics. They asked the American team to keep a low profile, Jackson said.
“For four months, these guys stayed out of sight, out of mind, they trained field artillery, helped build a training center for the Mongolian army,” Jackson said. “They had [a] huge tactical impact.”
When the Mongolian chief of land forces held a ceremony to honor the work of his soldiers, he asked the SFAB team to present awards publicly to the Mongolian soldiers.
Sitting in the seats? The Russian and Chinese delegation officials.
It was a soft blow that falls in line with Jackson’s push to use the SFAB teams to slowly woo foreign partner forces.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
19. The Flawed Tzu of ATP 7-100_3 Chinese Tactics
Quite a critique.
Excerpt:
Examining one’s potential adversaries for potential strengths and weakness is crucial for any military service and government, leading to the publishing of training guidance that directs and supports resource management. Still, when the document is based on historically short-sighted analysis and false assumptions, danger exists. The West's desire for the PRC to develop a capitalist economy; missed or ignored the PRC’s establishment of state-directed capitalism. This system empowered the PRC to influence and dictate internal economic development and actions, which influenced Chinese industry to flout international organizations and treaties. Misunderstanding motivations is dangerous, disregarding capabilities is deadly. Continuing with the second part of Sun Tzu’s quote, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you will also suffer a defeat.” Forgetting our history with the PLA sets a bad precedence. The 7-100.3 does acknowledge the improvements the PLA has made in technology deploying fifth-generation fighters, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and coordinated cyber operations. But by ignoring the interplay between technologies, the military's and government’s history of adaptation, and the government's internal controls and international interactions, the 7-100.3 creates a document that will design and develop poor training and leaders with a misunderstanding of a possible adversary.
The Flawed Tzu of ATP 7-100_3 Chinese Tactics
Applying Sun Tzu’s sage advice about knowing your enemy, the U.S. Army recently published ATP 7-100.3 Chinese Tactics. Unfortunately, rather than an honest assessment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), it appears the U.S. Army was looking at a dirty mirror and seeing a distorted version of itself. These include such simple misunderstandings of internal processes as stating the PRC is moving towards a capitalistic free market system. Or more dangerous mirroring that the PRC wants to be a good neighbor endeavoring for cooperation with India and other neighbors. The 7-100.3 more dangerously discounts our shared history when the U.S. military fought the PLA during the Korean War. Although poor claims are made, the 7-100.3 cannot be wholly discounted; valuable insights exist. The 7-100.3’s failure to honestly represent the PRC and the PLA could have severe implications on the U.S. Army’s professional education, the design of training events, and leader development with the possibility of serious repercussions.
One aspect of a nation’s character extends from the interaction of its political and economic systems; these two systems influence everything from business and industry to international relations. ATP 7-100.3 alleges that the PRC is moving towards a capitalistic free market system. The 7-100.3’s claim that the PRC is moving towards a capitalistic free market system is outdated and harkens back to a misunderstanding and Western aspiration over thirty years old. The PRC instead established and operates under a system of state-directed capitalism. State-directed capitalism is a system in which the government directs, influences, and resources the nations and business economic planning and development. Though the 7-100.3 bypasses a discussion on the PRC’s political structure, it does address the complex interplay between the PLA, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the PRC; reinforcing the PLA’s support of the CCP, with the PLA’s goal of maintaining the stability of the PRC. The interplay of the PLA support to the CCP and state-directed capitalism gives the CCP and arguably the PLA an immense amount of direct control in guiding and directing business.
Moving beyond misunderstanding internal systems of the PRC, the 7-100.3 makes misguided suppositions on the PRC's regional and international motivations and actions, stating that the PRC wants to be a good neighbor endeavoring for cooperation with India and other nations. This statement contradicts numerous actions by the PRC against its neighbors and the international community. Two examples are the ongoing disputes with India and the Philippines. The PRC and India claim the Ladakh’s Gogra region sustaining a steady-state low-level conflict. Even though both nations maintain “unarmed” military forces in the territory, occasionally hostilities occur, leading to injuries and even the death of Service members. In addition to this border dispute, the PRC has aided Pakistan's procurement of nuclear weapons technology as a counter-balance to India. In another example, the Philippines filed an arbitration case against the PRC in the UN, involving the Chinese economic encroachment on the Philippines’ Scarborough Shoals. The PRC would reject the UN tribunal’s ruling, which ruled in the Philippines' favor. In response, the PRC actually increased the number of violations against the Philippines' and other neighbors' exclusive economic zones. Though concerning and with the possibility of escalation, the PRC/India conflict remain primarily local; the PRC economic actions are more problematic for not only does it show the PRC ignoring other nation's legitimate claims, it also demonstrates the PRC's dismissive attitude towards international organizations and intergovernmental treaties and agreements. Both actions show the PRC has no desire to be a good neighbor unless the other side is willing to consent to the PRC's activities or desires.
More dangerously than misunderstanding the PRC’s internal systems or international interactions, though, the 7-100.3 misremembers the U.S.’s dealings with the PLA during the Korean War. The 7-100.3 states that “the PLA had no expeditionary capability, minimal mechanization, low-technology systems, and a severe lack of professionalism.” Though technically accurate at the beginning of the PLA’s direct involvement in the conflict, the battle-tested PLA fought the combined UN military force to a standstill by signing the Armistice. Showing that the PLA is capable of rapidly adapting and improving while under the pressure and strain of combat. Though even this must be qualified as the PLA has not fought in an external conflict in over fifty years, it prevents the U.S. Army and the world from having a framework for analyzing the PLA’s fighting capability.
Examining one’s potential adversaries for potential strengths and weakness is crucial for any military service and government, leading to the publishing of training guidance that directs and supports resource management. Still, when the document is based on historically short-sighted analysis and false assumptions, danger exists. The West's desire for the PRC to develop a capitalist economy; missed or ignored the PRC’s establishment of state-directed capitalism. This system empowered the PRC to influence and dictate internal economic development and actions, which influenced Chinese industry to flout international organizations and treaties. Misunderstanding motivations is dangerous, disregarding capabilities is deadly. Continuing with the second part of Sun Tzu’s quote, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you will also suffer a defeat.” Forgetting our history with the PLA sets a bad precedence. The 7-100.3 does acknowledge the improvements the PLA has made in technology deploying fifth-generation fighters, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and coordinated cyber operations. But by ignoring the interplay between technologies, the military's and government’s history of adaptation, and the government's internal controls and international interactions, the 7-100.3 creates a document that will design and develop poor training and leaders with a misunderstanding of a possible adversary.
Major Thomas G. Pledger serves as a T10 AGR Officer as the Chief of the Operations Action Group for the National Guard Bureau J3.
The views in this article are the author's own and not the National Guard Bureau, U.S. Army or Department of Defense.
Notes:
ATP 7-100.3, 1-3
ATP 7-100.3, 1-1, 1-4
ATP 7-100.3, vii
ATP 7-100.3, 1-3
https://time.com/5600363/china-tiananmen-30-years-later/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gadyepstein/2010/08/31/the-winners-and-losers-in-chinese-capitalism/?sh=7e65ae6688b1
ATP 7-100.3, 2-1
ATP 7-100.3, 1-1, 1-4
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3144162/china-india-border-dispute-both-countries-pull-back-soldiers
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56121781
https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/the-strategic-implications-chinas-nuclear-aid-pakistan
https://time.com/100417/china-vietnam-sino-vietnamese-war-south-china-sea/
ATP 7-100.3, 1-3
https://www.unc.mil/History/1950-1953-Korean-War-Active-Conflict/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17976-if-you-know-the-enemy-and-know-yourself-you-need
20. U.S., Philippines Eye Return to Full Military Drills in 2022
Excerpts:
China doesn’t oppose other nations’ military drills, but hopes “they will not target any third party,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday at a regular press briefing in Beijing.
The ramp-up in military engagement comes after the U.S., U.K. and Australia unveiled a security partnership last month that allows Canberra to acquire nuclear-powered submarine technology.
While some nations in Southeast Asia were concerned that the pact would drive a regional arms race, the Philippines was broadly supportive of the move but said that Manila wanted good defense relations with all countries in the Indo-Pacific.
U.S., Philippines Eye Return to Full Military Drills in 2022
October 14, 2021, 1:51 AM EDT Updated on October 14, 2021, 4:37 AM EDT
- America wants to ‘increase complexity and scope’ of exercises
- Philippines sees ‘like-minded’ countries rejoining drills
The U.S. and the Philippines are planning to return to full-scale military drills in 2022 after two years and will invite Australia and the U.K. as observers, in another sign of the Biden administration’s push to deepen ties in the Indo-Pacific and counter China’s assertiveness.
America wants “to increase the complexity and scope” of its military exercises with the Philippines, and plans to invite new partners to join the drills, Admiral John Aquilino, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief, said at a briefing in Manila.
The U.K., Australia and Japan are among the “like-minded” countries that could rejoin the drills as observers, Philippine military chief Jose Faustino said at the same briefing.
China doesn’t oppose other nations’ military drills, but hopes “they will not target any third party,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday at a regular press briefing in Beijing.
Ramp-Up
The ramp-up in military engagement comes after the U.S., U.K. and Australia unveiled a security partnership last month that allows Canberra to acquire nuclear-powered submarine technology.
While some nations in Southeast Asia were concerned that the pact would drive a regional arms race, the Philippines was broadly supportive of the move but said that Manila wanted good defense relations with all countries in the Indo-Pacific.
Earlier in his term, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wanted to end military exercises with the U.S., as he sought to build ties with China. The drills were canceled in 2020 and scaled down this year due to the pandemic.
In recent months, however, the Philippines has been moving back towards its long-time alliance with the U.S., amid tensions with Beijing over the South China Sea.
Aquilino also repeated America’s commitment that it will stand with the Philippines against threats. The U.S. has also allocated $12.5 million to implement a deal that allows American projects in Philippine military bases, he said.
— With assistance by Philip Glamann
(Updates with China foreign ministry comment in fourth paragraph.)
21. How to Get Congress to Dump Old U.S. Military Equipment for Good
Excerpts:
The House and Senate Armed Service Committee bills contain legislation detailing a “Global Force Management Oversight Act.” Depending on the final version, the Secretary of Defense will be required to submit a report on the Global Force Management Allocation Plan, describing where departures from the GFMAP took place from year to year, and explaining differences between the actual allocation of forces to combatant commands during a given year and the forces originally provided in the GFMAP.
Led by Wittman and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the effort seems likely to become law. Congress cannot address the imbalance between the service chiefs and combatant commanders without access to the right data for analysis. This is an important step to provide lawmakers with information they need to review, and ultimately restrain, the demand signal from combatant commanders for forces in their respective theaters. This information will also be critical to the forthcoming Defense Strategy Commission in its work reviewing the Pentagon’s next document so that the force may be simultaneously ready, healthy, and modern.
How to Get Congress to Dump Old U.S. Military Equipment for Good
In Washington, it’s easy to blame politicians for being, well, politicians. Defense leaders often decry the parochial interests of elected officials thwarting their plans to get rid of older weapons to free up dollars for reinvestment. This blame is not unfounded, but sometimes Congress has it right. When acting in good faith, Congress contends the services should hang onto old stuff to maintain enough capacity to meet global demand for the United States military.
Even as defense leaders call for increased spending on emerging technologies, the services remain busy flying, driving, and sailing presence missions today. Every year, the U.S. military participates in joint exercises with allies and partners, conducts operations, and serves as the nation’s preferred first responder. Combatant commanders have missions to accomplish in their theaters and they need forces from the services to execute those missions.
So, if the services are caught between modernizing the force and saying yes to combatant commanders when they ask for more support, a question logically follows: When can and should the Defense Department say “no” to certain missions?
The Air Force dealt with a range of non-traditional demands for forces this year, for example. Due to the scale of the United States’ effort to evacuate refugees and Americans from Afghanistan, the U.S. mobilized the Civil Reserve Air Fleet—calling on commercial airlines to support humanitarian and military operations. The non-combatant evacuation was so intense and extensive that that crews and planes for portions of the C-17 fleet are now offline for a much-needed reset.
The unprecedented Afghan airlift means the Air Force will rely on its reserve components in the meantime for lift. But those same air reserve components have also been running hard. Earlier in the year, C-130s from three Air National Guard wings and a Reserve wing flew missions in support of the U.S. Forest Service in response to extreme wildfires. The wings were activated a monthly sooner in 2021 than 2020 and are already flying double the pace of last year.
Air Force chief General CQ Brown and his counterpart Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger wrote frequently over the past year about the need to reconsider how the Defense Department balances long-term and short-term risk when considering investments in modernization versus current operations.
Similarly, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday cautions the Navy is funding global presence operations partly at the cost of its shipbuilding and development efforts. Referencing operational demands in the Middle East, Gilday estimated, “Those 15 request for forces that extended four [aircraft] carriers in Central Command for almost a year came at a cost of over a quarter of a billion dollars that we cannot invest in modernization.
In late 2020, Adm. Frank Caldwell, director of the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program, pointed out that it’s not just carriers under strain. Caldwell explained “all of the maritime commanders want a lot more of what the submarine force can bring,” with the preface, “we are a force that’s in very high demand.”
This spring, acting Army Secretary John Whitley also spelled out the struggles his service faces. Whitley said, “[The Army is] about 35% of the active-duty end strength of the department, about 45% if you add in reserve forces….but we’re over 50% of the current operating tempo of the department.” With Iraq and Afghan ops over, the Army continues to deploy soldiers at wartime rates.
Whitley also built on statements from Army chief of staff General James McConville last year, warning that air defense artillery units and armored brigade combat teams were stressed by an operations tempo “higher than it was even during the peak time in Afghanistan and Iraq.” McConville concluded, “So we got to fix that.” Amen. Today, the Army is trying to revamp its readiness model to provide more deployment predictability, but Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps rejoins, “A lot of it is going to be dependent on the combatant command demand signal of those deployed units. And that is one of the baseline things that drives everything.”
Congress is poised to force the issue. In this year’s House and Senate defense authorization bills for fiscal year 2022 there is language on finding an answer for how to better manage the demand signal for forces, honing in on evaluating the force allocations for combatant commanders, and building on efforts to address the issue earlier in the year, spearheaded by Congressman Rob Wittman (R-Va.)
The House and Senate Armed Service Committee bills contain legislation detailing a “Global Force Management Oversight Act.” Depending on the final version, the Secretary of Defense will be required to submit a report on the Global Force Management Allocation Plan, describing where departures from the GFMAP took place from year to year, and explaining differences between the actual allocation of forces to combatant commands during a given year and the forces originally provided in the GFMAP.
Led by Wittman and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the effort seems likely to become law. Congress cannot address the imbalance between the service chiefs and combatant commanders without access to the right data for analysis. This is an important step to provide lawmakers with information they need to review, and ultimately restrain, the demand signal from combatant commanders for forces in their respective theaters. This information will also be critical to the forthcoming Defense Strategy Commission in its work reviewing the Pentagon’s next document so that the force may be simultaneously ready, healthy, and modern.
Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow in the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. You can follow her on Twitter: @MEaglen.
22. Will Americans Buy into Biden’s Ambitious Domestic Terrorism Plan?
Excerpts:
But there is an important change within this strategy unrelated to recent politics. The Biden plan explicitly promises to diverge from the counterterrorism policies of the war on terror in order to promote constitutional protections. “Past U.S. Government prevention efforts have had a mixed record,” the strategy notes. “We need to do better – better at protecting rights and freedoms while still pursuing the goal of preventing individuals from harming their fellow Americans through terrorism or other criminal activity.”
Towards that end, the strategy repeatedly makes several good-faith efforts at alluding to civil-liberty protections. It distinguishes, for example, between ideology and violence. “Our country and its laws leave wide open the space for political and ideological views and their articulation, including through peaceful protest,” the strategy emphasizes, “But they leave no room for unlawful violence.” Freedom of expression and of assembly are mentioned several times in the report. Wherein civil liberties groups often pointed to the criminalization of speech in the war on terror’s law enforcement investigations, the new strategy, as outlined, intends to focus on acts of violence and inspiring others to acts of violence. As Attorney General Merrick Garland put it when he announced the strategy in June, “we are focused on violence, not on ideology.”
Will Americans Buy into Biden’s Ambitious Domestic Terrorism Plan?
The president’s national strategy pivots the United States away from the worst practices of the war on terrorism—if law enforcement, courts, and agencies will follow.
There is much that is notable about the Biden administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. Most importantly, it holds the potential of pivoting away from some of the egregious abuses involved in terrorism investigations during the last two decades of the global war on terrorism.
Released in June, the Biden strategy breaks new ground in its deep appreciation of the “complex, multifaceted and evolving” challenge that domestic terrorism poses. It directly and indirectly references the deficiencies of the policies implemented to counter transnational terrorism. And it recognizes that the threat of domestic terrorism—and a mishandled response to it—can threaten democracy. But what precisely is new here, and will it matter?
To start, Biden defines and identifies a wider-array of domestic terrorists, including “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists [RMVE’s] and networks whose racial, ethnic, or religious hatred leads them toward violence, as well that those whom they encourage to take violent action.” It recognizes gender-motivated violent extremists. It includes “the threat [that] comes from anti–government or anti–authority violent extremists,” and self-proclaimed militias, often representing a wide ideological spectrum. And it lists potentially-violent extremists with topical grievances across the political spectrum, from anti-abortion to animal rights, the environment, and even involuntary celibacy.
Given the many dimensions of domestic extremism, countering the threat is daunting. The internet stands to accelerate recruitment and mobilization of any of these groups. “Gun flows,” including assault weapons, are readily available. And the presence of racially-biased extremists inside the military, law enforcement, and other government agencies pose an additional challenge.
While some critics may claim to see partisan motivations in the administration’s plan, nevertheless, the tone of the strategy emphasizes a methodological approach, a privileging of evidence and procedure, and sense of multiple stakeholders whose various interests need to be adequately addressed.
But there is an important change within this strategy unrelated to recent politics. The Biden plan explicitly promises to diverge from the counterterrorism policies of the war on terror in order to promote constitutional protections. “Past U.S. Government prevention efforts have had a mixed record,” the strategy notes. “We need to do better – better at protecting rights and freedoms while still pursuing the goal of preventing individuals from harming their fellow Americans through terrorism or other criminal activity.”
Towards that end, the strategy repeatedly makes several good-faith efforts at alluding to civil-liberty protections. It distinguishes, for example, between ideology and violence. “Our country and its laws leave wide open the space for political and ideological views and their articulation, including through peaceful protest,” the strategy emphasizes, “But they leave no room for unlawful violence.” Freedom of expression and of assembly are mentioned several times in the report. Wherein civil liberties groups often pointed to the criminalization of speech in the war on terror’s law enforcement investigations, the new strategy, as outlined, intends to focus on acts of violence and inspiring others to acts of violence. As Attorney General Merrick Garland put it when he announced the strategy in June, “we are focused on violence, not on ideology.”
The administration’s strategy also accords respect to privacy protections in the government’s efforts to analyze data from government and private sources. It’s a direct response to criticism of mass warrantless surveillance on American citizens and others within the United States in gross violations of Fourth Amendment protections.
So, what will the Biden administration do to make its plan a reality? The strategy does not actively promote new legislation but instead takes a reflective, wait-and-see approach to whether such legislation is required. For years, discussion of a federal domestic terrorism statute has been at the crosshairs of debate in Washington and beyond. The essence of the debate has been over whether or not the excesses of law enforcement that accompanied prosecutions of suspected international terrorists—for example warrantless surveillance, aggressive FBI stings, and suspicion based on race and ethnicity—will be replicated in a domestic terrorism statute.
While the strategy does not preclude such legislation, it purports to a patient assessment, rather than an aggressive embrace. It aims at “examining carefully what new authorities might be necessary and appropriate…driven by facts and informed by the analysis of experts” who can advise on “both the current authorities for addressing domestic terrorism threats and the implications for civil rights and civil liberties of pursuing any changes to those authorities.”
Biden’s report acknowledges throughout that the threat of domestic extremist violence warrants not just law enforcement actions but a multi-dimension approach involving digital literacy, civic education, and raising public awareness concerning how to effectively combat and prevent domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence.
All told then, the Biden strategy holds potential. It will be their task to reform practices and policies to achieve that goal. But whether law enforcement, the judicial system, and government agencies tasked with security will ultimately exercise restraint in collecting information, in targeting communities, and in separating speech from action remains to be seen. With judicious and responsible direction from the top, perhaps true regard for civil liberties in the context of terrorism can follow.
Karen J. Greenberg, Ph.D, is Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and the
author of "Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump" (Princeton University Press, 2021).
23. Cultural Intelligence: More than Materiel
You cannot conduct effective information and influence activities without sufficient cultural intelligence.
359. Cultural Intelligence: More than Materiel | Mad Scientist Laboratory
[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist is pleased to feature our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, with Terry Young, Founder and CEO, sparks & honey. In this episode, we discuss the future of workplaces, the meaning of true diversity and how to achieve and measure it, and how to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to build cultural intelligence across a wide spectrum of future topics — Enjoy! (Please note that this podcast and several of the embedded links below are best accessed via a non-DoD network due to network priorities for teleworking)]
[If the podcast dashboard is not rendering correctly for you, please click here to listen to the podcast.]
Terry Young is the Founder and CEO of sparks & honey, “a cultural intelligence consultancy helping organizations understand explosive and immediate cultural shifts, as well as cultural tastes that develop over time.” By leveraging the power of culture, sparks & honey seeks to open minds and create possibilities in the now, next, and future. Mr. Young is a frequent speaker and writer on the largest shifts that will shape the future, most recently addressing such topics as precision consumer 2030, the rise of Generation Z, new semantics, open business, diversity OS, and the future of giving. His deep understanding of consumer behavior and digital and technology platforms allowed him to architect the sparks & honey model and cultural intelligence platform, QTM.
In our interview with Mr. Young, we discuss the future of workplaces, the meaning of true diversity and how to achieve and measure it, and how to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to build cultural intelligence across a wide spectrum of future topics. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:
- Cultural intelligence can help us understand why humans make the decisions that they make and how we can translate that information into opportunities. At scale, it can identify weak signals and emerging threats and help organizations anticipate change.
- sparks & honey leverages AI and man-machine teaming to identify the impacts of cultural trends.
-
QTM — their AI cultural analysis system — uses natural language processing to analyze and map cultural trends at scale by scouring myriad sources — social media, patents, blogs, influencers, policy changes, academic papers, scientific discoveries — and then building a taxonomy of culture to categorize, cluster, and quantify these different ‘signals.’
- The humans in this man-machine equation translate these signals into opportunities by adding nuance, intuition, and context to make sense of these trends and where the world is heading.
-
Cultural trends are classified in a ‘stack’ with three levels. Megatrends, like climate change, will structurally change society in the long term, 8-10 years out. Macrotrends will create impacts in 1-3 years, while Micro-signals indicate short term changes.
- Cultural Intelligence identifies the drivers of cultural change – not just what is happening, but why it is happening. For the military, cultural intelligence could help identify the emergence of radical ideologies and track new and convergent trends affecting the Operational Environment.
-
sparks & honey predicts that cultural changes are trending towards equity in organizations. This is something that is on the radar of many large organizations, but is being dismissed as a non-priority. Due to changes arising from the COVID-19 global pandemic, work environments are shifting and employees are likely to prioritize fairness and moral leadership in the workplace and outside of it. Negative perceptions about uniformed service, exacerbated by our adversaries’ information operations, could reduce the pool of interested recruits.
- The pandemic has also increased the velocity at which businesses will be expected to prioritize employee wellness. Leaders need to be thinking about the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of their workforce. For the Army, prioritizing wellness – with an emphasis on mental health – will be essential in maintaining Soldier readiness.
-
Diversity will also be increasingly important to an organization’s success and cannot be solely prioritized in the human resources department. A holistic approach can spread organizations too thin. Improvement in this area needs to be incremental and will require focus, transparency, and consistent re-evaluation of progress.
-
Given that change is inevitable, organizations should focus on building resilience rather than mitigation or aversion. This strategy will help prevent disruption and chaos when unforeseen changes occur, but will also better prepare them to ‘see around corners’ and anticipate changes that will impact their operations.
Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next episode of The Convergence, featuring our interview with Dr. Brent Sterling, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and author of Other People’s Wars: The US Military and the Challenge of Learning from Foreign Conflicts, discussing how militaries learn (or don’t!) from foreign conflicts, what pitfalls await those trying to learn from historical conflicts, how focusing only on “relevant” observations hampers our creativity in analyzing warfare, and what strategists can do to avoid past mistakes.
… learn more about the U.S. Army’s single consistent OE narrative (spanning the near, mid-, and far terms out to 2050) in:
… and review the following additional related content:
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
