Quotes of the Day:

“You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

- John Wooden

"Science is not truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn't lie to you. It learned more."

- Unknown (found on social media)

"All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it." 

- Mozart

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 6 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (06.09.22) CDS comments on key events

3. National Defense Service Medal won’t be awarded after December

4. Futures Command faces identity crisis as Army shifts mission

5. Biden’s ‘no’ on Russia terrorism label picks Congress fight

6. Japan, US, Philippines to step up maritime security ties

7. So Square It’s Hip: ​​Gen Z Tries on the Communist Cadre Look

8. Inside Norway’s complex plan to save a stranded Air Force Osprey

9. Are al Qaeda and Iran really at odds?

10. FDD | Deal or No Deal, Israel Must Restore a Credible Military Threat

11. FDD | Washington must act to build capable federal cybersecurity workforce

12. China drills improved Taiwan's combat abilities, President Tsai says

13. Putin calls for review of Ukraine grain deal, accuses West of deception

14. Seeking a Program Manager for SoA in Taiwan

15. Biden to host U.S.-Pacific Island summit amid heightened tensions with Beijing

16. New Details Revealed in 'Fat Leonard' Escape, Detention as Manhunt Continues

17. World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence

18. UWM 'volunteers' for dining halls sought, staff email shows

19. The Weakness of Xi Jinping

20. In Praise of Lesser Evils

21. The Dangerous Decade

22. Russia Is Taking A Big Risk Purchasing Rockets and Artillery Shells From North Korea

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 6 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-6

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 6

Sep 6, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, George Barros, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 6, 10:00 pm ET

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

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) September 6 report on the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) described numerous ways in which Russian occupation authorities and the Russian military are jeopardizing the safe operation of the plant.[1] The report does not attempt to determine which party is responsible for the shelling that has damaged the facility and repeatedly calls on “all relevant parties” to take measures to improve the situation. The moderation and apparent neutrality of that language can overshadow the extremely clear articulation of the Russian activities undermining the plant’s safety and the fact that the report attributes no dangerous actions to Ukraine. The IAEA’s report is thus a coded condemnation of Russian moves that have created and are perpetuating the danger of nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

The report specifically notes that Ukraine reported to the IAEA that Russian forces had positioned military equipment in two turbine halls and various other facilities in and around the ZNPP.[2] It adds that the inspection team that finally visited the plant recently directly observed Russian military equipment in turbine halls and elsewhere around the plant.[3] It added that personnel from Russia’s state atomic energy organization, ROSATOM, were at the site and observed that “the presence of Rosatom senior technical staff could lead to interference with the normal lines of operational command or authority and create potential frictions when it comes to decision-making.”[4] It also noted that “the operating staff did not have unrestricted access to some areas, such as the spray cooling ponds, roofs of the buildings, and structures in the area of the water intake, and that access to the cooling ponds area was required to be granted by the military personnel at the site.”[5] The IAEA’s inspection team was told that “the on-site emergency centre was not accessible to the plant staff for emergency response as it was occupied by the military authority.” The team visited the alternative emergency center and observed that it lacked “an independent power supply or an independent ventilation system, and there is no internet connection to enable effective communication with all parties involved in an emergency response.”[6]

The IAEA report thus demonstrates that Russian officials have placed military equipment in locations inhibiting access to essential facilities, installed their own personnel to oversee the plant’s operations in ways that the IAEA judges could undermine effective response to a nuclear emergency, restricted the Ukrainian operating staff’s access to key parts of the facility, and shifted the emergency center to a location lacking essential components vital to an effective response to a serious nuclear emergency. The Russians have thus created conditions at the ZNPP that increase the risk that an emergency could occur and significantly increase the danger that the operating staff will be unable to respond efficiently and effectively in such an event.

Russian President Vladimir Putin could seek to use the fears that his actions are causing to coerce the IAEA and the international community into a de facto recognition of Russia’s right to be involved in the operation of the ZNPP, which he might seek to portray as de facto recognition of Russia’s occupation of southern Ukraine. The somewhat coded language of the IAEA report reflects the fact that Ukraine remains the operator of the ZNPP and the party responsible for its safe operation and for complying with the IAEA under international law. The IAEA cannot directly engage Russia regarding the plant’s operation without at least tacitly admitting that Russia has some right to be consulted. Putin might seek to take advantage of this situation to attempt to create a process analogous to the Minsk Accords that established the “ceasefire” in Ukraine following Russia’s 2014 invasion. The Minsk and Minsk II agreements treated Russia as a neutral party rather than a participant, thereby tacitly accepting Putin’s assertion that Ukraine was in civil war rather than the victim of Russian aggression. Putin might seek to use the conditions he has created at the ZNPP to establish a parallel international framework undermining Ukraine’s sovereign rights over the much greater expanse of Ukrainian territory Russian forces now occupy.

Ukrainian forces conducted a counterattack in Kharkiv Oblast near Balakliya that likely drove Russian forces back to the left bank (north side) of the Severskyi Donets and Serednya Balakliika rivers on September 6. Ukrainian forces likely captured Verbivka (less than 3 km northwest of Balakliya) on September 6.[7] Geolocated footage posted on September 6 shows Ukrainian infantry in eastern Verbivka (less than 3 km from Balakliya).[8] Multiple Russian sources acknowledged Ukrainian gains in Verbivka and reported that Russian forces demolished unspecified bridges in Balakliya‘s eastern environs to prevent further Ukrainian advances.[9] Images posted on September 6 also show a destroyed Russian bridge over the Serednya Balakliika River—a geographic feature behind which the Russian front line in this sector likely lies.[10] Social media users reported that Russian forces withdrew from checkpoints six kilometers west of Balaklia on September 6.[11]

Russian forces likely no longer maintain their previous positions in Bairak and Nova Husarivka (just south of Balakliya on the right bank of the Seversky Donets River). Russian forces likely abandoned Bayrak and Nova Husarivka in late August. Images posted on August 30 show that Russian forces blew the bridge over the Seversky Donetsk River near Bayrak on an unspecified date.[12] Bridge demolition activity indicates a planned Russian withdrawal. Ukraine’s General Staff reported on September 6 that Russian forces conducted air strikes against Bayrak, indicating that Ukrainian forces may have advanced in the area.[13]

Russia’s deployment of forces from Kharkiv and eastern Ukraine to Ukraine’s south is likely enabling Ukrainian counterattacks of opportunity. The September 6 Ukrainian counterattack in Kharkiv was likely an opportunistic effort enabled by the redeployment of Russian forces away from the area to reinforce Russian positions against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast. Obituary data on Russian servicemen indicates that Russia deployed elements of the 147th Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army to Kherson Oblast no earlier than late August.[14] This is the first time ISW has observed elements of Russia’s elite 1st Guards Tank Army operating in southern Ukraine. Elements of the 147th previously fought in Bucha in Kyiv in March and elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army were active primarily along the Kharkiv Axis after the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv.[15]

Key Takeaways

• The International Atomic Energy Agency report released on September 6 describes Russian activities that increase the likelihood of a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant while decreasing the ability of the plant’s personnel to respond to such an accident effectively.
• Ukrainian forces have launched likely opportunistic counterattacks in southern Kharkiv Oblast and retaken several settlements. Russian redeployments of forces from this area to defend against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson likely prompted and facilitated these counterattacks.
• Ukrainian forces are continuing an operational-level interdiction campaign and striking Russian logistics nodes, transportation assets, manpower and equipment concentrations, and control points across Kherson Oblast.
• Russian and Ukrainian sources discussed kinetic activity northwest of Kherson City and in western Kherson Oblast along the Inhulets River.
• Russian forces made incremental gains south of Bakhmut and continued ground attacks north, northwest, and southwest of Donetsk City.
• Russian authorities continue setting conditions to Russify Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.

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

• Ukrainian Counteroffensives
• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort- Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort 1- Kharkiv City
• Russian Supporting Effort 2- Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

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

Ukrainian military officials reiterated on September 6 that Ukrainian forces are targeting Russian logistics nodes, transportation assets, manpower and equipment concentrations, and control points across the Southern Axis.[16] Ukraine’s Southern Operational command stated that Ukrainian troops carried out over 150 fire missions in the direction of Kherson Oblast and specifically targeted Russian river crossings in critical areas.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that these Ukrainian strikes are having significant impacts on Russian forces’ ability to conduct offensive operations.[18] Ukrainian officials are maintaining operational silence and did not provide specifics on Ukrainian ground movements in Kherson Oblast.

Social media footage taken by residents of Kherson Oblast on September 6 provides visual evidence of the continuing Ukrainian operational-level interdiction campaign. Ukrainian forces likely struck key Russian logistics nodes and military assets in three main areas on the evening of September 5-6: around Kherson City, in and around Nova Kakhkovka (55km due east of Kherson City), and deep in Russian-held rear areas in southern Kherson Oblast. Social media reports from within the Kherson City area include video claiming to capture the sounds of explosions from a strike on Russian positions in Chornobaivka, on the northern outskirts of Kherson City.[19] Geolocated imagery and satellite imagery from September 5 indicates that Ukrainian strikes likely destroyed the Darivskyi Bridge (about 15km northwest of Kherson City).[20] Residents reported the sounds of explosions after a Ukrainian strike on Russian equipment concentrations in and around Nova Kakhkovka, about 55km due east of Kherson City.[21] Residents also reported explosions and the activation of Russian air defenses over various areas south of the Dnipro River, including Hola Prystan (10km southwest of Kherson City), Kalanchak (65km southeast of Kherson City), and Chaplynka (80km southeast of Kherson City).[22]

Ukrainian and Russian sources reported kinetic activity in two main areas along the Kherson Oblast frontline on September 6- northwest of Kherson City near the Mykolaiv-Kherson border and in western Kherson Oblast along the Inhulets River that runs between Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled an attempted Russian advance near Lyubomirivka, about 25km northwest of Kherson City.[23] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command similarly noted that Ukrainian troops fought against Russian assaults near Schmidtove and Ternovi Pody, both about 25km north of Kherson City and along the Mykolaiv-Kherson Oblast border.[24] The frontline northwest of Kherson City is likely highly contested as Ukrainian troops attempt to push inwards toward Kherson City and Russian troops attempt to push outwards towards Mykolaiv City.

Russian milbloggers discussed purported Ukrainian operations in western Kherson along the Inhulets River on September 6. One Russian source reported that Ukrainian forces are transferring reinforcements to the south bank of the Inhulets River but that Ukrainian troops have not been successful in pushing further south that Sukhyi Stavok (about 65km northeast of Kherson City).[25] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops attempted to advance towards Bilohirka (4km northeast of Sukhyi Stavok) from the northwest across the Inhulets River and that fighting is ongoing in Kostromka (4km southeast of Sukhyi Stavok).[26] Russian sources also stated that Russian troops fired on Ukrainian positions around the Sukhyi Stavok pocket, which confirms that Ukrainian forces are holding positions there.[27] Several geolocated videos further confirm that Ukrainian forces have captured territory in northern Kherson near the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border, namely around Olhyne, Visokopillya, and Novovoznesenske.[28]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) seemingly adopted a more tempered tone in its claims about the Ukrainian counteroffensive on September 6 and stated that Ukrainian troops are continuing attempts to attack in the Mykolaiv-Kryvyi Rih direction.[29] Since the start of the counteroffensive of August 29, the prose employed by the Russian MoD has typically been acerbic and intended to undermine Ukrainian actions and present the counteroffensive on whole as a failing. The more neutral tone of the Russian MoD’s September 6 statement may suggest that the Russian MoD seeks to avoid getting too far away from the discourse of Russian milbloggers, who have been reporting specifics of the counteroffensive in granular detail. The Russian MoD likely is unwilling to directly refute concrete claims made by military correspondents, and the more neutral approach to the Ukrainian counteroffensive affords the MoD a margin of error when discussing operations in Kherson Oblast that does not put it too badly at odds with milbloggers in the wider Russian information space.

Russian Main Effort- Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks along the Izyum-Slovyansk axis on September 6 and continued routine air and artillery strikes in this area.[30] Geolocated footage posted on September 5 shows Ukrainian troops walking freely along a road in Staryi Karavan, about 10km northeast of Slovyansk.[31] The footage suggests that Ukrainian forces may have conducted a limited counterattack northeast of Slovyansk and gained ground near the T0514 highway that runs into Slovyansk itself, or conducted an infiltration reconnaissance mission in the area. Russian forces’ control over Staryi Karavan is likely reduced in either event.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks toward Siversk on September 6 and continued routine artillery strikes on Siversk and surrounding settlements.[32]

Russian force continued ground attacks south and northeast of Bakhmut on September 6 and made incremental gains south of Bakhmut. Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group fighters established full control over the entirety of Kodema (13km southeast of Bakhmut) by the end of the day on September 6, and a Russian military correspondent posted footage of soldiers moving freely around streets in Kodema.[33] Russian forces will likely use positions in Kodema to push northwards on Zaitseve, where fighting is ongoing.[34] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian troops attempted attacks near Vesela Dolyna (5km southeast of Bakhmut) and in Soledar (10km northeast of Bakhmut).[35] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 3rd Brigade claimed they are also advancing from the outskirts of Horlivka (20km south of Bakhmut).[36]

Russian forces conducted a series of ground attacks north, west, and south of the outskirts of Donetsk City on September 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted assaults near Avdiivka (5km north of the outskirts of Donetsk City), Novobakhmutivka (15km north of the outskirts of Donetsk City), and Spartka and the Butivka mine (both directly on the northern outskirts of Donetsk City).[37] Russian sources claimed that the 11th DNR Regiment took control of a bridge on the road that runs between Pisky and Pervomaiske (both on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City) and are continuing efforts to advance westward on Pervomaiske.[38] Ukrainian troops also reportedly repelled Russian attacks in Marinka, on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[39] Russian troops conducted routine air and artillery strikes along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[40]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks southwest of Donetsk City or in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast on September 6 and continued routine air and artillery strikes in these areas.[41] DNR Territorial Defense claimed that proxy forces, under the cover of Russian artillery fire, took control of Novopil and Vremivka, about 90km southwest of Donetsk City and directly along the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border.[42] ISW has not observed any evidence of this claim, however.

Supporting Effort #1- Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication – GLOCs – to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast on September 6 and continued routine shelling of Kharkiv City and its environs.[43]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces launched an offensive operation on Balakliya (about 65km southeast of Kharkiv City) on September 6. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces gained control of the northwestern part of Verbivka (4km northwest of Balakliya) on the north side of the Krainya Balakliya River.[44] Geolocated video footage from within Verbivka shows Ukrainian soldiers inspecting the bodies of dead Russian soldiers on September 6, indicating that Ukrainian troops have advanced into the settlement.[45] Several Russian milbloggers claimed that heavy fighting is ongoing around Balakliya as Ukrainian troops have reportedly entrenched themselves on the outskirts of the settlement, forcing Russian troops to redeploy reserve troops to the area to support defensive operations.[46] Russian sources voiced their concern that the Ukrainian attack on Balaklyia is intended to cut Russian forces off from Izyum and slowly ”wedge” into Luhansk Oblast.[47] Ukrainian officials have not yet commented on the progression of Ukrainian offensive operations in Kharkiv Oblast.

Supporting Effort #2- Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 6 and continued routine air and artillery strikes along the line of contact in Zaporizhia Oblast.[48] Russian and Ukrainian sources continued to claim that the other side shelled Enerhodar and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) throughout the day on September 6.[49] Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov reported a large explosion that led to a total power and water outage in Enerhodar.[50] Russian sources accused Ukrainian troops of firing at a Russian passport office in Enerhodar.[51]

Russian forces continued routine missile and artillery attacks along the frontlines in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts on September 6.[52]

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

Russian federal subjects (regions) continue to recruit, form, and deploy volunteer battalions to Ukraine.

Former Deputy of Perm Oblast’s Legislative Assembly, Alexander Grigorenko, returned to Perm on September 5 after his unspecified volunteer unit deployed to Donbas.[53] Grigorenko’s return to Perm is the first indicator that ISW has observed of the deployment of a Perm Oblast’s volunteer unit to Ukraine. Russian media outlet Kasparov reported that military enlistment offices in Samara Oblast are conducting solicitation calls via phone to invite Samaran reserve officers to enlist for a one-time 300,000-ruble ($4,895) payment and 200,000-ruble ($3,263) monthly salary for volunteer service.[54] Russian media also stated that the ”Murman” rifle company, likely newly formed in Murmansk Oblast and part of the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade, deployed to Ukraine on September 6 and that the “Komi“ motorized rifle company of the Northern Fleet deployed to Ukraine on August 30.[55] Russian outlet TVKOM reported that the formation of the Buryatian ”Baikal” battalion is at about 70 percent (of a planned end strength of 500 men) and that the battalion will deploy to Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod, to undergo training after forming.[56] Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov additionally stated on September 6 that the Chechen Republic is preparing ”several thousand” more volunteers and fighters for two new elements that will be part of the existing two volunteer Chechen regiments and three battalions generated to fight in Ukraine.[57]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian authorities continue setting conditions to Russify Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. LNR Deputy Internal Minister Vitaly Kiselev stated on September 6 that the Kremlin’s ruling United Russia Party helped organize a “rehabilitation course” for Ukrainian children from Donbas with “neuropsychiatric pathologies of varying severity” at the Scientific and Practical Center for Child Psychoneurology of the Moscow City Department of Health.[58] A United Russia official reportedly stated that some parents from Donbas will go to sanatoriums in Dagestan for further "therapy” at the end of September.[59]

Russian occupation authorities continued to face partisan activity in occupied areas on September 6. Ukrainian partisans conducted an improved explosive device attack against Berdyansk city occupation commandant Artem Bardin in Berdyansk on September 6.[60] Russian sources claim that Bardin is alive but in serious condition at a local hospital.[61]

Russian occupation authorities are continuing to prepare for annexation referenda. Russian-appointed Zaporizhia Oblast Military-Civilian Administration Head Vladimir Rogov claimed on September 6 that the “Electoral Commission of Zaporizhia Oblast” is preparing voter lists for the referendum. Rogov stated that voters will vote in stationary booths and voting boxes and that commission members have inspected all polling stations and selected law enforcement officers to safeguard the electoral process.[62] The Russian-backed chairperson of the election commission, Galina Katyushchenko, claimed that the election commission has begun analyzing and correcting voter lists to ensure that “every resident of the region can take part in the expression of will.”[63]

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

[1] ukraine-2ndsummaryreport_sept2022.pdf (iaea.org)

[2] ukraine-2ndsummaryreport_sept2022.pdf (iaea.org), pp. 9-10.

[3] ukraine-2ndsummaryreport_sept2022.pdf (iaea.org), pp. 13-14.

[4] *ukraine-2ndsummaryreport_sept2022.pdf, p. 14.

[5] *ukraine-2ndsummaryreport_sept2022.pdf, p. 15.

[6] *ukraine-2ndsummaryreport_sept2022.pdf, pp 21-22.

[12] https://twitter.com/neonhandrail/status/1564993725964914688; https///t.me/Info_BA_News/3763

[20] https://t.me/hueviyherson/25476; https://twitter.com/cxemu/status/15671... radiosvoboda.org/a/news-skhemy-pontonnyy-mist-daryivka/32020788.html; https://twitter.com/NLwartracker/status/1567064477874405376; https://twit

[22] ttps://t.me/hueviyherson/25485; https://t.me/hueviyherson/25483; https://t.me/Bratchuk_Sergey/18167; h...

[53] https://www.kasparov dot ru/material.php?id=6315D45D864C5

[54] https://www.kasparov dot ru/material.php?id=63172BA91A40C

[55] https://regnum dot ru/news/3688800.html; https://www.bnkomi dot ru/data/news/148387/

[56] https://tvcom-tv dot ru/v-buryatii-prodolzhayut-komplektovat-imennoj-batalon-%C2%ABbajkal%C2%BB.html

[57] https://www.grozny-inform dot ru/news/politic/143231/; https://avia dot pro/news/glava-chechni-neskolko-tysyach-rossiyskih-dobrovolcev-i-professionalnyh-voennyh-gotovyatsya-k

[61] https://rg dot ru/2022/09/06/komendant-berdianska-artem-bardin-gospitalizirovan-v-tiazhelom-sostoianii-posle-vzryva.html;

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (06.09.22) CDS comments on key events

Of all the post World War II conflicts that occurred Ukraine is the most likely to have a successful "Marshall Plan" because it has the right conditions for execution. We throw around the Marshall Plan terminology a lot but it is usually not appropriate for most conflicts. But Ukraine will benefit from a Marshall Plan because of its unique history, political system, culture, and previous economy.

Excerpt:

Ukraine, general news

The complete recovery of Ukraine after its victory in the Russian war of aggression will be the largest economic project in Europe. Its cost can currently be estimated at more than a trillion US dollars, President Zelenskiy said. He stressed that the implementation of the reconstruction project of Ukraine under the Fast Recovery Plan, which allows for the immediate restoration of all necessary infrastructure in the liberated territory, has already begun.

CDS Daily brief (06.09.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

As of the morning of September 6, 2022, more than 1,124 Ukrainian children are victims of full- scale armed aggression by the Russian Federation, Prosecutor General's Office reports. The official number of children who have died and been wounded in the course of the Russian aggression is 382 and more than 741, respectively. 236 children are considered missing, and 7,343 children have been deported to Russia. 5,391 children have been found. However, the data is not conclusive since data collection continues in the areas of active hostilities, temporarily occupied areas, and liberated territories.

A total of 6,786 schools were opened for in-class schooling on September 1. 4,599 schools have shelters, and 2,187 schools have shelters up to 100 meters [distance] from the school. By September 15, the authorities plan to open another 3,093 educational institutions that must be equipped with shelters, Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. In total, there are 15,297 schools in Ukraine. As of today, there are 13,881 schools in the territories controlled by Ukraine, Tymoshenko said. Children in 1,889 schools located up to 40 km from the border or the war zone will not be allowed to attend offline classes.

There is a woman with a child, pregnant women, including a nine-months pregnant who is supposed to give birth at the end of September, among the captives at "Azovtal" currently held in Russia, Natalia Zarytska, the wife of a prisoner of war [held y Russians] in Olenivka and the head of the Council of Wives and Mothers of Defenders of Ukraine "Women of Steel" said. She called for an immediate liberation of the women.

Ukraine returned the bodies of another 25 fallen defenders, the Ministry of Reintegration reported. The specialized ombudsman carried out the exchange operation in cooperation with law enforcement agencies.

Over the course of September 5, there were 39 Russian attacks from self-propelled guns and mortars, as well as 2 rounds from small arms, Dmytro Zhivytskyi, head of the Sumy Oblast Military Administration, reported. No victims were reported.

The Russian forces destroyed the Kurakhove gymnasium #2 with a rocket attack on the evening of September 5, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, said. He stressed that this is the 274th school in the region fired upon by the Russian forces since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, and the 29th completely destroyed. Kyrylenko also said that four civilians were injured in Donetsk Oblast over the past day.

On the night of September 6, the Russian forces shelled Nikopol district, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, three times with Grad MLRS. A residential area in Nikopol was hit. Two people - a man and a

woman - were hospitalized, the Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, said.

At around 8 a.m. on September 6, Russian missiles hit the city of Kryvyi Rih and set the oil depot on fire. The same depot was shot the day before, head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih Oleksandr Vilkul reported. It was later reported that Kryvy Rih was hit by a Kh-101 missile launched from the Caspian Sea.

The city of Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, was fired at on the evening of September 6. No victims were reported.

On Tuesday, September 6, at 12:00 p.m. Russian troops attacked the town of Pechenihy in Kharkiv Oblast with S-300 missiles, Pechenihy head Oleksandr Husarov said. Three people were injured, and houses suffered "significant destruction".

Occupied territories

Natalia Zarytska, the wife of a [Ukrainian] prisoner of war [held in] Olenivka and the head of the Council of Wives and Mothers of Defenders of Ukraine "Women of Steel", told at September 6 press briefing in Kyiv that 40 days have passed since the killing of the Ukrainian POW in the detention center in Olenivka. As of now, there are no answers to who died, who was injured, and what is the exact number of victims. Contrary to international humanitarian law, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross were not allowed to visit the Ukrainian prisoners of war. Relatives of the Ukrainian prisoners are strongly disappointed by the impotence of the international organizations.

Head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration, Serhii Haidai, said that the Russian occupation authorities mobilized residents of the so-called LPR into the army by force at the local enterprises and replaced them with either women or Russian citizens moved from Russia. According to Haidai, more than 400 men were forcibly mobilized recently at the once leading mine "Dovzhanska-Capitalna", and women and pensioners were recruited in their place. At the metallurgical plant in Alchevsk, forced mobilization affected even those who were exempt from mobilization. Russian citizens work at the plant; however, they are not mobilized for the army. If a patrol stops them in the street and tries to recruit them, they produce their document and are released with an apology. Haidai also said that Russia does not care to exchange residents of the occupied territories captured by Ukraine as a part of POW swaps.

Deputy Prime Minister - Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk, said that the situation around the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, Zaporizhzhya NPP, remains tense due to constant shelling by the Russian army. On September 5, shelling provoked a fire and a shutdown of the last power unit of the ZNPP. Vereshchuk said that Ukraine demands that Russia opens humanitarian corridors to evacuate peaceful residents of surrounding cities, but Russia refuses to open one. On September 6 at 12:20, residents of Enerhodar, where the NPP is located, reported a powerful explosion in the

city. The electricity and water supply in the city simultaneously disappeared after that. The Ukrainian intelligence reports that [Russian] occupying authorities intensified repressions in the city. Another unit of the Russian Rosgvadia police arrived in the city. They abduct people they deem unreliable and torture them in the former police station they repurposed into a torture chamber.

The so-called [Rissian-instlled] "commandant of the city" of Berdyansk, Artem Bardin, was blown up in his car in the center of occupied Berdyansk, Zaporizhzhya Oblast, Russian mass media reported. However, the occupying authorities later denied the reports and said that Bardin was severely injured, left without legs and fighting for his life.

Operational situation

It is the 195th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy continues to concentrate its efforts on establishing full control over the territory of Donetsk Oblast, maintaining the captured parts of Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, and Mykolaiv Oblasts.

Over the past day, the Russian military launched 3 missile strikes and more than 60 airstrikes and carried out about 90 rounds of anti-aircraft fire. The Russian forces began the night of September 5 with rocket attacks on civilian objects in the cities of Bakhmut and Kostyantynivka, Donetsk Oblast. The Russian mlitary carried out airstrikes on the areas of Bayrak, Asiyivka, and Zalyman in Kharkiv Oblast; Pryshyb, Vremivka, Velyka Novosilka, Novomykhailivka, Novopil, Dmytrivka, Bohorodychne, Zaytseve, Kodema, Soledar, Yakovlivka, Krasnohorivka of Donetsk Oblast, Dorozhnianka, Poltavka and Olhivske of Zaporizhzhya Oblast, Bila Krynytsia, Bilohirka and Kostromka of Kherson Oblast and Velyke Artakove, Ternivka and Lyubomyrivka in Mykolaiv Oblast.

The Russian military fired mortars and barrel artillery in the areas of Hasychivka, Yanzhulivka, Mykolaivka, Mykhalchyna Sloboda (Chernihiv Oblast), Novovasylivka, Nova Huta, Seredyna-Buda, Bachivsk, Yastrubyne, Starykove, Sosnivka, Volfyne and Smoline (Sumy Oblast). The enemy conducted an aerial reconnaissance using the Orlan-10 UAV in the Shalygine area (Sumy Oblast).

The Ukrainian Defense Forces continue to conduct a defensive operation, maintain specified frontiers and prevent the enemy from advancing deep into the Ukrainian territory.

The Air Force Grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues to repulse the enemy's missile and air strikes and effectively protects critical objects on the territory of Ukraine. Ukrainian Air defense forces shot down a guided cruise missile over Mykolaiv Oblast.

During the past day, to support the ground groupings, the Ukrainian Defence Forces Air Force carried out more than 30 strikes to destroy manpower, combat and special equipment, and other Russian military objects.

Ukrainian missile troops and artillery continue to carry out counter-battery tasks, disrupt the enemy control system and logistical support, and destroy anti-aircraft defenses, firepower, and Russian manpower.

As a result of the coordinated work of Ukraine's aviation and artillery, several enemy platoon strongholds, about 5 positions of anti-aircraft missile systems, and an enemy artillery battery were hit.

Units of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus perform tasks in the areas bordering Ukraine. Preparations for the command and staff exercise "C2 of a grouping of troops (forces) in the course of systematic military operations to liberate territory temporarily captured (occupied) by the enemy" (September 8-14), which will be held at the "Brestsky" training ground, are nearing completion. The training will involve the C2 of the Western Military District, operational groupings of the Armed Forces detachments and units, and units of the 6th separate mechanized brigade (Grodno) of the Western Military District. The ''enemy" [red team] actions will be impersonated by the units of the 11th separate mechanized brigade (Slonim), the 48th separate electronic warfare battalion (Brest) and the 22nd separate SOF company (Grodno) of the Western Military District.

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

The command of the 1st Russian Army Corps's military units makes conscripts sign military contracts by force, making it impossible for them to be discharged from military service within three years. In addition, one-time payments for signing such contracts do not apply to conscripts. This significantly lowers the morale and psychological state of personnel.

Kharkiv direction

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

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

The Russian military used all available firing equipment to continue shelling the military and civilian infrastructure of Udy, Sosnivka, Svitlychne, Zolochiv, Prudyanka, Velyki Prohody, Nove, Pytomnyk, Ruska Lozova, Ruski Tyshki, Petrivka, Kostyantynivka, Pryshyb, Husarivka, Chepil, Odnorobivka, Dementiivka, Borshchova, Momotove, Bayrak, Slobozhanske, Mospanove.

As a result of a successful Ukrainian attack in the area of Kupyansk, the occupying Russian forces lost more than 100 servicemen who were killed and wounded. Two [enemy] combat vehicles were destroyed.

The Russian military uses the Holy Trinity Church in Mala Komyshuvakha, Kharkiv Oblast, as a field hospital.

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

The Russian military shelled Virnopillya, Brazhkivka, Ridne, Dolyna, Krasnopillya, Dmytrivka, Bohorodychne, Donetske, Sloviansk, Kryva Luka, Siversk, Verkhnokamianske, Ivano-Daryivka, Spirne, Krasnopillya, Dibrivne, and Piskunivka.

The units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces achieved tactical success and knocked the enemy out of previously occupied positions.

Donetsk direction

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

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

The Russian forces shelled the areas around Rozdolivka, Bilohorivka, Yakovlivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Hryhorivka, Vesela Dolyna, Odradivka, Zaitseve, New York, Yuryivka, Opytne, Vesele, Mayorsk, Avdiivka, Pervomaiske, Maryinka, Mykolaivka, Kodema, Oleksandrivka, Vodyane, and Krasnohorivka.

Ukrainian defenders successfully repelled Russian offensive attempts in the areas of Zaitseve, “Butivka” mine, Spartak, Bilohorivka, Hryhorivka, Pokrovske, Bakhmutske, Lozove, Soledar, and Semyhirya.

The Russian units of the 4th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps attacked in the direction of Bilohorivka and Hryhorivka. They suffered losses and retreated.

The 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps attacked Stryapivka and Soledar. It had no success and withdrew. PMC "Wagner" tried to capture Kodema and Zaitseve. The battle continues.

Russian attempts to recapture the lost positions in the Stary Karavan and Brusivka areas are possible. The enemy units of the 24th separate SOF brigade of the Central Military District and the 208th rifle regiment of mobilization reserve are likely to be involved.

Zaporizhzhya direction

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

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

The Russian forces shelled the areas around Vremivka, Velyka Novosilka, Neskuchne, Shakhtarske, Novomykhailivka, Zolota Nyva, Prechystivka, Vuhledar, Pavlivka, Kostyantynivka, Zelene Pole, Vremivka, Olhivske, Poltavka, Zaliznychne, Chervone, Hulyaipilske, Dorozhnyanka, Novodanylivka, Bilohirya, Vilne Pole, Novomykhailivka, Kermenchyk, Novopil, Hulyaipole, and Kamianske.

Kherson direction

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

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

There is no change in the operational situation.

The Russian military continues illegal activities in Kherson Oblast. Thus, the Russian occupiers turned off the Kakhovka HPP, which caused the blackout in a part of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya Oblasts.

In the city of Kherson, more than 30 enemy servicemen and three tanks were hit [by Ukrainian forces]. An enemy anti-aircraft missile complex and six enemy trucks were destroyed in the Antoniv bridge and crossing area.

The successful actions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces rendered the river crossings in the Kherson area unusable. They once again quashed the enemy's attempts to resume the transfer of troops across the Dnipro River.

Russian military transport aircraft (seven IL-76s) transferred up to the battalion of the separate "Akhmat" regiment to the "Dzhankoy" airfield in the occupied Crimea. In addition, up to 100 units of military equipment (UAZ "Patriot" cars, BBM "Tiger") were moved to the airfield area. According to preliminary data, the separate "Akhmat" regiment became part of the enemy 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District. It was named "78th motorized rifle regiment". It is possible that the units of the regiment will strengthen the enemy grouping of troops in the Zaporizhzhya direction. The "Akhmat" regiment was supposed to have four battalions - "North-Akhmat", "South-Akhmat", "West-Akhmat", and "East-Akhmat" with 500 soldiers each.

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

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

11.8 km;

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

The Russian forces conduct defensive operations, shelling the areas of Mykolaiv, Novohryhorivka, Yakovlivka, Partyzanske, Kvitneve, Kyselivka, Shevchenkove, Ternovi Pody, Pravdyne, Lyubomyrivka, Stepova Dolyna, Tavriyske, Myrne, Stepove, Novooleksandrivka, Pervomaiske, Kobzartsi, Petrivka, Zarichne , Ivanivka, Tokareve, Olhyne, Shyroke, Posad-Pokrovske, Ukrainka, Prybuzke, Lymany, Lupareve, and Oleksandrivka.

To prevent the encirclement, the enemy BTG of the 83rd separate airborne assault brigade retreated from the Vysokopillya to the Novovoskresenske area. In addition, the Russian forces lost their positions in the areas of Novovoznesneske, Novohredneve and Bilohirka. The Russian military continues to regroup troops in the Mykolaiv-Kryvy Rih direction, strengthening advanced positions in the directions of a possible [Ukrainian units'] breakthrough deploying the units that were concentrated in the depth of battle formations and other directions. In particular, the enemy strengthened the positions of the 83rd separate airborne assault brigade in the Novovoskresenske area with a tank company, probably from the 126th regiment of the 22nd Army Corps.

The Russian command possibly plans to conduct a counteroffensive in the following directions:

-    Novodmytrivka, Olhyne and Novovoskresenske, Novovoznesensk (using the 83rd and 11th separate airborne assault brigade BTGs), as well as Ukrainka, Petrivka (probably using the 126th separate coastal defense brigade BTG);

-   Bruskinske, Sukhy Stavok (probably by the forces of the company tactical group of the 34th separate motorized rifle brigade) and Blagodativka, Lozove (probably using the company tactical group of the 69th separate radio interception battalion) to encircle the units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine.

In the future, the Russian military will try to dislodge Ukrainian units from their positions in the Kryvy Rih and Mykolaiv directions and recapture the lost position.

The enemy continues to commit illegal actions and places personnel and military equipment in kindergartens (Verkhniy Rogachyk), and temples of the Moscow [Othodoz Church] Patriarchate (Chervony Mayak) in Kherson Oblast.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

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

The number of enemy ships stationed in the Black Sea is 11 warships and boats. Two Kalibr cruise missile carriers, namely a frigate of project 1135.6 and one "Buyan-M" type corvette, are in the southern part of Crimea, ready for a missile attack. Up to 16 Kalibr missiles may be ready for a salvo.

Most large amphibious ships are in the ports of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol for replenishment and scheduled maintenance. There are no signs of preparation for an amphibious assault on the southern coast of Ukraine.

One submarine of project 636.3 is located in Sevastopol, and three are in Novorossiysk.

A Russian corvette, minesweeper and boats are on patrol in the Sea of Azov.

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

On September 6, the Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine. Kh-101 missiles were launched from the enemy Tu-95 aircraft over the waters of the northern part of the Sea of Azov. The missiles hit the Zaporizhzhya Oblast. Five of the six missiles were shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems.

A new caravan of Ukrainian agro-industrial products has left the Odesa coast today. The dry cargo ships QUEEN SARA and ORIS PRINCESS sailed from the port of Chornomorsk. NEW LEVANT and IRMGARD sailed from Odesa, and the tanker VITIS and bulk carrier OCMIS ADVENTURE sailed from the port of Pivdenny. In total, since the opening of the grain corridor, 92 ships have left the ports of Odesa, carrying more than 2 million 100 thousand tons of food.

Operational losses of the enemy from 24.02 to 06.09, approximately:

Personnel - almost 50,150 people (+350);

Tanks – 2,077 (+9);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,484 (+25);

Artillery systems – 1,179 (+22);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 296 (+2); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 156 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,305 (+9); Aircraft - 236 (0);

Helicopters – 207 (+1);

UAV operational and tactical level - 876 (+9); Intercepted cruise missiles - 209 (+4);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

The complete recovery of Ukraine after its victory in the Russian war of aggression will be the largest economic project in Europe. Its cost can currently be estimated at more than a trillion US dollars, President Zelenskiy said. He stressed that the implementation of the reconstruction project of Ukraine under the Fast Recovery Plan, which allows for the immediate restoration of all necessary infrastructure in the liberated territory, has already begun.

International diplomatic aspect

The complete recovery of Ukraine after its victory in the Russian war of aggression will be the largest economic project in Europe. Its cost can currently be estimated at more than a trillion US dollars, President Zelenskiy said. He stressed that the implementation of the reconstruction project of Ukraine under the Fast Recovery Plan, which allows for the immediate restoration of all necessary infrastructure in the liberated territory, has already begun.

Joe Biden rejected the idea of designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The Administration downplays the issue by suggesting that the US has already imposed more sanctions than the status entails. However, there have more reasons not to call Russia what it is. The bilateral relations are at the lowest point since the hottest days of the Cold War. The White House believes the decision could have a negative impact on some bilateral issues, incuding jeopardising deals to move goods through the Black Sea. Had it designated Russia as a terrorist state, it could have abandoned attempts to release two US citizens being kept hostages. Brittney Griner, a basketball star, has been in captivity for more than 200 days, and Marc Fogel is serving his 14 years term in prison. However, it could have already been settled had the White House greenlighted a swap for Viktor Butov, a Russian arms dealer named "Merchant of Death", serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States.

Another aspect of the problem is that such a [state sponsor of terrorism] status would complicate relations of the US with third countries with more intensive relations with Russia, including trade ones.

"We do not have any problems with natural gas. Europe actually reaps what it sows. Mr Putin's attitude says that if you are doing this, I will do it," the President of Turkey explained the cause of the natural gas crisis. Indian Petroleum Minister said the country would carefully assess whether to support the G7 proposal to impose a price cap on Russian oil. He returns criticism to Europeans who "are buying more in one afternoon than he does in a quarter."

Russia's share of imports was 0.2% in March, and the most significant share primarily comes from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Despite sanctions and decreasing imports from Western countries, Russia earned €158 billion in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first six months of the war, according to CREA. The largest fossil fuel importer was the EU (€85.1 bln), followed by China (€34.9 bln), Turkey (€10.7 bln), India (€6.6 bln), Japan (€2.5 bln), Egypt (€2.3 bln), and South Korea (€2 bln). Overall, Russia earned more than it had already spent on the war, estimated to be €100 billion.

Energy supply is among the issues of concern for almost a third of Europeans (+12% since last winter), with the Czech Republic (46%) and Estonia (45%) as the most concerned. The majority of Europeans support reducing imports of oil and gas and investing in renewable energy, which is important for overall security (84% vs 11%), according to Eurobarometer.

78% of Europeans support sanctions against Russia, while only 17% don't.

German Chancellor rejected the request of Ukraine's Prime Minister to allow the purchase of tanks, according to Die Welt. In April, the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann informed the Ukrainian government of its readiness to provide Ukraine with Leopard 2A7 worth €1.5 billion. According to Eurobarometer, the majority of Germans (70%) support the supply of military aid to Ukraine, while one-quarter are against it. Olaf Scholz holds on to his "non-escalate" self-restriction policy, despite the absence of any signs that Russia plans to stop its war of aggression. Moreover, RF is

set to step up its offensive by buying hundreds of Iranian attack drones and millions of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea.

The overall attitude of Europeans toward supplying Ukraine with weapons reflects the one of the Germans (68% support providing arms, and 26% don't support it). The leading nations that support arming Ukraine are Sweden (92%), Poland (91%) and Denmark (91%), while the most opposing to that are Bulgaria (58%), Greece (55%) and Cyprus (49%).

Russia, relevant news

After the abolition of the simplified visa regime with the European Union, the cost of Schengen Visas for Russian citizens will increase from €35 to €80, and the processing time will be up to 15, sometimes up to 45 days, Russian business publication Kommersant reports. The European Commission approved the complete suspension of the simplified visa regime with Russia starting September 12.

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

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3. National Defense Service Medal won’t be awarded after December

National Defense Service Medal won’t be awarded after December

militarytimes.com · by Meghann Myers · September 6, 2022

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the formal end of combat operations in Iraq, the Defense Department is preparing to truly transition the military out of a wartime posture. Which is to say, the National Defense Service Medal is going back into retirement on Dec. 31.

The award ― affectionately known as the “pizza stain,” which all troops serving since 9/11 have been able to pin on their uniforms after initial training ― won’t be awarded for the foreseeable future.

“Termination is based on the United States no longer conducting large-scale combat operations in designated geographic locations as a result of the terrorist attacks on the United States that occurred September 11, 2001,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a memo signed Aug. 30.

Thus brings to a close the fourth conflict for which troops could earn the National Defense Service Medal. It previously was activated for five years during the first Gulf War, 13 years for Vietnam and four years for the Korean War.

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Units will also do reviews for individual awards.

The announcement comes a month after the department scaled back eligibility for the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, which will be limited to deployments to Syria going forward.

Similarly, the Inherent Resolve Campaign Medal ― awarded for the defeat-ISIS mission ― has been restricted to Syria, its airspace and 12 nautical miles out to sea.

Troops deploying to Iraq for train-advise-assist missions will instead receive the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal.

It’s not that the U.S. is no longer involved in counterterrorism or any potential combat operations, according to the Pentagon, but that those operations are on such a small scale they don’t rate the medal.

Still, troops continue to deploy throughout the world, including to ostensible war zones.

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Lt. Gens. Bryan Fenton and Michael Langley took senators' questions at their Thursday confirmation hearing.

Since March, roughly 20,000 American troops have been mobilized to central and Eastern Europe in support of NATO, either training local forces or teaming up with Ukrainian troops outside the country to get them up to speed on U.S. weapons sent over for their fight against Russia.

It’s possible that the mission could become a named operation that then might warrant a specific medal, but Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told Military Times in August that there were no announcements to be made.

And in Africa, U.S. troops are deployed to Somalia and Kenya, launching airstrikes against al-Shabab militants.

What the end of National Defense Service Medal essentially means is that while troops will earn awards for deploying abroad in support of myriad missions, they won’t get a wartime award just for completing training.

About Meghann Myers and Davis Winkie

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.

4. Futures Command faces identity crisis as Army shifts mission

Excerpts:

But Congress wants more answers about who is overseeing the Army’s modernization work. A provision in the House version of the latest defense authorization bill, submitted as an amendment by Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., requires the service to prepare a plan that “comprehensively defines the roles and responsibilities of officials and organizations of the Army with respect to the force modernization efforts of the Army.”

If the Army fails to submit this plan on time, the head of Army Futures Command will revert to the roles and responsibilities laid out during the Trump administration. In other words, Wormuth’s latest directive would “have no force or effect.”

How Army modernization goes in the coming years could also influence Milley’s effort to create a joint futures command that would encompass all of the military services.

He considers Army Futures Command “an enormous success.” This model, he told Defense News, could pave the way for the joint force to determine what it will need to operate successfully in the future.

“As we go forward, we need to make sure [the Army] maintains that momentum that it’s built,” Milley said, “which is actually leading the way for joint modernization.”

Futures Command faces identity crisis as Army shifts mission

Defense News · by Jen Judson · September 6, 2022

WASHINGTON — Gen. Mark Milley confronted a daunting challenge when he became chief of staff of the Army in 2015.

Virtually all of the Army’s recent modernization efforts — from the sprawling Future Combat Systems program, centered around a network that connected new vehicles, drones and other technology, to the Comanche helicopter to the Crusader weapon system intended to replace aging artillery — had ended in cancellation.

When Milley, who now leads the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the Pentagon’s top officer, became Army chief, he sketched out a new approach. Over his first several months in the position, he proposed a four-star command, dubbed “Army Futures Command,” that would ultimately lead the service’s modernization programs, grouped into six priority categories.

Milley saw the command as a new way forward, breaking free of the bureaucracy and silos that had hampered previous efforts.

“Here we are 40 years later, and the vehicles and weapon systems that were brought online when I was a lieutenant were still the vehicles and weapon systems — and organization and the doctrine are pretty much the same,” he told Defense News in an exclusive interview.

Over his four-year term as the Army’s chief of staff, Milley, working with top service officials, shifted billions of dollars into modernization programs and based the new command in Austin, Texas, an area known for its innovative, technology-focused workforce. The Army gave the command’s chief and the leaders of new groups, dubbed “cross-functional teams,” the authority to manage requirements and the leeway to direct dollars.

Now, four years into the experiment, top service officials are rethinking Army Futures Command, shifting it from an organization with control over investment decisions to an advisory body focused more on emerging technology and less on near-term programs. The move, they say, is meant to reaffirm civilian control of the military.

Gen. James McConville, then-vice chief of staff of the Army, uses a virtual reality flight simulator during a 2018 tour of the Capitol Factory in Austin, Texas. (Sgt. Brandon Banzhaf/U.S. Army)

But the shift has raised questions about the future influence of the command and where the changes would leave the Army’s critical modernization efforts. It has also revealed a rare public schism among Pentagon leaders on how the service should approach modernization.

The divide comes at a critical time. The service hopes to get 24 new systems to soldiers by September 2023, an important milestone to prove the Army can move past its previous acquisition failures and address threats posed by Russia and China.

“We must transform quickly so we have continued overmatch against those who wish us harm and those who threaten our national security,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention last fall.

“Our competitors have been aggressively investing in modernizing their forces with new technology and new weapons in order to maintain overmatch,” he added. “We must modernize now.”

The beginnings of Army Futures Command

As Milley planned Army Futures Command, he wanted an organization entirely concentrated on fielding new equipment. Unlike Training and Doctrine Command, where modernization had to compete for attention alongside training, recruitment and professional military education, a more focused organization would enable the Army to move faster.

Even so, he said he faced skeptics in the Obama administration. Milley told Defense News that when he shared his ideas with Pentagon officials, he initially “did not get a lot of support.”

But in early 2017, the Trump administration arrived, and Milley found a potential backer in acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.

During an initial meeting at the Pentagon, McCarthy asked Milley to name his modernization priorities. Milley grabbed a paper dinner napkin on the desk and made a list.

Core to the Army and the first priority, Milley said, was fires. The military uses fires, such as artillery, to destroy or disable enemy forces’ ability to attack.

Next, he thought about movement, leading to the second and third priorities: a new combat vehicle and a vertical lift aircraft program.

To shoot and move in a coordinated manner, the Army would need to securely and reliably communicate, making the network the fourth priority.

“Then you have to be able to protect all of that,” Milley said, meaning the Army needs air defense, a capability considerably weakened when the Army shifted its focus to a counterinsurgency fight in the Middle East. Air and missile defense became the fifth priority.

“The last key function is to sustain” the force, he added, which leads to a focus on systems that enhance individual soldier capability — the final priority.

McCarthy was sold, and the two began hashing out the details. With the help of Army Secretary Mark Esper, who was confirmed in 2017, and Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, the four worked to make Army Futures Command a reality.

Milley and other top Army officials wanted the command to benefit from rapid technology development taking place at companies like Google and Amazon. Locating the headquarters in the tech town of Austin was meant to help the service learn how innovative businesses operate.

To lead the command, the Army tapped Gen. Mike Murray, who, as the Army’s G-8 chief, was in charge of making the service’s funding match up with its equipment needs. Suddenly, Murray went from wearing Army camouflage every day to donning button-down shirts and cowboy boots.

Milley said that was by design; civilian clothes made more sense in Austin because the uniform can be a “barrier.”

Then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, right, walks with Gen. John Murray, left, who led Army Futures Command and is seen here in civilian clothes — a deliberate decision to close the gap between the military and the innovative private sector. (Luke J. Allen/U.S. Army)

But what the command really needed was money. Top service officials launched a process to cut other programs to find dollars for their new top priorities.

Through this approach, dubbed “night court” and led by McCarthy and McConville, the Army shifted, in the first round, more than $30 billion over five years away from projects that weren’t top priorities — like an Army lab effort to develop a bullet that would drop grass seed when it was shot — to the six priority areas.

In its first year, night court eliminated 41 programs and reduced or delayed 39 more. The Army, for example, canceled the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System and a service life extension program for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, and the service delayed the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

Esper also gave significant autonomy to the service’s four-star commanders overseeing forces, training, doctrine, materiel and modernization in the investment process. The idea was to allow leaders to quickly make decisions — whether for readiness or requirements.

Army Futures Command seemed to be taking root — but Milley said “a lot of antibodies” remained within the service.

Perhaps no group was more affected than the Army’s acquisition branch, which now had to contend with an entirely new command’s processes. The branch raised concerns AFC had too much freedom to direct funding and that its processes could undermine civilian control of the budget.

The tension between the acquisition office and the new command became most clear in the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program, a competition to replace the Bradley fighting vehicle, a critical armored troop carrier.

In fall 2019, only General Dynamics Land Systems submitted a bid for the next phase of the program, despite the service’s efforts to create a competitive project.

Officials at Army Futures Command and those in the service’s acquisition branch clashed over whether the program could move forward, but the service ultimately started over, delaying the program by roughly two years.

Hoping to defuse the tension, McCarthy in 2020 issued a directive meant to clarify the authorities of AFC and those of the service’s acquisition office.

The order put Army Futures Command in the driver’s seat, establishing it as “leading the modernization enterprise.” It designated the command as the “Chief Futures Modernization Investment Officer acting on behalf of the Army” but noted it should work “in coordination with [the Army acquisition office], on all matters pertaining to research and development.”

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., speaks during a news conference in 2015 on Capitol Hill. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Army Futures Command was also starting to win supporters in Congress.

“I had my doubts in the beginning,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., the ranking member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told Defense News in a recent interview. He said he questioned whether it cost too much and was in the right location — even “the entire concept.”

But, he added, “I was always in favor of doing things differently than what has been done in the old Army because, obviously, that wasn’t working.”

A new administration

Army Futures Command received attention and gained traction as it opened its headquarters in downtown Austin in August 2018. Across the street, it opened the Army Applications Laboratory, which helped startups meet the service. The lab was based at the Capital Factory, a hub connecting entrepreneurs with investors.

Milley said the command was able to bring “more successful programs in the last 24 months to actual reality, at least an initial operating concept, than the Army did in the previous four years.”

Although some of those efforts were already in development, the command has touted it was able to push programs through development and into soldiers’ hands faster than previously planned.

In 2021, the Army delivered a new short-range air defense system to Europe; the service now is working to field the same system with a 50-kilowatt laser capability in fiscal 2022.

Also last year, the service bought and fielded two Iron Dome systems for Indirect Fires Protection Capability, briefly deploying one to Guam. In addition, the Army delivered Enhanced Night Vision Goggles.

This year, soldiers are on track to get a new air and missile defense sensor, a command-and-control capability, the mixed-reality Integrated Visual Augmentation System, and the Next-Generation Squad Weapon.

After Christine Wormuth became Army secretary in May 2021, she made two visits to Army Futures Command’s headquarters. She told Defense News she quickly identified some “ambiguity” in the direction given to the command and the service’s acquisition office about their roles and responsibilities.

At the same time, Wormuth moved to centralize investment authority in Army headquarters.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, right, receives a brief on capabilities by Col. Jay Whisham, director of the Army Applications Lab, left, and Casey Perly, director of technical insights and analysis at the lab, on Sept. 20, 2021, in Austin, Texas. (Anthony-Matthew Sualog/U.S. Army)

Then, in May 2022, she issued a memo voiding previous Army modernization directives and shifting much of AFC’s control over funding back to the acquisition branch. This included funding for laboratory research as well as development and prototyping.

Wormuth told Defense News the memo was meant to “make some minor adjustments to the relationship between” the acquisition office and the command.

“I didn’t want to make any changes through that directive that would get in the way of delivering results,” she added.

But Calvert said the new directive “basically guts the entire intention of the Army Futures Command.”

“Why the hell did we do it in the first place?” he said. “If bureaucrats want to take over the operation and tell the military to take a back seat … that’s just an entire bureaucratic power play from my perspective, and we’re going to be back to where we were.”

Thomas Spoehr, a former three-star Army general once in charge of force development who now works at the Heritage Foundation think tank, said Wormuth’s directive has left the “perception — whether correct or not — that the Army headquarters is seeking to rein in AFC.”

“That impacts their ability to get things done,” he said of Army Futures Command.

Army officials have pushed back on claims they weakened the command.

“Army Futures Command never had acquisition authority,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, stressed in testimony on Capitol Hill this spring. “That has always resided, as required by law, on the civilian secretariat side in my office.”

The AFC commander’s “got his job, I’ve got mine. No one person is in charge of everything,” he added.

The Army has not named a new AFC chief since Murray left in late 2021. According to multiple sources who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly, Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt was the front-runner for the job. However, he reportedly was reluctant to send the National Guard to stop the Jan. 6 insurrection, spurring concerns his nomination wouldn’t survive a Senate confirmation process.

From left, then-President Donald Trump and then-Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt view air assault exercises at Fort Drum, N.Y., on Aug. 13, 2018. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

With no one in the top job, Lt. Gen. James Richardson, Murray’s deputy, is serving as acting commander. He has made few public appearances, and the command has returned to wearing military uniforms more regularly at the request of the new command sergeant major.

Spoehr said leaving the command without a chief is “inexplicable.”

“I am not aware of an Army four-star command ever going this long without a nomination for a commander,” he added. “There is no substitute for a confirmed four-star commander when the command deals with the Pentagon officials, industry and the public. People know four-star generals are a rare breed.”

Wormuth said the Army is working to name a new commander, and she remains “very hopeful that we will see a nominee going to the Senate in short order.”

The path forward

The Army’s modernization programs have a busy year ahead. By the end of this fiscal year, the service is slated to choose a team to build a new long-range assault aircraft.

The Army is also on schedule to deliver in FY23 a new long-range Precision Strike Missile; a cannon capable of shooting out to 70 kilometers; a long-range hypersonic weapon; a ship-killing midrange missile; a new lightweight tank; the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle; and a new tactical unmanned aircraft system.

Lockheed Martin conducts a flight test of the Army's Precision Strike Missile in May 2021. (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin)

In a recent interview, Wormuth and Bush vowed Army Futures Command will remain in Austin and have a four-star chief. And, along with McConville and Richardson, they confirmed their commitment to seeing the service’s modernization priorities to the finish line.

But Wormuth told Defense News she sees the command evolving to focus on thinking about the longer-term future rather than on programs for the next decade.

According to her directive, the command “is responsible for force design and force development and is the capabilities developer and operational architect for the future Army.”

“AFC assesses and integrates the future operational environment, emerging threats, and technologies to provide warfighters with the concepts and future force designs needed to dominate a future battlefield,” it added.

The command should be “helping us think about where we need to be not just in 2030, but thinking ahead to the Army of 2040,” Wormuth said, adding that the organization “is fundamentally about doing a lot of conceptual work.”

Now, Wormuth is focused on pushing a total of 35 signature systems into soldiers’ hands by 2030. About 24 will either enter the field or be in late prototyping phases by the end of FY23.

But Congress wants more answers about who is overseeing the Army’s modernization work. A provision in the House version of the latest defense authorization bill, submitted as an amendment by Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., requires the service to prepare a plan that “comprehensively defines the roles and responsibilities of officials and organizations of the Army with respect to the force modernization efforts of the Army.”

If the Army fails to submit this plan on time, the head of Army Futures Command will revert to the roles and responsibilities laid out during the Trump administration. In other words, Wormuth’s latest directive would “have no force or effect.”

How Army modernization goes in the coming years could also influence Milley’s effort to create a joint futures command that would encompass all of the military services.

He considers Army Futures Command “an enormous success.” This model, he told Defense News, could pave the way for the joint force to determine what it will need to operate successfully in the future.

“As we go forward, we need to make sure [the Army] maintains that momentum that it’s built,” Milley said, “which is actually leading the way for joint modernization.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

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Defense News · by Jen Judson · September 6, 2022

5. Biden’s ‘no’ on Russia terrorism label picks Congress fight

Excerpts:

Rep. TOM MALINOWSKI (D-N.J.), one of those five House lawmakers, indicated to NatSec Daily Tuesday that he and others would push the bill forward, Biden’s stance notwithstanding.

“I understand our main focus has to stay on tangible things — military aid to Ukraine and squeezing Putin economically. But a strong case has been made that Russia merits designation given its use of the Wagner Group and support for other violent extremists, and I see no reason why the administration or Congress should shield them from it,” he said.

Biden’s ‘no’ on Russia terrorism label picks Congress fight

Politico · by Alexander Ward · September 6, 2022

With help from Lara Seligman, Lawrence Ukenye, Daniel Lippman and Connor O’Brien

As it stands today, Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN is the only person who can designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. But he may have just gotten his marching orders from President JOE BIDEN not to slap that label on the Kremlin, lowering the chances of Russia suffering the stiffest sanctions possible.

Upon his return to the White House Monday night, Biden was asked by a reporter if Russia should be placed on the state sponsor of terrorism list alongside North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran. “No,” the president replied.

Biden’s one-word statement reflects the administration’s long-held view that the designation would do more harm than good. The sanctions that would follow placing Russia on the list are so broad that they’ll do more than hurt just Russia’s economy — they’ll impact anyone doing legitimate business there.

That matters less to international finance and business than when, say, North Korea or Iran are given the terrorism sponsor designation because those countries are far less integrated in the global economy — but Russia is, and so the third and fourth order effects (etc. etc.) could unleash widespread pain.

Plus, administration officials say, American sanctions on Moscow are about as tough already as any that would come after putting Russia on the terrorism blacklist. The move would be redundant and unhelpful, Biden’s team argues.

Blinken, then, was always unlikely to place the label on Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN’s forehead. But if he had any inkling to do so, Biden’s comment surely squashed it.

In Washington, that’s not the end of it. Biden’s “no” will ratchet up the tension as the administration fights with Congress over the issue.

In July, Speaker NANCY PELOSI told Blinken that if he didn’t put Russia on the terrorism blacklist, then Congress would. Since then, the Senate unanimously passed a non-binding resolution urging Blinken to do so, followed by a bipartisan quintet of House members introducing a bill that would officially slap the designation on Russia.

Rep. TOM MALINOWSKI (D-N.J.), one of those five House lawmakers, indicated to NatSec Daily Tuesday that he and others would push the bill forward, Biden’s stance notwithstanding.

“I understand our main focus has to stay on tangible things — military aid to Ukraine and squeezing Putin economically. But a strong case has been made that Russia merits designation given its use of the Wagner Group and support for other violent extremists, and I see no reason why the administration or Congress should shield them from it,” he said.

6. Japan, US, Philippines to step up maritime security ties

Our alliance system is key to mutual security.

Japan, US, Philippines to step up maritime security ties

AP · by HARUKA NUGA · September 6, 2022

TOKYO (AP) — An American diplomat in Tokyo on Tuesday criticized China’s “increasingly hostile maritime actions” as a threat to the safety of waterways in the resource-rich Indo-Pacific, as the United States seeks to strengthen security cooperation with allies Japan and the Philippines.

U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Raymond Greene said disregard for international law and heavy-handed actions by Beijing are aimed at increasing its control over the region. “Specifically, the increasingly hostile maritime actions by the People’s Republic of China threaten the safety of our waterways,” he said at a news conference ahead of a meeting of officials from the three countries.

”No one nation should be able to dominate Indo-Pacific waters through coercion and outright intimidation,” he said. “Might does not make right and we do not shy away from calling out Beijing’s provocative actions.”

He said China’s actions included a militarization of the East and South China Seas, harassment of foreign fishing and other vessels, and depletion of maritime resources and the environment.

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China ranks second highest in military spending after the United States and is rapidly modernizing its forces. It says its military is purely for defense and to protect its sovereign rights.

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Japan sees China as a regional security threat and worries about growing tensions surrounding Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory. Tokyo also is concerned about increasing cooperation between China and Russia and their joint military activities around Japan, including joint firing drills off northern Japan over the weekend.

Japanese Vice Defense Minister Kimi Onoda, also at the news conference, said Japan and the Philippines as maritime nations share security challenges, including attempts by other nations to singlehandedly change the status quo in the South and East China Seas.

Robespierre L. Bolivar, chargé d’affaires at the Philippine Embassy, said promotion of cooperation among the three countries is important to help protect the Philippines’ maritime interests.

About 20 maritime security officials and experts from the three countries are to discuss maritime security cooperation at the two-day session.

___

AP writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.

AP · by HARUKA NUGA · September 6, 2022

7. So Square It’s Hip: ​​Gen Z Tries on the Communist Cadre Look

If Xi and the bureaucrats can lead the fashion trends in China then I guess they have the support of the youth.

So Square It’s Hip: ​​Gen Z Tries on the Communist Cadre Look

Why are some Chinese youth dressing like middle-aged civil servants? It might be ironic, or a longing for stability in uncertain times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/world/asia/china-communist-cadre-fashion.html

• Give this article

President Xi Jinping in his trademark blue jacket with oversize trousers during a July visit to Urumqi, China. The understated look has become surprisingly popular with some younger Chinese.Credit...Li Xueren/Xinhua, via Associated Press

By Joy Dong

Sept. 7, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

A dull blue jacket, oversize trousers, a Communist Party member pin adding a splash of red on the chest, a small briefcase in hand. It’s the typical dress of the typical Chinese official, and has long been the very opposite of the look that many young Chinese strive for.

But now the cadre look is cool.

On Chinese social media platforms where trendsetters trade fashion tips, young people — mostly men — have been sharing pictures of themselves dressed like their strait-laced, middle-aged dads working in Communist Party offices. They call the trend “ting ju feng,” or “office and bureau style” — meaning the working wear of a typical mid-rank bureaucrat.

The paragon of this determinedly dull look is China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. He is highly likely to win another five years in power in October, when about 2,300 delegates gather for a Communist Party congress in Beijing. Many of those officials will be wearing Western-style suits and ties for that special occasion. Back at the office, though, countless officials now sport the dark blue wind jacket favored by Mr. Xi.

Despite his immense power, Mr. Xi has not been seen as a fashion influencer — until now. Some followers of the trend may be tongue in cheek, poking fun at China’s era of conformity. Others say that they are in earnest and that for many young Chinese, the look suggests a stable career path and a respectable lifestyle — a Communist Party version of the preppy look.

“Compared with the clothes with fashion-brand logos, this style is more dignified and poised,” Yang Zhan, a 21-year-old electric engineering student in Anhui Province, in central China, wrote in a message replying to questions from The New York Times. He had posted a picture of himself wearing his father’s navy blue jacket and mother’s Communist Party member pin on Xiaohongshu, one of the fastest-growing social platforms targeting young Chinese.

Image

Yang Zhan wearing his father’s jacket and mother’s party pin in a photo on Xiaohongshu, a social platform frequented by young Chinese.

Credit...Yang Zhan

On Xiaohongshu, hashtags for the trend have amassed more than five million views. Young government employees have posted their daily looks, and students have also posted selfies in the cadre-wear. Some young women also show off the styles of their civil servant boyfriends. Canny garment sellers have even started including the “office bureau style” label in their online ads for clothes usually bought by middle-aged men.

There are limits to the appeal of the cadre look. Mr. Yang’s pictures attracted admiring comments online, but he said he would never wear the outfit to class. “Otherwise my classmates would say I’m stinking with smugness,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little too mature.”

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Though the cadre look is far from dominating fashion sales, the emergence of the unabashedly conventional look reflects China’s conservative political turn.

“That jacket has long been popular among cadres,” said John Fitzgerald, an expert on China’s cadre culture and an emeritus professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. “The style is understated, that says, ‘Don’t look at me’. What’s new is the popularity among young people.”

Cadres often used to dress much more expensively, sporting flashy accessories like luxury watches and expensive belts. But that was before Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign began in 2012. Mr. Xi’s signature blue jacket has echoes of the Mao suit, which was worn by many Chinese people, especially officials, before commercial fashion and Western-style suits took off in China in the 1980s.

Image

Mao Zedong, center, with members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1957. The Mao suit was common attire in China before the 1980s.Credit...Sovfoto/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images

The cadre style’s popularity may also reflect the high interest in holding a government post, especially while the economy has slowed sharply. Last year a record two million people registered to take the national government agencies’ hiring exam.

“When big internet companies are having rounds of layoffs, the ‘office bureau style’ is sending out an unspoken message of being reliable, stable and rid of intensive competition,” Hu Zhen, a Chinese fashion blogger, said in a recent video.

For junior workers, Mr. Hu recommended a short-sleeved white shirt with a chest pocket big enough to hold a small notebook, a handy tool for field visits by public servants.

So far no state outlets have openly encouraged the trend among young people, but if they did, it would not be surprising. The government strictly monitors every aspect of youth culture online, blurring images of tattoos and revising lyrics with negative connotations. Pop idols attending government functions and interviewed by the state news media have also sometimes dressed in ting ju feng.

Image

The “office bureau style” sends a message of stability and reliability, Hu Zhen, a Chinese fashion blogger, said in a video posted on Xiaohongshu.

Credit...Hu Zhen

In fact, Mr. Xi once compared the value orientation of young people to buttoning up a shirt. “If the first button is done wrong, the rest will all go wrong.”

Still, many young people think ting ju feng is just a social media fad. Wei Zhangnan, a Beijing business consultant, posted his cadre look but added that it might not last. “Probably it will soon be gone,” he said. “Not everybody is fond of the old cadre vibe.”

Others are rolling their eyes at the look and the fascination it reflects with civil servant culture.

“The profession is being looked up to as if it has a halo on it now,” said Tina Zhou, a law student from northeastern Liaoning Province. “If anybody who is not a civil servant deliberately dresses like this in daily life, I would think he is a bit too uptight and stern.”

8. Inside Norway’s complex plan to save a stranded Air Force Osprey

I had no idea.

Inside Norway’s complex plan to save a stranded Air Force Osprey

The effort must contend with the risk of bad weather and a nature reserve.

BY NICHOLAS SLAYTON | PUBLISHED SEP 6, 2022 5:30 PM

taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · September 6, 2022

Norway finally has a plan to get an American CV-22 Osprey that’s currently stuck on a nature reserve. The tiltrotor aircraft has been stuck on an island in the northernmost part of Norway for almost a month.

The plan is still waiting on approval from the U.S. Air Force, and is dependent on the weather in a notoriously unpredictable part of Norway, according to a spokesperson for the Norwegian Air Force. Even though it is summer, storms, cold weather and heavy winds affect the island of Senja, part of Troms and Finnmark County. The Osprey is on the southern part of the island, and a photo provided by the Norwegian Armed Forces shows it close to the water, but far enough where retrieval is difficult. Stongodden is a nature reserve, with a delicate and vulnerable landscape, and any effort to get the aircraft must avoid disturbing the land.

The Osprey is one of the Air Force Special Operation Command’s aircrafts. The emergency landing was caused by a hard clutch engagement, where the clutch slips on one of the engines, transferring power to the other. When it quickly reengaged, the sudden torque can rapidly throw an Osprey off balance. The Norway incident is one of two the last three months that prompted AFSOC to ground its entire fleet of 52 Ospreys. No one was hurt in the emergency landing. The fleet is now cleared for operations again, but the hard clutch engagement problem hasn’t been solved.

On Aug. 12, a U.S. Osprey aircraft had a controlled emergency landing in the nature reserve on Stongodden. Stongodden is located on the southern tip of the island of Senja in Troms and Finnmark, the northernmost county in Norway.

The Norwegian military developed a retrieval plan after working with the county’s environmental protection office, according to Lt. Col. Eivind Byre, head of communications for the Royal Norwegian Air Force. The aim is to launch the operation this weekend, but the plan is still waiting on approval from the U.S. Air Force.

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The proposal involves retrieving the aircraft with a crane boat, but to make this possible, the plane must be moved a little closer to shore, according to Byre.

“Therefore, we plan to build a small road out of wood materials which makes as little harm to nature as possible,” Byre said. “Weather and wind in Norway this time of the year can change quite quickly, and is an important factor to consider. Hopefully we will be able to start the operation this weekend.”

Along with a road, a ramp and a jetty will be built to move the aircraft and create conditions favorable for a retrieval by sea. Due to concerns of the Osprey toppling over, disassembling the aircraft and moving it in pieces has been ruled out.

The plan is incredibly complicated and “something neither we nor the Americans have done before,” chief sergeant for 139 Air Wing in the Maritime Helicopter Wing, Odd Helge Wang told Norway Posts soon after the Osprey made its emergency landing.

The Osprey stuck in Stongodden is the latest lost aircraft the military has been trying to retrieve off of Europe this summer. Last month the Navy was able to fish an F/A-18E Super Hornet out of the Mediterranean Sea after intense weather blew it off of the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman in July. In March, a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey crashed during a training exercise in a different part of Norway, killing four Marines.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · September 6, 2022

9. Are al Qaeda and Iran really at odds?

Excerpts:

The debate about the Islamic Republic’s collaboration with al Qaeda is far from over. Much is already known, and there is ample evidence yet to be released. However, proponents of nuclear diplomacy with Iran hope to sweep it under the rug, for fear of scuttling talks.

Another 9/11 anniversary is approaching. For the sake of those who perished on that day, not to mention the men and women who gave their lives on the battlefields of Afghanistan, it’s time for a full and truthful account of this relationship to be released by the U.S. government. It should be produced without fear or favor.

Are al Qaeda and Iran really at odds?​

The debate about the Islamic Republic's collaboration with al Qaeda is far from over

By Jonathan Schanzer - - Tuesday, September 6, 2022​

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

OPINION:

A photo, first posted on an anonymous Twitter account, circulated last week among terrorism watchers here in Washington. It received scant attention in the mainstream media. The now authenticated photo, dated 2015, shows three of al Qaeda’s top leaders smiling casually. Their names: Saif al Adel, Abu Muhammad al Masri, and Abu al Khayr al Masri. Their location: Tehran.

All three men served in key leadership positions for the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization. And all three men were apparently circulating freely in Iran.

Al-Adel is now believed to be on the short list of candidates to lead al Qaeda after the American assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan in early August. Al-Masri was a senior al Qaeda leader who was gunned down on the streets of Tehran, presumably by the Israeli Mossad, in November 2020. Al Masri, another senior al Qaeda leader, was felled in Syria by a U.S. drone strike in 2017.

The photo questions — yet again — the notion that al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic were at odds. If anything, they appear to cooperate, even if Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian tensions prevent a full-blown alliance.

American officials (mostly those advocating for a nuclear deal with Iran) have repeatedly and falsely asserted that the Iranian regime maintained an antagonistic relationship with al Qaeda, placing members of the world’s most dangerous terrorist group under house arrest. This assertion has been regurgitated by prominent beltway analysts such as Nelly Lahoud and Peter Bergen. Both wrote books recently, parroting lines proffered by U.S. officialdom, downplaying the ties between Tehran and al Qaeda. Both got it wrong.

Here’s just a sample of what we know:

The 9/11 Commission Report (released in 2004) states: “Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11 … some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.”

In 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department issued sanctions against four al Qaeda leaders based in Iran. One of them was Sa’ad bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden.

In 2012, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi, a top al Qaeda operative in Iran. According to the Treasury press release, “Iran continues to allow al Qaeda to operate a core pipeline that moves al Qaeda money and fighters through Iran to support al Qaeda activities in South Asia. This network also sends funding and fighters to Syria.”

This came on the heels of a designation the year prior in which Treasury sanctioned “Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, a prominent Iran-based al Qaeda facilitator, operating under an agreement between al Qaeda and the Iranian government.” Treasury targeted Khalil (aka Yasin al-Suri) along with five other al Qaeda operatives, noting how Iran was a “critical transit point for funding to support al Qaeda’s activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This network serves as the core pipeline through which al Qaeda moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia …”

What’s most notable about these revelations is that they were made by the Treasury during the Obama administration. When the Obama Administration inked the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear accord with the Islamic Republic in Iran, there was no discussion of this pipeline.

The administration yielded an estimated $150 billion dollars to the regime in exchange for fleeting nuclear restrictions. The regime’s malign regional activities, including its collaboration with al Qaeda, were deemed outside the purview of the agreement.

While the Obama administration ended its investigation into this collaboration, the Trump administration revived it. In 2017, the Central Intelligence Agency released (thanks to a campaign by FDD’s Long War Journal) a trove of documents from the 2011 raid by U.S. Navy SEALS on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Among the documents was a video that revealed that bin Laden’s son Hamza was married in Iran, with senior al Qaeda figures in attendance. In 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed the allegations of Iranian collusion with al Qaeda. In early 2021, he charged that Iran was the new home base for al Qaeda.

This did not stop the incoming Biden administration from pursuing a return to the nuclear deal that President Donald Trump exited in 2018. The deal currently being negotiated in Vienna could yield Iran an estimated $275 billion in the first year, and as much as $1 trillion over the ensuing decade. Once again, the regime’s ties to al Qaeda are not addressed.

Earlier this year, a federal judge found in favor of victims and families that sued Iran for providing “material support” to al Qaeda, among other groups that perpetrated terrorist attacks against American servicemembers and civilians in Afghanistan. The case offered new insights into this dynamic.

The debate about the Islamic Republic’s collaboration with al Qaeda is far from over. Much is already known, and there is ample evidence yet to be released. However, proponents of nuclear diplomacy with Iran hope to sweep it under the rug, for fear of scuttling talks.

Another 9/11 anniversary is approaching. For the sake of those who perished on that day, not to mention the men and women who gave their lives on the battlefields of Afghanistan, it’s time for a full and truthful account of this relationship to be released by the U.S. government. It should be produced without fear or favor.

• Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is senior vice president for research at the nonpartisan think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

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10. FDD | Deal or No Deal, Israel Must Restore a Credible Military Threat

Excerpts:

Is the Iranian regime as ossified and vulnerable? Perhaps. Despite the massive sanctions relief in any upcoming deal, Iran’s economy will remain fragile. This suggests opportunities for Israel, even after a deal is signed.

Unfortunately, Israel will likely need to act alone. Israel is already waging economic and psychological warfare against Iran. There are kinetic strikes, too. Indeed, Israel, according to the foreign press, is already hammering assets of the regime across the Middle East and in Iran, in an asymmetric campaign called the “War Between Wars.” The Iranian regime has been unable to stop them.

Building on this momentum, Israel must endeavor to find other willing partners in the region. Regime change need not be the immediate goal. Indeed, it would suffice if stakeholders in the Middle East weakened the Iranian regime enough to prevent it from taking provocative actions under a nuclear umbrella yielded too easily through the deeply-flawed deal that currently hangs in the balance.

FDD | Deal or No Deal, Israel Must Restore a Credible Military Threat

fdd.org · by Jacob Nagel Senior Fellow · September 6, 2022

The Iranian regime and the US are exchanging drafts of what is being described again as a “take it or leave it, last chance [nuclear] deal.” Both sides will not admit publicly to having compromised, amidst a flurry of activity. For now, it is unclear whether a new agreement is imminent or not.

For the Iranian regime, there are three major unresolved issues, among other minor ones.

First, what happens if a future US president pulls out of the deal? Regime negotiators, under the direction of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khameinei, demand legal assurances in the event that a future president exits the deal. They also demand a predetermined end to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigations into Iran’s suspicious activities, well before the appropriate information has been provided. Finally, the regime demands the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or at least all of its associated businesses, from Washington’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

There are other issues that linger, but it all boils down to two key questions: Does Khameinei really want a deal? And how many more concessions will the US envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, make?

Leading political, military, and intelligence figures in Israel are unanimously concerned about the deal currently being negotiated. It is widely viewed as worse than the deal from 2015, which was extremely dangerous. The current deal on the table would yield huge amounts of cash to the regime, with nuclear restrictions that would fully “sunset” in a few short years. Israel has not yet given up on the idea of trying to convince the White House that this deal is a mistake. Some believe that the current government should make more noise, like former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu did in 2015.

The current deal, if signed, would provide massive sanctions relief that would allow the regime to rebuild its economy, as well as upgrade its nuclear and conventional capabilities, and bolster its support for terrorism. As constructed, the deal does not account for Iran’s recent illegal nuclear advances (most of which occurred after President Biden was elected). Nor does it address the regime’s foiled plots against former Trump administration officials Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and others.

Israel is now preparing for two scenarios: deal or no deal. There is also a recognition in Jerusalem that Iranian foot-dragging could result in a decision on the deal only after the November midterm elections. But no matter what happens, Iran will remain dangerously close to a nuclear threshold country or even one that acquires nuclear weapons.

Israel believes that it’s time to restore a credible military threat to the Iranian regime. Episodes from the past clearly demonstrate that Iran’s behavior can be shaped by such a threat.

In 2003, after the US invasion of neighboring Iraq, the regime believed it faced a possible military threat, so it came to the negotiating table, willing to make concessions. We saw this again in 2011-2012, when President Obama warned that “all options were on the table.” Unfortunately, the US didn’t wield its leverage in either scenario.

In January 2020, a year and a half after President Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, the US military eliminated IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani in a drone attack. This action restored the credible military threat for a short period. The Iranian regime significantly curtailed its new nuclear violations, likely out of fear of another strike.

This was the status quo for an entire year, until President Biden refused to wield a military threat. One year later, there is still no credible military threat, and Iran has engaged in one nuclear violation after another.

Deal or no deal, Israel must seriously consider a new paradigm, like the one President Reagan introduced in 1983. That was the year Reagan abandoned “containment” and adopted a plan to roll back Soviet Union expansionism. And it worked.

This doctrine is described in a book called “Victory,” and it has been highlighted elsewhere by Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Reagan policy was outlined in National Security Decision Directive 75, which called for the use of all instruments of American power, overt and covert, to counter the Soviet Union. It included a significant defense buildup, an economic warfare strategy, supporting anti-Soviet proxy forces and dissidents, and a full-throated delegitimization of the Soviet Union’s ideology. The result was the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Is the Iranian regime as ossified and vulnerable? Perhaps. Despite the massive sanctions relief in any upcoming deal, Iran’s economy will remain fragile. This suggests opportunities for Israel, even after a deal is signed.

Unfortunately, Israel will likely need to act alone. Israel is already waging economic and psychological warfare against Iran. There are kinetic strikes, too. Indeed, Israel, according to the foreign press, is already hammering assets of the regime across the Middle East and in Iran, in an asymmetric campaign called the “War Between Wars.” The Iranian regime has been unable to stop them.

Building on this momentum, Israel must endeavor to find other willing partners in the region. Regime change need not be the immediate goal. Indeed, it would suffice if stakeholders in the Middle East weakened the Iranian regime enough to prevent it from taking provocative actions under a nuclear umbrella yielded too easily through the deeply-flawed deal that currently hangs in the balance.

Brigadier General (res.) Jacob Nagel is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and a visiting professor at the Technion aerospace faculty. He previously served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security advisor and head of the National Security Council (acting). FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

fdd.org · by Jacob Nagel Senior Fellow · September 6, 2022

11. FDD | Washington must act to build capable federal cybersecurity workforce

Excerpts:

While the federal government should seek to retain those that participate in this program, the nation also benefits if they leave for private sector jobs. With critical infrastructure largely owned by private companies and small and medium-sized businesses as the backbone of the U.S. economy, the national interest is served when the government bears more of the burden when industry – particularly small companies cannot – and trains more entry-level cyber personnel knowing that some will move on after a time.

Cybersecurity jobs reflect the specific needs and technologies in use by an organization, causing numerous variations in what “qualified” means, regardless of time in the field. Ultimately, strengthening the national cybersecurity workforce – from where the federal government draws its own workforce – comes down to providing training, a career development path, and retention incentives for new and existing cybersecurity employees.

FDD | Washington must act to build capable federal cybersecurity workforce

Dr. Georgianna Shea

CCTI and TCIL Chief Technologist

Matthew Brockie

Research Assistant

fdd.org · by Dr. Georgianna Shea CCTI and TCIL Chief Technologist · September 6, 2022

With the U.S. facing a reported cybersecurity personnel shortage of at least 700,000 workers, the White House’s July workforce summit set the appropriately ambitious goal of filling those vacancies.

The summit—hosted by National Cyber Director Chris Inglis — emphasized plans to build the national workforce and improve its skills while addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The programs announced at the summit, however, only minimally address one of the central problems: the mismatch between the skills of applicants and the needs of employers, including the federal government.

Most of the initiatives announced at the summit focused on enhancing school programs and increasing the number of individuals entering the workforce. For example, CISCO, IBM, Girls Who Code, Fortinet, Dakota State University, and Ambassador Susan E. Rice have unveiled plans focused on bolstering K-12 cyber education as well as recruitment from historically black universities and colleges. This will increase the number of cybersecurity professionals entering the market but may not significantly close the gap between qualified cybersecurity professionals and open vacancies in government and industry.

The summit also highlighted a number of skill enhancement initiatives, but these programs lack nationwide scalability and accessibility. The cybersecurity professional association announced its One Million Certified in CybersecuritySM initiative to provide individuals with free certification training and exams to help fill 2.72 million vacancies globally.

With chapters in over fifty countries, and it is currently unclear how many of the certification opportunities will go to Americans. The nonprofit NPower said it will offer free IT training for “military-connected individuals” and young adults from underserved communities, but the applicants must live near a handful of cities and the program has age restrictions.

The summit could have achieved more by focusing on several key challenges that are responsible for the persistent mismatch between the skills of applicants and the needs of both public sector and private sector employers.

Building technical skills

First, cybersecurity is a dynamic field that relies on perishable skills and niche capabilities. No matter how much school or training individuals have, or how many certificates they hold, there is always more to learn.

As technology and adversary techniques advance, so do the technical skills required by the workforce at all levels, not just the entry-level. The qualifications employers seek in a given year may be overshadowed by new requirements the next. In addition to gaps in the technical abilities of recent university graduates, 66 percent of those graduates were found to lack desired soft skills like communication, flexibility, and leadership.

On-the-job training

Second, while obtaining a degree in cybersecurity provides students with a broad understanding of the field and its fundamental principles, most organizations, including the Department of Defense, require baseline certifications to demonstrate specific knowledge in security infrastructure, risk mitigation, threat recognition, and other topics. On top of the baseline certifications, employers may require knowledge and sector-specific certifications on the products or technologies they use.

The makers of some vendor-specific technologies, like Splunk, offer select free training on their products, a practice that should be explored and encouraged amongst all vendors. With each employer creating a niche list of qualifications, an individual can go to college for cybersecurity, graduate, and still not be qualified for an entry-level job in the field.

Gaining needed experience

Third, even with the right certifications, individuals might still find themselves unqualified. The biggest obstacle for applicants is the requirement of prior work experience, even for entry-level positions. According to global information technology professional association ISACA’s annual workforce survey, an overwhelming 73 percent of respondents stated that the most important factor for determining whether an applicant is qualified is whether they have previous hands-on experience with the specific systems the company is using.

During the summit, Accenture announced an apprenticeship program to provide such experience, however, there needed to be more discussion of scalable community partnerships that would provide experience on the technologies being used locally.

Obtaining security clearance

Fourth, even with the right certifications and prior experience, applicants will face another obstacle if they want to be a part of the 16 percent of cybersecurity professionals working for the U.S. government or a federal contractor: Nearly all of these positions require a security clearance. For a government contractor, employees with clearances can engage in billable federal support work immediately. However, if an employee does not have a clearance, the company may need to wait months, if not years, before the employee can do billable work. What’s more, there is always a chance they may not obtain the clearance at all. So even if qualified cybersecurity personnel are available, government contractors may not be willing to keep the employee on payroll while waiting for clearance.

Collectively, these four challenges create another problem for the industry. Qualified applicants are so scarce that the minute a company invests in an entry-level employee, advancing them to a mid-career qualification level, that person may well get poached by a competitor. 60 percent of ISACA survey respondents reported difficulties retaining qualified cybersecurity professionals.

Early cybersecurity applicants are having trouble getting jobs in the private sector or federal government. Companies and the government, meanwhile, complain that there are not enough qualified applicants. However, there are plenty of applicants – they just need a clear pathway to becoming qualified.

Goodwill’s IT Training program

The efforts announced at the White House summit are a good start, and there are other community initiatives — not addressed at the White House summit — that also promote certification training. Great examples that could be replicated nationally include the Information Technology Training program available in Denver and Colorado Springs through the Goodwill of Colorado.

This nonprofit organization provides free career development resources, including cybersecurity training and certification exams. And the Microsoft Technology Education and Literacy in Schools program partner schools with industry volunteers to help teachers understand various technology topics to address in teaching.

Washington must do more.

To build on these initiatives, the government must convince companies to invest in hiring entry-level applicants without prior experience. That can be a hard sell when employees are apt to leave after a short time. Similar to a hiring bonus, companies could incentivize new employees to stay for a certain period of time by offering retention bonuses or well-established advancement pathways.

Right now, factors contributing to employee turnover include better offers, poor financial incentives, and lack of development opportunities. Providing employees with professional development as part of a broader retention strategy will reduce employee turnover and ultimately advance the cybersecurity industry’s mission.

The federal government can set an example for industry by creating its own Federal Cyber Workforce Development Institute. An idea promulgated by CSC 2.0, the successor to the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, this program would offer entry-level federal employees the training and experience needed to become mid-career professionals.

The institute would provide hands-on learning opportunities, skills assessments, and other training for entry-level federal employees as well as develop upskilling and reskilling curriculum for existing employees looking to transition to cybersecurity positions. This program would “make it easier for federal employers to prepare newly hired early-career personnel for federal cyber work roles,” the CSC 2.0 report explained.

Benefit for private sector

While the federal government should seek to retain those that participate in this program, the nation also benefits if they leave for private sector jobs. With critical infrastructure largely owned by private companies and small and medium-sized businesses as the backbone of the U.S. economy, the national interest is served when the government bears more of the burden when industry – particularly small companies cannot – and trains more entry-level cyber personnel knowing that some will move on after a time.

Cybersecurity jobs reflect the specific needs and technologies in use by an organization, causing numerous variations in what “qualified” means, regardless of time in the field. Ultimately, strengthening the national cybersecurity workforce – from where the federal government draws its own workforce – comes down to providing training, a career development path, and retention incentives for new and existing cybersecurity employees.

Dr. Georgianna Shea is the chief technologist of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Matthew Brockie is a research assistant and student in cybersecurity at Colorado State University. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

fdd.org · by Dr. Georgianna Shea CCTI and TCIL Chief Technologist · September 6, 2022

12. China drills improved Taiwan's combat abilities, President Tsai says

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.- Nietsczhe 

China drills improved Taiwan's combat abilities, President Tsai says

Reuters · by Reuters

TAIPEI, Sept 6 (Reuters) - The combat skills of Taiwan's military are now "more mature" and it is better able to fight thanks to having to repeatedly scramble to see off Chinese forces during their recent drills, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Tuesday.

China staged war games in the immediate aftermath of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei last month, angered by what it saw as a strong show of U.S. support for the island Beijing claims as its own territory. Chinese military activities close to Taiwan have continued since then.

Speaking to air force personnel at the Hualien air base on Taiwan's east coast, Tsai said the situation around the Taiwan Strait remained tense and the threat had not gone away.

"In the face of challenges, our national military has calmly responded to the enemy's intents at intrusion and have tenaciously defended the country's security," she said, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the presidential office.

"I believe that after this period of combat readiness missions, our national military's combat skills are more mature and its combat power is more powerful."

Tsai added that she was "extremely proud" of the armed forces.

1/9

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen visits the military base in Hualien, Taiwan September 6, 2022. Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via REUTERS

The Hualien base has hangers cut out of the side of a mountain and is home to Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-16s.

Taiwan's military is also holding two days of drills starting late Tuesday around Hengchun on the far southern tip of the island. Apache attack helicopters, Ching-kuo Indigenous Defence Fighters, artillery and drones will feature in the drills.

Taiwan's armed forces are well-equipped but dwarfed by China's. Tsai has been overseeing a modernisation programme and has made increasing defence spending a priority.

Taiwan has set defence as the theme for this year's Oct. 10 national day, with the slogan "You and me join together to protect the land and defend the country", organisers said on Tuesday.

Tsai will oversee a military parade that day and give a key note speech.

Taiwan's democratically-elected government says that as the People's Republic of China has never ruled the island, it has no right to claim it or decide its future, which can only be set by Taiwan's people.

China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Ann Wang and Fabian Hamacher in Hengchun, Taiwan; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Reuters

13. Putin calls for review of Ukraine grain deal, accuses West of deception

But all warfare is based on deception.- Sun Tzu

Putin calls for review of Ukraine grain deal, accuses West of deception

Reuters · by Pavel Polityuk

• Summary
• Companies
• Putin accuses Kyiv and West of flouting grain deal
• Says too much grain going to EU not poor nations
• Says wants to discuss changing terms of deal
• Plans to talk to Turkish president about it soon

KYIV, Sept 7 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he wanted to discuss reopening a U.N.-brokered deal that allows Ukraine to export its grain via the Black Sea after accusing Kyiv and the West of using it to deceive developing countries and Russia.

Putin's criticism, which alleged that the deal was delivering grain, fertiliser and other foodstuffs to the European Union and Turkey at the expense of poor countries, is likely to raise fears that the pact could unravel if it cannot be successfully renegotiated.

Ukraine, whose ports had been blockaded by Russia since it invaded in February, said the terms of the agreement were being strictly observed and there were no grounds to renegotiate it.

The agreement, facilitated by the United Nations and Turkey in July, created a protected export corridor via the Black Sea for Ukrainian grain after Kyiv lost access to its main export route when Russia attacked Ukraine via land, air and sea.

The agreement, designed to help ease global food prices by increasing supplies of grain and oilseeds, has been the only diplomatic breakthrough between Moscow and Kyiv in more than six months of war.

Moscow said at the time that one of the main reasons it signed the deal was because it wanted to help developing countries stave off food shortages.

But Putin said on Wednesday that Ukraine and the West were not honouring its terms and that most of the grain was going to the EU, not to poorer countries, something the Russian leader said would have to change if what he called an "unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe" was to be averted.

"I met with the leaders of the African Union, with the leaders of African countries, and promised them that we would do everything to ensure their interests and facilitate the export of Ukrainian grain," Putin told an economic forum in Russia's Far East region.

But if shipments to Turkey as an intermediary country were excluded he said that only two out of 87 shipments had fallen under the U.N. World Food Programme, representing just 60,000 tonnes or 3% of the total 2 million tonnes exported so far.

"We are honouring the agreements. (But) it turns out....that they (the West) have just royally screwed us over and not just us but the poorest countries whose interests were the pretext for doing all this."

There were roughly 70 ships stranded in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February, some of which had already been loaded with grain, with contracts already signed. Some of those contracted cargoes have been the first to move.

Putin spoke about possibly restricting grain and food exports to the EU and promised to discuss the matter with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who helped broker the original deal.

OTHER COMPLAINTS

A Ukrainian presidential adviser responded by saying that Russia had no grounds to review the landmark pact and that the terms of the wartime agreement were being strictly observed.

"I believe that such unexpected and groundless statements rather indicate an attempt to find new aggressive talking points to influence global public opinion and, above all, put pressure on the United Nations," said Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser. read more

Ukraine hopes to export 60 million tonnes of grain in eight to nine months, presidential economic adviser Oleh Ustenko said in July, cautioning that those exports could take up to 24 months if ports do not function properly.

According to the United Nations, 88 ships have sailed or are due to sail from Ukraine under the deal so far, and of those two have been World Food Programme ships – one of which went to Djibouti, the other to Yemen.

Of those 88 ships the most grain – 368,407 tonnes – has gone or is due to go to Turkey. Around 757,697 tonnes in total is listed as going to European Union members though some shipments are also going to other countries including China, India, Iran, Egypt and Sudan.

Putin complained that another part of the deal meant to ease restrictions for Russian food exporters and shippers was not being implemented either.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt on the deal too a day earlier, accusing Western states of failing to honour reciprocal pledges to help facilitate Moscow's shipments. read more

UKRAINIAN BATTLEFIELD SUCCESS?

Ukrainian officials meanwhile remained guarded about how a counter offensive on the battlefield was faring.

Luhansk region Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian television, without giving locations, that a "counter-attack is underway and ... our forces are enjoying some success. Let's leave it at that".

But an official with the pro-Moscow self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic on Tuesday offered more detail and said there was fighting at Balakliia, an eastern town of 27,000 people that lies between Kharkiv and Russian-held Izyum, a city with a major railway hub used by Moscow to supply its forces.

"Today, the Ukrainian armed forces, after prolonged artillery preparation ... began an attack on Balakliia ... " Daniil Bezsonov said on Telegram, adding that if the town were lost, Russian forces in Izyum would become vulnerable on their northwest flank.

"At this time, Balakliia is in operative encirclement and within the firing range of Ukrainian artillery. All approaches are cut off by fire," he said.

Russia says it has repelled an assault in the south and has not reported any territorial losses.

Reuters was unable to independently verify those battlefield accounts.

Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Pavel Polityuk

14. Seeking a Program Manager for SoA in Taiwan

An opportunity for the right person. (Note I am a member of the SoA board of advisors).

Spirit of America has been active in Taiwan for most of 2022. We're now looking for an entrepreneurial national security professional, based in Taiwan, to design and implement programs that support Taiwan’s resilience and crisis preparedness, and strengthen US-Taiwan relationships. 

The ideal person has 5+ years experience in Taiwan, speaks Mandarin, and is a low-ego natural leader and relationship builder. Someone who has led the creation and launch of a successful new initiative. A highly collaborative “A player” able to partner with a diverse set of private and public leaders. They have outstanding communication skills and are even better at listening.

See also additional information here.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6972979817365258240/ 

Our hiring manager is Asia Pacific Regional Director, Josh Brandon, joshua@spiritofamerica.org and cc'd here. If interested in applying, candidates should provide a cover letter and resume here https://spiritofamerica.applytojob.com/apply/Jax93qaDVM/Regional-Program-Manager-Taiwan

15.  Biden to host U.S.-Pacific Island summit amid heightened tensions with Beijing

Too little too late?

Biden to host U.S.-Pacific Island summit amid heightened tensions with Beijing

washingtontimes.com · by Joseph Clark

President Biden will host leaders from Pacific Island countries later this month in a demonstration of the “deep and enduring partnership” of the U.S. and the region, the White House announced Friday.

The first-ever summit, which will be held in Washington on Sept. 28 and 29, advances Biden’s effort to shore up allies in the region as U.S.-China tensions grow.

“The summit will reflect our broadening and deepening cooperation on key issues such as climate change, pandemic response, economic recovery, maritime security, environmental protection, and advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Tensions flared recently when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan’s capital Taipei.

Beijing commenced a series of highly provocative military exercises in the waters surrounding Taiwan in response to the California Democrat’s brief visit to the self-governing island 100 miles off of China’s mainland.

Beijing claims Taiwan as part of China. The government in Taipei, which formally calls itself the Republic of China, is denounced by Beijing as an illegitimate renegade.

SEE ALSO: Taiwan Strait war could lead to undersea internet cables cutoff, costly shipping disruptions: Report

The military maneuvers sparked fears that the Chinese military could move to seize Taiwan by force in the foreseeable future.

The Biden administration has pressed for Beijing to cool tensions in the region and says its policy regarding Taiwan and China has not changed, despite the recent dustup.

• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.

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16. New Details Revealed in 'Fat Leonard' Escape, Detention as Manhunt Continues

Another embarrassment. But I wonder who he hired to help him escape. The father/son SF Team (the Taylors) who helped the Nissan guy escape from Japan to Lebanon are unavailable since they are awaiting trial in Japan.

New Details Revealed in 'Fat Leonard' Escape, Detention as Manhunt Continues - USNI News

news.usni.org · by Gidget Fuentes · September 7, 2022

U.S. Marshals wanted poster for Leonard Francis

An international manhunt continued Tuesday for Leonard Glenn Francis, a former defense contractor and convicted mastermind of a multimillion-dollar U.S. Navy corruption case who fled custody from home detention Sunday morning, just weeks before he was to be sentenced to federal prison.

Francis, a Malaysian national and the former president of Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia, was convicted in 2015 after taking a plea deal in exchange for helping U.S. prosecutors implicate three-dozen military officials. Since at least 2018, he has been living in home detention in San Diego under court-approved “medical furloughs” for treatment of renal cancer and other health issues, according to federal court documents. He was scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 22 before District Court Judge Janis Sammartino.

But at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday, the GPS tracker affixed to Francis’ ankle alerted federal monitors that it “was being tampered with,” a U.S. Marshals Service official told USNI News.

That alert prompted monitors with U.S. Pretrial Services to check on his status, which, per protocols, means ruling out scenarios including a faulty tracker. That agency handles all federal defendants on pretrial or pre-sentencing release.

“They just can’t assume somebody is on the run and call U.S. Marshals,” said Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Omar Castillo, with the U.S. Marshals Service in San Diego. “We got the call from them around 2:30 in the afternoon, and that’s when we went out to the residence.”

About a half hour later, the Marshals’ team arrived at the home, in an expensive area known as Carmel Valley, “to see if in fact he had possibly left or if he just had an issue with the GPS,” Castillo said. When they got there, the deputy marshals confirmed Francis wasn’t there.

Looking through the windows, after announcing their presence, they could see “the house was empty,” he said. Someone found an unlocked door, and “found the GPS monitor inside the house … and the scissors that he used to possibly cut it were right next to the GPS monitor.”

Before the marshals got to the house, San Diego Police Department had been alerted, either by Pretrial Services or Francis’ attorneys, to conduct a welfare check on Francis, Castillo said.

More than seven hours passed between when federal authorities were alerted by the GPS monitor and when marshals arrived at the house. Castillo said he didn’t know what caused the lapse in time. Marshals don’t get involved in any of the monitoring actions “until a judge actually issues a bench warrant for a defendant to be brought back … for pretrial release violation,” he added. It wasn’t clear whether Sammartino issued the warrant. U.S. Pretrial Services provides probation and pretrial work for the federal courts.

Unknown to federal monitors, Francis had been moving belongings out of the property – he lived there with his mother and children, according to court documents – for several days as neighbors told federal authorities they saw several U-Haul trucks “coming in and out of the residence,” Castillo said. “There was more than one” seen on Friday or Saturday.

Undated photo of Leonard Francis

“We are following leads that have come into our national number, as well as our website, and we are following some leads that we have established ourselves,” he said. “As of now, we think he’s probably going international. It sounds like he’s been planning this for a while.”

Castillo said he didn’t know what security arrangements were in place at Francis’ residence. He understands that Francis had security monitoring him, issued by the court, but paid for by Francis.

“I can tell you nobody was there when we showed up,” he said. “Nobody was there.”

It’s unclear how much time Francis had spent detained in U.S. physical custody before or after his conviction on a guilty plea. He had been living in home detention for at least four years, according to unsealed court documents.

That arrangement, approved by Sammartino with prosecutors’ support, was based on round-the-clock monitoring by a GPS ankle bracelet and a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week physical guard at Francis’ residence. That residence included a one-bedroom apartment, rented condominium and a gated single-family home, according to court transcripts.

Sammartino, a long-time district judge, has been overseeing the bulk of the cases brought forth from San Diego-based federal prosecutors who have led the long-running, wide-ranging investigation into Francis and GDMA’s alleged fraud and bribery of Navy and military officials, including senior officers serving with the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet.

“Our office is supporting the U.S. Marshals Service and its San Diego Fugitive Task Force in their efforts to bring Leonard Francis back into custody,” Kelly Thornton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, said in a statement Tuesday. “We will have no further comment at this time.”

Prosecutors have garnered federal convictions against 33 of 34 U.S. Navy officials, defense contractors and GDMA officers charged in the case, including Francis.

“We can confirm that NCIS is working jointly with the U.S. Marshals Service, Defense Criminal Investigative Service and U.S. Attorney’s Office to locate and apprehend Mr. Francis,” the Navy said in a statement to USNI News. “Out of respect for the investigative process, we cannot comment further at this time.”

Francis’ escape comes just two weeks before he was due to show up in a San Diego courtroom to be sentenced for his role in the case.

Francis was 50 years old when he, along with his company, in 2015 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery and conspiracy to defraud the United States, charges that could net him a 25-year prison sentence.

How Francis could escape from a four-years’-long home detention isn’t clear. But court documents unsealed last month reveal that Sammartino, as well as federal prosecutors, had lingering concerns about Francis’ commitment to adhere to judge-approved, pretrial restrictions that would enable him to get medical treatment in San Diego for unspecified ailments. This includes reported Stage 4 renal cancer, according to the transcripts, and other health issues related to aging.

Undated photo of Leonard Francis

Francis’ defense attorneys repeatedly requested that he be allowed to continue living at home while he received medical care, rather than be medically treated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. That request came after he had undergone some medical procedures and was receiving a series of medical treatments that required constant and regular medical monitoring. Those treatments, at times, required adjustments to the private security guards that were required to watch him round-the-clock, including when he moved into a condominium, rented from a medical doctor, for medical care. It wasn’t clear, from available court records, where the security guards were stationed, and how many. During one December 2020 court hearing, his attorney said that two guards alternated 12-hour shifts, a situation that raised concerns when one guard left the property for an extended lunch during a time when a federal pretrial monitor showed up to check on Francis.

“I don’t want to make this more complicated than it is, but in the event that something were to happen and the facility were to be empty one morning and he’s not there and he’s back in Malaysia for whatever reason,” she said, regarding her concerns about setting up that temporary convalescent location.

At one point, Sammartino repeated concerns in court about Francis’ honesty after Pretrial Services told the court that the security guard at Francis’ residence wasn’t on site during one unannounced visit. Francis was paying those security guards. Sammartino ordered all sides to her courtroom, and Francis, speaking by phone, apologized to her and said it wouldn’t happen again.

“Understood,” Francis’ lead attorney, Devin Burstein, replied, according to a transcript.

The judge questioned whether or not the U.S. Marshals Service would monitor Francis, saying that her name was on the the decision to let Francis outside of jail “without any security.”

“You’re not telling me he can’t afford this anymore, because he’s affording everything else, which is infinitely more expensive than the security individual,” Sammartino said.

Sammartino had approved those “medical furlough” requests multiple times, starting at least December 2017 – including in late 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic became more concerning to Francis’ medical condition – and even after she had received, unsolicited, a November 2020 letter from a San Diego-area bariatric surgeon who had been treating Francis that gave him a clean bill of health.

At a hearing to discuss that matter, the judge seemed to question her decision to allow Francis to remain in home detention. Francis had been released, by federal authorities, on his own recognizance and with a GPS bracelet, but without needing to post a monetary bond, as is common in cases where there’s a concern about escape.

“Number one, he could be here,” Sammartino told attorneys at one status hearing. “Number two, what I have traditionally told other defendants in pending cases in this overall conspiracy is that this has been a legitimate medical furlough, and at the point of which it is no longer a legitimate medical furlough, the court may take a different position.

“The other concern I have is, if he is not (redacted), I’m concerned. Is he paying his security team? What is his status? I even went so far as to wonder if he is still in this country. So I would like to hear all of those addressed. And the other thing is, Mr. Burstein, Mr. Pletcher, you have been very diligent in this matter, and it surprises me that I hear this from the doctor directly and not from you when there was a change of [medical] circumstance.”

Francis’ attorney told her that Francis continued to pay his round-the-clock security team and he was living in the house with his children.

“He’s not going anywhere,” said the attorney, who later added that Francis had moved out of the condo, which he had rented from the doctor who he had a falling out with over a billing issue, according to the transcript.

A U.S. Pretrial Services representative told the judge that Francis was monitored, even throughout the times when medical treatments required that the GPS bracelet be removed.

At a status hearing in January 2021, Sammartino questioned the status of Francis’ health and, at one point, raised the possibility of having an independent, third-party medical expert come to the court and explain Francis’ current health and future expectations. He was expected to testify at several pending trials of Navy officials, including five former 7th Fleet officers.

Defense attorneys argued that he would do so in 90-minute increments, with 15-minute breaks to accommodate his medical condition, as was the practice when Francis testified at an earlier military court-martial.

But when that trial began last spring, Francis wasn’t on the witness list. It’s unclear why he wasn’t called to testify. The latest court transcripts available on the publicly accessible website were from a December 2021 status conference, when the judge extended the medical furlough until May 23, 2022.

A federal jury convicted four of the five Navy officers – Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and David Lausman and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera – in late June on charges of accepting bribes from Francis. They are set to be sentenced next month.

The jury couldn’t agree on a verdict for the fifth officer, Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless. Loveless, a former fleet intelligence chief, has continued to contest the charges and is seeking an acquittal. Sammartino has denied his motion for mistrial, and a status hearing is set for Sept. 30 in San Diego.

Related

news.usni.org · by Gidget Fuentes · September 7, 2022

1​7. World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence

Another book for the "to read pile?" That Stephenson-Donovan relationship had an impact on me as one of the most influential books I read in high school or college in the 1970s was "A Man Called Intrepid..

Excerpts:

A large part of this success flows from the author’s focus on personalities, not just the personalities of individuals but also the personalities and cultures of organizations and services. This emphasis is not without its dangers. Most of the first three chapters of the book focus on the William Stephenson – William Donovan relationship, and some of this could have been edited at little cost. That is the last quibble of this review.

...

Nicholas Reynolds has done more than replough the ground worked by earlier histories. Some readers, with expertise in precise areas of intelligence history, may find errors or omissions, or a lack of detail or granularity. Others may wish for more emphasis on certain topics, with less on others. Given the book’s focus, for example, more attention is given to the battles over the chain of command in US naval intelligence than on the role of intelligence in supporting combat operations in the Second World War or on whether the conflict between Nimitz and MacArthur filtered down to intelligence interactions between their respective theaters. The author’s intent, after all, was to provide the view from 30,000 feet, and within that focus he delivers.

This is an exceptionally well cited book. It includes a fine bibliography that undersells itself with the label “select;” and it includes a helpful list of principal characters. That list should prove especially useful for readers whose bookshelves are not crowded with the titles in the bibliography. Finally, Need to Know belongs in the required or at least highly recommended readings portions of syllabi in intelligence studies programs, and it would not be out of place in libraries, personal or institutional, containing serious intelligence collections.

World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence

thecipherbrief.com

More Book Reviews

September 6th, 2022 by Need to Know, |

BOOK REVIEW: Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence

By Nicholas Reynolds / Mariner Books

Reviewed by William Nolte

The Reviewer — William Nolte retired in 2006 as chancellor of the National Intelligence University system. Previous assignments include two tours at the National Intelligence Council, head of legislative affairs at NSA, and commandant of the National Cryptologic School. He is now a lecturer in the intelligence studies program at the Catholic University of America.

REVIEW — Let me to begin by acknowledging that I wasn’t sure I should have agreed to review this book. Yet another book on intelligence in the aftermath of the Second World War? Hadn’t this field been fully ploughed?

That concern was ill-founded. Need to Know is a readable, thoughtful book on an important subject. The author states an intention of writing a “crossover” book covering more than one agency and focusing on strategy rather than tactics, the view from “thirty thousand feet rather than from the forward edge of a foxhole.” Those are ambitious objectives, given how few working intelligence professionals ever manage to look past their own agency and how many historical foxholes have been dug deeper and deeper over time. Readers looking for new developments or the exploration of previously neglected primary sources will find little of either in Need to Know. It is, on the other hand, highly successful at achieving the perspective proposed by the author.

A large part of this success flows from the author’s focus on personalities, not just the personalities of individuals but also the personalities and cultures of organizations and services. This emphasis is not without its dangers. Most of the first three chapters of the book focus on the William Stephenson – William Donovan relationship, and some of this could have been edited at little cost. That is the last quibble of this review.

From that point on, even previously covered issues come with new and illustrative information, in many instances noting the intersection of individual and corporate personalities in the development of organizational cultures. As an example, Reynolds provides a crisp review of the conflict dealt with in other works by Stephen Budiansky and others, between Hawaii-based cryptologist Joseph Rochefort and the Washington-based Redman brothers, John and Joseph. Beyond the personalities of the individuals involved, this issue reflected the tendency of headquarters elements, aided by developments in 20th century communications technology, to attempt to extend forward their writ, and the tensions created thereby with deployed personnel and components. Ambassadors, chiefs of station, and others would almost certainly agree that this trend has persisted into the 21st century.

In pursuing the “unifying threads” that produced the American intelligence establishment of the period from 1945 (or perhaps 1947), the author identifies an impressive and complex range. Issues arising from differences between American and allied (especially British) practices and policies and rivalries within the American participants between the uniformed services, uniformed services dealing with civilian organizations, and between civilian agencies figure prominently. Even practices and attitudes imported from prior service outside of government figure among the threads. Reynolds notes the reflection of one former OSS research officer on the composition of his office as so many members from Harvard, so many from Yale, and “someone from a place in the Midwest.” So much for flyover country.

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Beyond the range of such influences, veterans of the agencies built after the Second World War can easily attest to their stamina. Partly because of these antecedents and sometimes despite them, the men and women of the post-1945 intelligence services produced establishments that, warts, rivalries, poor judgments, and all, have served the US, its allies, and the causes of freedom and democracy well. Nevertheless, as an internal NSA study of the 1990s noted, at a time when flattening organizations was in vogue, the agency over the previous forty years had performed its mission “effectively but not efficiently,” while adding layers of bureaucracy that did little to enhance productivity. That judgment might well have been made regarding American intelligence as a whole. (The study in question was never implemented, by the way, largely because it was considered “too hard to do.”)

Attendees at any number of conferences and meetings of the US Intelligence Community, over many years, have heard speakers declare that closer integration of the agencies has little or nothing to do with technology but is “simply a cultural issue.” Simply in that sense is such an interesting descriptive term, evoking the view of one 20th century management guru that “change costs a fortune and takes forever.” A panel of former directors of central and national intelligence would likely concur with that judgment. It might even be worth suggesting that some technical problems are simpler and more readily resolved than cultural ones the latter often having deeper, stronger roots.

Nicholas Reynolds has done more than replough the ground worked by earlier histories. Some readers, with expertise in precise areas of intelligence history, may find errors or omissions, or a lack of detail or granularity. Others may wish for more emphasis on certain topics, with less on others. Given the book’s focus, for example, more attention is given to the battles over the chain of command in US naval intelligence than on the role of intelligence in supporting combat operations in the Second World War or on whether the conflict between Nimitz and MacArthur filtered down to intelligence interactions between their respective theaters. The author’s intent, after all, was to provide the view from 30,000 feet, and within that focus he delivers.

This is an exceptionally well cited book. It includes a fine bibliography that undersells itself with the label “select;” and it includes a helpful list of principal characters. That list should prove especially useful for readers whose bookshelves are not crowded with the titles in the bibliography. Finally, Need to Know belongs in the required or at least highly recommended readings portions of syllabi in intelligence studies programs, and it would not be out of place in libraries, personal or institutional, containing serious intelligence collections.

Need to Know earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats.

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18. UWM 'volunteers' for dining halls sought, staff email shows

I checked Snopes. Nothing there. This is not the Onion, the Duffleblog, or the Babylon Bee.

​Can you believe this? I wonder who conducted the analysis that said it was feasible to have 24 hour dining facility operations? And then who in their right mind would approve a request for "volunteers" from the faculty to cook, serve, and clean to sustain 24 hour dining operations?

No wonder we have problems in education. But I am sure we will soon read the "rest of the story" and that this report is not all there.

UWM 'volunteers' for dining halls sought, staff email shows

fox6now.com · by Sam Kraemer

UWM 'volunteers' for dining halls sought, staff email shows

A new UWM dining program allows students to eat whenever and however often they want, but the school doesn't have enough employees, sending an email to faculty and staff asking if they would volunteer to staff and clean the dining halls.

MILWAUKEE - For the first time in 25 years, there's a new dining program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Students can eat any time and as many times as they'd like across the three dining halls. There's just one problem. The school doesn't have enough employees.

On Friday, Sept. 2, the school administrators sent faculty and staff an email asking them to volunteer their time to cook and serve food and help clean up those dining halls.

On Labor Day, the head of the union for faculty and staff called the effort insulting.

Owen Griffith and Kailan Patel have only been on campus for a week.

"All you can eat," said Griffith. "You can take food back to your dorm, have it for a late-night snack."

They said they like the food options and the anytime dining plan, but they said Monday they've already been turned away at a dining hall.

"We just decided to go to see if they had any food or anything, but they're like, 'Oh, we don't. We ran out of food,'" said Patel. "They are understaffed. He was like, 'We're trying to get more staff.'"

Eric Lohman

University administrators sent an email to faculty and staff on Friday, first explaining the program addresses a critical issue for many students -- food insecurity. Then, journalism lecturer Eric Lohman noticed something else.

"I was livid about it," said Lohman.

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Teachers were asked to fill in as volunteers.

"Rather than figuring out a way to hire more workers to fill those roles, they simply asked us to do it for free without overtime pay," said Lohman.

Lohman is president of the union, representing faculty and staff at UWM. He said instructors are all for volunteering to help those in need while calling on school leaders to fix the problem instead of causing another.

"There is a solution to this problem," said Lohman. They could hire workers to work in the residence dining halls by paying them better wages and giving them better benefits, but they don't."

FOX6 News reached out to UWM Monday for comment but did not hear back.

Lohman said the union doesn't plan to give in, though he said he wouldn't be surprised if some staff members do volunteer to help.

fox6now.com · by Sam Kraemer

19.  The Weakness of Xi Jinping

​Conclusion:

The only viable way of changing course, so far as I can see, is also the scariest and deadliest: a humiliating defeat in a war. If Xi were to attack Taiwan, his likeliest target, there is a good chance that the war would not go as planned, and Taiwan, with American help, would be able to resist invasion and inflict grave damage on mainland China. In that event, the elites and the masses would abandon Xi, paving the way for not only his personal downfall but perhaps even the collapse of the CCP as we know it. For precedent, one would have to go back to the nineteenth century, when Emperor Qianlong failed in his quest to expand China’s realm to Central Asia, Burma, and Vietnam. Predictably, China suffered a mortifying loss in the First Sino-Japanese War, setting the stage for the downfall of the Qing dynasty and kicking off a long period of political upheaval. Emperors are not always forever.

The Weakness of Xi Jinping

How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future

By Cai Xia

September/October 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Cai Xia · September 6, 2022

Not long ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping was riding high. He had consolidated power within the Chinese Communist Party. He had elevated himself to the same official status as the CCP’s iconic leader, Mao Zedong, and done away with presidential term limits, freeing him to lead China for the rest of his life. At home, he boasted of having made huge strides in reducing poverty; abroad, he claimed to be raising his country’s international prestige to new heights. For many Chinese, Xi’s strongman tactics were the acceptable price of national revival.

点击此链接阅读中文版 (Read in Chinese).

Outwardly, Xi still projects confidence. In a speech in January 2021, he declared China “invincible.” But behind the scenes, his power is being questioned as never before. By discarding China’s long tradition of collective rule and creating a cult of personality reminiscent of the one that surrounded Mao, Xi has rankled party insiders. A series of policy missteps, meanwhile, have disappointed even supporters. Xi’s reversal of economic reforms and his inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic have shattered his image as a hero of everyday people. In the shadows, resentment among CCP elites is rising.

I have long had a front-row seat to the CCP’s court intrigue. For 15 years, I was a professor in the Central Party School, where I helped train thousands of high-ranking CCP cadres who staff China’s bureaucracy. During my tenure at the school, I advised the CCP’s top leadership on building the party, and I continued to do so after retiring in 2012. In 2020, after I criticized Xi, I was expelled from the party, stripped of my retirement benefits, and warned that my safety was in danger. I now live in exile in the United States, but I stay in touch with many of my contacts in China.

At the CCP’s 20th National Party Congress this fall, Xi expects that he will be given a third five-year term. And even if the growing irritation among some party elites means that his bid will not go entirely uncontested, he will probably succeed. But that success will bring more turbulence down the road. Emboldened by the unprecedented additional term, Xi will likely tighten his grip even further domestically and raise his ambitions internationally. As Xi’s rule becomes more extreme, the infighting and resentment he has already triggered will only grow stronger. The competition between various factions within the party will get more intense, complicated, and brutal than ever before.

At that point, China may experience a vicious cycle in which Xi reacts to the perceived sense of threat by taking ever bolder actions that generate even more pushback. Trapped in an echo chamber and desperately seeking redemption, he may even do something catastrophically ill advised, such as attack Taiwan. Xi may well ruin something China has earned over the course of four decades: a reputation for steady, competent leadership. In fact, he already has.

THE CHINESE MAFIA

In many respects, the CCP has changed little since the party took power in 1949. Now, as then, the party exercises absolute control over China, ruling over its military, its administration, and its rubber-stamp legislature. The party hierarchy, in turn, answers to the Politburo Standing Committee, the top decision-making body in China. Composed of anywhere from five to nine members of the broader Politburo, the Standing Committee is headed by the party’s general secretary, China’s paramount leader. Since 2012, that has been Xi.

The details of how the Standing Committee operates are a closely guarded secret, but it is widely known that many decisions are made through the circulation of documents dealing with major policy questions, in the margins of which the committee’s members add comments. The papers are written by top leaders in ministries and other party organs, as well as experts from the best universities and think tanks, and to have one’s memo circulated among the Standing Committee members is considered a credit to the writer’s home institution. When I was a professor, the Central Party School set a quota for the production of such memos of about one a month. Authors whose memos were read by the Standing Committee were rewarded with the equivalent of roughly $1,500—more than a professor’s monthly salary.

Another feature of the party system has remained constant: the importance of personal connections. When it comes to one’s rise within the party hierarchy, individual relationships, including one’s family reputation and Communist pedigree, matter as much as competence and ideology.

The CCP is more of a mafia organization than a political party.

That was certainly the case with Xi’s career. Contrary to Chinese propaganda and the assessment of many Western analysts that he rose through his talent, the opposite is true. Xi benefited immensely from the connections of his father, Xi Zhongxun, a CCP leader with impeccable revolutionary credentials who served briefly as propaganda minister under Mao. When Xi Jinping was a county party chief in the northern province of Hebei in the early 1980s, his mother wrote a note to the province’s party chief asking him to take an interest in Xi’s advancement. But that official, Gao Yang, ended up disclosing the note’s content at a meeting of the province’s Politburo Standing Committee. The revelation was a great embarrassment to the family since it violated the CCP’s new campaign against seeking favors. (Xi would never forget the incident: in 2009, when Gao died, he pointedly declined to attend his funeral, a breach of custom given that both had served as president of the Central Party School.) Such a scandal would have ruined the average rising cadre’s career, but Xi’s connections came to the rescue: the father of Fujian’s party chief had been a close confidant of Xi’s father, and the families arranged a rare reassignment to that province.

Xi would continue to fail upward. In 1988, after losing his bid for deputy mayor in a local election, he was promoted to district party chief. Once there, however, Xi languished on account of his middling performance. In the CCP, moving from the district level to the provincial level is a major hurdle, and for years, he could not overcome it. But once again, family connections intervened. In 1992, after Xi’s mother wrote a plea to the new party leader in Fujian, Jia Qinglin, Xi was transferred to the provincial capital. At that point, his career took off.

As all lower-level cadres know, to climb the CCP ladder, one must find a higher-level boss. In Xi’s case, this proved easy enough, since many party leaders held his father in high esteem. His first and most important mentor was Geng Biao, a top diplomatic and military official who had once worked for Xi’s father. In 1979, he took on the younger Xi as a secretary. The need for such patrons early on has knock-on effects decades down the line. High-level officials each have their own “lineages,” as insiders call these groups of protégés, which amount to de facto factions within the CCP. Indeed, disputes that are framed as ideological and policy debates within the CCP are often something much less sophisticated: power struggles among various lineages. Such a system can also lead to tangled webs of personal loyalty. If one’s mentor falls out of favor, the effect is the professional equivalent of being orphaned.

Outsiders may find it helpful to think of the CCP as more of a mafia organization than a political party. The head of the party is the don, and below him sit the underbosses, or the Standing Committee. These men traditionally parcel out power, with each responsible for certain areas—foreign policy, the economy, personnel, anticorruption, and so on. They are also supposed to serve as the big boss’s consiglieres, advising him on their areas of responsibility. Outside the Standing Committee are the other 18 members of the Politburo, who are next in the line of succession for the Standing Committee. They can be thought of as the mafia’s capos, carrying out Xi’s orders to eliminate perceived threats in the hope of staying in the good graces of the don. As a perk of their position, they are allowed to enrich themselves as they see fit, seizing property and businesses without penalty. And like the mafia, the party uses blunt tools to get what it wants: bribery, extortion, even violence.

SHARING IS CARING

Although the power of personal connections and the flexibility of formal rules have remained constant since Communist China’s founding, one thing has shifted over time: the degree to which power is concentrated in a single man. From the mid-1960s onward, Mao had absolute control and the final say on all matters, even if he exercised his power episodically and was officially merely first among equals. But when Deng Xiaoping became China’s de facto leader in 1978, he chipped away at Mao’s one-man, lifelong dictatorship.

Deng restricted China’s presidency to two five-year terms and established a form of collective leadership, allowing other officials—first Hu Yaobang and then Zhao Ziyang—to serve as head of the party, even if he remained the power behind the throne. In 1987, the CCP decided to reform the process for selecting members of the Central Committee, the party’s nominal overseer and the body from which Politburo members are chosen. For the first time, the party proposed more candidates than there were seats—hardly a democratic election, but a step in the right direction. Even the endorsement of Deng could not guarantee success: for example, Deng Liqun, a Maoist ideologue whom Deng Xiaoping had promised to promote to the Politburo, failed to earn enough votes and was forced to retire from political life. (It is worth noting that when the Central Committee held an election in 1997, Xi barely squeaked by. He had the fewest votes of all those selected to join, reflecting a general distaste within the party for “princelings,” descendants of top CCP leaders who rose thanks to nepotism rather than merit.)

Seeking to avoid a repeat of the disastrous Cultural Revolution, when Maoist propaganda reached its apogee, Deng also sought to prevent any leader from forming a cult of personality. As early as 1978, a student from the Central Party School who was a close family friend noticed on a school trip to a pig farm in the Beijing suburbs that items that Hua Guofeng had used on an inspection visit—a hot water bottle, a teacup—were displayed in a glass cabinet, as if it were a religious shrine. My friend wrote to Hua criticizing the personal worship, and Hua had the display removed. In 1982, China’s leaders went so far as to write into the party constitution a ban on cults of personality, which they viewed as uniquely dangerous.

Family reputation and pedigree matter as much as competence and ideology to the Communist Party.

Deng was willing to go only so far in sharing power, and he forced out Hu and Zhao successively when each proved too politically liberal. But Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, deepened the political reforms. Jiang institutionalized his group of advisers to operate more as an executive office. He sought advice from all members of the Standing Committee, which now made decisions by majority vote, and he circulated draft speeches widely. Jiang also made the elections to the Central Committee slightly more competitive by increasing the ratio of candidates to seats. Even princelings, including one of Deng’s sons, lost their elections.

When Hu Jintao took over from Jiang in 2002, China moved even further toward collective leadership. Hu ruled with the consent of the nine members of the Standing Committee, a clique known as the “nine dragons controlling the water.” There were downsides to this egalitarian approach. A single member of the Standing Committee could veto any decision, driving the perception of Hu as a weak leader unable to overcome gridlock. For nearly a decade, the economic reforms that began under Deng stalled. But there were upsides, too, since the need for consensus prevented careless decisions. When SARS broke out in China during his first year in office, for instance, Hu acted prudently, firing China’s health minister for covering up the extent of the outbreak, and encouraging cadres to report infections truthfully.

Hu also sought to expand the use of term limits. Although he ran into resistance when he tried to institute term limits for members of the Politburo and its Standing Committee, he did manage to introduce them at the level of provincial ministers and below. More successfully, Hu established an unprecedented process by which the composition of the Politburo was first selected by a vote of senior party members.

Ironically, it was through this quasi-democratic system that Xi rose to the heights of power. In 2007, at an expanded meeting of the Central Committee, the CCP’s top 400 or so leaders gathered in Beijing to cast votes recommending which ministerial-level officials from a list of 200 should join the 25-member Politburo. Xi received the most. The deciding factor, I suspect, was not his record as party chief of Zhejiang or Shanghai but the respect voters held for his father, along with the endorsement of (and pressure from) some key party elders. In a similar advisory election five years later, Xi got the most votes and, by the consensus of the outgoing leaders, ascended to the top of the pyramid. He swiftly got to work undoing decades of progress on collective leadership.

PARTY OF ONE?

When Xi took the reins, many in the West hailed him as a Chinese Mikhail Gorbachev. Some imagined that, like the Soviet Union’s final leader, Xi would embrace radical reforms, releasing the state’s grip on the economy and democratizing the political system. That, of course, turned out to be a fantasy. Instead, Xi, a devoted student of Mao and just as eager to leave his mark on history, has worked to establish his absolute power. And because previous reforms failed to place real checks and balances on the party leader, he has succeeded. Now, as under Mao, China is a one-man show.

One part of Xi’s plot to consolidate power was to solve what he characterized as an ideological crisis. The Internet, he said, was an existential threat to the CCP, having caused the party to lose control of people’s minds. So Xi cracked down on bloggers and online activists, censored dissent, and strengthened China’s “great firewall” to restrict access to foreign websites. The effect was to strangle a nascent civil society and eliminate public opinion as a check on Xi.

Another step he took was to launch an anti­corruption campaign, framing it as a mission to save the party from self-destruction. Since corruption was endemic in China, with nearly every official a potential target, Xi was able to use the campaign as a political purge. Official data show that from December 2012 to June 2021, the CCP investigated 393 leading cadres above the provincial ministerial level, officials who are often being groomed for top positions, as well as 631,000 section-level cadres, foot soldiers who implement the CCP’s policies at the grassroots level. The purge has ensnared some of the most powerful officials whom Xi deemed threatening, including Zhou Yongkang, a former Standing Committee member and the head of China’s security apparatus, and Sun Zhengcai, a Politburo member whom many saw as a rival and potential successor to Xi.

A bust of Xi, Jiangxi province, China, June 2019

Jason Lee / Reuters

Tellingly, those who helped Xi rise have been left untouched. Jia Qinglin, Fujian’s party chief in the 1990s and eventually a member of the Standing Committee, was instrumental in helping Xi climb the ranks of power. Although there is reason to believe that he and his family are exceedingly corrupt—the Panama Papers, the trove of leaked documents from a law firm, revealed that his granddaughter and son-in-law own several secret offshore companies—they have not been caught up in Xi’s anticorruption campaign.

Xi’s tactics are not subtle. As I learned from one party insider whom I cannot name for fear of getting him in trouble, around 2014, Xi’s men went to a high-ranking official who had openly criticized Xi and threatened him with a corruption investigation if he didn’t stop. (He shut up.) In pursuing their targets, Xi’s subordinates often pressure officials’ family members and assistants. Wang Min, the party chief of Liaoning Province, whom I knew well from our days as students at the Central Party School, was arrested in 2016 on the basis of statements from his chauffeur, who said that while in the car, Wang had complained to a fellow passenger about being passed over for promotion. Wang was sentenced to life in prison, with one of the charges being resistance to Xi’s leadership.

After ejecting his rivals from key positions, Xi installed his own people. Xi’s lineage within the party is known as the “New Zhijiang Army.” The group consists of his former subordinates during his time as governor of Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces and even university classmates and old friends going back to middle school. Since assuming power, Xi has quickly promoted his acolytes, often beyond their level of competence. His roommate from his days at Tsinghua University, Chen Xi, was named head of the CCP’s Organization Department, a position that comes with a seat on the Politburo and the power to decide who can move up the hierarchy. Yet Chen has no relevant qualifications: his five immediate predecessors had experience with local party affairs, whereas he spent nearly all his career at Tsinghua University.

Xi and his deputies have demanded a degree of loyalty not seen since Mao.

Xi undid another major reform: “the separation of party and state,” an effort to reduce the degree to which ideologically driven party cadres interfered with technical and managerial decisions in government agencies. In an attempt to professionalize the bureaucracy, Deng and his successors tried, with varying degrees of success, to insulate the administration from CCP interference. Xi has backtracked, introducing some 40 ad hoc party commissions that end up directing governmental agencies. Unlike his predecessors, for example, he has his own team to handle issues regarding the South China Sea, bypassing the Foreign Ministry and the State Oceanic Administration.

The effect of these commissions has been to take significant power away from the head of China’s government, Premier Li Keqiang, and turn what was once a position of co-captain into a sidekick. The change can be seen in the way Li comports himself in public appearances. Whereas Li’s two immediate predecessors, Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao, stood side by side with Jiang and Hu, respectively, Li knows to keep his distance from Xi, as if to emphasize the power differential. Moreover, in the past, official communications and state media referred to the “Jiang-Zhu system” and the “Hu-Wen system,” but almost no one today speaks of a “Xi-Li system.” There has long been a push and pull between the party and the government in China—what insiders call the struggle between the “South Courtyard” and the “North Courtyard” of Zhongnanhai, the imperial compound that hosts the headquarters of both institutions. But by insisting that everyone look up to him as the highest authority, Xi has exacerbated tensions.

Xi has also changed the dynamic within the Standing Committee. For the first time in CCP history, all Politburo members, even those on the Standing Committee, must report directly to the head of the party by submitting periodic reports to Xi, who personally reviews their performance. Gone is the camaraderie and near equality among Standing Committee members that once prevailed. As one former official in Beijing told me, one of the committee’s seven members—Wang Qi­shan, China’s vice president and a longtime ally of Xi—has grumbled to friends that the dynamic between Xi and the lesser members is that of an emperor and his ministers.

Xi is positioning himself not as merely a great party leader but as a modern-day emperor.

The most brazen change Xi has ushered in is to remove China’s presidential term limit. Like every paramount leader from Jiang onward, Xi holds three positions concurrently: president of China, leader of the party, and head of the military. Although the limit of two five-year terms applied only to the first of those three positions, beginning with Hu, there was an understanding that it must also apply to the other two to make it possible for the same person to hold all three posts.

But in 2018, at Xi’s behest, China’s legislature amended the constitution to do away with the presidential term limit. The justification was laughable. The professed goal was to make the presidency consistent with the party and military positions, even though the obvious reform would have been the reverse: to add term limits to those positions.

Then there is the cult of personality. Even though the ban on such cults remains in the party constitution, Xi and his deputies have demanded a degree of loyalty and admiration for the leader not seen since Mao. Ever since 2016, when Xi was declared the party’s “core leader” (a term never given to his predecessor, Hu), Xi has positioned himself in front of members of the Standing Committee in official portraits. His own portraits are hung everywhere, Mao style, in government offices, schools, religious sites, and homes. According to Radio France Internationale, Xi’s subordinates have proposed renaming Tsinghua University, his alma mater and China’s top school, Xi Jinping University. They have even argued for hanging his picture alongside Mao’s in Tiananmen Square. Although neither idea went anywhere, Xi did manage to get Xi Jinping Thought enshrined in the party’s constitution in 2017—joining Mao as the only other leader whose own ideology was added to the document while in office—and in the state constitution the next year. In one lengthy article published in Xinhua, the state media organ, in 2017, a propagandist crowned Xi with seven new North Korean–style titles that would have made his post-Mao predecessors blush: “groundbreaking leader,” “diligent worker for the people’s happiness,” “chief architect of modernization in the new era,” and so on.

Within the party, Xi’s lineage is carrying out a fierce campaign insisting that he be allowed to stay in power to finish what he started: namely, “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” As their efforts intensify, their message is being simplified. In April, party officials in Guangxi proposed a new slogan: “Always support the leader, defend the leader, and follow the leader.” In an echo of Mao’s “little red book,” they also issued a pocket-size collection of Xi quotations and invited citizens to memorize its contents. Xi seems to be positioning himself not as merely a great party leader but as a modern-day emperor.

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

The more a political system centers on a single leader, the more the flaws and peculiarities of that leader matter. And in the case of Xi, the leader is thin-skinned, stubborn, and dictatorial.

These qualities were in evidence even before he took office. In 2008, Xi became president of the Central Party School, where I taught. At a faculty meeting the next year, the number two official at the school conveyed Xi’s threat to teachers that he would “never allow them to eat from the party’s rice bowl while attempting to smash the party’s cooking pot”—meaning taking government pay while discreetly criticizing the system. Angry about Xi’s absurd notion that it was the party, not Chinese taxpayers, that bankrolled the state, I talked back from my seat. “Whose rice bowl does the Communist Party eat from?” I asked out loud. “The Communist Party eats from the people’s rice bowl but smashes their cooking pot every day.” No one reported me; my fellow professors agreed with me.

Xi acts as “chairman of everything.”

Once in office, Xi proved unwilling to brook criticism. Xi uses Standing Committee and Politburo meetings not as an opportunity to hash out policies but as a chance to deliver hours-long monologues. According to official data, between November 2012 and February 2022, he called for 80 “collective study sessions,” in which he spoke at length on a given topic before the Politburo. He rejects any suggestions from subordinates that he thinks will make him look bad. According to an old friend of Wang Qishan, who as a Standing Committee member during Xi’s first term was part of the inner circle, Wang once proposed that Xi’s “eight-point regulation,” a list of requirements for party members, be made an official party rule. But even this rather sycophantic suggestion was considered an affront by Xi because he had not come up with it himself, and he rebuked Wang on the spot.

Xi is also a micromanager. He acts as “chairman of everything,” as many analysts have noted. In 2014, for example, he issued instructions on environmental protection 17 times—a remarkable degree of meddling, given all that is on his plate. Deng, Jiang, and Hu recognized that administering a country as vast as China requires taking local complexities into account. They emphasized that cadres at all levels should take instructions from the CCP’s Central Committee but adapt them to specific situations as needed. Such flexibility was crucial for economic development, since it gave local officials room to innovate. But Xi insists that his instructions be obeyed to the letter. I know of a county party chief who in 2014 tried to create an exception to the central government’s new rules on banquets because his county needed to host delegations of foreign investors. When Xi learned of the attempted innovation, he grew furious, accusing the official of “speaking ill of the CCP Central Committee’s policy”—a serious charge that, as a result of this incident, was subsequently codified in the party’s disciplinary regulations and is punishable by expulsion.

The CCP used to have a long tradition, dating back to Mao, in which cadres could write to the top leader with suggestions and even criticisms, but those who dared try this with Xi early in his tenure learned their lesson. Around 2017, Liu Yazhou, a general in the People’s Liberation Army and a son-in-law of a former president, wrote to Xi recommending that China reverse its policy in Xinjiang and cease rounding up members of the Uyghur minority. He was warned not to speak ill of Xi’s policies. Xi’s refusal to accept such counsel removes an important method of self-correction.

Why, unlike his predecessors, is Xi so resistant to others’ advice? Part of the reason, I suspect, is that he suffers from an inferiority complex, knowing that he is poorly educated in comparison with other top CCP leaders. Even though he studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University, Xi attended as a “worker-peasant-soldier,” a category of students admitted in the 1970s on the basis of political reliability and class background, not their academic merits. Jiang and Hu, by contrast, earned their spots in university through highly competitive exams. In 2002, when Xi was a provincial cadre, he received a doctoral degree in Marxist theory, also at Tsinghua, but as the British journalist Michael Sheridan has documented, Xi’s dissertation was riddled with instances of suspected plagiarism. As I know from my time at the Central Party School, high-ranking officials routinely farm out their schoolwork to assistants while their professors turn a blind eye. Indeed, at the time he supposedly completed his dissertation, Xi held the busy job of governor of Fujian.

MR. WRONG

In any political system, unchecked power is dangerous. Detached from reality and freed from the constraint of consensus, a leader can act rashly, implementing policies that are unwise, unpopular, or both. Not surprisingly, then, Xi’s know-it-all style of rule has led to a number of disastrous decisions. The common theme is an inability to grasp the practical effect of his directives.

Consider foreign policy. Breaking with Deng’s dictum that China “hide its strength and bide its time,” Xi has decided to directly challenge the United States and pursue a China-centric world order. That is why he has engaged in risky and aggressive behavior abroad, militarizing the South China Sea, threatening Taiwan, and encouraging his diplomats to engage in an abrasive style of foreign policy known as “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy. Xi has formed a de facto alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, further alienating China from the international community. His Belt and Road Initiative has generated growing resistance as countries tire of the associated debt and corruption.

Xi’s economic policies are similarly counterproductive. The introduction of market reforms was one of the CCP’s signature achievements, allowing hundreds of millions of Chinese to escape poverty. But when Xi came to power, he came to see the private sector as a threat to his rule and revived the planned economy of the Maoist era. He strengthened state-owned enterprises and established party organizations in the private sector that direct the way businesses are run. Under the guise of fighting corruption and enforcing antitrust law, he has plundered assets from private companies and entrepreneurs. Over the past few years, some of China’s most dynamic companies, including the Anbang Insurance Group and the conglomerate HNA Group, have effectively been forced to hand over control of their businesses to the state. Others, such as the conglomerate Tencent and the e-commerce giant Alibaba, have been brought to heel through a combination of new regulations, investigations, and fines. In 2020, Sun Dawu, the billionaire owner of an agricultural conglomerate who had publicly criticized Xi for his crackdown on human rights lawyers, was arrested on false charges and soon sentenced to 18 years in prison. His business was sold to a hastily formed state company in a sham auction for a fraction of its true value.

Nowhere has Xi’s desire for control been more disastrous than in his reaction to COVID-19.

Predictably, China has seen its economic growth slow, and most analysts believe it will slow even more in the coming years. Although several factors are at play—including U.S. sanctions against Chinese tech companies, the war in Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic—the fundamental problem is the CCP’s interference in the economy. The government constantly meddles in the private sector to achieve political goals, a proven poison for productivity. Many Chinese entrepreneurs live in fear that their businesses will be seized or that they themselves will be detained, hardly the kind of mindset inclined to innovation. In April, as China’s growth prospects worsened, Xi hosted a meeting of the Politburo to unveil his remedy for the country’s economic woes: a combination of tax rebates, fee reductions, infrastructure investment, and monetary easing. But since none of these proposals solve the underlying problem of excessive state intervention in the economy, they are doomed to fail.

Nowhere has Xi’s desire for control been more disastrous than in his reaction to COVID-19. When the disease first spread in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, Xi withheld information about it from the public in an attempt to preserve the image of a flourishing China. Local officials, meanwhile, were paralyzed. As Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, admitted the next month on state television, without approval from above, he had been unable to publicly disclose the outbreak. When eight brave health professionals blew the whistle about it, the government detained and silenced them. One of the eight later revealed that he had been forced to sign a false confession.

A worker closing a barrier to a residential area during a COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai, May 2022

Aly Song / Reuters

Xi’s tendency to micromanage also inhibited his response to the pandemic. Instead of leaving the details of policy to the government’s health team, Xi insisted that he himself coordinate China’s efforts. Later, Xi would boast that he “personally commanded, planned the response, oversaw the general situation, acted decisively, and pointed the way forward.” To the extent that this was true, it was not for the better. In fact, his interference led to confusion and inaction, with local health officials receiving mixed messages from Beijing and refusing to act. As I learned from a source on the State Council (China’s chief administrative authority), Premier Li Keqiang proposed activating an emergency-response protocol in early January 2020, but Xi refused to approve it for fear of spoiling the ongoing Chinese New Year celebrations.

When the Omicron variant of the virus surged in Shanghai in February 2022, Xi yet again chose a baffling way to respond. The details of the decision-making process were relayed to me by a contact who works at the State Council. In an online gathering of about 60 pandemic experts held shortly after the outbreak began, everyone agreed that if Shanghai simply followed the latest official guidelines, which relaxed the quarantine requirements, then life in the city could go on more or less as usual. Many of the city’s party and health officials were on board with this approach. But when Xi heard about it, he became furious. Refusing to listen to the experts, he insisted on enforcing his “zero COVID” policy. Shanghai’s tens of millions of residents were forbidden from going outside, even to get groceries or receive life-saving health care. Some died at the gates of hospitals; others leaped to their deaths from their apartment buildings.

Just like that, a modern, prosperous city was turned into the site of a humanitarian disaster, with people starving and babies separated from their parents. A leader more open to influence or subject to greater checks would not likely have implemented such a draconian policy, or at least would have corrected course once its costs and unpopularity became evident. But for Xi, backtracking would have been an unthinkable admission of error.

ACTION, REACTION

The CCP’s leadership has never been a monolith. As Mao once said, “There are parties outside our party, and there are factions within our party, and this has always been the case.” The main organizing principle of these factions is personal ties, but these groups tend to array themselves on a left-to-right continuum. Put differently, although Chinese politics are largely personalistic, there are real differences over the direction of national policy, and each lineage tends to associate itself with the ideas of its progenitor.

On the left are those who remain committed to orthodox Marxism. This faction dominated the party before the Deng era, and it advocates the continuation of class struggle and violent revolution. It includes subfactions named for Mao, Chen Yun (who was the second most powerful official under Deng), Bo Xilai (a former Politburo member who was sidelined and imprisoned before Xi took power), and Xi himself. At the grassroots level, the left also includes a small, politically powerless contingent of Marxist university students, as well as workers who were laid off as a result of Deng’s reforms.

The center consists mainly of Deng’s political descendants. Because most of today’s cadres were trained under him, this is the faction that dominates the CCP bureaucracy. Centrists support full-throated economic reforms and limited political reforms, all with the goal of ensuring the party’s permanent rule. Also in the center is a group descended from two retired top officials, Jiang and Zeng Qinghong (a former vice president), as well as a group called the Youth League Faction, consisting of supporters of former party leader Hu Jintao and the current premier Li.

Last are the subfactions on the right, which in the Chinese context means liberals who advocate a market economy and a softer form of authoritarianism (or even, in some cases, constitutional democracy). This camp, which I belong to, is the least powerful of the three. It includes followers of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, party leaders under Deng. It also arguably includes Wen Jiabao, who was China’s premier from 2003 to 2013 and still wields influence. When asked about his push for political reform in a 2010 interview, Wen responded, “I will not yield until the last day of my life.”

Within the CCP elite, many resent Xi’s disruption of the traditional power distribution.

Xi faces growing opposition from all three factions. The left, while initially supportive of his policies, now thinks he has not gone far enough in reviving Mao’s policies, with some having become disenchanted after he cracked down on the labor movement. The center resents Xi’s undoing of economic reforms. And the right has been completely silenced by Xi’s elimination of even the slightest political debate.

Glimpses of these divides can be seen in the Standing Committee. One member, Han Zheng, is widely perceived as a member of Jiang’s faction. Li in particular seems to diverge from Xi, and a row between the officials is breaking out into public view. Li has long quietly opposed Xi’s zero-COVID policy, stressing the need to reopen businesses and protect the economy. In May, after Li told 100,000 party cadres at an online conference that the economy was in worse shape than expected, Xi’s allies launched a counterattack. In Xinhua, they defended him by arguing, “China’s economic development prospects will definitely be brighter.” As a symbol of their resistance to Xi’s COVID policy, Li and his entourage refuse to wear masks. In April, during a speech in the city of Nanchang, Li’s aides could be seen asking attendees to remove their masks. So far, Li has taken Xi’s imperiousness sitting down, always acquiescing out of necessity. But he may soon reach a breaking point.

Indignation at the elite level is replicating itself further down the bureaucracy. Early in Xi’s tenure, as he began to shuffle power, many in the bureaucracy grew disgruntled and disillusioned. But their resistance was passive, expressed through inaction. Local cadres took sick leave en masse or came up with excuses to stall Xi’s anticorruption initiatives. At the end of 2021, the CCP’s disciplinary commission announced that in the first ten months of that year, it had found 247,000 cases of “ineffective implementation of Xi Jinping’s and the Central Committee’s important instructions.” During the Shanghai lockdown, however, resistance became more overt. On social media, local officials openly criticized the zero-COVID policy. In April, members of the residents’ committee of Sanlin Town, a neighborhood in Shanghai, collectively resigned, complaining in an open letter that they had been sealed in their offices for 24 days with no access to their families.

China’s leader is facing not only internal dissent but also an intense popular backlash.

Even more troubling for Xi, elite dissatisfaction is now spreading to the general public. In an authoritarian state, it is impossible to accurately measure public opinion, but Xi’s harsh COVID measures may well have lost him the affection of most Chinese. An early note of dissent came in February 2020, when the real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang called him a “clown” for bungling the response to the pandemic. (After a one-day trial, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in prison.) Chinese social media platforms are awash in videos in which ordinary people beg Xi to end his zero-COVID policy. In May, a group calling itself the “Shanghai Self-Saving Autonomous Committee” released a manifesto online titled, “Don’t be a slave—save yourself.” The document called on the city’s residents to fight the lockdown and form self-governing bodies to help one another. On social media, some Chinese have sarcastically proposed that the most effective plan for fighting the pandemic would be to convene the 20th National Congress as soon as possible to prevent Xi from staying in power.

Meanwhile, despite Xi’s claims of having vanquished poverty, most Chinese continue to struggle to make ends meet. As Li revealed in 2020, 600 million people in China—some 40 percent of its population—barely earned $140 a month. According to data obtained by the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, some 4.4 million small businesses closed between January and November 2021, more than three times the number of newly registered companies in the same period. Facing a financial crisis, local governments have been forced to slash government salaries—sometimes by as much as 50 percent, including pay for teachers. They will likely resort to finding new ways of plundering wealth from the private sector and ordinary citizens, in turn generating even more economic misery. After four decades of opening up, most Chinese don’t want to go back to the days of Mao. Within the CCP elite, many resent Xi’s disruption of the traditional power distribution and think his reckless policies are jeopardizing the future of the party. The result is that for the first time since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, China’s leader is facing not only internal dissent but also an intense popular backlash and a real risk of social unrest.

FIVE MORE YEARS?

Harboring resentment is one thing, but acting on it is another. Members of the party’s upper echelons know that they can always be charged with corruption, so they have little incentive to maneuver against Xi. High-tech surveillance is presumed to be so pervasive that party elites, including retired national leaders, do not dare communicate with one another outside official events, even about mundane matters. The public, for its part, stays silent, held back by censorship, surveillance, and the fear of arrest. That is why opponents of Xi are focused on the one legal avenue for removing him: denying him a third presidential term at the upcoming National Congress.

Perhaps sensing the growing disappointment, Xi has done everything he can to tilt the playing field in his favor. The most important constituency, of course, is his fellow Standing Committee members, who ultimately have the greatest say over whether he stays in office, in part because of their control over members of China’s legislature. Xi has likely done what he can to ensure the support of Standing Committee members, from promising that they will stay in power to pledging not to investigate their families.

Nearly as important is the military, since denying Xi a third term would likely require the support of the generals. Propagandists routinely remind Chinese that “the party commands the gun,” but China’s leaders realize that in truth the gun is always pointed at the party’s head. Although Xi has steadily replaced China’s generals with his own men over the years, military officials’ rhetoric still wavers between emphasizing personal loyalty to Xi and institutional loyalty to the Central Military Commission, the body, headed by Xi, that oversees them.

In one potential sign of lingering opposition within the ranks, I learned last December from several of my contacts in China that Liu, the military official whom Xi had rebuked for criticizing policy on the Uyghurs—had disappeared along with his younger brother, also a general. Both brothers’ houses were raided. The news sent shock waves through the military, since as the son-in-law of a former president, Liu would normally have been considered untouchable. But by detaining him and his brother, Xi had issued his strongest warning yet to princelings and the top brass of the People’s Liberation Army that they should get in line.

China's Politburo Standing Committee members lining up at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, November 2012

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Xi has also ramped up his ostensible anticorruption drive. In the first half of 2022, the government has punished 21 cadres at or above the provincial ministerial level and 1,237 cadres at the district and departmental level. There has been a distinct focus on the security and intelligence agencies. In January, Chinese state television aired a confession by Sun Lijun, once a high-ranking security official, who had been charged with corruption and now faces the prospect of execution. His sin, according to the party’s top disciplinary body, was that he had “formed a cabal to take control over several key departments,” “harbored hugely inflated political ambitions,” and had “evil political qualities.” In March, Fu Zhenghua, who as deputy minister of public security had been Sun’s boss, was also charged with corruption, removed from office, and expelled from the CCP. The message was clear: obey or risk downfall.

Adding extra layers of insurance to his quest for a third term, Xi has issued a veiled threat to retired party cadres. Party elders have long wielded enormous clout in Chinese politics; it was retired elites who forced out Zhao in 1989, for example. In January, Xi took direct aim at this group, announcing that the government would “clean up systemic corruption and eliminate hidden risks” by retroactively investigating the past 20 years of cadres’ lives. And in May, the party tightened the guidelines for retired cadres, warning them “not to discuss the general policies of the party Central Committee in an open manner, not to spread politically negative remarks, not to participate in the activities of illegal social organizations, and not to use their former authority or position influence to seek benefits for themselves and others, and to resolutely oppose and resist all kinds of wrong thinking.”

Xi has also sought to guarantee the backing of the 2,300 CCP delegates invited to attend the National Congress, two-thirds of whom are high-level officials from across the country and one-third of whom are ordinary members who work at the grassroots level. The delegates have been carefully screened for their loyalty to Xi. And to prevent any surprises at the congress, a ban on “nonorganizational activities” forbids them from mingling outside of formal small-group meetings of their provincial delegations, limiting their ability to or­­ganize against a particular policy or leader.

In the months leading up to the congress, the CCP’s stealth infighting will probably intensify. Xi could order more arrests and more trials of high-ranking officials, and his critics could leak more information and spread more rumors. Contrary to the conventional wisdom among Western analysts, he may not have locked up a third term. Xi’s proliferating opponents could succeed in ushering him out of office, provided they either convince enough Standing Committee members that he has lost the support of the CCP’s rank and file or persuade party elders to intervene. And there is always a chance that an economic crisis or widespread social unrest could turn even stalwart allies against him. Despite all this, the most likely outcome this fall is that Xi, having so rigged the process and intimidated his rivals, will get his third presidential term and, with it, the right to continue as head of the party and the military for another term. And just like that, the only meaningful political reform made since Deng’s rule will go up in smoke.

XI UNBOUND

What then? Xi will no doubt see his victory as a mandate to do whatever he wants to achieve the party’s stated goal of rejuvenating China. His ambitions will rise to new heights. In a futile attempt to invigorate the economy without empowering the private sector, Xi will double down on his statist economic policies. To maintain his grip on power, he will continue to preemptively eliminate any potential rivals and tighten social control, making China look increasingly like North Korea. Xi might even try to stay in power well beyond a third term. An emboldened Xi may well accelerate his militarization of disputed areas of the South China Sea and try to forcibly take over Taiwan. As he continues China’s quest for dominance, he will further its isolation from the rest of the world.

But none of these moves would make discontent within the party magically disappear. The feat of gaining a third term would not mollify those within the CCP who resent his accumulation of power and reject his cult of personality, nor would it solve his growing legitimacy problem among the people. In fact, the moves he would likely make in a third term would raise the odds of war, social unrest, and economic crisis, exacerbating existing grievances. Even in China, it takes more than sheer force and intimidation to stay in power; performance still matters. Mao and Deng earned their authority through accomplishments—Mao by liberating China from the Nationalists, and Deng by opening it up and unleashing an economic boom. But Xi can point to no such concrete triumphs. He has less margin for error.

The only viable way of changing course, so far as I can see, is also the scariest and deadliest: a humiliating defeat in a war. If Xi were to attack Taiwan, his likeliest target, there is a good chance that the war would not go as planned, and Taiwan, with American help, would be able to resist invasion and inflict grave damage on mainland China. In that event, the elites and the masses would abandon Xi, paving the way for not only his personal downfall but perhaps even the collapse of the CCP as we know it. For precedent, one would have to go back to the nineteenth century, when Emperor Qianlong failed in his quest to expand China’s realm to Central Asia, Burma, and Vietnam. Predictably, China suffered a mortifying loss in the First Sino-Japanese War, setting the stage for the downfall of the Qing dynasty and kicking off a long period of political upheaval. Emperors are not always forever.

• CAI XIA was a Professor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party from 1998 to 2012.

Foreign Affairs · by Cai Xia · September 6, 2022

20. In Praise of Lesser Evils

Excerpts:

It’s not a great time to be a realist.

...

Despite these insights, Kirshner’s conclusions are not earth shattering. Although arguing that “after three-quarters of a century, it is more than appropriate for any great power to reassess the nature of its global commitments,” he ends by advocating that the United States maintain the status quo in foreign policy, contending that a leap into the unknown—in effect, any major changes—does not comport with realism’s emphasis on prudence. This is a frustrating conclusion, as it suggests a level of stasis in the international system that the book itself belies when discussing the rise of China.

Specter, on the other hand, largely punts on the question of the future of U.S. foreign policy. In arguing that realism is too deferential to imperial approaches, too undemocratic, and too rooted in ethically questionable philosophy, he makes clear that he doesn’t regard realism as a reasonable path forward, at least not until it incorporates postcolonial, feminist, and critical theoretical insights. This distaste mirrors much of the progressive unease with pragmatism and moderation in foreign policy when those notions come into conflict with universal values. At times, this tension has produced uncomfortable internal debates among progressives over humanitarian intervention—for example, in Syria—pitting those who argue that the United States has a responsibility to protect human rights around the world with those who argue that such interventions would do little but drag the country further into endless Middle Eastern wars.

But the realists have never been blind to this tension. As Morgenthau himself wrote in his classic treatise Politics Among Nations, “Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible.” Realists accept that foreign policy is often a choice between the lesser of evils. Pretending otherwise—pretending that moral principles or values can override all constraints of power and interest—is not political realism. It is political fantasy.

In Praise of Lesser Evils

Can Realism Repair Foreign Policy?

By Emma Ashford

September/October 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Emma Ashford · September 6, 2022

It’s not a great time to be a realist. Although many prominent realist theorists of international relations correctly predicted the war in Ukraine, their focus on great-power politics over the rights of small states and their warnings about the risks of escalation have not been popular among the foreign policy commentariat. The insistence of some realists, chief among them John Mearsheimer, that the war is almost entirely the result of the structural factor of NATO’s expansion rather than the bellicosity of Russian President Vladimir Putin has not endeared realism to a broader public audience, either. According to the scholar Tom Nichols, the war in Ukraine has proved that “realism is nonsense.”

Some of this is just realism’s normal public relations problem when it comes to ethics and human rights. One of the main philosophical traditions of international politics, realism sees power and security as being at the center of the international system. Although the school of thought comes in a variety of flavors, nearly all realists agree on a few core notions: that states are guided primarily by security and survival; that states act on the basis of national interest rather than principle; and that the international system is defined by anarchy.

None of these notions are pleasant or popular. The realist Robert Gilpin once titled an article “No One Loves a Political Realist.” All too often, pointing out the harsh realities of international life or noting that states often act in barbaric ways is seen as an endorsement of selfish behavior rather than a simple diagnosis. As one of the school’s founding fathers, Hans Morgenthau, put it, realists may see themselves as simply refusing to “identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe.” But their critics often accuse them of having no morals at all, as the debate over Ukraine has shown.

As if on cue, two new books seek to address realism’s flaws and its promise by looking back at the history of classical realism—an earlier version of realism that arrived at its pessimism not by way of its analysis of the international system but through a more broadly gloomy take on human nature. Matthew Specter’s The Atlantic Realists explores the development of classical realism in the period after World War I, with a particular focus on the cross-pollination between German and American intellectuals and on the deeper and more malevolent historical roots of the concepts underlying this philosophy. Jonathan Kirshner’s An Unwritten Future, by contrast, seeks to rehabilitate classical realism as a frame for understanding modern geopolitics, particularly in opposition to more modern structural versions of realism. Whereas Kirshner seeks to praise classical realism, Specter has come to bury it. But both authors draw on a central truth about realism, which the political scientist William Wohlforth has put this way: “The most important point is that realism is not now and never has been a single theory.” Rather, it comprises a variety of models for thinking about the world, each characterized by pragmatism and the art of the possible, rather than grand and often doomed ideological crusades suggested by other schools of thought.

THE KREMLIN ON THE COUCH

Realists have been at the forefront in criticizing the United States’ disastrous foreign policy in recent decades, highlighting the folly of trying to remake the world in its image. As a result, public and even elite views have begun to swing in a more pragmatic and realist direction over the last decade. In failing to adequately explain and respond to the war in Ukraine, however, realists may face a potential backlash to that shift.

Ukraine has long been a flash point for realist thought. Many realists argue that in the post–Cold War period, the United States has been too focused on an idealistic conception of European politics and too blasé about classic geopolitical concerns, such as the enduring meaning of borders and the military balance between Russia and its rivals. Policymakers who subscribed to liberal internationalism—the idea that trade, international institutions, or liberal norms can help build a world where power politics matter less—typically presented NATO’s expansion as a matter of democratic choice for smaller central and eastern European states. Realists, in contrast, argued that it would present a legitimate security concern for Moscow; no matter how benevolent NATO might seem from the West’s perspective, they would argue, no state would be happy with an opposing military alliance moving even closer to its borders.

These disputes became more rancorous after Russia’s 2008 war in Georgia and its 2014 annexation of Crimea, with liberal internationalists arguing that these wars revealed Putin to be an imperialist, revisionist leader seeking to reconquer the Soviet empire. Many realists, however, maintained that these conflicts were Moscow’s attempts to prevent its closest neighbors from joining NATO. Both arguments are plausible; the Kremlin’s reasoning is hard to discern. Yet as diagnoses, they point to very different policy conclusions: if Putin is acting out of ambition, then the West should bolster deterrence and take a hard line against Russia, but if he is acting out of fear, it should compromise and accept limits on future expansion.

Ukraine has long been a flash point for realist thought.

Since the February 24 invasion, there has been a new dimension to this criticism. The more thoughtful critiques of realism in the months after the war began noted that many realist analyses of the conflict are relatively unhelpful because they focus almost entirely on relations between the United States and Russia and ignore the internal and ideational factors that explain Putin’s decision to invade and his conduct during the conflict. Realists are probably correct that NATO’s expansion into the post-Soviet space contributed to the war, but that is at best a partial explanation. Other factors appear to have also loomed large in Russia’s prewar decision-making: the prospect of NATO armaments or bases in Ukraine (with or without its formal membership), Western training for the Ukrainian military, Kyiv’s corruption crackdown on oligarchs close to Putin, and Ukraine’s increasing economic ties to the EU.

The war in Ukraine thus suggests that some realist theories are simply not as helpful as they could be during a time of global geopolitical upheaval; realists have the broad contours of the war in Ukraine right but get many of the details wrong. This is particularly unfortunate, as other approaches to the world—most notably the variants of liberal internationalism that dominated so much of the post–Cold War period—have also been found wanting. Proponents of primacy or liberal hegemony, for example, who argued that the United States could maintain its outsize military edge and prevent the rise of other powers, have been proved wrong by the rise of China. Liberal internationalists who endorsed wars of regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq or humanitarian interventions in Libya have seen their grand projects falter and fail. The realist theories presented in Specter’s and Kirshner’s books may not offer insights that are new, precisely, but they revise and update our understanding of a classical realist model whose pragmatism is in many ways a better fit for our newly multipolar world.

LET’S GET REAL

What today is called “realism”—the school of thought most undergraduates are taught in their International Relations 101 class—is in fact structural realism or neorealism, a version of realism outlined in the 1970s by the scholar Kenneth Waltz. Neorealism is further divided into “defensive” and “offensive” variants, depending on whether one believes that states primarily seek security through defensive means, such as military fortifications and technology, or through an expansion that acquires power and territory. Both versions focus heavily on structural factors (the ways that states interact at the global level) and effectively ignore domestic politics, the quirks of bureaucratic decision-making, the psychology of leaders, global norms, and international institutions. Neorealism thus stands in stark contrast to the older school of classical realism, which counts Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Bismarck among its earliest practitioners, has strong roots in philosophy, and includes factors such as domestic politics and the role of human nature, prestige, and honor. It also contrasts with classical realism’s more modern counterpart, “neoclassical realism” (a term coined by Gideon Rose, a former editor of this magazine), which seeks to marry the two variants by reincorporating domestic and ideational factors into structural theories.

Specter’s and Kirshner’s books both concern themselves with classical realism, in particular its role as the fount of all later realist theories. As if in a comic book, Specter seeks to unearth realism’s origin story, with a focus on the intellectual underpinnings and biographies of key players such as Morgenthau and the German theorist Wilhelm Grewe. In doing so, his intent is to prove that the genesis of realism is a much darker tale than previously understood. In the commonly told story of classical realism, German-American émigrés such as Morgenthau reacted to the bloody wars of the early twentieth century by rejecting the unfounded idealism of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and returning to the classic notions of realpolitik espoused by such thinkers as Machiavelli and Thucydides. This narrative, as presented most famously by the British historian Edward Hallett Carr, attributes the rise of the Nazis and the outbreak of World War II to the failure of Wilson’s idealistic efforts to create a League of Nations that would resolve conflict through laws and norms instead of through realpolitik and force.

But classical realism, Specter argues, is not actually a descendant of Bismarckian Realpolitik. Rather, it is an offshoot of the pursuit of Weltpolitik, the imperialist school of thought put into practice by the bumbling imperialist Wilhelm II in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Where the former emphasized skillful balancing between adversaries to avoid unnecessary conflict, the latter was driven more by social Darwinist notions that great powers have the right to expand and dominate. To make his case for realism’s nefarious roots, Specter looks at the origins of central concepts of classical realism, exploring terms such as “the national interest” and “geopolitics.” What he finds is that some of these terms did in fact originate decades before the mid-twentieth century, in debates about imperialism and the claims of politicians such as Wilson that rising powers like the United States and Germany were exceptional.

Polish soldiers during a NATO exercise in Orzysz, Poland, July 2022

Omar Marques / Getty Images

Likewise, Specter makes a solid case that the classical realists in many ways invented a noble lineage for themselves, identifying great historical philosophers whose work fit in with their notions of the world (such as Hobbes) while eliding or avoiding altogether their more questionable historical antecedents. He spends significant time exploring the linkages between the German philosopher Carl Schmitt’s notions of Grossraum—more infamous in its later incarnation as Lebensraum, the doctrine that Hitler’s Nazi government used to justify its conquests in eastern Europe—and the later realist thinkers’ focus on geopolitics.

This intellectual genealogy of realism is an impressive contribution. But the lessons that Specter draws from it are less convincing. Although he is correct that the classical realists of the 1950s took concepts and ideas from earlier, less ethical theories of international relations, it is not clear why such borrowing undermines their later arguments. Specter proposes that, because of these nefarious ties, realism should be viewed not as “a storehouse of accumulated historical ‘wisdom,’ but rather a historical artifact—and one that has, tragically, exerted too much power over world politics.” Yet all philosophers and scholars reach to the past for inspiration and support. So what if the classical realists looked backward for similar perspectives to bolster their case? They sought a longer, more diverse lineage for their ideas than the troubled history of the early twentieth century. It is hard to blame them for that.

Indeed, much of Specter’s overall argument amounts to guilt by association. It is undoubtedly true that the classical realists couched their arguments in terms that would have been familiar to early-twentieth-century imperialists. But they added to that legacy, as Specter himself notes, “ethical seriousness” and “caution.” These elements were as much a reaction against the ideas and events they had witnessed over the preceding decades as anything else. That there are darker variants of realism in history should not tarnish its more modern incarnations. Indeed, the same could be said for today’s foreign policy debate. There are undoubtedly realist approaches to the world that espouse power-seeking and U.S. military primacy. But there are also more ethical and defensive variants that take the core insights of realism but do not accept the amorality or imperialist principles of realism’s earliest roots. Some realists are heartless hawks who would sell their own mothers; others are thoughtful doves who regret the necessity of difficult choices. For every Henry Kissinger, there is a George Kennan.

IT’S COMPLICATED

Kirshner’s targets in An Unwritten Future are closer to the present day. Kirshner savages the theories of structural realists, which he argues are excessive in their devotion to rationalist causes of war and cannot explain anything other than stasis in the international system. In stripping down realism to a more parsimonious model, one in which the only truly important variable is power, Kirshner argues, the structural realists have gone too far, producing a theory of little value. In proposing what he sees as a more useful way to assess the world, he draws on a wave of recent scholarship by academics who are agnostic about paradigms such as realism and liberalism. Instead, these scholars study the role of honor and prestige in international affairs, factors that were central to classical realism. Kirshner argues that contemporary thinkers should resurrect the classical realist models of the world, bringing in domestic political and ideational factors, and avoiding what he sees as the pitfalls of neorealism’s “hyper-rationalist” view of the world.

In Kirshner’s view, clashes between states may sometimes arise from misperceptions or from the security dilemma, in which one state’s attempts to make itself secure unintentionally make a neighboring state less secure. But in addition to these causes, which structural realists would accept as relevant, he believes that war may as often arise from differing worldviews or different hierarchies of interests in different states, factors that structuralist realists tend to ignore. Kirshner also correctly identifies many of the core problems that structural realists have faced in recent years: how to reconcile morality with a fundamentally amoral theory, the malleability of the notion of the national interest, and the limits of realism as a guide to purposeful action rather than as a guide to what not to do.

Kirshner argues bluntly that structural realism is often better at pointing out the errors in others’ approaches than at suggesting its own solutions, a criticism that will ring true to anyone who has followed the debates over the causes of the Ukraine invasion. Indeed, An Unwritten Future is at its strongest when arguing that war is a plunge into radical uncertainty. (It is weakest when playing inside baseball, pointing out internal contradictions in the ways structural realists have borrowed their models from economics.) Structural neorealism cannot fully explain why and when wars happen or how leaders and populations will react when they do. Six months ago, who would have believed that an actor whose primary claim to fame had been playing a president on television would have pulled Ukrainians together in defiance of an invasion, spurring the creation of a new and unified national identity? War, as Kirshner underscores, can be understood only by incorporating human factors into the analysis.

Kirshner’s problem with later generations of realists stems from their response to the challenge from liberalism. Liberals believe that states can rise above conflict and power politics, although they differ on whether that can be achieved through trade, international institutions, or international law; realists simply do not believe transcendence is possible. In the face of this disagreement, rather than accepting that the two schools were based on entirely different ideological assumptions, neorealists adopted social scientific language and framing, in the hopes of making their own beliefs seem scientific, rather than ideological, in nature. In fact, Kirshner says, both realism and liberalism have ideological bases, and contemporary realists should stop pretending to be scientists and return to the messier but more analytically rich terrain of classical realism.

THE DESIRABLE AND THE POSSIBLE

The debates over Ukraine, and over U.S. foreign policy more broadly, are in many ways simply rehashing long-running criticisms of realist or restraint-minded thinkers. As Kirshner highlights, because most realists emphasize prudence above all else, it is much easier for them to criticize than it is to offer a different, affirmative policy as a replacement. As a result, there is no one realist policy. For example, realists were clear and united in their criticisms of the war on terrorism—they nearly unanimously opposed the invasion of Iraq—but far less so on the question of what they believe should replace it. Some call for a new crusade against China, and others for a U.S. drawdown in many regions. This division makes it hard for realists to shape the policy process in this or future administrations.

Yet even if realism is largely present in today’s policy debates as a foil, pushing U.S. foreign policymakers to justify their choices and perhaps adopt slightly more pragmatic options, that may be the best that realists can hope for. As Specter points out, realists have had a complicated relationship with policymaking. Kennan, who served as the U.S. State Department’s director of policy planning, and Morgenthau, who worked under him, are among the best-known realist policymakers, and their influence has waxed and waned over time. The most realist administrations—those of Presidents Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush—had some notable policy triumphs: ending the Vietnam War, managing the peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union, winning the Gulf War. But they also had mixed legacies, from Nixon’s troubled domestic political record to Bush’s 1992 electoral loss. That is still more than one can say for realist influence in the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations, when unchallenged U.S. power allowed idealists to drive most policy. Yet as the world continues its shift toward multipolarity, realist insights will once again become more important for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

This makes Specter’s and Kirshner’s books particularly valuable. That both consider realism’s antecedents and insights without using some variant of liberalism as a straw man is equally impressive. “Paradigms are inescapable,” Kirshner writes. “Paradigm wars are largely vacuous.” Neither book wastes time in irresolvable philosophical disputes. Yet it is also ironic that both books are in some ways guilty of the very charge they level at realist theories: Specter and Kirshner provide excellent critical overviews of the problems with these theories but fall short in providing alternatives.

On this front, Kirshner’s book performs notably better. With chapters on the rise of China, how to meld political economy questions into classical realist theories, and even exploring the potential weaknesses and shortfalls of classical realism, An Unwritten Future thoughtfully assesses the question of what it would mean in practice to reinsert classical realist perspectives into ongoing policy debates. Classical realism suggests that the United States should be extremely wary of China’s rise and that Chinese ambition will rise with Chinese power. It also suggests that Washington should seriously consider ways to come to terms with and accommodate this rise, within limits, lest it accidentally provoke an earth-shattering great-power war like those in 1815, 1914, or 1939.

Realists have had a complicated relationship with policymaking.

Despite these insights, Kirshner’s conclusions are not earth shattering. Although arguing that “after three-quarters of a century, it is more than appropriate for any great power to reassess the nature of its global commitments,” he ends by advocating that the United States maintain the status quo in foreign policy, contending that a leap into the unknown—in effect, any major changes—does not comport with realism’s emphasis on prudence. This is a frustrating conclusion, as it suggests a level of stasis in the international system that the book itself belies when discussing the rise of China.

Specter, on the other hand, largely punts on the question of the future of U.S. foreign policy. In arguing that realism is too deferential to imperial approaches, too undemocratic, and too rooted in ethically questionable philosophy, he makes clear that he doesn’t regard realism as a reasonable path forward, at least not until it incorporates postcolonial, feminist, and critical theoretical insights. This distaste mirrors much of the progressive unease with pragmatism and moderation in foreign policy when those notions come into conflict with universal values. At times, this tension has produced uncomfortable internal debates among progressives over humanitarian intervention—for example, in Syria—pitting those who argue that the United States has a responsibility to protect human rights around the world with those who argue that such interventions would do little but drag the country further into endless Middle Eastern wars.

But the realists have never been blind to this tension. As Morgenthau himself wrote in his classic treatise Politics Among Nations, “Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible.” Realists accept that foreign policy is often a choice between the lesser of evils. Pretending otherwise—pretending that moral principles or values can override all constraints of power and interest—is not political realism. It is political fantasy.

Foreign Affairs · by Emma Ashford · September 6, 2022

​21. The Dangerous Decade

​Excerpts:

Ultimately, however, the biggest risk to U.S. security in the decade to come is to be found in the United States itself. A country divided against itself cannot stand; nor can it be effective in the world, as a fractious United States will not be viewed as a reliable or predictable partner or leader. Nor will it be able to tackle its domestic challenges. Bridging the country’s divisions will take sustained effort on the part of politicians, educators, religious leaders, and parents. Most desired norms and behaviors cannot be mandated, but voters have the power to reward or penalize politicians according to their behavior. And some changes, including expanding civics education and opportunities for national service, could be formally introduced.

Navigating a decade that promises to be as demanding and dangerous as this one—a decade that will present old-fashioned geopolitical risks alongside growing global challenges—calls for a foreign policy that avoids the extremes of wanting to transform the world or ignoring it, of working alone or with everyone. It will ask a great deal of U.S. policymakers and diplomats at a time when the country they work for is deeply divided and easily distracted. What is certain is that the course of this decade and decades to come will depend on the quality of officials’ political skills at home and their statecraft abroad.

The Dangerous Decade

A Foreign Policy for a World in Crisis

By Richard Haass

September/October 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass · September 6, 2022

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” Those words are apocryphally attributed to the Bolshevik revolutionary (and Foreign Affairs reader) Vladimir Lenin, referring to the rapid collapse of tsarist Russia just over 100 years ago. If he had actually said those words, Lenin might have added that there are also decades when centuries happen.

The world is in the midst of one such decade. As with other historical hinges, the danger today stems from a sharp decline in world order. But more than at any other recent moment, that decline threatens to become especially steep, owing to a confluence of old and new threats that have begun to intersect at a moment the United States is ill positioned to contend with them.

On the one hand, the world is witnessing the revival of some of the worst aspects of traditional geopolitics: great-power competition, imperial ambitions, fights over resources. Today, Russia is headed by a tyrant, President Vladimir Putin, who longs to re-create a Russian sphere of influence and perhaps even a Russian empire. Putin is willing to do almost anything to achieve that goal, and he is able to act as he pleases because internal constraints on his regime have mostly disappeared. Meanwhile, under President Xi China has embarked on a quest for regional and potentially global primacy, putting itself on a trajectory that will lead to increased competition or even confrontation with the United States.

But that is not all—not by a long shot. These geopolitical risks are colliding with complex new challenges central to the contemporary era, such as climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. And not surprisingly, the diplomatic fallout from growing rivalries has made it nearly impossible for great powers to work together on regional and international challenges, even when it is in their interest to do so.

Further complicating the picture is the reality that American democracy and political cohesion are at risk to a degree not seen since the middle of the nineteenth century. This matters because the United States is not just one country among many: U.S. leadership has underpinned what order there has been in the world for the past 75 years and remains no less central today. A United States riven internally, however, will become ever less willing and able to lead on the international stage.

Call it a perfect—or, more accurately, an imperfect—storm.

These conditions have set off a vicious circle: heightened geopolitical competition makes it even more difficult to produce the cooperation demanded by new global problems, and the deteriorating international environment further fuels geopolitical tensions—all at a time that the United States is weakened and distracted. The frightening gap between global challenges and the world’s responses, the increased prospects for major-power wars in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and the growing potential for Iran to cause instability in the Middle East have come together to produce the most dangerous moment since World War II. Call it a perfect—or, more accurately, an imperfect—storm.

To warn of danger is not to predict the future. Ideally, things will turn out for the better. But good things rarely happen on their own; to the contrary, left to their own devices, systems deteriorate. The task for U.S. policymakers, then, is to rediscover the principles and practice of statecraft: to marshal national power and collective action against the tendency toward disorder. The goal must be to manage the collision of old geopolitics and new challenges, to act with discipline in what is sought, and to build arrangements or, better yet, institutions where there is sufficient consensus. To do all that, Washington will have to prioritize establishing order over fostering democracy abroad—at the same time as it works to shore up democracy at home.

DISORDER ON THE RISE

In August 1990, intent on territorial conquest, Iraq invaded its far smaller neighbor Kuwait. “This will not stand,” U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded. He was right. Within weeks, Washington had organized wide-ranging international support for a military intervention around the limited objective of ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The 1990–91 Gulf War was marked by extensive cooperation, including from China and Russia, fostered by U.S. leadership under the aegis of the United Nations. In a matter of months, the coordinated response met with considerable success; Iraqi aggression was reversed and Kuwait’s independence restored at minimal cost. The major powers upheld the norm that force cannot be used to change borders, a fundamental element of international order.

Nothing of that sort could take place in today’s world, as the Ukraine crisis has made abundantly clear, and the fact that Russia is a much more powerful, influential country than Iraq was in 1990 only partly explains the difference. Although Russia’s invasion has inspired a sense of solidarity and impressive levels of coordination among Western countries, the war in Ukraine has yielded nothing resembling the nearly universal embrace of the goals and institutions of the U.S.-led order that was spurred by the Gulf War. Instead, Beijing has aligned itself with Moscow, and much of the world has refused to sign on to the sanctions imposed on Russia by Washington and its partners. And with one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council blatantly violating international law and the principle that borders may not be changed through force, the UN remains mostly sidelined.

Older geopolitical risks are colliding with complex new challenges.

In a sense, the two wars serve as bookends to the post–Cold War Pax Americana. The United States’ preponderance of power was bound to diminish, not owing to American decline but because of what the commentator Fareed Zakaria dubbed “the rise of the rest”—that is, the economic and military development of other countries and entities and the emergence of a world defined by a much greater diffusion of power. That said, the United States, by what it did and did not do in the world and at home, squandered much of its post–Cold War inheritance, failing to translate its primacy into an enduring order.

This failure is especially noticeable when it comes to Russia. In the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the juxtaposition of vast American power and staggering Russian weakness made it seem unlikely that, three decades later, world affairs would once again be dominated by hostility between the Kremlin and Western capitals. Debates rage about how this came to pass, with profound disagreements over how much blame the United States deserves and how much should be attributed to Putin or to Russian political culture more broadly. But whatever the cause, it is difficult to deny that six U.S. presidential administrations have little to show for all their efforts to build a successful post–Cold War relationship with Russia. Today, under Putin, Russian behavior is fundamentally at odds with the most basic tenets of international order. Putin shows no interest in integrating Russia into the prevailing order but rather seeks to ignore it when he can—and when he cannot, to undermine or defeat it. He has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to employ brutal military force against civilian populations in Europe and the Middle East. Putin’s regime does not respect the borders and sovereignty of other countries, as witnessed with its ongoing invasion of Ukraine and attempt to annex parts of the country.

Russia’s aggression has upended many assumptions that influenced thinking about international relations in the post–Cold War era. It has ended the holiday from history in which wars between countries were rare. It has hollowed out the norm against countries’ acquiring territory by force. And it has demonstrated that economic interdependence is no bulwark against threats to world order. Many believed that Russia’s reliance on western European markets for its energy exports would encourage restraint. In reality, such ties did no better in moderating Russian behavior than they did in preventing the outbreak of World War I. Worse yet, interdependence proved to be more of a constraint on countries that had allowed themselves to grow reliant on Russia (above all, Germany) than on Russia itself.

A Ukrainian serviceman in Kyiv, June 2022

Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters

All that said, Russia will emerge weakened from what promises to be a long war with Ukraine. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is anything but a superpower. Even before Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its assault on Ukraine, the Russian economy was not among the ten largest in the world in terms of GDP; at least in part because of those sanctions, it is expected to contract by up to ten percent over the course of 2022. Russia’s economy remains heavily dependent on energy production; its armed forces have revealed themselves to be poorly led and organized and no match for NATO. Again, however, it is Russian weakness juxtaposed against Putin’s willingness and ability to act recklessly with the military and nuclear strength he does possess that makes Russia such a danger.

Russia presents an acute, near-term problem for the United States. China, in contrast, poses a far more serious medium- and long-term challenge. The wager that integrating China into the world economy would make it more open politically, more market oriented, and more moderate in its foreign policy failed to pay off and has even backfired. Today, China is more repressive at home and has vested more power in the hands of one individual than at any time since the reign of Mao Zedong. State-owned enterprises, rather than being rolled up, remain omnipresent, while the government seeks to constrain private industry. China has regularly stolen and incorporated the intellectual property of others. Its conventional and nuclear military might has increased markedly. It has militarized the South China Sea, economically coerced its neighbors, fought a border clash with India, and crushed democracy in Hong Kong, and it continues to increase pressure on Taiwan.

Russia and China share an animosity to a U.S.-led international system.

Yet China also has significant internal weaknesses. After booming for decades, the country’s economy is now beginning to stall, diluting a principal source of the regime’s legitimacy. It is unclear how the Chinese Communist Party can restore strong economic growth, given the country’s political constraints, which hamper innovation, and demographic realities, including a shrinking labor pool. China’s aggressive foreign policy, meanwhile, has alienated many of its neighbors. And China is nearly certain to face a difficult leadership transition over the next decade. Like Putin, Xi has consolidated power in his own hands in ways that will complicate any succession and perhaps lead to a power struggle. The outcome is difficult to predict: an internal struggle could result in diminished international activism or the emergence of more benign leaders, but it could also lead to even more nationalist foreign policies designed to rally support or distract public attention.

What is certain is that Xi and other Chinese leaders seem to assume that China will pay little if any cost for its aggressive behavior, given that others are too dependent on its exports or on access to its market. So far, this assumption has been borne out. Yet a conflict between the United States and China no longer seems like a remote possibility. Meanwhile, as Washington’s relations with Moscow and Beijing grow tenser, Russia and China are growing closer. They share an animosity to a U.S.-led international system that they see as inhospitable to their political systems at home and their ambitions abroad. Increasingly, they are willing to act on their objections and do so in tandem. Unlike 40 or 50 years ago, it is the United States that now finds itself the odd man out when it comes to triangular diplomacy.

MIND THE GAP

As the geopolitical picture among great powers has darkened, a chasm has opened between global challenges and the machinery meant to contend with them. Take global health. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limitations of the World Health Organization and the unwillingness or inability of even rich, developed countries to respond to a crisis that they had every reason to anticipate. Some 15 to 18 million people worldwide have thus far died as a result, millions of them unnecessarily. And nearly three years after the pandemic began, China’s refusal to cooperate with an independent investigation means the world still does not know how the virus originated and initially spread, making it harder to prevent the next outbreak—and providing a prime example of how old, familiar geopolitical dysfunctions are combining with new problems.

Among other global challenges, climate change has arguably received the most international attention, and rightly so—yet there is little to show for it. Unless the world makes rapid progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions during this decade, it will be much more difficult to preserve and protect life as we know it on this planet. But diplomatic efforts have come up short and show no sign of improving. Individual countries determine their own climate goals, and there is no price for setting them low or not meeting them. Generating post-pandemic economic growth and locking in energy supplies—a concern heightened by the war in Ukraine and the disruptions it has yielded in the energy sector—have increased countries’ focus on energy security at the expense of climate considerations. Once again, a traditional geopolitical concern has collided with a new problem, making it harder to contend with either one.

When it comes to nuclear proliferation, the reality is more complex. Some scholars predicted that dozens of states would have developed nuclear weapons by now; in fact, only nine have developed full-fledged programs. Many advanced industrialized countries that could develop nuclear weapons have chosen not to. No one has used a nuclear weapon since the United States did so in the final days of World War II. And no terrorist group has gained access to one.

A chasm has opened between global challenges and the machinery meant to contend with them.

But appearances can be deceiving: in the absence of proliferation, nuclear weapons have attained a new value. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave up the Soviet nuclear weapons that remained on its territory; since then, it has been invaded twice by Russia, an outcome that might persuade others that giving up nuclear weapons decreases a country’s security. Regimes in Iraq and Libya were ousted after abandoning their nuclear weapons programs, which could make other leaders hesitant to do so or encourage them to consider the advantages of developing or acquiring nuclear capabilities. North Korea remains secure as it continues to expand its nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. Russia, for its part, appears to be according nuclear weapons a larger role in its defense posture. And the U.S. decision to rule out direct military involvement in Ukraine out of a fear that dispatching troops or establishing a no-fly zone could lead to a nuclear World War III will be seen by China and others as evidence that possessing a substantial nuclear arsenal can deter Washington—or at least get it to act with greater restraint.

No wonder, then, that Iran is putting in place many of the prerequisites of a nuclear weapons program amid negotiations meant to revive the 2015 nuclear deal from which the United States withdrew in 2018. The talks seem to have hit a wall, but even if they succeed, the problem will not go away, as the accord features a number of sunset clauses. It is thus more a question of when, not if, Iran makes enough progress to provoke an attack intended to prevent Tehran’s nuclear capability from reaching fruition. Or one or more of Iran’s neighbors might decide they need nuclear weapons of their own to counter Iran should it be able to field nuclear weapons with little warning. The Middle East, for three decades the least stable region of the world, may well be on the cusp of an even more dangerous era.

TROUBLE AT HOME

As problems new and old collide and combine to challenge the U.S.-led order, perhaps the most worrisome changes are taking place inside the United States itself. The country retains many strengths. But some of its advantages—the rule of law, orderly transitions of power, the ability to attract and retain talented immigrants on a large scale, socioeconomic mobility—are now less certain than they once were, and problems such as gun violence, crime in urban areas, drug abuse, and illegal immigration have become more pronounced. In addition, the country is held back by political divisions. A widespread refusal among Republicans to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, which led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, suggests the possible emergence of an American version of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles.” Localized, politically inspired violence might well become commonplace in the United States. Recent Supreme Court decisions and the diverging domestic reactions to them have reinforced the impression of a Disunited States of America. As a result, the American political model has become less appealing, and democratic backsliding in the United States has contributed to backsliding elsewhere. Making matters worse, U.S. economic mismanagement led to the 2008 global financial crisis, and more recent missteps have allowed inflation to skyrocket, further damaging the country’s reputation. Perhaps most worrisome is the erosion of faith in Washington’s basic steadiness. Without a consensus among Americans on their country’s proper role in the world, there have been wild swings in U.S. foreign policy, from the George W. Bush administration’s catastrophic overreach in Iraq, to the Obama administration’s debilitating underreach in the Middle East and elsewhere, to the Trump administration’s incompetence and transactionalism, which led many to doubt whether precedent or standing commitments mattered anymore in Washington. The Biden administration has done much to prioritize alliances and partnerships, but it, too, has at times reinforced doubts about American steadfastness and competence, especially during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan last year.

The fact that it is impossible to predict who will occupy the Oval Office in the future is nothing new; what is new is that it is impossible to assume much about how that person will approach the United States’ relationship with the world. The result is that U.S. allies and partners increasingly have no choice but to weigh continued reliance on Washington against other alternatives, such as greater self-sufficiency or deference to powerful neighbors. An additional risk is that Washington’s ability to deter rivals will diminish as its foes come to see the United States as too divided or reluctant to act.

ONE BIG IDEA?

In the face of the geopolitical tumult and global challenges that seem certain to define this decade, no overarching doctrine or construct for American foreign policy will be able to play the role that containment did during the Cold War, when the concept provided a good deal of clarity and consensus. Such constructs are useful for guiding policymakers, explaining policies to the public, reassuring allies, and signaling adversaries. But the contemporary world does not lend itself to such a simple frame: today, there are simply too many challenges of different sorts that do not sit inside a single construct. Accounting for this judgment is the reality that it is no longer possible to speak of world order as a single phenomenon: there is the traditional geopolitical order reflecting balances of power and the extent to which norms are shared, and there is what one might term the globalization order reflecting the breadth and depth of common effort to meet challenges such as climate change and pandemics. World order (or the lack of it) is increasingly the sum of the two.

That does not mean that the United States should simply wing it and approach every foreign policy issue in isolation. But instead of a single big idea, Washington should use a number of principles and practices to guide its foreign policy and reduce the risk that the coming decade will produce a calamity. This shift would translate into a foreign policy that is based largely on alliances to deter Russian and Chinese aggression and selective partnerships of the like-minded to address global challenges that the United States cannot ignore or handle on its own. In addition, democracy promotion at home rather than abroad should be the focus of U.S. attention, since there is more to build on and more to lose if the effort fails.

The greatest immediate threat to global order stems from Russian aggression against Ukraine. Properly managing the war will require a delicate balance, one that blends determination with realism. The West must provide extensive military and economic support to Ukraine to ensure its continued viability as a sovereign state and to prevent Russia from controlling more territory than it already holds, but the West also needs to accept that military force alone cannot end the Russian occupation. That outcome would require political change in Moscow and the arrival of a leadership willing to reduce or end Russia’s presence in Ukraine in exchange for sanctions relief. Putin will never accept such a deal. And to offer a worthwhile compromise to a hypothetical future regime in Moscow, Washington and its partners would need to levy far more draconian sanctions on all Russian energy exports—above all, a ban on natural gas exports to Europe.

A Russian tank moving through Popasna, Ukraine, May 2022

Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters

On China, the United States likewise needs to strengthen the foundations of a regional order. That means prioritizing its alliance with Japan, the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States), and the AUKUS grouping (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Applying the lessons gleaned from watching Europe’s awkward dance with Russia, the United States needs to reduce its interdependence with China—which, in too many instances, looks an awful lot like dependence on China. This would mean scaling back economic relations so that imports from China and exports to it become less essential to the economic health of the United States and that of its partners—which will make it easier to stand up to China, or even sanction it, if need be. The United States and other Western countries must bolster the resiliency of supply chains in critical materials through a mix of diversification and redundancy, stockpiling, pooling arrangements, and, when necessary, increased domestic production. This is not economic decoupling so much as economic distancing.

Washington and its partners will also need to respond forcefully if China moves against Taiwan. Allowing China to capture the island would have massive ramifications: every American ally and partner would reconsider its security dependence on the United States and opt for either appeasement of China or some form of strategic autonomy, which would likely involve obtaining nuclear weapons. A conflict over Taiwan would also lead to a profound global economic shock owing to Taiwan’s dominant role in manufacturing advanced semiconductors.

Preventing such a scenario—or, if required, defending against a Chinese attack—calls for Washington to adopt a posture of strategic clarity on Taiwan, leaving no doubt that the United States would intervene militarily to protect the island and putting in place the security and economic means to back up that pledge. More international involvement, not less, will be required, which should entail at a minimum coordinating a strong sanctions package with European and Asian allies.

U.S. policy should not seek to transform Russia or China.

Relations with both Russia and China will remain complex, as they will not be one-dimensional even if they are largely competitive or adversarial. High-level, private strategic dialogues should become a component of both bilateral relationships. The rationale for such dialogues has less to do with what they might accomplish than what they might prevent, although in the case of China, there could be greater scope for exploring rules to guide relations between the two powers. Diverging and competing U.S., Russian, and Chinese attitudes and ambitions may rule out more than limited collaboration on world order, but these fault lines arguably make communication among the three countries all the more vital to reduce the chance of a grave miscalculation on geopolitical matters.

Meanwhile, U.S. policy should not seek to transform Russia or China, not because doing so would be undesirable but because advocating for regime change would likely prove irrelevant or counter-productive. The United States must deal with Russia and China as they are, not as Washington would prefer them to be. The principal focus of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia and China should not be to reshape their societies but to influence their foreign policy choices.

Over time, it is possible that limiting their external success and avoiding confrontation with them will build pressures inside their political systems, which could lead to desirable change, much as four decades of containment did with the Soviet Union. But Washington ought not to pose an existential threat to either government lest it strengthen the hands of those in Moscow and Beijing who argue that they have nothing to lose by acting recklessly and that there is nothing to be gained from working selectively with the United States.

Realism must trump idealism.

There is another reason for prioritizing the promotion of order over the promotion of democracy—one that has nothing to do directly with Russia and China. Efforts to build international order, be it for the purpose of resisting aggression and proliferation or combating climate change and infectious disease, have broad support among nondemocracies. A world order premised on respect for borders and common efforts on global challenges is preferable to a liberal world order premised on neither. That so many countries have not participated in sanctioning Russia is revealing. Framing the crisis in Ukraine as one of democracy versus authoritarianism has, not surprisingly, fallen flat among many illiberal leaders. The same logic applies to the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, which the Biden administration is belatedly working to repair: a preference for democracy and human rights is one thing, but a foreign policy based on such a preference in a world defined by geopolitics and global challenges is unwise and unsustainable.

A similarly clear-eyed view should determine how Washington approaches cooperation on global challenges. Multilateralism is far preferable to unilateralism, but narrow multilateralism is far more promising than universal or broad forms of collective action that rarely succeed; witness, for example, the course of climate-change diplomacy and trade. Better to pursue realistic partnerships of the like-minded, which can bring a degree of order to the world, including specific domains of limited order, if not quite world order. Here, too, realism must trump idealism.

This observation has direct implications for dealing with climate change. Climate change poses an existential threat, and although a global response would be best, geopolitics will continue to make such collaboration difficult. The United States and its partners should emphasize narrower diplomatic approaches, but progress on mitigation is more likely to stem from technological breakthroughs than from diplomacy. That owes not to a lack of possible policy tools but rather to a lack of political support in the United States and other countries for those measures or for trade pacts that could encourage mitigation by imposing taxes or tariffs on goods derived from fossil fuels or manufactured through energy-inefficient processes. As a result, the goal of adapting to climate change should receive more attention and resources, as should exploration of the technological possibility of reversing it.

FORGING AHEAD

Three last considerations fall most directly on the United States. As it works to untie the knots that bind old geopolitical dilemmas to newer problems, the United States will face a number of serious threats, not only from Russia and China but also from Iran and a number of failed states that could provide oxygen to terrorists in the greater Middle East, and from North Korea, whose conventional military and nuclear capabilities continue to grow. Security, therefore, will require Washington to increase defense spending by as much as one percent of GDP: still considerably below Cold War levels, but a significant step up. U.S. allies will need to take similar steps.

In dealing with the many threats that will define this decade, the United States will also need to act with both greater caution and greater boldness in the economic realm. There is as yet no serious alternative to the dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency, but that day may come, especially if Washington continues to weaponize the dollar through the frequent imposition of sanctions, in particular those targeting central banks. If a competitor currency emerges, the United States will lose its ability to borrow at low rates and inflate its way out of its massive debt, which currently stands at more than $30 trillion. Even now this debt threatens to crowd out more productive government spending, since the cost of servicing it will rise along with interest rates. But fiscal caution should be combined with a more assertive approach to trade, which would ideally mean joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and fleshing out newly announced frameworks in the Indo-Pacific and the Americas so that they lower barriers to trade in goods and services, set standards for data, and meaningfully address climate change.

Ultimately, however, the biggest risk to U.S. security in the decade to come is to be found in the United States itself. A country divided against itself cannot stand; nor can it be effective in the world, as a fractious United States will not be viewed as a reliable or predictable partner or leader. Nor will it be able to tackle its domestic challenges. Bridging the country’s divisions will take sustained effort on the part of politicians, educators, religious leaders, and parents. Most desired norms and behaviors cannot be mandated, but voters have the power to reward or penalize politicians according to their behavior. And some changes, including expanding civics education and opportunities for national service, could be formally introduced.

Navigating a decade that promises to be as demanding and dangerous as this one—a decade that will present old-fashioned geopolitical risks alongside growing global challenges—calls for a foreign policy that avoids the extremes of wanting to transform the world or ignoring it, of working alone or with everyone. It will ask a great deal of U.S. policymakers and diplomats at a time when the country they work for is deeply divided and easily distracted. What is certain is that the course of this decade and decades to come will depend on the quality of officials’ political skills at home and their statecraft abroad.

• RICHARD HAASS is President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the forthcoming The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass · September 6, 2022

​22. Russia Is Taking A Big Risk Purchasing Rockets and Artillery Shells From North Korea

Russia Is Taking A Big Risk Purchasing Rockets and Artillery Shells From North Korea

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · September 6, 2022

Ever since North Korea became the third country to recognize the independence of two Russia-backed separatist states within Ukraine, speculation has been rife about how the isolationist communist state may deepen its ties to Russia. Following catastrophic flooding, a worse-than-usual food shortage, and an economic crisis triggered by the country’s decision to close its borders completely during the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea may have finally found a new source of incoming – weapons sales from Russia.

North Korea to Russia’s Rescue?

According to a senior U.S. defense official, Russia is currently in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea as its troops face weapons and ammunition shortages in Ukraine. It’s a sign that the West’s sanctions on Russia are working, making it hard – if not impossible – for Russia to manufacture advanced weapons and ammunition.

According to a U.S. official, Russia is actively seeking support from North Korea due to Western sanctions, and that support is already being given. However, few details were offered from the declassified intelligence about the exact kinds of ammunition that North Korea will provide.

“The United States provided few details from the declassified intelligence about the exact weaponry, timing or size of the shipment, and there is no way yet to independently verify the sale,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

“A U.S. official said that, beyond short-range rockets and artillery shells, Russia was expected to try to purchase additional North Korean equipment going forward.”

Will North Korea Let Russia Down?

While North Korea may have the resources to build short-range rockets and artillery shells, the communist nation is no better positioned to create advanced weaponry or rockets than Russia is.

North Korea is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, and while it may be able to provide additional manpower and manufacturing capabilities for Russia, it is ultimately unable to provide the kind of advanced weaponry Russia really needs at this stage in the war.

Even if North Korea is at least capable of fulfilling orders for less advanced equipment, Russia is still taking a risk over the quality of the rockets that could be sent their way. That should be a particularly serious concern for the Kremlin given that Iranian combat drones recently sent to Russia were plagued with faults and problems.

Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder revealed in late August how Russia received plane loads of unmanned aerial vehicles from Iran in August as part of a plan to import hundreds of drones from Iran. The drones are expected to be used for surveillance and rocket strikes in Ukraine.

According to Ryder, however, U.S. intelligence “indicates that UAVs associated with this transfer have already experienced numerous failures.”

North Korean Type 88 Assault Rifle. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

If North Korea and Iran can’t supply the weapons and drones Russia needs, and if the West won’t lift sanctions that block the importation of technology and parts from the West, Russia will face a real struggle in supplying its troops in Ukraine with the equipment they need.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · September 6, 2022​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com