Quotes of the Day:
"What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one."
- Margaret Mitchell
"If asked for a brief explanation, I would say that the existential vacuum derives from the following conditions. Unlike an animal, man is not told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do - which is conformism - or he does what other people wish him to do - which is totalitarianism."
- Dr. Viktor E. Frankl
"We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist."
- E. B. White
1. Who Assassinated Haiti’s President? The Mystery Gets Murkier
2. America’s Dismal Foreign Policy — and What to Do About It (Book Review)
3. Blinken warns Asian nations of China’s growing nuclear ambitions
4. Is China Gaming the System or Playing the Game?
5. How Trump stiff-armed Congress — and gaslighted the courts — to build his wall
6. The Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan.
7. If China and the US Claim the Same Moon-Base Site, Who Wins?
8. 84-year-old German sentenced after hiding WWII Nazi tank, anti-aircraft cannon in his house
9. Why the Quad Alarms China
10, Without An Enforced Honor Code, Can The Military Academies Survive?
11. US Army to retain properties that were set to close in Germany, Belgium
12. Critical Success Factors to Operational Gender Mainstreaming
13. The United States is determined to dominate the semiconductor tech war
14. What Will Decrease Training Deaths? More Training, GAO Says
15. China’s Hubris Is a Threat to Its Economic Future
16. Great Power Clashes Will Reshape America
17. The Plight of the Foreign Policy Realists
18. Beyond Hiroshima: Blackout warfare
1. Who Assassinated Haiti’s President? The Mystery Gets Murkier
I thought we knew. But I guess the real question is who is behind it?
Excerpt:
According to police, a plot against him was being formed in Port-au-Prince, Miami and Colombia, involving the little-known Haitian-American preacher in Florida, Christian Emmanuel Sanon.
For years, the 63-year-old pastor, who is being held by police in Port-au-Prince, pitched himself on YouTube and in conference rooms as a man with a plan to eradicate Haiti’s poverty. Efforts to reach Mr. Sanon or his brother for comment weren’t successful. It couldn’t be determined if he has a lawyer.
“We need a new leadership that will change the way of life,” he said in a 2011 YouTube video. By 2015, friends and colleagues said Mr. Sanon began talking about a transitional government for Haiti that would provide security and build prosperity.
Who Assassinated Haiti’s President? The Mystery Gets Murkier
Nearly a month after President Jovenel Moïse was killed, the circumstances are just as hard to parse, with more new questions than answers
By Drew Hinshaw, Ryan Dube, Kejal Vyas and Juan Forero
Updated Aug. 4, 2021 10:10 pm ET
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—After he climbed the bloodstained staircase, Carl Henry Destin found a baffling scene.
The Haitian president lay dead on the floor, with multiple gunshot wounds. Every drawer was flung open, and papers were scattered as if someone had been searching for something.
“The bedroom had been totally ransacked…documents everywhere,” Mr. Destin said. “There were a lot of witnesses, but they didn’t want to talk.”
Mr. Destin, a judicial officer often tasked with logging evidence at a murder scene, counted dozens of bullet holes and their locations at the presidential residence. He was struck by the chaos of the scene and the thin recollections from the bystanders who described little more than hearing the clatter of gunfire.
Outside, police frantically halted traffic as they searched for Colombian mercenaries they said had been running through the narrow streets of the hillside neighborhood.
Carl Henry Destin, a Haitian judicial officer, left the residence of Mr. Moïse on July 15.
PHOTO: RICARDO ARDUENGO/REUTERS
Nearly a month after Haiti’s 53-year-old head of state, President Jovenel Moïse, was killed on July 7, the circumstances remain just as murky, with no shortage of suspects and speculation—and more new questions than answers. Complicating matters: key investigators, including Mr. Destin, are in hiding, saying they are being threatened and fear for their lives.
Haitian police have implicated more than 40 people in a plot to kill the president of one of the world’s poorest countries, in a conspiracy they say ran from working-class towns in the high Colombian Andes to the Miami suburbs.
But no clear motive or mastermind has emerged in the investigation.
In a jail near the country’s airport are 18 former soldiers from Colombia suspected in the plot; another three are dead after police said gunbattles broke out in the hills of the crowded capital of Port-au-Prince.
The following account is based on more than a dozen interviews with legal officials, political advisers, diplomats, judicial officers and lawyers briefed on the investigation, and several currently under arrest, including Jean Laguel Civil, the head of presidential security.
The Wall Street Journal reviewed WhatsApp messages among some of the suspects and audio recorded during a private planning meeting involving the Colombian ex-soldiers. Documents recording testimony given by key witnesses and photos taken during and after the chaotic melée that led to the death of the president were also reviewed.
The information, which includes details that haven’t previously been reported, adds to questions about the official outlines of the investigation.
“I really don’t trust any immediate leads of what we’ve heard so far,” said Georges Fauriol, a Haiti expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “The story simply doesn’t add up.”
Haitian police officers with suspects in the killing on July 8.
PHOTO: JEAN MARC HERVE ABELARD/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Haitian officials crucial to the investigation are now in hiding. Callers to Mr. Destin, the crime-scene officer, from blocked numbers have threatened his life and family, he said. Three other clerks and judicial officers on the case said they received the same calls. One colleague, tasked with interviewing suspects, left his lights on one Sunday night, then casually strolled away from his home with his wife, slipping into hiding with pages of handwritten notes from interviews with suspects, which haven’t yet been typed up.
Haitian police say publicly they are making progress.
“Whoever was involved in the murder, this person will be brought to justice,” Mr. Moïse’s successor, Prime Minister and acting President Ariel Henry, said in a recent interview. “No matter who he is.”
Police have divulged little evidence against the accused and haven’t provided a plausible motive, helping feed doubts about the official story of the Florida preacher’s central role in the assassination. Police have also detained or implicated a Haitian ex-senator, two DEA informants—one a convicted cocaine trafficker—several Miami businessmen and a former security contractor for the U.S. Embassy.
In his last year as president, Mr. Moïse’s country had reached a crisis point. Gangs carried out massacres in politically contested neighborhoods and conducted extortion schemes across the capital, where they now control about a third of the territory, according to the United Nations. Kidnappings have risen, and prominent lawyers, journalists and civil rights activists have been gunned down. Meanwhile, Haitians faced a 23% inflation rate in 2020.
Mr. Moïse had canceled several public contracts he and advisers felt were gouging the cash-strapped Haitian state, creating new enemies. His government said it foiled a coup attempt in February. He and other politicians were accused of involvement with gangs, which he had denied.
Pressure had grown from protesters, opposition lawmakers and international groups for Mr. Moïse to step down or make way for an election.
The Florida preacher
According to police, a plot against him was being formed in Port-au-Prince, Miami and Colombia, involving the little-known Haitian-American preacher in Florida, Christian Emmanuel Sanon.
For years, the 63-year-old pastor, who is being held by police in Port-au-Prince, pitched himself on YouTube and in conference rooms as a man with a plan to eradicate Haiti’s poverty. Efforts to reach Mr. Sanon or his brother for comment weren’t successful. It couldn’t be determined if he has a lawyer.
“We need a new leadership that will change the way of life,” he said in a 2011 YouTube video. By 2015, friends and colleagues said Mr. Sanon began talking about a transitional government for Haiti that would provide security and build prosperity.
Christian Emmanuel Sanon in a 2011 YouTube video.
He held more than 10 online meetings since 2020 with Parnell Duverger, a retired economics professor at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. Together, they envisioned an $83 billion economic development plan for Haiti that Mr. Duverger developed, involving roads, hydroelectric power plants and waste removal infrastructure, according to a presentation of the plan, called “A Marshall Plan for Haiti,” reviewed by the Journal.
In May, Mr. Sanon showed it to a small group gathered at a Fort Lauderdale conference room, Mr. Duverger said in an interview. Present were Venezuelan émigré Antonio Intriago, the head of Miami-area security company CTU Security, and Ecuador-born Walter Veintemilla, president of Florida-based Worldwide Capital Lending Group, Mr. Duverger said.
Alleged funds for effort
Haitian authorities allege that CTU hired the Colombian ex-soldiers who are now in custody, while Mr. Veintemilla’s loan company provided the funds for the operation. The FBI has since raided properties owned by the two men in southern Florida, including Mr. Veintemilla’s home in Weston, as part of the investigation into the assassination. The men haven’t been arrested.
“Our client is innocent and is working to clear his name,” a lawyer for Mr. Intriago said. In a statement, Worldwide Capital, Mr. Veintemilla’s company, said Mr. Sanon approached the firm to provide financing for infrastructure projects and that it had assisted in providing a loan of unspecified size to CTU to fund those efforts. It said there was no discussion of an assassination plot or of using violence to bring about change in Haiti’s leadership.
FBI agents in the courtyard of the president’s residence on July 15.
PHOTO: VALERIE BAERISWYL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Mr. Duverger said Mr. Sanon wanted to become prime minister one day, but there was no discussion at the meetings about forcing an unconstitutional overthrow of political leadership in Haiti. Mr. Duverger said he can’t fathom that Mr. Sanon was the mastermind of the assassination plot.
Haitian officials said that when they raided Mr. Sanon’s hotel room in Port-au-Prince, they found a cache of automatic weapons.
Those who knew the preacher said he was averse to guns, according to Steven Bross, a 65-year-old airline pilot who was Mr. Sanon’s neighbor in the 2000s in Brandon, Fla. “He’s a godly man and thinks everybody else should be too,” he said.
Mr. Sanon’s main source of income appeared to be an MRI machine he owned in Haiti, Mr. Bross said. In 2013, Mr. Sanon filed for bankruptcy in Florida, according to state records, and his home went into foreclosure.
“He could be considered quite naive, he has no street smarts,” Mr. Bross said. “I could see him being taken advantage of…. [Whoever is responsible] set him up big time.”
Haiti After President Moïse’s Assassination: What’s Next
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Haiti After President Moïse’s Assassination: What’s Next
In Haiti, President Jovenel Moïse’s killing brings more political turmoil to a country that has long been roiled by lawlessness and economic woes. Photo: Joseph Odelyn/Associated Press
Laurent Lamothe, a former prime minister and close ally of Mr. Moïse, said Mr. Sanon was a “smoke screen,” distracting the officials from finding the real mastermind.
“There is no way he could have financed an operation like that,” said Mr. Lamothe, who had never heard of Mr. Sanon before the killing.
Recruiting Colombian ex-soldiers
In Colombia, meanwhile, Duberney Capador, a 40-year-old ex-soldier, was recruiting veterans of the country’s long guerrilla conflict with two other former servicemen. Hired by CTU, Mr. Intriago’s Miami-area security company, Mr. Capador used a WhatsApp group to invite candidates for what he said would be a 400-man platoon on a five-year contract with an unnamed U.S.-based company to protect the political elite of a Central American country.
The job would pay about $3,000 a month, he said, according to the WhatsApp messages. Nearly 300 veterans swiftly signed up.
Mr. Capador took the job to raise money for his mother’s farm, his sister, Jenny Capador, said. The two had been in contact regularly after he reached Haiti on May 11, she said. “I can assure you that my brother is innocent,” she said.
On June 9, 100 applicants were invited to join a smaller WhatsApp group called “First Flight.” They were the lucky few who had made the cut, Mr. Capador wrote on WhatsApp.: “If you’re not on this list, go cry about it.”
Haitian police escorted suspects on July 8.
PHOTO: VALERIE BAERISWYL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The company had the support of the U.S. State Department, the former servicemen were told. The mission was vaguely defined, with no mention of Haiti or any plot to assassinate or overthrow a president, according to WhatsApp messages reviewed by the Journal.
It would involve threadbare accommodations and “urban combat,” Mr. Capador texted.
Anyone who didn’t feel up for the task should leave the group chat, he wrote. And to those who stayed, he added: “Welcome, gentleman, to this small but selective group.”
A State Department spokeswoman said reports that the ex-soldiers were acting on behalf of the U.S. government, whether the State Department, FBI or DEA, were false. The U.S. has dispatched FBI agents and other officers to Haiti to assist in the investigation.
“None of it makes any sense,” said Miguel Pinto, who leads a retired soldiers’ association that has been working with the families of the Colombian ex-soldiers to repatriate the bodies of those who died in Haiti and to ascertain the fate of those now in detention. “If a retired soldier wants to make money committing crimes, you don’t have to leave Colombia for that,” he said.
Days waiting by the pool
At least 24 of the men entered Haiti, mostly in early June, crossing the border from the Dominican Republic. Some spent their free time while they waited for details of their assignment at a house with a pool in Port-au-Prince, according to relatives who joined them on video chats. The ex-soldiers spent much of their days cooking.
At least two Haitians were part of the group, serving as translators, among other roles.
There was no whiff of trouble, said Luz Caceres, sister of Neil Caceres, who is in custody in Port-au-Prince. “We would say, ‘How are you, brother?’ He would say, ‘super good.’ ”
Investigators removed material from Mr. Moïse’s residence on July 15.
PHOTO: ORLANDO BARRIA/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
The men were told their leader would be a fellow Colombian veteran Germán Alejandro Rivera, whose nickname was Col. Mike.
“Sirs, important info,” a Colombian ex-soldier, Gersain Mendivelso, wrote them over WhatsApp. “You are going to provide security for the president of this country, so for obvious reasons you have to be at your best.”
A screenshot of WhatsApp messages from Gersain Mendivelso to Colombian ex-soldiers who were recruited to work in Haiti. The top of the screen shows that Mr. Mendivelso last looked at his WhatsApp on July 7 22:46. The messages were sent in June when the recruitment process was going on. In translation, the messages read: “Be available to send me through this way, pant shirt boot size, in order to prepare as soon as possible, for the arms, don’t worry it’s all american.” And: “Gentlemen important info you will provide security for the president of this country, so for obvious reasons you have to be at your best”
They needed to send their sizes for pants, shirts and boots, he added, “in order to prepare as soon as possible.” As for the weaponry, he told his comrades, “Don’t worry, it’s all American.”
On June 22, the men were taken to meet Mr. Intriago. His company, CTU, had long partnered with the U.S. Justice Department to help bring international criminals to justice, he told the room, according to audio recorded by one of the former soldiers and reviewed by the Journal. It had conducted far-flung operations from Iraq to Brazil to Peru, Mr. Intriago said. Mr. Sanon was present at the gathering, according to the audio.
The company was going to break two centuries of poverty in Haiti, Mr. Intriago continued, showing two videos of clean energy projects purportedly planned for Haiti. Each one of those projects, Mr. Intriago told the former soldiers, held promise for security contracts. “Those investors will not be here without security,” he said.
Supporting the project was Mr. Veintemilla’s Worldwide Capital, which Mr. Intriago said was a conglomerate of 200 companies, including his own.
Haiti, he reminded his South American audience, had helped Simón Bolívar liberate Colombia from Spain; now it was time for them to return the favor. “Here we are not Colombians. We are Haitians,” he said. “If you agree, let’s have a Hooah!”
All together, the Colombians cheered the battle cry: “Hooah!”
A mission to fight crime
A couple of weeks earlier, Reynaldo Corvington, the founder of what bills itself as Haiti’s largest security company, received a visit from Joseph Badio, a former official from the Haitian anticorruption agency, according to Mr. Corvington’s lawyer, Samuel Madistin.
Now in his 80s, Mr. Corvington had provided security for the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince during the 1990s, according to federal records.
Mr. Badio arrived with a small entourage that included Mr. Intriago; an opposition lawmaker, former Sen. John Joseph Joel; a convicted drug trafficker and ex-DEA informant, Rodolphe Jaar; another, occasional, DEA informant, Vincent Joseph; and the Colombian veteran nicknamed Col. Mike.
A soldier patroled in Port-au-Prince on July 8.
PHOTO: RICHARD PIERRIN/GETTY IMAGES
Mr. Joseph said he was working for the FBI on a State Department-backed mission to arrest 34 government officials for a host of crimes, including money laundering, corruption, drug trafficking and the sale of diplomatic passports in the Middle East, according to the lawyer, who added the men wanted Mr. Corvington’s advice on how Haitian people would react.
The men declined to share the names of those to be arrested, according to the lawyer. He said Mr. Corvington didn’t take them seriously, and the meeting ended without any subsequent contact.
Mr. Corvington and Mr. Joseph have since been arrested. Haitian police have also issued arrest warrants for Messrs. Badio, Joel and Jaar, who are at large and couldn’t be located.
The assassination unfolds
On the night of the killing, a small drone appeared hovering over the president’s home, according to Philogene Charles, an unemployed mother living in the hilltop neighborhood where the poor and wealthy live side-by-side.
She said she at first thought the commotion outside was coming from soccer fans, until she heard gunshots and a loud bang coming from Mr. Moïse’s estate.
“We thought the gang wars were finally coming to our area,” said Ms. Charles, who had hoped living next to the president would offer some security.
Five to seven Colombian men arrived first and quickly entered the building, according to neighbors and Colombian police, who have assisted the Haitians in the investigation. Gunfire and at least one explosion erupted.
From inside, the president at 1:34 a.m. dialed Jean Laguel Civil, the coordinator for presidential security, who said he jolted awake. “Your excellency, what’s happening?” Mr. Civil said he asked, in an interview.
“Send reinforcements,” he said Mr. Moïse asked. “Come, save me.”
Mr. Civil said he spent the next half-hour calling for reinforcements.
A Haitian police officer outside the president’s residence on July 15.
PHOTO: RICARDO ARDUENGO/REUTERS
Around the home’s steep driveway and its blue metal gate, three different police units were assigned to guard the premises, each with their own commander. The head of the largest unit, Dimitri Herard, was off duty that night but immediately answered a call from Mr. Civil: “I’m on my way,” Mr. Herard replied, according to court testimony seen by the Journal and confirmed with Mr. Herard’s father. Mr. Herard, who is now in custody, said in an interview that he is innocent and feared he would be killed in jail.
Next, Mr. Civil said, he called the commanding officer present that night. “He never answered,” said Mr. Civil, who got in his pickup and began driving to the house himself.
On the gravel road outside the president’s home, a second group of Colombians arrived. A Haitian-American member of the group shouted through a loudspeaker, in English: “Get back, get back…This is a DEA operation.”
“There is no need to panic,” the man added in Haitian Creole, according to videos and neighbors.
At least three pickups full of police had arrived, as had Mr. Civil, the security coordinator, who said he was late on the scene because he didn’t want to show up by himself. Driving around a corner, he said he found about 20 Colombians in matching brown boots, several aiming assault rifles at him. He reversed and backed away.
Police began blockading the nearby roads with trucks and sent a small team on foot to make sense of the chaos inside the home, where first lady Martine Moïse had survived after being injured in the attack. Ms. Moïse declined to comment for this article. At her husband’s funeral, she said traitors had betrayed him because he wanted to change a corrupt system.
The Colombians were trapped by the roadblocks and began to scatter. Breaking into a nearby home for cover, Mr. Joseph, the former informant, called “someone in Washington” for advice, he told the human-rights lawyer who visited the men in custody.
A DEA spokesperson said that an agency official received a call sometime after the assassination from an individual who was at times a confidential source to the agency. “A DEA official assigned to Haiti urged the suspect to surrender to local authorities and, along with U.S. State Department officials, provided information to the Haitian government that assisted in the surrender and arrest of the suspect and one other individual,” the spokesperson said.
A gunbattle broke out in the neighborhood. Mr. Capador, the Colombian ex-soldier who had recruited his compatriots, texted his sister. His mission had gotten complicated, he wrote, and they had “arrived too late” to accomplish it. Now, he added, he was in a home facing oncoming bullets, according to WhatsApp messages.
By the time the shooting ended, Mr. Capador was dead, found shirtless with more than a dozen bullet wounds.
Eleven of the former soldiers later sought to hide in the Taiwanese embassy. Sheltered inside, one of the men sent WhatsApp messages to his wife: “They want to pass off the death of that man as if we were the ones that had done it,” he said. “They already had all of their intentions,” he said, adding “and they fooled us.”
The ambassador gave the police permission to enter and arrest them.
Two other men were found hiding in a nearby neighborhood and apprehended by residents who beat them and turned them into police, videos of the event showed. Reunited in a police cell, the men were packed together, some of them shirtless and bloodied, others in dirt-stained tees, all of them handcuffed, according to the human-rights lawyer who visited them.
By then, Mr. Destin, the judicial officer, had made it into the presidential house to record the scene. Within days, threatening calls from blocked numbers began, he said: “My life is in danger.”
Mr. Moïse’s funeral at his family home in Cap-Haitien on July 23.
PHOTO: RICARDO ARDUENGO/REUTERS
—Arian Campo-Flores in Miami, Jenny Carolina González in Bogotá, Colombia, and José de Córdoba in Mexico City contributed to this article.
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Appeared in the August 5, 2021, print edition as 'Who Killed Haiti’s President? Mystery Grows.'
2. America’s Dismal Foreign Policy — and What to Do About It (Book Review)
Andrew Bacevich's new book.
These are some very interesting data points:
Similarly, in the three decades from 1961, four of seven American presidents had once served as officers in the Navy in the Pacific campaign, creditably in Nixon’s case, heroically in the cases of Kennedy, Ford and Bush the Elder. By contrast, and by odd coincidence, three of the four presidents over the next three decades — Clinton, Bush the Younger and Trump — were born within a matter of weeks of one another in 1946. That made them exactly of an age to serve in Vietnam, which of course none of them did. Before his untimely death 11 years ago, the great historian Tony Judt said that he was “more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it.”
And today? America still has an awe-inspiring 750 military bases in some 80 countries, truly an empire on which the sun never sets, and the military-industrial complex longs to build ever more fantastical (and fantastically expensive) weapons systems with no obvious purpose. As Bacevich says, that might be a better place to start defunding than with the police. And he recommends a phased American withdrawal from NATO, whose purpose has indeed been obscure since the Cold War ended.
More than that, he commends an alternative course “based on realism, prudence, scrupulous self-understanding and an appreciation of the world as it is rather than as policy elites might wish it to be.” A cynic might reply, Good luck with that. But one can only hope that Bacevich is read and understood by a generation young enough to see through and reject those dismal elites.
America’s Dismal Foreign Policy — and What to Do About It
nonfiction
Looking down at Kabul, May 2021.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
AFTER THE APOCALYPSE
America’s Role in a World Transformed
By Andrew Bacevich
Twenty years ago this Sept. 11, America suffered a horror that led to far larger disasters. Within little more than 18 months the United States had embarked on not one but two unneeded, unconstitutional and — as it proved — unwinnable wars. Today, after waging the longest war in their history, the Americans have scuttled from Afghanistan (as Churchill would have said), and from Iraq too, with President Biden announcing the withdrawal of the last combat troops. Both countries have been left to stew in their own juice, or in bloody chaos, with the real victors in one case the Taliban, and Iran in the other. Few great powers in history have suffered such humiliating failures.
These woes have at least led to a new mood of reflection, on America’s history and role in world affairs, and the most penetrating critiques have come not from the liberal left or the soggy center (which was implicated in the disasters). Few critics have been more penetrating than Andrew Bacevich, a conservative Catholic who made his career as an Army officer and saw active service in Vietnam and the first gulf war, a contrast indeed to the chickenhawks and armchair warriors of Washington. His first and easiest task in “After the Apocalypse” is to deride the failures — who now defends those wars? — and to give a rogues’ gallery of the politicians (including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) and journalists (including two New York Times columnists) who supported the Iraq war at the time.
But there is much more, and Bacevich looks back at the long and rather weird tradition of American exceptionalism, as it’s called. From Lincoln’s “last best hope of earth” to Wilson’s belief that America could “vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world,” the idea runs to Bill Clinton’s “the greatest nation on earth,” Madeleine Albright’s “we are the indispensable nation” and on to Hillary Clinton’s “America is great because we are good.” Other nations may have sometimes basked in their own self-esteem, but have the leaders of any other modern country ever spoken quite like that?
To make his point sharper, Bacevich compares his task with that of Marc Bloch, a great historian who served as a French Army officer in two wars and was later captured and shot by the Germans when serving in the Resistance. In his brilliant book “Strange Defeat,” Bloch tried to make sense of his country’s catastrophic collapse in 1940. France was ruled by men “brought up in mental bogs,” Bloch wrote, all their mistakes “engendered by the faulty teaching of history.” That is all too true of America, Bacevich observes, now, and for a long time past.
“Just as the self-congratulatory domestic narrative centers on the ineluctable expansion of freedom ‘from sea to shining sea,’” Bacevich writes, “so, too, the narrative of America abroad emphasizes the spread of freedom to the far corners of the earth. ” America’s account of its foreign policy, he notes, is “even less inclined than the domestic narrative to allow room for ambiguity and paradox,” and it excludes “disconcerting themes such as imperialism, militarism and the large-scale killing of noncombatants.” He finds a dissonance between windy rhetoric and harsh reality even in “the good war” 80 years ago, which was by no means so good for all Americans, or all countries.
Starting in 1942, Bacevich reminds us, Frank Capra made “Why We Fight,” a series of seven government-sponsored documentary movies that gave “a greatly simplified account of the origins of World War II” and described “a people deeply devoted to liberty and equality for all.” An addendum to those movies was called “The Negro Soldier,” and quite evaded the grotesque irony that America was fighting a war against the most hateful racial tyranny in history with a rigorously segregated Army, with that “Negro soldier” mostly kept in menial roles.
And maybe World War II has distorted the American perspective ever since. When President Biden speaks of “the strength and audacity that took us to victory in two world wars,” he forgets that the United States entered those wars belatedly (and in the second case involuntarily), and it succeeded largely thanks to the ordeals endured by others. The first war against Germany was won by the blood sacrifice of the French and British Armies, the second by the blood sacrifice of the Red Army, with American casualties modest by comparison, and the crucial American contribution in both cases financial. Since then, when has the United States actually won a war? From the stalemate in Korea to the latest failures it’s hard to see any clear victory.
What Americans have failed fully to recognize is what might be called the impotence of great might. In the heyday of the Cold War two vast superpowers faced each other, each armed with an immense array of nuclear warheads. It seemed that no other country could possibly prevail against either. But what actually happened? The Americans were humiliated in Vietnam by one ragtag peasant army and the Russians were humiliated in Afghanistan by another. And in both cases the effect on national self-confidence was grievous. The Afghan adventure destroyed the morale of the Red Army before precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union, and by the 1970s the U.S. Army in Vietnam could have been described in the words an 18th-century English general used of his own army, “in a state of licentiousness which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy.”
Some of Bacevich’s points are the sharper for being personal: Recalling the atrocious use of defoliants in Vietnam, he adds ruefully that “the high incidence of prostate cancer among Vietnam veterans (myself included) has been traced to their probable exposure to Agent Orange.” “After the Apocalypse” is offered, he says, “not for my own contemporaries but for those who will inherit the muddle we have made.” And what a bunch we contemporaries are! Compare us with our predecessors. In my own country, every prime minister from 1940 to 1963 — Churchill, Attlee, Eden and Macmillan — had formerly served as an infantry officer in the Great War, whereas in 2003 we were taken into the Iraq war by Tony Blair and a government of more than a hundred ministers, not one of whom had ever performed any military service whatever.
Similarly, in the three decades from 1961, four of seven American presidents had once served as officers in the Navy in the Pacific campaign, creditably in Nixon’s case, heroically in the cases of Kennedy, Ford and Bush the Elder. By contrast, and by odd coincidence, three of the four presidents over the next three decades — Clinton, Bush the Younger and Trump — were born within a matter of weeks of one another in 1946. That made them exactly of an age to serve in Vietnam, which of course none of them did. Before his untimely death 11 years ago, the great historian Tony Judt said that he was “more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it.”
And today? America still has an awe-inspiring 750 military bases in some 80 countries, truly an empire on which the sun never sets, and the military-industrial complex longs to build ever more fantastical (and fantastically expensive) weapons systems with no obvious purpose. As Bacevich says, that might be a better place to start defunding than with the police. And he recommends a phased American withdrawal from NATO, whose purpose has indeed been obscure since the Cold War ended.
More than that, he commends an alternative course “based on realism, prudence, scrupulous self-understanding and an appreciation of the world as it is rather than as policy elites might wish it to be.” A cynic might reply, Good luck with that. But one can only hope that Bacevich is read and understood by a generation young enough to see through and reject those dismal elites.
3. Blinken warns Asian nations of China’s growing nuclear ambitions
Blinken warns Asian nations of China’s growing nuclear ambitions
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he has “deep concern” over China’s growing nuclear arsenal in comments to a meeting with Asian counterparts on Friday.
Speaking virtually at the ASEAN Regional Forum foreign ministers’ meeting, Blinken told the closed-door gathering that China’s expanding nuclear capabilities highlight how “Beijing has sharply deviated from its decades-old nuclear strategy based on minimum deterrence,” according to a statement from State Department spokesman Ned Price.
Blinken also called on China to “abide by its obligations under the international law of the sea and cease its provocative behavior in the South China Sea,” and raised “serious concerns about ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang,” according to the statement.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China believes in upholding “true multilateralism” and “maintaining regional peace and stability” in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and “the resurgence of geopolitics,” according to a statement from China’s foreign ministry.
Without referring to the U.S. directly, Wang said countries should avoid interfering in each other’s internal affairs, adding that Asian nations had been bullied by others in the past and didn’t require “teachers” or “saviors.”
The U.S. has sought to rally nations across Asia and beyond to push back against China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. During a visit to India in late July, Blinken warned against “rising global threats to democracy” and sought to strengthen the Quad grouping of nations made up of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also recently returned from a trip to Southeast Asia, including stops in Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Blinken also repeated U.S. calls for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and urged the government of Myanmar to end violence and return to democratic governance, according to the statement by his spokesman.
___
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4. Is China Gaming the System or Playing the Game?
I expected an analysis of Chinese sports and how it prepares for the Olympics. It starts out with a critique of China and the former USSR and now Russia but what it concludes with is a anti-American screed and some love for China and (though not stated) a kind of application of critical race theory which I think is the author's real agenda.
I am all for the freedom to express all ideas and this is surely an example of that (no matter how disgusting and unpalatable these ideas are the author has the right to express them). But this author needs to be called out for this conclusion. Yes we have our problems in the US and yes there are issues with college sports funding disparities but I do not think China is more "transparent."
Conclusion:
By contrast, China's sports machine is more transparent. This is not meant to relativize the pain and suffering of those who don't make it in China, or the gross inequality of a relatively poor country investing heavily in sports. But it should give people in western countries pause to think about China's course—is it really so brutal, or just a reflection of a system that we all, wittingly or not, follow?
Is China Gaming the System or Playing the Game?
Blog Post by Ian Johnson
August 6, 2021 2:36 pm (EST)
For many, a quick glance at the Olympics medals table reinforces the idea of China as a threat—a country pursuing victory at any cost. Its surge up the table in recent years seems like a perfect allegory for its rising military and economic power—a modern-day Soviet Union that uses a state-sponsored sports machine to game its way to international glory.
The numbers buttress this view. As of Thursday, the People's Republic sits atop the gold medal race with thirty-four to twenty-nine for the United States. But it has relatively few silver and bronze, a sign that resources have been aimed at disciplines with a higher probability of success. This perception is reinforced by golds being concentrated in a few sports: relatively marginal, rarely involving teams, and disproportionately female.
These are smart choices for winning gold. But it feels against the spirit of the Olympics—the work of a sports bureaucracy that aims to win in the standings rather than create a national sporting culture that organically produces elite athletes.
These concerns are legitimate, but focusing them on China is wrong. Instead, we should recognize that China is little different that other countries at the top—including the United States. Rather than challenging or upending the international system created by western countries over the past century, China is trying to win in Tokyo the same way as rich countries: by spending huge amounts of money on elite sports.
The role model for these sports programs is the old Soviet Union. Today, the last vestige of this system is Russia. Like the USSR, Russia is a relatively poor country and is fighting a losing battle for Olympic glory—perhaps reflected in its athletes' repeated penalties for doping. Still, it clings near the top, not quite as good as in the old days but still punching above its weight.
Most other countries at the top of the table have largely avoided Russia's doping scandals but followed a similar pattern. That means focusing on sports where they have a comparative advantage and pouring in money. Often, these involve sports where investment can yield quick results, such as cycling or rowing. These involve relatively little innate skill (compared to say, the parallel bars or shooting a three-pointer) but require endless hours each day of training—ideal for financial support.
Overall, the correlation is money, and the motivation is embarrassment of failing in front of the home crowd.
Look at the current medals table and, not surprisingly you will see host Japan near the top. For decades it had been a sporting lightweight, rarely cracking double digits in golds. But after it won its bid in 2012 it began investing heavily in sports so far this year has a record haul of twenty-one, good for third place. Up there, too, is the United Kingdom, a legacy of it hosting the 2012 games.
It is the same story for Australia, which had been an Olympic second-class power before it hosted the 2000 games. Since then it has spent generously on elite sports, as a current government document puts it, "to deliver national pride." Of the $350 million spent on sport, $150 million goes toward elite athletes.
This makes China's "sports machine" less remarkable than it often appears in the media. Like others, it sees the Olympics as part of being a great power—along with aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, space missions, and the like. So, it continues to fund a vast, nationwide sports program.
As for the country it now rivals at the top of the global system—the United States—it does not have a vast sports bureaucracy and yet it is routinely among the world's top countries at the games. Surely, its model is more organic than China's.
That depends on how you look at it. At its heart is professional college sports, which subsidizes other sports. At face value, that sounds acceptable but there are two problems: it shifts the focus of some universities and colleges away from education and toward sports. More troubling, it imposes a form of regressive taxation. One study shows that money generated by disproportionately Black and Hispanic athletes—in football and basketball, for example—is channeled to sports dominated by whites. Therefore, this pool of unpaid athletes from poor demographic groups helps support a vast edifice of elite sports in the United States.
By contrast, China's sports machine is more transparent. This is not meant to relativize the pain and suffering of those who don't make it in China, or the gross inequality of a relatively poor country investing heavily in sports. But it should give people in western countries pause to think about China's course—is it really so brutal, or just a reflection of a system that we all, wittingly or not, follow?
5. How Trump stiff-armed Congress — and gaslighted the courts — to build his wall
I think DOD is going to have to answer for some of this on the funding and accounting issues. It is a good thing we have civilian control of the military (note snarky sarcasm).
How Trump stiff-armed Congress — and gaslighted the courts — to build his wall
Congress’ power of the purse was ignored, but lawmakers remain divided over how to respond.
President Donald Trump tours a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, in Alamo, Texas. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo
08/06/2021 04:37 AM EDT
Pentagon records obtained by POLITICO paint the clearest picture yet of how far the Trump administration went to get around Congress and speed the diversion of military construction funds to build its border wall in 2019.
The diversion, totaling $3.6 billion, disrupted scores of improvements for military operations and the quality of life for troops and their families. The newly released documents provide the first-ever look at the inner workings of how that money was moved around — and it’s not a pretty sight for congressional committees, which were left in the dark and denied basic answers about the accounting maneuvers.
The Defense Department ignored statutory language in the appropriations laws specifying how the dollars were to be used. Millions of dollars were moved to never-before-seen ‘’project lines” created by the comptroller and then written into the military services’ construction budgets without the knowledge of Congress. And even in the case of the Navy, DoD skipped past customary transfer requirements and made those dollars immediately available to the Army Corps of Engineers to write checks on those accounts.
DoD continues to defend its performance. But the records were sensitive enough that it took a yearlong struggle by POLITICO to obtain just those covering the Navy. The department took nine months to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request, and even then, the Comptroller’s office withheld or failed to include the most relevant documents. It took another three months before this was corrected, a full year after the FOIA was filed in July 2020.
With Trump gone and a new White House trying to recover the wall funds, many in both parties want to put the episode in the rear-view mirror. But more than $1 billion is not coming back. And left behind in its place is a legacy of distrust and nagging questions as to how Congress can better protect its constitutional power of the purse.
“I think we have to keep this on our radar screen,” said Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who also sits on Appropriations. “Forewarned is forearmed.”
“If we should have another situation where a president wants to take money away from the military and put it into a domestic, personal, political agenda, then we should be able to stop that,” Reed added.
A 'national emergency'
Without doubt, the Pentagon enjoyed immense discretion once the White House invoked its singular construction powers after declaring a “national emergency” in early 2019. The relevant statute, enacted in 1982 and known in political shorthand as 2808, allowed DoD to proceed “without regard to any other provision of law.”
But what made the ensuing process so remarkable was its lack of transparency: It hid from Congress and the federal courts the full scope of what was being tossed aside in favor of the wall spending.
Deciphering the diversion was no easy matter for judges with no grounding in the appropriations process. There were repeated assurances that DoD was only “reprioritizing” dollars already in its hands. If a judge asked for more details, the administration calibrated its answers to explain as little as possible.
“You said 'reprioritize,’” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel Collins in a 2020 hearing. “I want to understand as best I can … what actually happens. Is there a transfer and a reprogramming of money from one account to another account and then an expenditure differently? How does the money move in this case?”
“No, your honor, there’s not a transfer or a reprogramming of any kind,” Collins was told by a Justice Department attorney representing the administration at the hearing.
That answer was correct as far as it went. But the budget records plainly show that a big part of the story was left out. How could it be there was no “reprogramming of any kind?” Because DoD had exempted itself from the budget rules requiring such a reprogramming and notice to Congress.
Indeed, the whole exchange was akin to a city mayor telling his local traffic court judge that he was innocent of speeding — without explaining that he’d exempted himself from the speed limits.
A closer look at the budget ledgers released to POLITICO helps to illustrate this. The documents only apply directly to the Navy, but other military services saw the same pattern of transactions.
One document dated June 18, 2019 shows the fiscal 2019 Navy appropriations proceeding on course with DoD approvals, pretty much as Congress had anticipated.
But three months later, on Sept. 16, the corresponding ledger shows an entirely different world.
DoD had withdrawn its prior approvals and “deferred” further action on eight overseas projects for which Congress had appropriated $205.8 million to the Navy. Two-thirds of those funds carried with them statutory requirements that the dollars be spent “outside the U.S.” Nonetheless, DoD set out to do the opposite.
The full $205.8 million was “administratively realigned” with a newly created project line for the wall, inserted into the Navy’s construction budget under the heading “CONUS UNSPECIFIED.”
That sum was then “sub-allotted” fully to the Army Corps of Engineers for construction of the wall. This allowed the Corps to immediately write checks on the Navy account, avoiding a required transfer between the two services.
Sidestepping the law
Looking back, all these shortcuts were made easier by the budget exemptions assumed by DoD.
The Impoundment Control Act, adopted in response to Richard Nixon’s power grabs in the 1970s, went by the wayside early. That law requires a “special message notification” to be filed with the Government Accountability Office whenever a department defers prior appropriations such as happened with the eight Navy projects. No such notice was ever given, the GAO confirmed.
GAO has made no ruling on the matter, but DoD’s “administrative” realignment of the Navy funds had all the markings of a required reprogramming. As defined by GAO, a reprogramming occurs when an executive agency shifts funds “within an appropriations account … to use them for purposes other than those contemplated at the time of appropriation” by Congress.
In this case, the new Navy project line for the wall didn’t even exist at the time Congress appropriated the funds in the fall of 2018. Moreover, judging from its past decisions, GAO would typically weigh the tightly prescribed rules which have long governed any changes in military construction appropriations.
The Pentagon devotes pages to reprogramming procedures in its financial management regulations. Those rules are then referenced by statute in the military construction appropriations bills. And two of the Navy projects here — one in Germany and another in Bahrain — fell squarely in the title covered by this language in the fiscal 2019 appropriations act.
As to the “sub-allocation” of Navy funds to the Army Corps, that also required some sleight-of-hand.
In fairness to DoD, there are ample precedents where some military services “sub-allot” their annual construction funds to the Corps. But the procedure is so rarely used by the Navy that it’s a stretch in this case — and one seemingly designed to avoid telling the courts a diversion of this size had required transfers.
The Navy has its own engineering command, NAVFAC. In fact, a DoD directive — updated just a year before the diversion — designated NAVFAC to be the lead agent for Navy-funded projects in the U.S.
In the past five years, only 13 out of 287 Navy’s military construction projects required any such sub-allocation of funds to the Corps, NAVFAC told POLITICO. That’s less than 5 percent — compared with the 100 percent sub-allocation in the wall diversion.
“The Department used the same procedures in providing funds to [the Corps of Engineers] for 2808 projects as it has used for decades,” said Christopher Sherwood, a DoD spokesperson charged with defending the Comptroller’s office. “The components sub-allotted the funds to the Army for use by [the Corps], thus all funds retained their original appropriation identification. The funds were neither transferred nor reprogrammed
Congress responds
As a West Point graduate and Armed Services chair, Reed was most sensitive to the diversion’s impact on the military, especially its personnel. From Kentucky to Maryland and North Carolina, schools, day-care facilities, and water treatment improvements were caught up in the mix, affecting troops and their families.
But from his seat on Appropriations, there’s no ignoring that “the lack of transparency is a problem,” Reed said.
“We were not being told because their interpretation …was the normal reprogramming rules did not apply because it was under 2808,” he said. “But again, the spirit of 2808 was [that] in a national security emergency, a president should have some flexibility to move funds to deal with military necessities. Trump completely disregarded this. He defied the whole spirit of the law and used it for his own political benefit.”
Congress took the first steps to try to reassert itself last winter, with Trump on his way out after the 2020 election.
The annual defense authorization bill, enacted over the president’s veto, included a House-initiated provision designed to rein in DoD’s discretion under the 2808 authority.
The department will still be empowered to go around current laws, but the path is narrowed some and will require more notice to Congress. Moreover, a $500 million cap is imposed for all military construction projects undertaken using the 2808 authority during a future emergency. In the event of a national emergency declaration in which 2808 authority would be used only to build projects only within the U.S, a tighter cap of $100 million would rule.
Beyond this, it’s not clear whether the Appropriations leadership will demand further steps to ensure it is kept better informed in the future. There is a residue of bitterness toward DoD for its back-handed treatment of the panel and its staff — a stain not easily erased. “The Department of Defense was not forthcoming,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in an interview.
But as a member of Appropriations, she said there has been little discussion in the panel. “There are a lot of people who would like to address it, but there doesn’t seem to be a bipartisan willingness to do that,” Shaheen said.
In fact, when the committee met this week to approve a new military construction bill — the first of the post-Trump era — the only public discussion of the wall was in reference to helping private landowners whose property was damaged by the construction. This silence illustrates how the diversion remains so identified with Trump that any further tightening of the budget rules risks being seen by Republicans as another attack on him and, implicitly, the GOP. For Senate Democrats, who know they must win over Republicans to make any progress on appropriations bills, it’s become a bridge too far.
Largely ignored so far is the bigger root of the dispute: the National Emergency Act. Enacted in the 1970s, it was intended to rein in White House power grabs but has since been twisted out-of-shape because of court decisions which put presidents like Trump in the driver’s seat. Reed acknowledged the NEA may need to be revisited, but thus far it is conservative Republicans with a libertarian streak, such as Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who have been at the forefront.
Unlike many in his party, Lee was willing to challenge Trump’s emergency declaration in 2019, and his so-called “ARTICLE ONE” bill now seeks to rein in the emergency act, which Trump used to open the door for DoD to use its 2808 powers. His approach is to limit future emergency declarations under the NEA to just 30 days, after which Congress would decide if they continued or not.
With a Democrat now in the White House, Lee’s ideas have drawn more attention from the right, worried about “emergency” action on climate change, for example. But Lee has found an ally also in Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who has included Lee’s proposal as part of a much broader bill reasserting Congress’ power on a range of national security issues.
The SCOTUS factor
One last outlier: the U.S. Supreme Court. What the justices decide this fall could add to the calls for Congress to do more.
At issue is a petition for writ of certiorari filed on Trump’s behalf last year after his border wall suffered a defeat in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2020. In that decision, a three-judge panel broke 2-1 against Trump and ruled that DoD’s use of its 2808 authority violated 2808 itself because the wall projects failed to meet the “military” standards set in the statute.
Trump sought to reverse this ruling by getting the case before the more conservative Supreme Court. It’s now Biden’s call, and to the dismay of the wall’s challengers, the new administration has effectively lined up with Trump and is asking the justices to vacate wall-related rulings which might impede Biden’s own executive powers going forward.
This strategy was first seen in June, when the Solicitor General’s office argued that an earlier wall ruling could become a foothold for meddlesome suits challenging the Pentagon’s transfer powers. The Court agreed to vacate that decision on July 2.
Smelling trouble, the wall’s challengers — a legal team led by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Sierra Club and other environmental interests — struck back in filings to the Court on July 19. Their core argument was that much as the Pentagon may use its transfer powers on a regular basis, there is nothing so common about the use of DoD’s 2808 authority. In the plaintiffs’ view, the greater risk to the nation is that vacating the 9th Circuit’s decision will wipe out all its legal history and make it easier for future presidents to go down the same path as Trump did.
Some of Biden’s posture likely reflects the ingrained culture of the Solicitor General’s office, which rarely hesitates to defend executive power. But it’s a striking situation given the president’s long service in the Senate, and his administration has hurt its credibility by not being more straightforward about its intentions.
When POLITICO asked for guidance regarding the plaintiff filings, the Justice Department waited a full week before declining to comment on when it was filing a reply. Then, less than 24 hours later on Tuesday, the Solicitor General’s office did file, and its position was to vacate the Ninth Circuit decision.
"Multiple courts have already found that Trump's fake emergency violated the Constitution,” said Dror Ladin, the lead ACLU attorney on the case. “I think most people would be surprised to learn that the Biden administration is still trying to erase those rulings and open the door to future presidential abuse of emergency powers."
6. The Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan.
Excerpt:
An escalation of American airstrikes against the Taliban in recent weeks was an attempt to ensure the group’s adherence to the deal. That effort appears to have failed, and the peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government have become all but an afterthought as the insurgents push for a military victory throughout Afghanistan.
The Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan.
- Aug. 8, 2021, 3:47 a.m. ET
Kunduz is the first major Afghan city to be overrun by the Taliban since they began their military offensive in May.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
By Sharif Hassan and
- Aug. 8, 2021, 3:47 a.m. ET
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban seized the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said. It is the first major city to be overtaken by the insurgents since they began their sweeping military offensive in May.
It was the third provincial capital to be overtaken by Taliban in three days, and the series of victories in cities marks a significant change in the insurgents’ offensive as international troops, led by the United States, began withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Kunduz, the capital of a province of the same name, is a significant military and political prize. With a population of 374,000, it is a vital commercial hub near the border with Tajikistan.
“All security forces fled to the airport, and the situation is critical,” said Sayed Jawad Hussaini, the deputy police chief of a district in Kunduz city.
Clashes between government forces and Taliban fighters were continuing in a small town south of the city, where the local army headquarters and the airport are, security officials said.
Security forces, who had retreated to the town earlier in the morning, were preparing a military operation to flush Taliban fighters out of the strategic city on Sunday afternoon, according to security officials.
In the two preceding days, the Taliban had taken two other provincial capitals: Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan Province, and Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz Province on the Afghanistan-Iran border. As Kunduz was collapsing on Sunday morning, the Taliban also seized Sar-i-Pul, the capital of a northern province of the same name, officials said.
“Taliban are walking in the streets of the city. Local residents are terrified,” said Sayed Asadullah Danish, a member of the Sar-i-Pul provincial council. Provincial officials had taken shelter in an army base on the outskirts of the city, where clashes were continuing, he added.
After sweeping through the country’s rural areas, the insurgents’ military campaign has shifted to brutal urban combat in recent weeks. They have pushed into cities like Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in the south and Herat in the west.
The strategy has exhausted the Afghan government’s forces and overwhelmed the local militia forces that the government has used to supplement its own troops, a move reminiscent of the chaotic and ethnically divided civil war of the 1990s.
“We are so tired, and the security forces are so tired,” said Mr. Hussaini, the police official in Kunduz. “At the same time we hadn’t received reinforcements and aircraft did not target the Taliban on time.”
On Sunday, after a night of heavy fighting, Taliban fighters flooded into the streets of Kunduz and raised their flag over its main square, a video recorded by a resident showed. Two of the city’s main markets, where shopkeepers sell fabrics and footwear, caught fire, sending dark plumes of smoke over the city.
Since the U.S. withdrawal began, the Taliban have captured more than half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. Their attacks on provincial capitals have violated the 2020 peace deal between the Taliban and the United States. Under that deal, which precipitated the American withdrawal from the country, the Taliban committed to not attacking provincial centers like Kunduz.
An escalation of American airstrikes against the Taliban in recent weeks was an attempt to ensure the group’s adherence to the deal. That effort appears to have failed, and the peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government have become all but an afterthought as the insurgents push for a military victory throughout Afghanistan.
7. If China and the US Claim the Same Moon-Base Site, Who Wins?
Excerpts:
Until now, U.S. space defense has largely concentrated around the objects orbiting Earth. That changed this year, when the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command were tasked with protecting U.S. assets up to 272,000 miles away, a volume called “cislunar space” that extends slightly beyond the Moon’s orbit.
They have some catching up to do, said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., the ranking member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee. Lucas believes the 2019 landing of China’s Chang'e-4 spacecraft on the far side of the moon should have been this generation’s Sputnik moment.
“But with all of the chaos in the world, and COVID-19, and all of this environment we're working in, we missed it,” he said.
Those far-side moon operations meant China had developed the technology to operate and communicate with its landed rover out of line of sight—and out of view of almost all of the U.S. ability to see what they’re doing.
The achievement allows China “to accomplish scientific, military, or other endeavors without observation or repercussion,” Duffy and Lake wrote. The authors urged that the U.S. needs to speed its monitoring efforts, such as the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHPS, that is being developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory.
“In the future, other defensive and offensive assets will be needed to assure the open and peaceful use of cislunar space,” the authors argued.
If China and the US Claim the Same Moon-Base Site, Who Wins?
Relatively few craters are attractive, and there’s no consensus about avoiding conflict over them.
There’s a not-so-quiet race back to the moon underway, but the two largest factions, with China and Russia on one side, and the United States and its partners on the other, are not recognizing each others’ proposed rules on what’s allowed once they get there.
Lawmakers and space policy analysts are concerned: How do you avoid conflict in space if the international laws and policies on Earth no longer apply?
“Many terrestrial military doctrines are not applicable in space, or at least not as applicable. If you get beyond 50 miles, or at least 62 miles, suddenly different rules apply. We need to start being aware of that,” Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn, said.
There’s already some aggressive international elbowing over the rules of satellite operations. As with the moon, there’s no consensus yet on how to respond to aggression in Earth orbit, the head of U.S. Space Command Gen. James Dickinson told attendees at last week’s Sea Air Space conference.
“The behavior of some of our adversaries in space may surprise you,” Dickinson said. “If similar actions have been taken in other domains, they'd likely be considered provocative, aggressive, or maybe even irresponsible. And in response, the U.S. government would take corresponding actions using all levers of national power, a demarche, or a sanction or something to indicate we won't tolerate that type of behavior, but we're not quite there yet in space policy.”
In 1967, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a treaty on the use of outer space that promised cooperation and banned nuclear weapons, military maneuvers, and military installations off-planet. The agreement also requires countries to take “appropriate international consultations” before making any moves that would “cause potentially harmful interference” with other space programs, and allows countries to “request consultation” if they believe such interference is likely.
This treaty “forecasted very well” the issues that that might arise as space exploration expanded, said James Lake, a senior associate at Canyon Consulting who co-wrote an article on lunar security issues in this month’s Space Force Journal. “The question remains: is that text sufficient? That’s something we are going to find out fairly soon.”
Notably, a treaty annex that prohibits military activity on the moon went unratified by Russia, China, and the United States. It’s likely both the China-Russia and U.S.-led partnerships will begin their moon bases without any sort of agreement between them in place.
In June, the China National Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos announced they would begin surveying locations for their International Lunar Research Station this year, and pick a site by 2025.
In 2020, NASA, together with the nations partnering with the U.S. under the Artemis Accords, outlined its Artemis Base Camp project. The Artemis nations aim to to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024.
“Water ice, for example, might be in limited pockets, for example, making the territories around certain craters on the polar regions, perhaps more desirable,” Bowen said.
So what happens if each decides on the same crater as the best spot to begin moon operations?
“If you have a situation like that, where you're trying to do something in the exact same spot, it’s essentially who gets there first,” said Alex Gilbert, a researcher and space resources doctoral student at the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “And if you're not first, then the only alternative is to forcibly remove the current occupant.”
The Artemis nations have endorsed the idea of “safety zones” on the moon, to require communication between two space operations that want to operate in the same area.
“Even if you set up a base and you declare a safety zone, people can still go into that safety zone. It's just something that it's really to be used as a tool to get parties to talk to each other,” he said.
But there’s already a risk those zones will instead be used as a way to rope off sites from competitors, he said.
“One thing that is really kind of important to understand about safety zones is that everyone kind of has their own definition,” Gilbert said.
“Whoever gets there first can use the resources, but no nation can ‘claim’ the territory,” said Laura Duffy, a space systems engineer with Canyon Consulting who co-wrote “Cislunar Spacepower, The New Frontier,” with Lake with Lake in this month’s Space Force Journal.
It’s not just water, but rare earth metals and helium-3 that will be up for grabs on the moon, making a treaty for its peaceful use critical, Duffy said.
“The Moon must be available for open and free use, according to the Artemis Accords and Outer Space Treaty,” she said.
But neither Russia nor China are expected to join the Artemis Accords.
Until now, U.S. space defense has largely concentrated around the objects orbiting Earth. That changed this year, when the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command were tasked with protecting U.S. assets up to 272,000 miles away, a volume called “cislunar space” that extends slightly beyond the Moon’s orbit.
They have some catching up to do, said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., the ranking member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee. Lucas believes the 2019 landing of China’s Chang'e-4 spacecraft on the far side of the moon should have been this generation’s Sputnik moment.
“But with all of the chaos in the world, and COVID-19, and all of this environment we're working in, we missed it,” he said.
Those far-side moon operations meant China had developed the technology to operate and communicate with its landed rover out of line of sight—and out of view of almost all of the U.S. ability to see what they’re doing.
The achievement allows China “to accomplish scientific, military, or other endeavors without observation or repercussion,” Duffy and Lake wrote. The authors urged that the U.S. needs to speed its monitoring efforts, such as the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHPS, that is being developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory.
“In the future, other defensive and offensive assets will be needed to assure the open and peaceful use of cislunar space,” the authors argued.
8. 84-year-old German sentenced after hiding WWII Nazi tank, anti-aircraft cannon in his house
Sometimes you cannot make this stuff up.
A Panther tank must make a helluva snow plow.
84-year-old German sentenced after hiding WWII Nazi tank, anti-aircraft cannon in his house
A German resident in the northern town of Heikendorf was sentenced this week to a suspended prison sentence of 14 months nearly six years after authorities discovered a World War II-era arsenal in the defendant’s cellar, a collection that included a 1943 40-ton tank aptly known as the “Panther of Heikendorf” and an 88 mm anti-aircraft cannon.
The defendant, named only as Klaus-Dieter F. in German reports — as German privacy laws restrict full identification — was ordered to pay a €250,000 fine, or approximately $300,000 USD.
The defendant reportedly purchased and restored the tank in late 1970s, when it was brought to Germany after sitting untouched in an English junkyard for decades.
Although he stored it in his cellar, Klaus-Dieter F. wasn’t shy about showcasing his prized possession. According to local reports, the defendant drove it on multiple occasions, even using it as a snow plow during a particularly harsh winter.
The 84-year-old former financier had his house raided in 2015 after authorities saw some of the artifacts while conducting searches for stolen Nazi art.
In addition to the tank and flak cannon, officials found a mortar, a torpedo, 70 rifles and machine guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Most items were determined to be non-operational.
The topic of the weapons’ working order, meanwhile, instigated debates as to whether the defendant violated the country’s War Weapons Control Act. Sentencing reflected a ruling that nearly all items in the arsenal were “not war weapons within the meaning of the War Weapons Control Act, because they are no longer usable as such,” a court spokesman said.
Instead, the collection was classified as museum items.
In addition to the weapons cache, the 2015 search turned up an array of Nazi memorabilia, including busts of Hitler, Reich eagle decorations, Nazi uniforms, swastika pennants and SS rune-shaped lamps.
It took nearly nine hours for two dozen soldiers from the German army to remove the items from the house.
According to reports, numerous U.S.-based museums have expressed interest in purchasing the tank, which was ordered to be donated to a museum or licensed collector as part of the sentencing.
9. Why the Quad Alarms China
Excepts:
China will also double down on strategic and military cooperation with Russia. Moscow and Beijing have already committed to expand bilateral nuclear energy cooperation, and in a May call with Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Chinese-Russian relations “the best in history.” From China’s perspective, Russia serves as a useful military partner and, with respect to the Quad, offers a way to expand China’s field of strategic options geographically. Russia’s proximity to Japan and its continued occupation of Japan’s Northern Territories, for example, could make Tokyo think twice before joining with the United States in any future military scenarios involving China.
The continued consolidation of the Quad will also drive further increases in Chinese military spending. Even if some Chinese analysts are doubtful about the actual impact of the Quad on the hard business of warfighting, military officials will argue that they must be ready for worst-case scenarios involving the Quad. Chinese officials are wary of repeating the Soviet Union’s mistake of military overextension at the expense of the civilian economy. But if they see the correlation of forces with the United States and its allies shifting against China, Beijing’s military spending will increase accordingly, turbocharging the regional arms race in Asia.
Ultimately, the biggest question may be what all of this means for Xi, especially in the run-up to the 20th Party Congress, in the fall of 2022, where Xi hopes to secure his own long-term political dominance. There is some chance that the Quad’s progress will offer Xi’s detractors additional evidence of his inclination to strategic overreach. More likely, however, is that Xi will ultimately manage to strengthen his own hand by pointing to the Quad as proof that China’s adversaries are circling the Motherland, thereby further consolidating his hold on power.
Why the Quad Alarms China
Its Success Poses a Major Threat to Beijing’s Ambitions
By Kevin Rudd
August 6, 2021
When former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe invited officials from Australia, India, and the United States to meet in Manila in November 2017, Chinese leaders saw little reason to worry. This gathering of “the Quad,” as the grouping was known, was merely “a headline-grabbing idea,” scoffed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. “They are like the sea foam in the Pacific or Indian Ocean: they get some attention but will soon dissipate.” Beijing had some reason for such dismissiveness. The interests of the Quad’s members were, Chinese strategists assessed, too divergent to allow for real coherence. Anyway, the Quad grouping had already been tried more than a decade earlier, with little in the way of real results.
Within a few years of that November 2017 gathering, however, Beijing had started to rethink its initial dismissiveness. By March of this year, when the Quad held its first leader-level summit and issued its first leader-level communique, Chinese officials had begun to view the Quad with growing concern. Since then, Beijing has concluded that the Quad represents one of the most consequential challenges to Chinese ambitions in the years ahead.
As “strategic competition” with China has become a rare point of bipartisan consensus in Washington, Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken to warning that his country faces a “struggle over the future of the international order” with a United States determined to thwart China’s rise. Xi believes that Beijing has an opportunity between now and 2035 to make China the world’s top economic, technological, and potentially even military power. Integral to this push is persuading countries in Asia and around the world that Chinese dominance is inevitable and that, accordingly, they have no option but to start deferring to Chinese demands. That would enable China to begin rewriting the rules of the international order—and entrench its global leadership position—without ever having to fire a shot.
The Quad is uniquely problematic for China’s strategy because its aim of unifying a multilateral coalition of resistance has the potential to stiffen spines across the whole of the Indo-Pacific and possibly beyond. For Xi, the critical question is whether the Quad will evolve to be large, coherent, and comprehensive enough to effectively balance against China, thereby undermining any sense that its dominance, in Asia or globally, is inevitable. So far, Beijing has struggled to mount an effective response to the Quad challenge. Whether Chinese officials settle on a strategy that succeeds in undermining the Quad’s progress will be one of the key factors in determining the course of U.S.-Chinese competition—and the fate of China’s global ambitions more generally— in what has already become a “decade of living dangerously.”
COME TOGETHER
Abe’s first attempt to launch the Quad came in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, when Australia, India, Japan, and the United States worked together on a disaster response. Abe saw the Quad as a way to build the four countries’ capacity to work together to meet shared regional security challenges. But the response in other capitals was tentative at best.
In Washington, President George W. Bush worried that such cooperation would unhelpfully alienate China when it needed Beijing in the “war against terrorism”; within a few years, as cables subsequently released by WikiLeaks showed, the administration was privately assuring regional governments that the Quad would never meet. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly ruled out any real security cooperation with the Quad and categorized ties with Beijing as his “imperative necessity.” And in Canberra, the conservative government of John Howard worried about undermining economically beneficial ties with China and also opposed expanding existing trilateral cooperation with the United States and Japan by adding India; in June 2007, Australia formally withdrew and announced the decision in Beijing soon after. When Abe, the driving force behind the Quad, unexpectedly resigned, in September 2007 (before becoming prime minister again in 2012), his successor, Yasuo Fukuda, formally consigned the Quad to the dustbin of history.
When Abe got the band back together a decade later, strategic circumstances had changed dramatically. After years of growing U.S.-Chinese tensions, assertive Chinese behavior in the South China and East China Seas, and repeated clashes between Chinese and Indian forces along their contested land border, the strategic calculus on China had evolved in all the Quad capitals. Still, Beijing thought it had little reason to worry after the Quad reassembled, in November 2017, for a working-level meeting of diplomats on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila: they failed to issue a joint communique outlining a common strategic purpose, instead releasing uncoordinated individual statements that served mostly to highlight divergences on key concerns. Beijing remained largely indifferent even after the first meeting of the Quad’s foreign ministers, in September 2019 in New York, and even when the ministers finally agreed to work together on what would become the Quad’s mantra: to “advance a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The Quad is one of the most consequential challenges to Chinese ambitions in the years ahead.
Then, in June 2020, Chinese and Indian forces clashed along their shared border, leaving 20 Indian soldiers dead and causing New Delhi, heretofore the most reluctant member of the Quad, to reassess its strategic priorities and demonstrate new eagerness to balance Chinese power. When the Quad’s foreign ministers met again, in October 2020 in Tokyo, Beijing began to pay attention. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated bluntly that Washington’s goal was to “institutionalize” the Quad, “build out a true security framework,” and even expand the grouping at “the appropriate time” in order to “counter the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to all of us.” (Pompeo had earlier gathered New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam for what became known as the “Quad Plus” talks on trade, technology, and supply chain security.)
Following the meeting, India invited Australia to join its annual Malabar naval exercises held with the United States and Japan. This was notable because India had previously refused to allow Australian participation in the exercises for fear of antagonizing Beijing. Now, thanks in large part to the June 2020 border clash, all remaining hesitation in Delhi was gone. From Beijing’s perspective, the geopolitical wei qi board was suddenly looking less advantageous.
FROM DIVIDE TO ATTACK
At first, Chinese strategists seemed to think there was a relatively straightforward solution to the new challenge from the Quad: using a combination of carrots and sticks to drive a wedge between the economic and security interests of the Quad’s members. By stressing each state’s overwhelming dependence on the Chinese market, Beijing hoped to break the Quad apart.
Following the October 2020 Quad ministerial meeting and the subsequent Malabar naval exercises, Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, changed his tone dramatically, slamming the effort to build an “Indo-Pacific NATO” and calling the Quad’s Indo-Pacific strategy “a big underlying security risk” to the region. Beijing also selected a target against which to use a stick. Chinese strategic tradition advises “killing one to warn a hundred.” In this case, the idea was to kill one (Australia) to warn two (India and Japan).
Beijing had previously seemed intent on improving relations with Canberra. But without specific explanation, it suddenly imposed restrictions on imports of Australian coal—and then meat, cotton, wool, barley, wheat, timber, copper, sugar, lobster, and wine. As the smallest of the four Quad economies, Australia would, in Beijing’s judgment, be the most vulnerable to economic pressure (and by dint of size and geography, less threatening to Chinese security interests). At the same time, China worked to repair relations with India and Japan. Following years of efforts to improve ties with Tokyo, Beijing tried to finalize a visit by Xi to meet with Abe’s successor, Yoshihide Suga. And it sought to de-escalate tensions with India by negotiating an agreement to pull back troops from the area where clashes had occurred and working quietly to secure the release of a captured Chinese solider in order to avoid sparking a nationalist firestorm.
But Beijing had underestimated the effect of its own actions on Quad solidarity, and neither of these carrots had the intended effect. In Tokyo, aggravation over Chinese assertiveness in the East China Sea and concerns about human rights and Hong Kong had begun to throw the relationship into a deep chill. In Delhi, wariness of China had become deeply ingrained, no matter that the immediate standoff had been resolved. As Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar explained, the border clashes had produced greater “comfort levels” in Delhi with the need “to engage much more intensively on matters of national security” with Washington and other partners. The arrival of a new administration in Washington, one that would bring a renewed focus on allied, regional, and multilateral engagement and move quickly to resolve Trump-era trade and military-basing disputes with Asian allies, added a further obstacle to Beijing’s plan.
By early this year, Chinese officials had realized that neither ignoring nor splitting the Quad would work. So Beijing moved on to a third option: full-scale political attack.
The March meeting of the Quad’s leaders confirmed growing Chinese concerns about the grouping’s significance. By convening the Quad’s top leaders for the first time (albeit virtually) so early in his administration, U.S. President Joe Biden signaled that the group would be central to his strategy in the Indo-Pacific. And for the first time, the meeting produced a unified communique committing to promote “a free, open, rules-based order, rooted in international law” and to defend “democratic values, and territorial integrity.” The Quad also pledged to jointly manufacture and distribute one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses throughout the region. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to what may be Beijing’s worst fears when he declared, “Today’s summit meeting shows that the Quad has come of age. It will now remain an important pillar of stability in the region.”
Beijing has moved to full-scale political attack.
Since then, there has been an explosion in Chinese condemnations of the Quad as a “small clique” of countries trying to “start a new Cold War.” In May, Xi denounced efforts to use “multilateralism as a pretext to form small cliques or stir up ideological confrontation.” China has begun to portray itself as the champion of “genuine multilateralism” and as the leading defender of the United Nations system. Xi and other Chinese officials have started talking more frequently about “great-power responsibility” and China’s status as the “responsible great power.” Beijing is also doubling down on its efforts to develop alternate trade frameworks by promoting its membership in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), attempting to finalize the EU-Chinese investment agreement, and flirting with the idea of joining the CPTPP (the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which evolved out of the U.S.-driven Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations). Beijing’s hope is that it can isolate and marginalize the Quad by diplomatically and commercially outflanking it on the global stage.
Yet such denunciations have so far done little to stall the Quad’s progress. Biden’s June trip to Europe—where Australia and India joined a gathering of the G-7 and U.S. discussions with the EU and NATO included a heavy China component—reinforced fears that the Quad could integrate itself into a broader anti-Chinese alliance. And U.S.-South Korean interactions, including President Moon Jae-in’s May visit to Washington, reinforced fears that the Quad could bring in South Korea and become “the Quint”; although Seoul has usually been reluctant to side explicitly with the United States against China, the two countries’ joint statement agreed that they “acknowledge the importance of open, transparent, and inclusive regional multilateralism including the Quad.”
REASON TO WORRY
China has considerable reason to worry about such developments and what they could mean for its regional and global prospects. On the security front, for example, the Quad changes Beijing’s thinking about various scenarios in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea and, to a lesser degree, in the East China Sea, as China’s sense of the likelihood of Australian, Indian, or Japanese military involvement in any conflict involving the United States grows. Especially significant would be the Quad’s coordination with the United States’ Pacific Deterrence Initiative. A distributed network of land-based antiship missiles and other precision-strike capabilities stationed in allied countries in the region could hinder Beijing’s threaten Taiwan with an amphibious invasion, a blockade, or land-based missiles—although political agreement on such deployments in individual Quad countries is far from guaranteed. Another Chinese concern is that the Quad will move toward an intelligence-sharing arrangement with the Five Eyes intelligence partnership, which would allow for sensitive information on Chinese strategy and behavior to be more widely disseminated.
But the worst-case scenario from Beijing’s perspective is that the Quad could serve as the foundation of a broader global anti-Chinese coalition. If the Quad were to draw other Asian countries, the EU, and NATO into efforts to confront or undermine China’s international ambitions, it could over time swing the collective balance of power definitively against China. The Quad could also lay the groundwork for a broader allied economic, customs, and standards union, which could reshape everything from global infrastructure funding to supply chains to technology standards. The Biden White House’s senior Asia official, Kurt Campbell, has already spoken of the need to provide a “positive economic vision” for the Indo-Pacific; Beijing fears that the Quad could become the fulcrum for such an effort.
One bright spot from Beijing’s perspective is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is likely to keep its distance from the Quad, as part of its general neutrality on U.S.-Chinese tensions. Chinese officials also take comfort from continued protectionist sentiment in both Washington and Delhi, which means that neither is likely to join the CPTPP (or even RCEP) any time soon. Indeed, the gravitational pull of the Chinese economy will remain the greatest tool for weakening the Quad and subverting anti-Chinese efforts more broadly: for Beijing, China’s continued economic growth and increasing share of the global economy remain its most important strategic advantages, as they were in the past.
China will also double down on strategic and military cooperation with Russia. Moscow and Beijing have already committed to expand bilateral nuclear energy cooperation, and in a May call with Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Chinese-Russian relations “the best in history.” From China’s perspective, Russia serves as a useful military partner and, with respect to the Quad, offers a way to expand China’s field of strategic options geographically. Russia’s proximity to Japan and its continued occupation of Japan’s Northern Territories, for example, could make Tokyo think twice before joining with the United States in any future military scenarios involving China.
The continued consolidation of the Quad will also drive further increases in Chinese military spending. Even if some Chinese analysts are doubtful about the actual impact of the Quad on the hard business of warfighting, military officials will argue that they must be ready for worst-case scenarios involving the Quad. Chinese officials are wary of repeating the Soviet Union’s mistake of military overextension at the expense of the civilian economy. But if they see the correlation of forces with the United States and its allies shifting against China, Beijing’s military spending will increase accordingly, turbocharging the regional arms race in Asia.
Ultimately, the biggest question may be what all of this means for Xi, especially in the run-up to the 20th Party Congress, in the fall of 2022, where Xi hopes to secure his own long-term political dominance. There is some chance that the Quad’s progress will offer Xi’s detractors additional evidence of his inclination to strategic overreach. More likely, however, is that Xi will ultimately manage to strengthen his own hand by pointing to the Quad as proof that China’s adversaries are circling the Motherland, thereby further consolidating his hold on power.
10. Without An Enforced Honor Code, Can The Military Academies Survive?
Excerpts:
The Academy must regain the lost respect for the Honor Code and then use it as unifying framework to resist claims of unfairness asserted by critical race theorists and to build the moral reasoning skills required by leaders of character. Rejuvenating the Honor Code can be a relatively straightforward process. The focus must return to those 14 unambiguous words. All incoming candidates should be admonished that adherence to the Code is the minimum standard required for ensuring fairness and ethical behavior across all aspects of cadet life. Upon Acceptance into the Cadet Wing, the new 4th class must understand that they are being inducted into a unique society that holds honor, integrity and unity above all else. These cannot be empty words. Upper class cadets must be role models for upholding the integrity of the Code and not enablers of corrosive behaviors. Discrimination cannot be condoned within the context of the tenets of the Honor Code and will be considered tantamount to stealing a fellow cadet’s right to fair treatment.
Finally, the Academy administration must live up to their oaths and obligations as leaders of character by acknowledging past mistakes and restoring an unambiguous Honor Code. A transition period will be necessary and difficult, but the rewards are great for cadets, the Academy, and our country. Once again Academy graduates will become role models for guiding this country through these most difficult times where leaders of character are so critically needed.
Without An Enforced Honor Code, Can The Military Academies Survive? - CD Media
Honor Code USAFA
Co-authored with Doug Goodman, USAFA Class 72
“We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does”
Upon returning to USAFA for our 30th Class Reunion in 2002, we found locked doors to cadet dormitory rooms. A simple security issue we were told, but gone were the days when a $100 bill could be left unmolested on one’s desk. Later that day in a formal briefing, the Commandant of Cadets informed us that the Honor Code could not be enforced as it was in the 1970s. Doing so would decimate present classes, whose members adhered to a less rigid standard of morality and honor. And now 20 years hence the Academy is embroiled in yet another scandal with 243 cadets accused of cheating with no resolution in sight.
Academy alumni, who watched the decline in academic standards, military rigor, and ethical expectations over the past several decades, wonder if the Academy can withstand the onslaught of doctrines like Critical Race Theory (CRT) that are incompatible with training future Air Force officers. A new breed of ideological, senior officers argues a new ethos better aligns Academy values with evolving cultural realities. Once aligned, what will distinguish the Academy from other institutions involved in academic and military training? If the answer is “nothing,” then the value of the Academy’s contribution comes into question.
When asked, “What is unique about the Academy experience?” most alumni will offer a variant of the following answer: “It was
the most intense, demanding, and yet rewarding four years of my life, combining a prestigious academic curriculum, rigorous 24/7/365 military leadership training, and world-class athletic program. But these advantages paled in comparison to the bonds forged with fellow classmates, who collectively faced and overcame these challenges.” As individuals we would have failed, and only through the strength of others and the shared ethical foundation of the Honor Code were we able to succeed.
Over the past 50 years all three academies have been beset with scandals, and numerous commissions have been tasked to produce recommendations to improve the Honor Code. In the wake of the West Point Electrical Engineering scandal in 1976, former astronaut Frank Borman reported that any cheating scandal would find its beginning in a “toleration” situation. He was right. Most commissions have struggled with the justification and enforcement of the toleration clause. Surveys show that while over 60% of graduates admit violating the toleration code, less than 2% of the adjudicated violations have been for toleration. In terms of sheer numbers, lying, cheating and stealing are minor compared to rampant, unenforced toleration infractions.
The Honor Code has been the victim of moral relativism, which blurs the line between right and wrong, good and evil, and ethical and unethical behavior. Today, the Code’s 14 simple, unambiguous words must now be explained in over 20,000 words in the “Air Force Cadet Wing Honor Code Reference Handbook.” Rather than providing clarity to these 14 unambiguous words, the handbook represents a jumble of procedural constructs and newly defined terms that allow for subjective interpretation. The Honor Code as written forces cadets to abide by a shared, simple ethic, but it also constrains the Academy leadership’s ability to subjectively interpret and selectively apply it.
An effective combat unit is necessarily self-policing. It cannot knowingly tolerate behaviors of others that endanger the
unit. Behavioral psychologists note that toleration is much more insidious in high pressure, high consequence organizations, where honor and integrity are assumed or demanded by all its members. The knowledge that some members gain personal advantage through tolerated, dishonorable behaviors will eventually undermine the individual’s belief and support of a system that is perceived to be unfair. The perception of fairness is a basic human instinct and in stressful situations can override higher reasoning functions like honor and integrity. These instincts are directly coupled with innate drives toward either group cooperation and unity or toward division and conflict. A value system deemed unfair will eventually lead to wider spread dishonorable behaviors, the breakdown of unit cohesion, and ultimate collapse of the organization.
More than a decade ago Dr. Frederick Malmstrom, USAFA Class of 1964, and Dr. R. David Mullin launched a thorough investigation into the deterioration of the Honor Code. The findings delivered a grave prognosis – one that the Academy administration sadly did not heed. Fifty years ago respect for the Code ranged from 90-100% but plunged to 70% for the classes of 2007-2010. Between 2002 and 2011, 1st and 4th class cadets were given the Defining Issues Test which ranks moral reasoning on a scale that ranges from “acting purely from self-interest” to “making moral decisions based on shared ideals and principles.” An institution tasked with developing leaders of character would be expected to score well above average. Disappointingly, the test found “no significant difference in the highest level of moral
reasoning between Academy seniors and seniors at other colleges and universities. One in four members of the Class of 2010 regressed to lower levels of ethical decision making while at the Academy.
Before admission to the Academy, it is likely a large portion of cadets will be exposed to destructive social theories like CRT that are based on power structures, victimization, and unfairness. CRT is rooted in ambiguity and teaches that America is an inherently and permanently racist society steeped in oppression. Freedom, meritocracy, equality, and justice are instruments of this oppression. The system is unfair, irredeemably flawed, and requires replacement. If the current academic climate prevails at the Academy, these future leaders will be taught by professors who are sympathetic to these theories and reject the Honor Code as an antiquated instrument of dominance and oppression.
The Academy must regain the lost respect for the Honor Code and then use it as unifying framework to resist claims of unfairness asserted by critical race theorists and to build the moral reasoning skills required by leaders of character. Rejuvenating the Honor Code can be a relatively straightforward process. The focus must return to those 14 unambiguous words. All incoming candidates should be admonished that adherence to the Code is the minimum standard required for ensuring fairness and ethical behavior across all aspects of cadet life. Upon Acceptance into the Cadet Wing, the new 4th class must understand that they are being inducted into a unique society that holds honor, integrity and unity above all else. These cannot be empty words. Upper class cadets must be role models for upholding the integrity of the Code and not enablers of corrosive behaviors. Discrimination cannot be condoned within the context
of the tenets of the Honor Code and will be considered tantamount to stealing a fellow cadet’s right to fair treatment.
Finally, the Academy administration must live up to their oaths and obligations as leaders of character by acknowledging past mistakes and restoring an unambiguous Honor Code. A transition period will be necessary and difficult, but the rewards are great for cadets, the Academy, and our country. Once again Academy graduates will become role models for guiding this country through these most difficult times where leaders of character are so critically needed.
11. US Army to retain properties that were set to close in Germany, Belgium
Don't give up the high ground. Once you leave the high ground it is difficult to recover.
US Army to retain properties that were set to close in Germany, Belgium
A row of U.S. Army cargo trucks sit in front of one of the old buildings at Coleman Barracks in Mannheim, Germany, in 2017. U.S. Army in Europe and Africa said Aug. 6, 2021, that the military will keep six sites in Germany and Belgium, including Coleman Barracks, that were slated to close under a Pentagon plan to consolidate bases in Europe. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. Army in Europe and Africa said Friday that it will keep seven sites in Germany and Belgium that were slated to close under a Pentagon plan to consolidate bases in Europe.
The Army said it will hold on to the bases because of “growing requirements in the European theater.”
In Germany, the military is retaining Barton Barracks in Ansbach, Pulaski Barracks in Kaiserslautern, Coleman Barracks in Mannheim, Husterhoeh Kaserne in Pirmasens, Weilimdorf Warehouse in Stuttgart and the Amelia Earhart Center in Wiesbaden.
In Belgium, Daumerie Caserne will also be kept.
Some sites that were slated to close have since emerged as key parts of an Army effort to enhance combat capabilities in Europe, which have become a priority amid concerns about a more assertive Russia.
“Through this assessment it was found the sites should be retained as the requirements in growth are outpacing facility construction and renovation,” a USAREUR-AF statement said.
Coleman Barracks in Mannheim has been especially important to Army efforts, serving as a hub for more than 800 armored vehicles and associated pieces of equipment.
Keeping Coleman Barracks will provide easier access for regionally allocated forces because of its proximity to the autobahn, as well as to rail and barge loading facilities, the USAREUR-AF statement said.
The Amelia Earhart Center in Wiesbaden, Germany, is one of six sites that U.S. Army in Europe and Africa said the military will keep that were slated to close under a Pentagon plan to consolidate bases in Europe. (Wikimedia Commons)
Barton Barracks in Ansbach also is seen as “optimal for future growth,” the Army said.
Retaining Pulaski Barracks in Kaiserslautern will mean preserving 76,000 square feet of administrative space to free capacity to support operations for personnel and equipment arriving into Europe, the Army said.
Meanwhile, Husterhohe Kaserne in Pirmasens will be transferred to U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Africa, the Army said.
The decision to keep the various sites is separate from a plan to close scores of other bases in Germany as part of former President Donald Trump’s push to cut troop numbers in the country by about 12,000.
In that plan, numerous bases were slated to close, including U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart.
President Joe Biden has put a hold on those plans while the Pentagon conducts a wide-ranging review of its force posture around the world.
In 2015, the Defense Department announced its European Infrastructure Consolidation initiative, which called for the closure of numerous sites across Europe in a move that was expected to save around $500 million annually once implemented.
The decision came after years of reductions to the bases and forces in Europe as part of the military’s long post-Cold War drawdown on the Continent.
However, by 2017, U.S. European Command was having second thoughts about some aspects of the plan in light of a more volatile security environment in Europe.
By 2018, the Pentagon had issued its own directive to the Army to examine its basing plan in Europe.
John Vandiver
12. Critical Success Factors to Operational Gender Mainstreaming
We've "come a long way, baby" (yes that is an attempt at humor (and you need to be old enough to remember that advertisement that used that line) but I also mean it with respect. We are moving forward, though I expect to read the usual criticism from the usual voices about this).
Excerpts:
Gender mainstreaming is achieved when policies and programming integrate gender considerations into their design and execution. The true measure of success is the survivability of gender initiatives and planning considerations independent of the gender advisor. As one planner reflected to me, “you have to bake it in, not sprinkle it on” (an effective analogy despite its gender nuances!). Incorporating gender considerations into planning has become normalised when others advocate for these issues on your behalf. The focus shifts from having to ‘make the case’ for gender, to others starting to own it.
This was evident during my deployment when the (male) Operational Plans Chief, unprompted, argued a gender based risk to a mission and convinced the higher headquarters it was worthy of their attention; when the Fires Advisor back briefed me on a gender consideration he had identified on a target pack; and when the CJ5 discussed gender as one of the four supporting concepts to the campaign to defeat Da’esh with the head of operations in the Iraqi Security Force.
But the most telling evidence was at the end of the tour, when the three-star Commanding General delivered his Operational Assessment to the Combined Forces Commander and National Chiefs of Joint Operations. In his opening address he stated, “the inability or unwillingness to include women in peace and security processes is an impediment to addressing the root causes of instability”. This demonstrated that gender initiatives had committed leadership support; were delivered as part of the broader operational mandate (not as a standalone topic); were owned by the staff, not the gender advisor; and, most importantly, were operationally relevant.
Critical Success Factors to Operational Gender Mainstreaming
Reading Time: 5 minutes
In 2020, I deployed as the gender advisor for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), as part of Australia’s ongoing commitment to the global coalition to defeat Da’esh in Iraq and Syria. Embedded in the Strategy and Planning branch (CJ5), I worked with the intelligence, information operations and civil affairs teams to understand how gender roles and responsibilities within Iraqi culture affected our operations. Employing a gender perspective during this campaign enabled the operation to identify and address gender related vulnerabilities, threats, and opportunities.
Using this operation as a case study, this article explores what enabled the successful integration of gender perspectives into operations. But to get there, you must know what success looks like.
Gender mainstreaming is achieved when policies and programming integrate gender considerations into their design and execution. The true measure of success is the survivability of gender initiatives and planning considerations independent of the gender advisor. As one planner reflected to me, “you have to bake it in, not sprinkle it on” (an effective analogy despite its gender nuances!). Incorporating gender considerations into planning has become normalised when others advocate for these issues on your behalf. The focus shifts from having to ‘make the case’ for gender, to others starting to own it.
This was evident during my deployment when the (male) Operational Plans Chief, unprompted, argued a gender based risk to a mission and convinced the higher headquarters it was worthy of their attention; when the Fires Advisor back briefed me on a gender consideration he had identified on a target pack; and when the CJ5 discussed gender as one of the four supporting concepts to the campaign to defeat Da’esh with the head of operations in the Iraqi Security Force.
But the most telling evidence was at the end of the tour, when the three-star Commanding General delivered his Operational Assessment to the Combined Forces Commander and National Chiefs of Joint Operations. In his opening address he stated, “the inability or unwillingness to include women in peace and security processes is an impediment to addressing the root causes of instability”. This demonstrated that gender initiatives had committed leadership support; were delivered as part of the broader operational mandate (not as a standalone topic); were owned by the staff, not the gender advisor; and, most importantly, were operationally relevant.
While seemingly innocuous (anyone can write a good set of talking points!), I think this quote demonstrated how ingrained gender perspectives had become (gender had been included in this speech by the Plans staff instinctively while the gender advisor was in isolation due to COVID). Gender had become normalised as part of operational considerations. The success of integrating the OIR gender advisor within a core staff function, reinforced with informed leaders committed to gender concepts and empowered staff demonstrates how gender mainstreaming can be achieved in an operation level headquarters.
So how did we get there?
It’s not me, it’s you – empowerment and ownership
Focusing on empowering others to help mainstream gender is important for multiple reasons. Firstly, as the (often) lone gender advisor within a mission, you simply cannot span the breadth of all headquarters planning yourself. Having others working on your behalf enables you to influence more broadly.
Secondly, by empowering others you give staff ownership of the outcomes, thereby building a sense of responsibility. In essence, they start to care about it. The mainstreaming approach taken in OIR was designed on entrustment and delegation – enabling staff to understand and apply gender perspectives and own the gender outcomes as they applied to their work area. This requires discussing gender perspectives in a way that is useful and digestible.
Some of our biggest gender achievements were not gender advisor led, but the information operations, civil-military, or strategic communications teams taking carriage of gender considerations within their portfolio, with the gender advisor in support. Once staff branches were empowered, results spoke for themselves, and it was commonplace for gender issues to be discussed in operational forums.
It took a conscious effort for the gender advisor’s work to remain largely indistinguishable from routine operational effort, rather than dedicated gender advisor product. During my deployment, I delivered only two gender focused documents and only one gender brief.
It wasn’t that gender never featured during operational planning or Commander’s Updates, rather the gender inputs were included and briefed by other staff functions. The point here was gender was not to be seen as a standalone concept that was briefed and then just as quickly forgotten. Delivering gender in this way made it more powerful because it was part of the total force.
Leadership
The level of leadership support provided to gender advisors is the most critical factor to their success. Identifying and influencing the appropriate stakeholders who facilitate outcomes and enable tangible operational contributions is key.
The sponsorship, advocacy and foresight of the CJ5 in a three-star headquarters led to identifying and delivering a gender-sensitive and gender-responsive operational plan within the higher headquarters and partner forces at the most senior levels.
Leadership isn’t just about providing direct support, but also shaping the environment; engagement sets the tone for the staff to follow. Leaders expected their staff to consider gender in their work and it created a ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ approach at the practitioner level.
The connection between Gender Advisors and Operational Planners
The ability to mainstream gender relies on a complementary relationship between the gender advisor and operational planners, each bringing their own expertise in their specialised areas.
Often described as the influencer and integrator of an operational headquarters, the CJ5 Strategy and Planning branch is responsible for visualising the future and designing operational efforts. Therefore, the gender advisor is linked with all staff directorates so gender can be incorporated at all stages of planning and execution. The gender advisor must be fluent in operational planning processes, systems, and frameworks to bring the two worlds together.
In the same way gender subject matter experts bring an in-depth understanding of the complexities of gender dynamics in the operating environment, gender mainstreaming is also reliant on the expert knowledge of operations staff. The connection between these areas creates a synergy that makes gender theory operationally relevant and enables gender to be truly mainstreamed.
Relevance
When we discuss Gender, Peace and Security in an operational environment, we often hear the term ‘contribute to operational effectiveness and mission success’. But what does this actually mean?
Military gender advisors need to provide tangible relevance that demonstrates what gender brings to a commander charged with delivering operational effects and end states. As a Gender Advisor you need to be able to draw threads through the operational plan to illustrate how the Commander can leverage gender to contribute to those outcomes, or conversely the risk of not doing it.
Applying a gender perspective to operations needs an ability to demonstrate effects to create purpose and consequence, in a way staff can easily grasp it. Gender dynamics are inherently complex; the skill is being able to take gender concepts and translate them to be applicable. More than generalisations, you need to reframe it to deliver the ‘so what’ factor in a way staff can easily grasp.
If commanders and staff are not able to see how gender directly links to the mission, it will prove difficult to maintain support. It’s important to be able to pragmatically situate gender amongst the myriad of challenges within the operating environment.
About the Author: Wing Commander Jade Deveney was the Gender Advisor Plans on Operation Inherent Resolve.
Cover Image Credit: CPL Brandon Grey, Defence Image Gallery
13. The United States is determined to dominate the semiconductor tech war
Excerpts:
The United States seeks domination at a time when post-pandemic recovery is invisible, and electrification and digitalisation are unfolding rapidly. Semiconductors will be the main source of this drive as the United States reinforces its move to halt the flow of chip technology to China. Regardless of the friction between South Korea and Japan, the US policy to achieve leadership in chips will be maintained.
The United States is determined to dominate the semiconductor tech war
Author: June Park, George Washington University
The United States is home to ‘state-of-the-art’ integrated device manufacturers and fabless chip firms, but the global chip shortage during COVID-19 has revealed weaknesses in US chip manufacturing capacities at foundries. The Biden administration’s assessment of global semiconductor supply chains acknowledges that while the United States leads in system-on-chip designs, it severely lacks foundries to boost chip production in scale to mitigate the risk of future chip shortages.
While South Korea and Taiwan are major players in the global chip market, their shares of semiconductor and advanced chip production facilities are only a fraction of the industry. The United States still leads advanced chip design capability in areas where market revenue is greatest — integrated device manufacturers, fabless firms and system chips as final product. Global leadership in semiconductors requires an assessment of the entire ecosystem of chip production from research to design and manufacturing, as well as assessment of production capacity by chip type.
Of the US$1.5 trillion semiconductor industry, the United States dominates the integrated device manufacturer (15 per cent), fabless (25 per cent) and microprocessor (17 per cent) sectors. Meanwhile, South Korea and Taiwan lead the foundry (13 per cent) and memory chip (7 per cent) sectors to a lesser extent. The United States maintains the lead in microchips through innovation and is now seeking leadership in both the system and memory chip markets. The United States aims to increase its capacity for mass production by acquiring foundries to consolidate complete supply chains domestically, despite an enduring reluctance on government-led industrial policy.
US–China frictions and the Japan–South Korea chip war show that the ultimate goal of the United States is to amalgamate East Asian allies into a US-driven global supply chain. Japan’s export curbs against South Korea on three critical materials — fluorinated polyimides, hydrogen fluoride and photoresist — for semiconductor production since July 2019 amid the Huawei ban has opened the South Korean semiconductor materials market wide open for US firms. The curbs prompted South Korea to set up facilities to domestically produce fluorinated polyimides and diversify import sources for hydrogen fluoride, lowering the dependency ratio on Japan to 10 per cent.
The South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy managed to induce US$28 million for a new plant in Cheonan from US investor DuPont to produce photoresist, the curbed element that South Korea had difficulty in transitioning to domestic production. Several Japanese exporters of the three elements have diminished or moved production to South Korea. Japan’s export controls have revealed a source of risk for South Korean chip producers. This has led to incentivised efforts toward self-sufficiency or alternative sources. Amid the paralysis of the WTO Appellate Body, South Korea continues to seek recourse against Japan under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994.
The United States seeks domination at a time when post-pandemic recovery is invisible, and electrification and digitalisation are unfolding rapidly. Semiconductors will be the main source of this drive as the United States reinforces its move to halt the flow of chip technology to China. Regardless of the friction between South Korea and Japan, the US policy to achieve leadership in chips will be maintained.
June Park is a political economist and an East Asia Voices Initiative Fellow at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.
14. What Will Decrease Training Deaths? More Training, GAO Says
It may seem counterintuitive to non- military personnel but I concur with the GAO.
I will never forget a story about the late BG Frank Toney when he was the commander of the Special Forces Command.
I was a battalion commander in Okinawa and I was TDY somewhere in Asia with one of our companies. I got a call from one of my commanders because one of our teams training in Hawaii had an accident in which one SF NCO was shot on the range during a night live fire training event (fortunately it was not life threatening). AfterI calls to my bosses in Hawaii and Fort Lewis I had to inform BG Toney (who was my senior rater!) and inform him of the incident. He had only two questions for me. First how was the NCO was (even though I led with his injuries were not life threatening he wanted to know the details). The second was what is the ODA going to do tomorrow? I had anticipated this question (knowing BG Toney and a little bit about how he thought and his philosophies on training and readiness and from mentorship by my group commander) and had already discussed it with the group, company, and detachment commanders. I told him they were going back on the range to continue training. He said that is right and he explained it was imperative the team did not become gun shy about live fire training just because they shot one of their own! He gave the "when you fall off your horse you have to get right back on the horse" analogy. But he was right of course. Had that team not continued training it would have lost confidence in its abilities. They continued to train to meet the standards and they retained their confidence (though they had to take a lot of harassment from their fellow ODAs!)
Excerpts:
The Defense Department generally works to implement most of GAO’s recommendations to improve personnel readiness and safety—and a regimented training program with performance-based criteria is high up on the list of GAO’s recommendations to mitigate and prevent training accidents. In their responses to the [[MONTH] report, Army and Marine Corps officials “concurred” with those specific recommendations and added that both branches already have formalized regulations for vehicle training but would “continue to review and refine training standards.”
If those specific recommendations are being implemented as GAO completes its most recent report on training accidents, Russell is confident that interviews with units will reflect some changes in training.
“We’ll just have to see; the data may or may not reflect it. But certainly if it’s out there while we’re talking to units and understanding the current environment hopefully that will come up,” he said.
What Will Decrease Training Deaths? More Training, GAO Says
A recent increase in non-combat vehicle deaths could be reversed with more, better training, GAO’s newest report says.
A number of high-profile training mishap deaths in recent years drew attention to the Defense Department’s resurging problem with non-combat fatalities. The number of deaths in training vehicle accidents has more than doubled over the last two reported years, after hitting a 10-year low of seven in 2017.
After the Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicle accident that killed nine in July 2020 and the May 2019 death of Lt. Hugh Conor McDowell in a vehicle rollover, Congress requested that the Government Accountability Office report on these specific training deaths. Among the GAO’s findings, presented in a recent report, was that no “prescribed training regimen” is currently being implemented.
“You see very consistent causes—driver inattentiveness, supervision lapses, and the lack of training,” said Cary Russell, director of GAO’s Defense Capabilities and Management office. “When you look at what we’ve reported, there’s a lot of consistency in terms of application of safety practices and the lack of a good training program.”
The lack of an implemented training regimen means that building up the skills and knowledge needed to safely drive combat vehicles largely comes down to whatever training and experience each individual service member can luck into.
“It’s just catch-as-catch-can when it comes to the training that’s afforded to that driver and so as a result any given driver, their experience, their capabilities and proficiency is going to vary,” Russell said. “It can be very difficult sometimes to know how well a driver is suited for an intense training environment when you’re going to be doing a lot of stuff at night or in adverse environmental conditions.”
National Guard troops in particular, obtain less training than GAO believes may be necessary to safely operate combat vehicles—a problem that seemed likely to worsen as Congress grappled with how to refund the Guard the $520.9 million spent on sending Guard troops to Washington, D.C., following the Jan. 6 insurrection. Before President Joe Biden signed a funding bill last Friday, it looked like a significant portion of training for Guard troops would face funding cuts.
“If you cancel an annual training period, and two individual training periods the month of August and September for Guardsmen, you have in essence cut almost 50% of their training days that prepare them to deploy domestically and internationally in response to whatever missions that the president or the governor has set up for us,” Indiana Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Roger Lyles said during a media call on July 16.
And even without training cuts, Guard troops are facing unprecedented demands on their limited time as wildfire and hurricane seasons continue to worsen.
“There’s a potential for a real impact on their readiness,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said shortly after Hokanson’s memo was released. “We’ve got wildfires and hurricane seasons coming...It’s already shaping up to be a busy summer for them,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said last week as the Pentagon scrambled for Guard funds. “They have other demands on their time and their talents and their capabilities, so a degradation to their readiness and their ability to train is not good for the country and not good for the fellow citizens that they serve.”
Earlier this year, two Guard helicopter crashes in close succession killed six service members. Russell said GAO is now working on a report that will look specifically at Air and Army National Guard aviation safety factors, as requested by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as a result of the crashes.
The Defense Department generally works to implement most of GAO’s recommendations to improve personnel readiness and safety—and a regimented training program with performance-based criteria is high up on the list of GAO’s recommendations to mitigate and prevent training accidents. In their responses to the [[MONTH] report, Army and Marine Corps officials “concurred” with those specific recommendations and added that both branches already have formalized regulations for vehicle training but would “continue to review and refine training standards.”
If those specific recommendations are being implemented as GAO completes its most recent report on training accidents, Russell is confident that interviews with units will reflect some changes in training.
“We’ll just have to see; the data may or may not reflect it. But certainly if it’s out there while we’re talking to units and understanding the current environment hopefully that will come up,” he said.
15. China’s Hubris Is a Threat to Its Economic Future
As Bonaparte said: 'never get in the way of your enemy when he is making a mistake." Will Chinese hubris damage its economic power?
China’s Hubris Is a Threat to Its Economic Future
Beijing’s habit of stamping on private enterprise is a sign of overconfidence that could end up undermining growth.
August 7, 2021, 8:00 PM EDT
China’s increasingly muscular interventions in the private economy have wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off share prices and sent investors scurrying to understand where the next targets will be. The country’s leadership has embarked on a risky top-down approach to economic policy-making that signals a departure from decades of market opening and engagement with the world, according to an Atlantic Council briefing paper released late last month by Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow with the Washington-based think tank.
The aim of Beijing’s government-directed and supported industrial policies is to create a more self-sufficient, more egalitarian country that will continue to grow rapidly, writes Montana-based Roberts, who is the author of “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism,” published last year. Before returning to the U.S. in 2018, Roberts spent more than two decades as the Beijing-based bureau chief for Bloomberg Businessweek, during which he reported from all of China's provinces and regions. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Matthew Brooker: Beijing to Montana is quite a change. Do you miss being in the thick of things in China?
Dexter Roberts: It was a huge shift. The population of Montana at the last census just barely passed 1 million people, and this is a state which is larger than Germany. By contrast, just the district that I was living in in Beijing, which was Chaoyang, was 3.5 million people. There’s a certain value in stepping aside from the day-to-day grind. I needed to take a step back and try to look at what did I learn, how did China change, how did I change, and I wasn’t doing that very well in China. I miss Beijing all the time. I miss the action and the excitement of being in a very big city and certainly in China in particular, which we all know is unlike anywhere else in the world.
MB: How has your thinking about China changed since you left the country, now you’ve got that distance and that perspective?
DR: An equally important question is how has China changed. In many ways, it has changed dramatically. Friends there watch with consternation, for example, the worsening relationship between the foreign press and the authorities. I came to China in 1995 and for many years there was an often symbiotic relationship. In the years after China joined the World Trade Organization there was a real sense among Chinese officials that it was worth their while to have a decent relationship with someone like myself. They wouldn’t always be happy with the stories that I wrote but they did feel at a time of economic opening that a business journalist could play a role in introducing China to the world. I had friends in the foreign ministry, and when I look at what’s happening right now it seems almost inconceivable.
MB: Where’s this all ultimately heading?
DR: I’m really worried that it’s on a path where the relationship will become worse and worse. People I knew were hopeful that things could improve with a new president coming into office. The thing I would remind them is: We’re only having an election in one of these two countries, and the president and party secretary of China has made it very clear that he has no intention of leaving anytime soon. We cannot ignore that a significant driver of tensions in the relationship is coming straight from Beijing. There is a sense among the leadership that their time on the world stage has come and conversely the United States’ time is passing. Xi Jinping said earlier this year the world is in chaos and time and momentum are on China’s side. He and senior officials in the Communist Party are extremely ambitious and intent on basically usurping the role of the United States across multiple dimensions globally. And despite real problems here in the U.S., you don’t have any officials here who are willing to let that happen easily. So I think we can expect things to continue to get worse. I hate to say that. I spent most of my life in China, I’ve lived longer in Beijing than anywhere else in the world, and certainly devoted my life to trying to understand China. I say that with sadness, but I’m not very optimistic at all.
MB: Are there any upsides to Xi Jinping’s strategy? Your book is very focused on rural migrant workers and how they’ve been relatively short-changed in China’s rise. Won’t Xi’s push for a more equitable society at least be good for them?
DR: It’s admirable that they have focused so much on trying to create a more equitable society. I wonder about some of the policies. To cite one example, in the battle against extreme poverty, where they’ve declared victory, a large part involves relocation of populations from areas that are perceived as not economically viable, not places where people can ever make a decent living. But you have to look where they go. I spent a bit of time going into these resettlement communities, and often it’s not at all clear what the future jobs will be. One I visited on the outskirts of Chongqing was basically taking all these middle-aged to elderly farmers and jam-packing them into high rises, and every job they had was related to helping themselves — so like, running the local store, being the superintendent of the building. Really what was driving the economy was money from the government. So my concern is, if there comes a day when China has to make hard choices about what it spends its money on — and I think that day is coming, for a whole lot of reasons — will they have the money to support these big resettlement communities?
The other thing is policies not taken, which I focus on in the book. We’ve been hearing about the necessity of household registration, or hukou, reform for years now. They’ve made various piecemeal reforms but since at least 2013 they’ve made it very clear that they plan to be on a path toward moving radically away from the household registration system and the reality is they’ve done very little.
MB: I was just looking through the five-year plan and there’s a commitment to hukou reform there. So we shouldn’t take that at face value?
DR: I find it very difficult. Similarly with reforms to rural land policies so that farmers and migrant workers can monetize their plot of land — rent it or sell it at market value. They’ve been talking about that for an equally long time and they have made, to my mind, very little progress. So I take it with an enormous grain of salt.
MB: Sun Dawu, the rural entrepreneur and government critic who you mentioned in your Atlantic Council briefing, just got 18 years in prison. China appears to be less tolerant of dissent than at any other time in the reform era. There is a school of thought that this is a paradoxical sign of insecurity on the part of the government. Do you share that view?
DR: I think it’s both. There is clearly greater confidence, if you look at the “wolf warrior” approach of the diplomats and so on. Part of it is this growing pride that China’s time has come and trying to be more forceful in dealing with the world. Because of that feeling that they don’t have to answer to the rest of the world as much, they are more willing to do things like put an entrepreneur in prison for 18 years — and if a U.S. official brings it up, say something like, this is none of your business, stop meddling. Whereas they may not have done that before.
On the other hand, I do think there is insecurity. There is a sense that there’s a danger in allowing civil society to flourish, there is a danger in allowing people to organize and try to do things for society out of the Communist Party system. So in a contradictory fashion you can see both this nervousness and the reverse.
MB: Can they achieve their ambition of surpassing the U.S.?
DR: They have done very well and the economy may overtake the U.S., but who is to say they stay in that position? There are tremendously serious stresses in the economy that will be very difficult to deal with. There’s the demographic challenge — there will be four working people for every retiree in not too many years. They seem to be unwilling to do certain reforms. There’s been a real drying up of the productivity that’s been driving the economy.
MB: Do you see signs of hubris?
DR: There is certainly hubris. I think they are overly confident about what they can do. There seems to be this idea that they can continue to grow fast even as they stamp on private enterprise and don’t carry out reform. There’s this sense that things have gone badly awry. Xi sees the inequality and looks at people like Jack Ma making all this money and he doesn’t like it. He has this idea that he can really rein in the private sector and continue to grow the economy while redistributing wealth. My feeling is that economies don’t work that way.
The hubris is from the top. Look at Xiongan [the new city being developed near Beijing that is intended to take over some functions from the capital]. There’s no obvious reason it should be there.
MB: What does the future hold for you personally? Do you plan to write more books on China? Will you go back?
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DR: Yes and yes. I am actually starting to put together what I hope will be a plan for my next book. When I left three years ago I was quite certain I was going to be back within 12 months. But then obviously we had the pandemic. Now we don’t really know when China is going to reopen to the world — probably at least not until the party congress next year. Also, the place has changed and attitudes toward the rest of the world and people from outside China have changed a lot too. So I just don’t know how soon that will be.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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16. Great Power Clashes Will Reshape America
Is R.E.M. singing "It's the end of the world as we know it?" This is quite a critique. If it is the "end" what does come next?
Excerpts:
But if the U.S.-dominated unipolar world is commonly believed to be over, there is no consensus about what sort of multipolar world order has come into being or is in the process of being created. Indeed, there have been numerous competing visions expressed about what the multipolar world should be or what it has become.
...
So, what is the current multipolar disorder heading toward? Is it headed toward a multipolar world in which a few (but more than two) great powers cooperate with one another to regulate conflict among the smaller powers? Or is it headed toward a multipolar world marked by competition among three or more great powers that allows freer rein to regional powers and their rivals? Perhaps it is evolving into a bipolar Sino-American world in which Washington and Beijing compete for influence over all other countries throughout the world (much like occurred during the Soviet-American Cold War). Maybe it will become a more cooperative Sino-American bipolar world based on a U.S.-China agreement to divide the world into spheres of influence. It could possibly become a unipolar world dominated by an even more powerful China, which other countries have failed to resist. Or perhaps the multipolar disorder is headed toward a renewed U.S.-dominated unipolar despite the seeming demise of such a system in recent years.
All of these possibilities could be in play during the next few years or even the next few decades. Only one thing seems certain: even when one system appears to be predominant, others will be working assiduously to undermine it.
Great Power Clashes Will Reshape America
The end of the U.S.-dominated unipolar world order is something that has been predicted—even advocated—for many years.
At the end of the bipolar Cold War era that was dominated by the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, many people either hoped or feared that a new unipolar world dominated by the United States had come into being. From the beginning of the twenty-first century, though, the ability of the United States to act as a unipole was challenged by several factors. These included:
America’s inability to prevail in its large-scale, long-lasting military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
America’s ineffective response to the Russian seizure of territory from Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.
America ceding the initiative to other external powers (Russia, Iran, and/or Turkey) in the ongoing post-2011 conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen.
America’s inability to prevent the rise of an increasingly powerful China from asserting vast maritime claims to the South China Sea and the East China Sea as well as increasing Beijing’s influence worldwide through its Belt and Road Initiative.
Washington’s unsuccessful attempts at rapprochements with American adversaries (as Donald Trump in particular attempted with North Korea and even Iran).
Washington’s unsuccessful attempts at dissuading America’s allies from cooperating with those adversaries. The 2021 U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and announcement that the United States would terminate its combat role in Iraq by the end of 2021 are just the latest signs that the U.S.-dominated unipolar world, if it ever really existed, is ending.
The end of the U.S.-dominated unipolar world order, though, is something that has been predicted—even advocated—for many years. It has become commonplace for officials and commentators in both America’s allies as well as its adversaries to describe American power as declining while that of others (especially their own) as rising. Indeed, pronouncements about the end of the U.S.-dominated unipolar world order and its replacement with a multipolar world are frequently made in the United States. The main distinction among these pronouncements is whether those making them see this as something positive or negative.
But if the U.S.-dominated unipolar world is commonly believed to be over, there is no consensus about what sort of multipolar world order has come into being or is in the process of being created. Indeed, there have been numerous competing visions expressed about what the multipolar world should be or what it has become.
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s view of a multipolar world is one that not only replaces a U.S.-dominated unipolar world but also as one which is regulated by the great powers—including Russia—which respect one another’s spheres of influence. In other words, for Putin, the multipolar world is one in which states that are not great powers are subject to agreements made by those that are.
While Chinese officials have also called for a multipolar world to replace the U.S.-dominated unipolar one, the vision of the future increasingly being expressed in China appears to be one that is China-centric, if not completely unipolar. Other observers foresee a bipolar Sino-American world order arising. Fearing that this would make Russia irrelevant, some Russian observers have called for a third pole balancing between the United States and China to be led (not surprisingly) by Russia.
For many less-than-great powers, the appeal of a multipolar world is that it allows them greater opportunity than a unipolar one to derive benefits by playing competing great powers against each other. For some, the prospect of no global great power being willing or able to dominate their region presents the possibility that they themselves could become regional hegemons, while others see this as necessitating adopting policies—including enlisting support from external great powers—to ensure that a neighboring state does not acquire this role.
With so many different states pursuing so many different visions, what now exists is not so much a multipolar world order but a multipolar world disorder instead. This, however, is not abnormal. Indeed, past world order systems—whether multipolar, bipolar, or unipolar—have all been inherently unstable since there have always been actors within them that seek to transform them to their advantage. World order systems reflect the balance of power among states at a given time. But this balance can change through one or more states becoming stronger economically and militarily vis-à-vis the incumbent great power(s).
Sometimes, the existing world system has changed dramatically either through great-power conflicts—such as World War I and World War II—or internal collapse in one of the great powers such as occurred in the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. By contrast, the current change from a U.S.-dominated unipolar world to a multipolar one has occurred more gradually through others taking advantage of numerous American policy miscalculations over the course of many years. But even when the world order system does not change, the possibility of its doing so is ever-present.
So, what is the current multipolar disorder heading toward? Is it headed toward a multipolar world in which a few (but more than two) great powers cooperate with one another to regulate conflict among the smaller powers? Or is it headed toward a multipolar world marked by competition among three or more great powers that allows freer rein to regional powers and their rivals? Perhaps it is evolving into a bipolar Sino-American world in which Washington and Beijing compete for influence over all other countries throughout the world (much like occurred during the Soviet-American Cold War). Maybe it will become a more cooperative Sino-American bipolar world based on a U.S.-China agreement to divide the world into spheres of influence. It could possibly become a unipolar world dominated by an even more powerful China, which other countries have failed to resist. Or perhaps the multipolar disorder is headed toward a renewed U.S.-dominated unipolar despite the seeming demise of such a system in recent years.
All of these possibilities could be in play during the next few years or even the next few decades. Only one thing seems certain: even when one system appears to be predominant, others will be working assiduously to undermine it.
Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Image: Reuters
17. The Plight of the Foreign Policy Realists
Quite a critique.
I think the right answer (and Grand Strategy and Statecraft) lie somewhere between the two poles represented in each of these articles.
Conclusion:
Most importantly, it demonstrates that time and history are not directional but circular. They can be turned back by sheer force. It’s understandable why this is a hard pill to swallow for a significant number of people who are either old-school die-hard liberal ideologues or those who grew up shaped by the post–Cold War “end of history” era. But the reason evangelical liberal internationalism fails repeatedly is not because of lack of trying, but that it is unnatural and is primarily dependent on hegemonic will and capability, and hegemony is unsustainable. Restrainers, different though their political backgrounds and underpinnings might be, understand that key assumption. Ideas won’t matter if there is no America to preserve anyway. Ideas won’t matter if the reigning hegemon is overstretched and collapses like the British Empire or the Soviet Union. The instinct of a realist and a restrainer is to avoid a scenario that might result if one keeps following failed prescriptions of the last quarter-century. And that is why restraint is on the rise.
The Plight of the Foreign Policy Realists
Ideas won’t matter if there is no America to preserve anyway.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies recently published an article titled Misplaced Restraint: The Quincy Coalition Versus Liberal Internationalism in Survival, its house journal. The article’s authors, Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, fire broadsides at what they call a profoundly deficient “understanding of the wellsprings of American success in the twentieth century,” by a group of domestic libertarians, foreign policy realists, and anti-imperialist left, under the banner of “restraint.” This group of restrainers is changing the conversation because they are “haunted by the Iraq war” and their “unifying objective is avoiding another Iraq War and curtailing American military interventions,” according to Deudney and Ikenberry. The authors argue that the restrainers are “united in opposing the project of American liberal internationalism, manifest in a system of rules, institutions and partnerships that the United States has built and led over the last seventy years.”
The most scathing parts of the article focus on foreign policy realists. The authors claim that after the Cold War realism seemed obsolete as great-power competition seemed to be over, so “American realists soon found a new role as critics,” and opposed NATO expansion and humanitarian missions, as well as nation-building adventures in Mesopotamia, arguing that American interests are not at stake. This is a bizarre claim. Realists did not seek to “find new roles” as they knew this post–Cold War liberal democratic peace was a political abnormality and would not last. It was utopian to think that history ended, and prominent realists including Robert Kaplan, Kenneth Waltz, and John Mearsheimer argued at that time against both sociological complacency and imperial overstretch, which seems prescient and ahead of time if reflected upon now.
Realists argued that left unchecked, NATO expansion would lead to an increasingly revanchist Russia and prove to be unsustainable. Its sustainability would be questioned as more and more small states sought out NATO’s umbrella to save them from increasing Russian revanchism, which would prove to be a burden on the alliance. No one even remotely sensible can argue that having Montenegro in NATO does anything for burden-sharing. NATO was supposed to be an alliance of equals based on a similar threat, not a protection racket or club to defend small satellites in faraway regions, or a club to spread liberal institutions. Hungary and Poland did not turn liberal-democratic, and Ukraine and Georgia’s fates were always sealed due to geography, a variable that liberals consistently seem to underestimate in their analysis. The United States or Western Europe (especially France and Germany) will not go to war with a nuclear power, nor should they want to be dragged to war by smaller powers on the periphery.
Likewise, realist aversion to social engineering and nation-building from Somalia to the Balkans, to Iraq and the greater Middle East were proved to be right over time. Intervention and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in trillions of wasted tax dollars as well as thousands of lives lost and maimed. Intervention and proxy war in Libya and Syria turned the region into slave markets and human-trafficking hubs wrecked the stable buffer zones between Europe and Africa, resulted in one of the largest mass migrations in the history of humanity, led to the rise of far-right tendencies in Europe predicated on a fear of irreversible demographic change, and possibly even proved to be a catalyst to Brexit.
The authors bafflingly argue that the entire Iraq war fiasco was essentially a realist project trying to preserve primacy in the Middle East. This is prima facie absurd and the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. The post–Cold War liberal internationalism was never just about Iraq. Years ago, Stephen Walt wrote about how neoconservatives such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were qualitatively no different than liberals like Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton, and that neoconservatives are essentially liberals on steroids. Both of those groups shared an internationalist instinct to spread democracy, and shape societies, by coercion and force if necessary. Likewise, Patrick Porter previously wrote about how the Iraq war was a liberal war.
British prime minister Tony Blair’s speech in Chicago on Kosovo, force and international criteria for intervention was instrumental behind British bandwagoning with this American project of democracy promotion, which in turn was to shape feudal societies and spread freedom and democracy, and most importantly, to roll back authoritarianism and defeat dictatorships. Arguing for “a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values,” Blaire argued for the continuation of a Clintonian Democratic Peace Theory. “We will need a new Marshall plan for Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia too if it turns to democracy. We need a new framework for the security of the whole of the Balkans,” Blair said. It was a call for a relentless global crusade based on values, without regard to history or geography, and without the support of a significant portion of the British (or American) population.
Recently, Samantha Power highlighted in her book The Education of an Idealist, how she, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton overruled then-senator Joe Biden and former Defense Department Secretary Bob Gates to persuade then-President Barack Obama to intervene in Libya. The declared cause behind the intervention was not to increase British, French, or American geopolitical influence but to “save civilians.” The Washington Post’s collection of internal documents, known as The Afghanistan Papers, showed that for a significant majority of the leadership, the Afghanistan war was a confusing mess between warfighting, and nation-building and women’s rights, an instinct evident in the outbursts and lamentations of Mark Milley, America’s top military officer, and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, as well as prominent liberal think tanks.
Whatever their moral flaws might be, realists are neither hyper-emotional about human rights nor are they utopian about social engineering on a mass scale, and to try and pin the War on Terror on anyone other than liberals and neoconservatives is an act of intellectual skulduggery, that tests the limits of an average reader’s intelligence.
The authors conflate and subsequently debate “restraint,” which is a grand strategy, with “liberal-internationalism,” which is at best a political ideology, and at worst a faith in a certain version of human history. The simple reason restraint is ascendant, and a myriad coalition of groups now support a diminished American primacy, is because primacy inevitably fails. It hollows out a great power from within, diminishes relative as well as aggregate power, wastes blood and treasure in pursuit of utopian aims, benefits foreign free-riders, and helps in the rise of adversarial powers. The restrainers“would also diminish the prospects for liberal democracy and human rights globally” and restraint often results in “regressive tendencies,” according to Deudney and Ikenberry. But that is not within the capability of any great power or even the strongest of empires in history. If liberal-internationalism and “progress” result in one-directional global wealth redistribution in the name of foreign aid, human rights, and nation-building, at the same time when domestic priorities are hollowed out and the southern border is under siege, it is no wonder that there's a major reaction, so to speak. The American people are clearly more grounded and realist, than the utopians in ivory towers.
“Ideas matter,” the authors declare, adding that “(t)o the extent that foreign-policy schools are—or can be—associated and implicated in costly failures, they are discredited. And foreign-policy schools offering compelling diagnoses of the sources of these failures and policies to avoid their recurrence gain credibility and influence.” Surveying the state of affairs at the time of writing this essay, the Taliban are on the verge of retaking Afghanistan, with the Afghan National Army which was trained and armed (for over twenty years with American money) dissipating, and hundreds of thousands of military age Afghan males from the major cities fleeing to European borders instead of taking up arms to fight. In Libya, the son of Muammar el-Qaddafi, Saif-Al-Islam is planning to run for the presidency, with former rebels joining his rank lamenting that Libya was better under a stable authoritarian hand—a fittingly ironic endgame to a disastrous saga. In both Tunisia and Egypt, the military is back in power crushing the Islamists and Muslim Brotherhood and the indifference of the West is only testament to the jaded realism after the horrors of democratic experimentation. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad Assad is firmly entrenched. Meanwhile, in Europe, border walls are up to stop further mass migration from Africa and the Middle East.
The failure of Arab Spring, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the rise and return of reactionary forces in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia, damage some core theological assumptions of the religion called “liberal-internationalism.” It demonstrates that some regions are not going to be either liberal or democratic in the near foreseeable future; that some semi-feudal lands are a by-product of specific cultural and historical traits which shape them, and not the other way round; that culture cannot be changed without colonizing and educating generations for centuries; that common men and women have reactionary instincts about faith-flag-family and evangelical liberalism and democracy perhaps do not go together often (as some earlier era liberals like Walter Bagehot understood); that in some culture women's rights are not fought for and sexual liberation isn’t a given; and that from some regions, military-age men flee en masse, rather than fight for their country.
Most importantly, it demonstrates that time and history are not directional but circular. They can be turned back by sheer force. It’s understandable why this is a hard pill to swallow for a significant number of people who are either old-school die-hard liberal ideologues or those who grew up shaped by the post–Cold War “end of history” era. But the reason evangelical liberal internationalism fails repeatedly is not because of lack of trying, but that it is unnatural and is primarily dependent on hegemonic will and capability, and hegemony is unsustainable. Restrainers, different though their political backgrounds and underpinnings might be, understand that key assumption. Ideas won’t matter if there is no America to preserve anyway. Ideas won’t matter if the reigning hegemon is overstretched and collapses like the British Empire or the Soviet Union. The instinct of a realist and a restrainer is to avoid a scenario that might result if one keeps following failed prescriptions of the last quarter-century. And that is why restraint is on the rise.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra is a national-security fellow at CFTNI, and a non-resident fellow at the James G Martin Center; and an elected early career historian member at the Royal Historical Society. His most recent paper was titled, NATO Enlargement, Russia, and Balance, and published in the summer issue of the Canadian Military Journal by the Department of National Defence, Canada.
Image: Reuters
18. Beyond Hiroshima: Blackout warfare
Dr. Pry has been carrying the water on EMP No one else is beating the drum more than him (Former DCI James Woolsey as well).
He provides a dire warning:
It would be the end of civilization, and a golden opportunity for aggressors.
Never before in history have little failed states like North Korea and Iran, or terrorists, been able to destroy the most advanced societies on Earth. For the first time in history, the dependency of nations upon the very electronic technologies that make possible modern civilization, also makes them vulnerable to malevolent modern barbarians and pygmy powers.
Most dangerous is the failure of strategic imagination in West and East to understand these new Weapons of Mass Destruction are more dangerous than H-bombs because they are more tempting to use.
Those who think EMP and Cyber Warfare are “grey-zone aggression” and “short of a real shooting war” are playing with existential fire.
The U.S. government should quickly implement the recommendations of the EMP Commission to protect electric grids and other critical infrastructures against nuclear EMP, as protection against this worst-case threat can mitigate other threats, including from NNEMP, Cyber Warfare, and special forces sabotage.
Beyond Hiroshima: Blackout warfare
Failed states like North Korea and Iran, or terrorists, can destroy the most advanced societies on Earth with an EMP attack. Op-ed.
“Someday science shall have the existence of Mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.” -Henry Adams (1862)
76 years ago, on August 6, 1945, a single A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima killing 135,000. A single H-bomb detonated over New York City could kill 10 million.
Today, a single nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warhead detonated 300 kilometers high over North America could kill 300 million. There would be no blast, fire, and radiation, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only an invisible electromagnetic wave, harmless to people, but lethal to electric grids, communications, transportation, food and water and other critical infrastructures that sustain the lives of 330 million Americans.
The same existential result can be achieved by a dozen, or fewer, non-nuclear EMP (NNEMP) warheads delivered by drones or cruise missiles, programmed to attack electric power control centers and transformer substations.
So, too, cyber-attack or special forces sabotage—an “army” of a few dozen terrorists using rifles or explosives to destroy perhaps as few as nine key transformers—could blackout electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for a year, causing 90% of the population to perish from starvation eventually. U.S. military capabilities would be paralyzed or crippled severely.
Many policymakers and national security experts schooled in the conventional and nuclear strategies of the Cold War still cannot grasp that modern civilization could be extinguished, national populations virtually annihilated, from a war on infrastructure electronics. For an education, read the unclassified EMP Commission reports at www.firstempcommission.org or the article by EMP Commission Chairman, William Graham, and former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, “Prepare For The Worst” (RealClearDefense 21 October 2019).
Immediately, few or no fatalities may result from EMP, NNEMP, cyber, or sabotage attacks on electric grids, an attractive feature of this revolutionary new mode of warfare. Adversaries can, in effect, hold hostage the lives of the North American population, whose salvation will depend upon the U.S. government focusing all remaining resources on their rescue, instead of fighting World War III.
Blackout Warfare, the name of my forthcoming book, and term used here to describe a military strategy focused on attacking national electric grids and critical infrastructure electronics, is called many things by many nations.
The Congressional EMP Commission calls it Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare. Russian military doctrine writes of No Contact Warfare, Electronic Warfare, and Network Centric Warfare. China calls it Total Information Warfare. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all call it Cyber Warfare. But their version of Cyber Warfare, and all these other labels for the same concept, include special forces sabotage, NNEMP, and nuclear EMP attack.
The EMP Commission warns that adversaries regard this new way of warfare as the greatest Revolution in Military Affairs in history:
“Combined-arms cyber warfare, as described in the military doctrines of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, may use combinations of cyber-, sabotage, and ultimately nuclear EMP attack to impair the United States quickly and decisively by blacking-out large portions of its electric grid and other critical infrastructures. Foreign adversaries may aptly consider nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military. The synergism of such combined arms is described in the military doctrines of all these potential adversaries as the greatest revolution in military affairs in history—one which projects rendering many, if not all, traditional instruments of military power obsolete.” (Assessing the Threat from EMP Attack, July 2017)
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are right. The U.S. electric grid is a technological Achilles heel, vulnerable to attack by many different means. Blackout Warfare could quickly and relatively easily paralyze all U.S. critical infrastructures, including:
- Government
- Military
- Electric Power
- Telecommunications
- Transportation
- Petroleum and Natural Gas
- Banking and Finance
- Food and Water
- Emergency Services
- Space
Imagine the consequences of the collapse of all these critical infrastructures, as would happen by blacking-out the electric grid—electric power being the keystone critical infrastructure that sustains all the others—some failing immediately, others within hours, virtually all within 72 hours (after exhaustion of emergency power).
It would be the end of civilization, and a golden opportunity for aggressors.
Never before in history have little failed states like North Korea and Iran, or terrorists, been able to destroy the most advanced societies on Earth. For the first time in history, the dependency of nations upon the very electronic technologies that make possible modern civilization, also makes them vulnerable to malevolent modern barbarians and pygmy powers.
Most dangerous is the failure of strategic imagination in West and East to understand these new Weapons of Mass Destruction are more dangerous than H-bombs because they are more tempting to use.
Those who think EMP and Cyber Warfare are “grey-zone aggression” and “short of a real shooting war” are playing with existential fire.
The U.S. government should quickly implement the recommendations of the EMP Commission to protect electric grids and other critical infrastructures against nuclear EMP, as protection against this worst-case threat can mitigate other threats, including from NNEMP, Cyber Warfare, and special forces sabotage.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, served as Chief of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, Director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, and as staff on the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA. He is author of The Power And The Light: The Congressional EMP Commission’s War To Save America.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
