Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

Gen. Cornwallis after Yorktown:
"I wouldn't call this a defeat. Our mission was to punish the Americans for dumping our tea in Boston Harbor. We accomplished that so now we're leaving. We'll still maintain a robust 'over the horizon' capability to burn down the White House.” 
- Mike Glenn channelling Cornwallis' ghost

If you don’t give people information, they make up something to fill the void” 
- Carla O’Dell

“One of the most effective ways to learn about yourself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you” 
- Edward T. Hall


1. The CIA Is Better Than the U.S. Military at Creating Foreign Armies
2. Report: Army official’s secret texts said, ‘We're f-ing abandoning Americans,' as US withdrew from Afghanistan
3. Fighting Breaks Out Between Taliban, Panjshiri Resistance After Failed Talks
4. Resistance fighters in Afghanistan say they've 'caused the Taliban heavy losses... but need help'
5. Anti-Taliban resistance fighters rely on grit, history and geography to hang onto a sliver of Afghanistan
6. Afghanistan Voice of America, Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe Staff Left Behind
7. Americans, Afghan commandos evacuated through secret CIA base outside Kabul: report
8. From Saigon to Kabul
9. Opinion | China’s latest crackdown on video gaming isn’t really about kids. It’s about control.
10. Analysis | The U.S. couldn’t build Afghanistan a democracy. That rarely works.
11. The U.S. Military Got Some Things Right in Afghanistan
12. Fired Marine’s question about leader accountability should not be dismissed
13. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: There’s A Problem In The Upper Reaches Of Our Military
14. China erases billionaire actress Zhao Wei from history
15. What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?
16. Opinion | How the U.S. Made War Humane and Endless
17. Appoint an 'Afghanistan commission' now
18. U.S. Retreat from Afghanistan Alarms Allies Like Taiwan
19. The Forever War is Dead. Long Live the Forever War.
20. Americans support Afghanistan pullout — but not the way it was done, a Post-ABC poll finds
21. Marine Corps revamps infantry school to produce critical-thinking, more advanced infantrymen
22. National Resistance Front repels multi-day Taliban assault on Panjshir
23. Taliban Says China Will Be 'Main Partner' To Rebuild Afghanistan
24. The Proper Measure of the Place: Reflections on the Afghan Mission
25. What is Infrastructure? Doctrine’s Failure to Define the Word and the Military’s Inability to Understand It
26. Why Some of America’s Diplomats Want to Quit
27. What Trump understood and Biden gets right about America's new role in the world




1. The CIA Is Better Than the U.S. Military at Creating Foreign Armies

A good article.  I do wish the author acknowledged that many of the CIA personnel are either sheep dipped SF personnel or former SF and other SOF personnel. Also, they do acknowledge in the conclusion the CIA is not building institutional Armies and cannot replace military institutional army building. The CIA develops only small discreet fighting forces for very specific objectives.

I also wish they discussed the CIA SF work on the Civilian Irregular Defense FGroup (CIDG) program in Vietnam. This was begun by the CIA and supported by SF and eventually turned over to SF for expansion throughout Vietnam. It was one of the most successful indigenous security programs.

But what should be a topic of study for SF and SOF is the comparison between authorities and processes between the CIA and building these forces under Title 50 and the authorities and processes required under Title 10 that must be used by SF and SOF. We should also compare the very flat and focused C2 structure for the CIa and the bloated C2 structure employed by SOF under Title 10 and under the control of the conventional theater command. We should ask what are the optimal authorities, resources, and C2 structures and can the best practices of the CIA under Title 50 be adapted for employment by SOF under Title 10.

I have long thought about the large number of sheep dipped SF and former SF and SOF personnel who have worked in the CIA's paramilitary and special activities division. I am convinced that the way they organized for these operations was a result of these SF/SOF operators asking themselves how they would create the optimal "SOF" organization to accomplish SF/SOF-like missions for the CIA and to meet US national security objectives without being under the control of the conventional military and theater C2 structure.

As I said the authors acknowledge the CIA limitations in the conclusion. These three paragraphs are important:

The U.S. intelligence community had long cautioned policymakers that assessing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s longevity following a U.S. withdrawal could not be divined from either the 1989-92 experience of the Soviet-supported regime of Mohammad Najibullah or the 1996-2001 chapter of Taliban rule, when, in both cases, the capabilities and loyalties of regional warlords were enabled by the delegation of money and authority. The U.S. commitment to re-creating Afghanistan along American lines with a strong central government and integrated national army, and Ghani’s unwillingness to yield a measure of power or authority to the end when he fled the country, defanged the country’s ethnic minorities and regional players.
The cost to the CIA’s approach, of course, is that in many cases the organization funded predatory warlords and strongmen who worked against the interests of the Kabul government, leading to a decrease in national unity and even insecurity. For example, when the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban soon after 9/11, their militias attacked Pashtun villages, raping women and girls, executing civilians, and stealing goods and lands.
The CIA model is hardly a panacea nor is it a perfect fit for broad, national programs the U.S. military is charged to administer. Even the CIA suffered from the hubris of some U.S. leaders who wanted to be part of the action and take on problems well beyond those of the organization’s actual mandate. But there is ample merit in the CIA’s security assistance method. Its focus on cultures, people, relationships, intelligence, and agility should in many ways guide America’s efforts to cultivate foreign partners in the future.



The CIA Is Better Than the U.S. Military at Creating Foreign Armies
Foreign Policy · by Douglas London, Bilal Y. Saab · August 31, 2021
An expert's point of view on a current event.
The failure of the Afghan army is a reminder that Pentagon-led security cooperation programs are more expensive and less effective than those led by spies.
By Douglas London, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, and Bilal Y. Saab, a senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute.
U.S. Marines keep watch as unseen Afghan National Army soldiers participate in an improvised explosive device training exercise in Lashkar Gah in the Afghan province of Helmand on Aug. 28, 2017. WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images
The disintegration of the Afghan army—trained and equipped by the U.S. military for the past two decades—has once again raised questions about the efficacy of the Defense Department’s advise-and-assist programs with foreign partner militaries. The United States spent more than $83 billion trying to build up the Afghan force only to see it collapse in a matter of 11 days following a Taliban onslaught, itself triggered by the U.S. military withdrawal from the country.
One U.S. government organization that has been generally more effective than the Pentagon in improving some capacities and capabilities of foreign partners, and at decidedly less cost in blood and treasure, is the CIA. And that’s even when considering those costs against substantial CIA casualties over 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Lebanon and Vietnam.
But first, it’s important not to compare apples to oranges. For a start, CIA programs are much more modest in scale and limited in mission than those of the U.S. military. It’s one thing to train and equip a smallish group of fighters and another altogether to build a national army from scratch.
The disintegration of the Afghan army—trained and equipped by the U.S. military for the past two decades—has once again raised questions about the efficacy of the Defense Department’s advise-and-assist programs with foreign partner militaries. The United States spent more than $83 billion trying to build up the Afghan force only to see it collapse in a matter of 11 days following a Taliban onslaught, itself triggered by the U.S. military withdrawal from the country.
One U.S. government organization that has been generally more effective than the Pentagon in improving some capacities and capabilities of foreign partners, and at decidedly less cost in blood and treasure, is the CIA. And that’s even when considering those costs against substantial CIA casualties over 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Lebanon and Vietnam.
But first, it’s important not to compare apples to oranges. For a start, CIA programs are much more modest in scale and limited in mission than those of the U.S. military. It’s one thing to train and equip a smallish group of fighters and another altogether to build a national army from scratch.
Second, not all friends of Washington, and especially in the Middle East, want to work with the CIA. It’s already challenging for some governments and armies in the region to establish stronger ties with the U.S. military due to accusations by anti-U.S. domestic actors of undermining sovereignty and independence. It’s a lot more challenging to partner with the CIA, which in most quarters of the region has a terrible reputation.
Unlike the Pentagon’s enormous, overly bureaucratic, and inflexible security cooperation enterprise, the CIA doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all blueprint.
Third, because it has fewer resources than the U.S. military, the CIA often runs the risk of recruiting foreign sources that aren’t properly vetted and end up engaging in illegal or unethical tradecraft. The often poor record of foreign partners working with the CIA on human rights is of particular concern to Congress and various rights organizations in the United States.
Fourth, because its officers operate in secrecy, with Congress exercising little oversight over their activities, the CIA’s failures in building foreign partner capacity are hard to assess. We know about all the flops of the Defense Department in this field because executive and legislative oversight mechanisms are numerous and oftentimes effective. That’s not the case with the CIA, though.
These limitations notwithstanding, there are considerable benefits to the CIA’s ability to establish vital connections with foreign assets. The key differences between the CIA and the Defense Department are cultural and procedural. Unlike the Pentagon’s enormous, overly bureaucratic, and inflexible security cooperation enterprise, the CIA doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all blueprint.
Since the days of its Office of Strategic Services forebearers, the CIA has been able to get two core principles of covert training and support missions right: Politics is local, and people fight for their families, beliefs, and survival. Obligation to community—or for many, religion—trumps flags and oaths to relatively new constitutions of artificial states ratified by distant strangers to whom these soldiers have no personal or communal loyalty. Training and support, therefore, isn’t an off-the-shelf solution but rather a custom fit.
Even the most conservative estimates suggest Washington spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Lebanese Armed Forces in the early to mid-1980s and billions building national armies in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, only to see these forces collapse in the face of what Americans perceived to be their enemies. The reality, of course, was that these national armies comprised soldiers who were being ordered to face opposing forces, in some cases from their own communities, or to sacrifice their lives in contests that had no meaning for themselves, their families, or their clans. And they were often led by officers to whom they felt no loyalty or connection apart from a common uniform.
The CIA has been able to get two core principles of support missions right: Politics is local, and people fight for their families, beliefs, and survival.
Politically, bureaucratically, and logistically, the U.S. military blueprint tends to assume an integrated force in which the fighters are loyal to the central government and the officers under whom they serve, regardless of their superiors’ ethnicity, religion, or clan. Order of battle, strategy, and tactics are likewise aligned to U.S. strengths and norms, rather than tailored to cultural, historic, geographic, educational, or topographic local realities. Washington then proceeds to arm such troops with weapons too complex and expensive for their use and often unsuitable for the terrain or the enemy’s tactics (for example, Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the Lebanese army or MD 530 helicopters to the Afghan army). Furthermore, there is often no way to measure effectiveness or monitor corruption.
In 2016, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) acknowledged to Congress that, in many cases, “U.S. funding dedicated to the ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] was wasted, whether inefficiently spent on worthwhile endeavors or squandered on activities that delivered no apparent benefit.” Moreover, SIGAR listed five major challenges confronting U.S. efforts to develop the ANDSF that were never overcome: 1) limited oversight visibility; 2) questionable force strength numbers; 3) unreliable capability assessments; 4) limited on-budget assistance capacity; and 5) uncertain long-term sustainability.
The CIA is by its own culture focused on people and relationships. Whereas the U.S. defense establishment is replete with unrivaled experts in their vocational fields, the CIA assigns people to such programs who blend technical prowess with interest and depth in the local history and culture and whose approach is informed by intelligence. The drawback of this approach is that there aren’t enough personnel with Arabic- and other foreign-language skills to scale the program. Nevertheless, CIA officers work more intimately with their foreign counterparts and often remain in such programs, rotating repeatedly with the units they support. Rather than being separated in distant fortresses, CIA teams are more typically collocated with their partners without walls or other barriers between them.
While it’s necessary to reemphasize that the CIA’s small size and unique intelligence collection authorities and responsibilities (set forth in the 1947 National Security Act, the 1949 CIA Act, Executive Order 12333, or other applicable provisions of law or presidential directives) provide it with far greater flexibility than the U.S. defense establishment in spending and acquisition, it tends to be more frugal and efficient when freed of the obligation to use U.S. vendors and equipment.
Read More

Ten provincial capitals have fallen in a week, and Kabul is teetering.

The one advantage the Afghan army had on the Taliban looks set to slip away with the hasty U.S. withdrawal.
There’s no debate over the prowess of U.S.-made weapons. The problem is some of those whom the United States trains are illiterate in their own languages, let alone speak English or any common language with comrades with whom they might share a fighting hole, and lack the education found among U.S. troops. Although some specialized units and conventional formations in the Lebanese army and the Iraqi army are capable of incorporating combined arms, they are largely organized as light infantry, and they are forced to adapt predominantly to U.S. tactics. CIA programs leverage local strengths and modularly blend in more sophisticated tactics to build on rather than replace that which makes the locals effective.
The basic weapon of choice for those units that the CIA has historically supported tends to be the cheaper and easier-to-use Kalashnikov rifle, with heavier weapons including machine guns and anti-armor being likewise from Russian-made inventories. Another advantage is that the weapons and their ammunition are equally almost always compatible with those being fielded by their enemies, should rounds or replacements need to be found on the battlefield. Even light artillery and aviation assets (generally, rotary wing) derived from Russian models are likely to be cheaper and easier to maintain. Yes, U.S. tools are better, but as witnessed in Afghanistan, they are useless if they can’t function or be operated—or if their pilots and crew members are left unprotected from assassination when out of uniform.
Equipping such units is exponentially cheaper when not burdened with U.S. requirements and materials, making it easier to keep them well armed, supplied, and cared for. As the SIGAR report illustrates, and as press coverage of the ANDSF’s collapse has likewise reflected, Afghan units were suffering from a lack of ammunition and food, with soldiers often unpaid for long periods of time. Meanwhile, some commanders and senior officers were too frequently siphoning off funds intended to support their units or drawing the salaries of nonexistent so-called ghost soldiers they fabricated to secure additional funding.
Nothing has been more important to the CIA’s success than organizing units along tribal, ethnic, and clan lines.
The CIA regularly audits and adapts the materials and tactics being used to offset the threats faced by the units it advises, assists, trains, and equips, with the agility to move quickly in adjusting to the fluidity of the battlefield. It can innovate and identify equipment that could be improvised, procured, and fielded without the extensive, often congressionally mandated timelines and bid process faced by the U.S. military. Perhaps more importantly, CIA-trained fighters were paid handsomely and more reliably compared with the ANDSF and, equally important, with those fighting, often only seasonally, for the Taliban.
CIA-supported fighters were also better fed and lodged than their ANDSF counterparts or Taliban opponents. Battlefield medics and sustained medical care for casualties have been key elements in CIA programs that have ensured such capabilities could be learned and fielded by their charges. The golden hour of critical medical care for life-threatening battlefield injuries is required in planning operations not only for U.S. forces but those the CIA has supported, and facilities were built to tend to those discharged owing to combat injury or retirement.
But for all of the above, nothing has been more important to the CIA’s success than organizing units along tribal, ethnic, and clan lines. Whether the Hmong hill tribesmen of Vietnam or in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighters came from the same communities with obligation and a code of honor to the elders or relatives already in such units who screened and vouched for them.
The U.S. intelligence community had long cautioned policymakers that assessing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s longevity following a U.S. withdrawal could not be divined from either the 1989-92 experience of the Soviet-supported regime of Mohammad Najibullah or the 1996-2001 chapter of Taliban rule, when, in both cases, the capabilities and loyalties of regional warlords were enabled by the delegation of money and authority. The U.S. commitment to re-creating Afghanistan along American lines with a strong central government and integrated national army, and Ghani’s unwillingness to yield a measure of power or authority to the end when he fled the country, defanged the country’s ethnic minorities and regional players.
The cost to the CIA’s approach, of course, is that in many cases the organization funded predatory warlords and strongmen who worked against the interests of the Kabul government, leading to a decrease in national unity and even insecurity. For example, when the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban soon after 9/11, their militias attacked Pashtun villages, raping women and girls, executing civilians, and stealing goods and lands.
The CIA model is hardly a panacea nor is it a perfect fit for broad, national programs the U.S. military is charged to administer. Even the CIA suffered from the hubris of some U.S. leaders who wanted to be part of the action and take on problems well beyond those of the organization’s actual mandate. But there is ample merit in the CIA’s security assistance method. Its focus on cultures, people, relationships, intelligence, and agility should in many ways guide America’s efforts to cultivate foreign partners in the future.
Douglas London is a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute and a 34-year veteran of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.
Bilal Y. Saab is a senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute and a former senior advisor in the U.S. Defense Department with oversight responsibilities for security cooperation in the broader Middle East. His upcoming book, Rebuilding Arab Defense, will be published in 2022.


2. Report: Army official’s secret texts said, ‘We're f-ing abandoning Americans,' as US withdrew from Afghanistan

Pro-tip - remember that Michael Yon thinks of himself as a journalist - your texts are not safe with him. These will likely be exploited by partisan groups (as well as the influencers from Russia and China in order to undermine the US government).


Buried lede - Yon working with the Taliban.

The texts were reportedly shared between 82nd Airborne Col. Matt Rogers and Michael Yon, a former Special Forces soldier and war correspondent. Yon was among a number of private citizens who worked in private groups to help evacuate Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

Yon wrote that he had been working with a man by the name of Rick Clay who “had three jets on ground in Kabul.” Yon said, “I had arranged Taliban bringing American mother and three American children all the way to gate. Turned away by American Army.”

Report: Army official’s secret texts said, ‘We're f-ing abandoning Americans,' as US withdrew from Afghanistan
americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · September 2, 2021
A U.S. Army colonel on the ground at the Kabul airport said U.S. troops were knowingly leaving behind U.S. citizens, according to a series of private texts leaked this week. In one text, the Army colonel wrote “Yes, we are fucking abandoning American citizens.”
The texts were reportedly shared between 82nd Airborne Col. Matt Rogers and Michael Yon, a former Special Forces soldier and war correspondent. Yon was among a number of private citizens who worked in private groups to help evacuate Americans stranded in Afghanistan.
Yon wrote that he had been working with a man by the name of Rick Clay who “had three jets on ground in Kabul.” Yon said, “I had arranged Taliban bringing American mother and three American children all the way to gate. Turned away by American Army.”
Rogers’ texts with Yon came as the veteran and war correspondent encountered difficulties getting people through to the Kabul airport.

Rogers wrote, “Everyone is having a hard time getting in the gate. [American citizens] can’t get past [Taliban] checkpoints.” Rogers then texted, “Are you trying to get people in?”
Yon responded “Any [American citizens]?”
Rogers texted back “Yes. All of them.”
Two minutes later, Rogers texted, “Yes, we are fucking abandoning American citizens.”
In a post on his subscription-based Locals account, Yon wrote “We had Americans at the gate in plenty of time. U.S. Army abandoned Americans to Taliban. I was personally involved in the rescue as was Rick Clay, David Eubank, Taliban helped us, until Colonel Matt Rogers from US Army said he cannot take them in.”
“Taliban actually delivered the American mother and children for us and stayed with them for hours until she told Taliban to go home,” Yon added.
Yon also told Just The News that the family stood waving passports, screaming that they are Americans once they got to the Kabul airport gate, but American forces would not come out to get them.
“You guys left American citizens at the gate of the Kabul airport,” Yon wrote Tuesday to the commander. “Three empty jets paid for by volunteers were waiting for them. You and I talked on the phone. I told you where they were. Gave you their passport images. And my email and phone number. And you left them behind.”
“Great job saving yourselves,” Yon added. Probably get a lot of medals.”
Just The News reported Yon’s account is backed by three dozen text and email exchanges with frontline Army officials in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden had, at one point during the Afghanistan evacuation efforts, said U.S. forces could remain in the country beyond August 31 if it was needed to evacuate U.S. citizens.
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden said, “If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out.”
Biden ultimately chose to stick with his August 31 withdrawal. After the last U.S. troops left shortly before midnight on Monday, Biden and other members of his administration admitted up to 200 Americans who had been seeking evacuation were still stranded in Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said “we have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time.”
The effort to bring Americans who are still stranded is now in what the Biden administration is referring to as the “diplomatic phase.”
After the last U.S. military flight left Kabul, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), said “While the military evacuation is complete, the diplomatic mission to ensure additional U.S. citizens and eligible Afghans who want to leave continues.”

americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · September 2, 2021


3. Fighting Breaks Out Between Taliban, Panjshiri Resistance After Failed Talks

From Voice of America. Remember there are more than VOA and RFE/RL journalists and employees still in Afghanistan who were unable to get out.

Are we assessing the resistance potential and what might be happening and what might happen in the future?



Fighting Breaks Out Between Taliban, Panjshiri Resistance After Failed Talks
By Ayesha Tanzeem
September 01, 2021 12:51 PM
voanews.com · 
ISLAMABAD - Heavy fighting has started between Taliban fighters and anti-Taliban resistance forces based in the Panjshir valley after talks between the two sides failed to resolve their differences. A resistance spokesman claims a Taliban offensive was repulsed with the Taliban suffering heavy losses.
The resistance is led by Ahmad Masood, son of well-known anti-Taliban resistance leader from the 1990s, Ahmad Shah Masood. The elder Masood, who led the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, was killed by al-Qaida militants posing as journalists just before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
After the fall of Kabul last month, members of the Afghan security forces from across the country who felt betrayed by the surrender of their military leaders made their way to Panjshir to join the resistance. Among them were some of the special forces famous for their battlefield victories against the Taliban over the years as well as the first vice president in the deposed regime, Amrullah Saleh.
Masood’s spokesman, Fahim Dashty, said the Taliban were running offensive operations in the northeast of the valley, in particular from a mountain pass named Khawak, as well as from the southwest from Parwan province.
He claimed the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA), as the Panjshir-based group calls itself, had repulsed them inflicting several hundred casualties.
“They have been defeated heavily. The figures that we already have, 150 of them have been killed, around 200 of them have been wounded, 35 of them have been detained, their four convoys have been destroyed as well as two heavy weaponry,” he claimed.
Taliban followers on social media shared video of the group traveling to Panjshir in a caravan of security vehicles with Taliban flags. They claimed the Taliban had taken over several areas previously controlled by the resistance forces.
On Wednesday the Taliban had blocked all traffic on the main road linking Panjshir to neighboring Gulbahar.
Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks between the two sides.
“We tried very hard that this issue be resolved through talks. We held multiple meetings with the stakeholders of Panjshir. We are also in touch via telephone. However, until now, we have not reached a resolution,” said senior Taliban leader Maulawi Amir Khan Muttaqi in an audio message to the people of Panjshir province circulated by their followers and spokesmen on social media.
Dashty told VOA Tuesday night that the negotiations were intended to result in an inclusive arrangement acceptable to all Afghans, and in which there were guarantees for human rights, including women rights.
The ball is in the Taliban’s court, he said. “The other side, if they want to announce their government, an un-inclusive government, it’s up to them. It will not affect our stance."

FILE - Ahmad Masood, son of Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood, speaks to supporters in Bazarak, Panjshir province, Afghanistan, Sept. 5, 2019.
The Taliban have indicated they are close to announcing their new government. A three-day meeting of the Taliban Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, led by Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, concluded in Kandahar Monday, said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. Taliban sources also said Mullah Abdul Ghani Brather, the head of the Taliban political team and a deputy of Akhundzada, returned to Kabul after attending the three-day meeting in Kandahar.
While the group has promised inclusivity, so far there are no indications that it has made a power sharing deal with any of the rival political factions in the country.
Muttaqi encouraged the people of Panjshir province to convince their fighters and leaders to lay down their arms and join the Taliban, promising them peace and security.
“We are sending you this message so you can take advantage and join the Emirate. We promise that the Islamic Emirate will be like your home. Under our govt your life, honor, and property will be safe,” he said.
He added that the Taliban had announced a general amnesty and Panjshir did not need to fight.
Dashty, meanwhile, said on a WhatsApp group recently set up by NRFA, “the war is going on ... and our forces are fully prepared.”
A former head of the Taliban political office based in Doha, Qatar, Sayed Mohammad Tayeb Agha, called on the Taliban to avoid a monopoly on power.
In a letter to the Taliban leadership, Agha said an isolationist policy could have negative consequences for the group.
He also encouraged the Taliban to prioritize professionalism in the new government and hire professionally sound employees of the former government. Agha called on the Taliban to accept all international norms not in conflict with Islam.
Taliban forces swept into Kabul on August 15 after running an offensive across the country in which all provincial capitals fell to them within 10 days. Since then, the group has repeatedly announced a general amnesty for former enemies, including members of Afghan security forces who fought against them for decades.
However, sporadic reports of Taliban fighters searching for former government or intelligence officials, coupled with a trust deficit accumulated over decades of war, led to a panic among the population, especially women’s rights activists, journalists, and those who were part of the former government.
voanews.com · 


4. Resistance fighters in Afghanistan say they've 'caused the Taliban heavy losses... but need help'
Again, are we conducting an assessment?

Here is my generic UW Standing “PIR” For Resistance that could be adapted with the specific information requirements for the Afghan resistance potential
Assessments – Special Forces Area Study/Area Assessment, PSYOP Target Audience Analysis, and Civil Affairs Civil Reconnaissance
Who is the resistance?
Leaders, groups, former military, in or out of government, etc.
Why is there a resistance or the potential for resistance?
What are the underlying causes/drivers?
What are the objectives of the resistance?
Do they align with the US and friends, partners, and allies? If not, who with?
What is the resistance narrative?
How is it shaping the information environment?
Where is it operating?
From where is it getting support?
When did it begin?
When will it/did it commence operations?
How will it turn out?
E.g., what is the assessment of success or failure of the resistance?
Most important - An expert recommendation: Should the US support or counter the resistance and if so how?

Resistance fighters in Afghanistan say they've 'caused the Taliban heavy losses... but need help'
Andy Wells·Freelance Writer
Thu, 2 September 2021, 7:41 am·4-min read

Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces stand guard on a hilltop in the Astana area of Bazarak in Panjshir province. (Getty)
A group of resistance fighters battling the Taliban in Afghanistan say they have caused the terror group “heavy losses” – but admitted that they still need help.
Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan is the only part of the country not under Taliban rule and are battling the National Resistance Front (NRF) for control.
Ali Nasary, head of foreign relations for the NRF, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday morning that the Taliban “are unable to challenge the Panjshir Valley, which has been impregnable for the past half a century”.
He said: “Unfortunately for the past three days the Taliban have been attacking the valley from three directions...

Militiamen loyal to Ahmad Massoud take part in a training exercise, in Panjshir province, northeastern Afghanistan. (AP)
“Luckily all attacks have been repelled. The Taliban have suffered heavy casualties and have actually retreated for more than 30 miles and many resistance fighters were able to take three districts.”’
However, when asked if the fighters can continue to hold back the Taliban, who now have access to US military hardware that was left behind, Nasary admitted that the NRF has been asking for more assistance in their battle.
He added: “A force having hardware better than us doesn't really mean anything because we've faced other forces that were stronger before…
Watch: Video shows anti-Taliban forces in training
“The reason we've been asking for assistance is because we’re at the forefront of not only fighting the Taliban but international terrorism…
“It's not a civil war, it's a war against terrorism that we're fighting all alone without anyone else helping us or assisting us at the moment.”
The NRF is led by 32-year-old Ahmad Massoud, the son of Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who helped force out the Soviets in 1989 and led the resistance against the Taliban when they previously held control of Afghanistan.

Speaking to CNN, the younger Massoud said his forces are fighting "intolerance and oppression brought by one political force over the majority of the population that do not support them”.
He explained that his group were resisting the Taliban as they “have not changed, and they still are after dominance throughout the country”.
Massoud, who believes the Taliban were only able to take control because of “the weakness of the government”, added: “We have a sufficient amount of equipment at the moment, but we will need assistance to sustain our resistance in the long term.”
Despite failing to defeat the resistance fighters, the Taliban called on rebels to negotiate a settlement with the group.

Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces are pictured on a Soviet-era tank as they are deployed to patrol along a road in the Astana area of Bazarak in Panjshir province. (Getty)
In a recorded speech addressed to Afghans in Panjshir, senior Taliban leader Amir Khan Motaqi called on the rebels to put down their weapons.
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is home for all Afghans," he said.
Motaqi said the Taliban had made many efforts to negotiate with leaders of the opposition forces in Panjshir, "but unfortunately, unfortunately, without any result".
Taliban forces are making preparations around the four sides of the Panjshir valley and there is no reason to fight, Motaqi said, adding that the anti-Taliban forces should keep in mind that it had not been possible to defeat the Taliban even with the support of Nato and US forces.
"But we are still trying to ensure that there is no war and that the issue in Panjshir is resolved calmly and peacefully," Motaqi added.

Afghan resistance fighters, who have so far managed to hold back the Taiban in Panjshir Valley. (Getty)
The remarks came after at least seven Taliban fighters were killed during an attempt to advance into the valley, according to two resistance leaders.
While the Taliban plans to reveal a new government, they are unlikely to get swift access to more than £7bn in assets mostly held abroad by the Afghan central bank, meaning they will struggle to keep essential services running.
The new, Taliban-appointed central bank head has sought to reassure banks the group wants a fully functioning financial system, but has given little detail on how it will provide the liquidity needed, bankers familiar with the matter said.
Afghanistan's real gross domestic product is expected to shrink by 9.7% this financial year, with a further drop of 5.2% seen next year, according to a report from Fitch Solutions.
Foreign investment would be needed to support a more optimistic outlook, Fitch added.
Watch: Taliban and UK officials open talks over allowing people to leave Afghanistan



5. Anti-Taliban resistance fighters rely on grit, history and geography to hang onto a sliver of Afghanistan

Is resistance potential only in this "sliver" of terrain?

Anti-Taliban resistance fighters rely on grit, history and geography to hang onto a sliver of Afghanistan
Ezzatullah Mehrdad and 
Haq Nawaz Khan 
Today at 5:17 p.m. EDT
The Washington Post · September 2, 2021
Zaki was among thousands of Afghans who fled into the craggy mountains north of Kabul following the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, fearing the brutality and harsh rules of the Islamist extremists. Now, the 27-year-old former government employee is carrying an AK-47 on Afghanistan’s last military front line.
College-educated, the civilian-turned-guerrilla fighter is part of a fledgling resistance force determined to prevent the Taliban from seizing the last sliver of Afghanistan the militants have yet to dominate — the rugged province of Panjshir.
“We do not want to be second- or third-class citizens of the country,” said Zaki, who asked that his full name not be used because he fears reprisals by the Taliban against his family in Kabul. “We do not want to lose our freedom and our smile.”
For the past four days, the Taliban has targeted Panjshir, attacking from several directions and engaging in fierce clashes with the resistance forces. It is the most serious challenge the Taliban has faced in the military campaign in which it swept across Afghanistan last month in a lightning strike that saw Kabul and 33 provincial capitals fall in 10 days.
Both sides say they have inflicted heavy battlefield casualties and have claimed successes, and both are using social media to spread disinformation.
Despite the resistance’s control of most of the province, it remains unclear whether it will gain traction or be swiftly crushed by a resurgent Taliban, whose forces on Thursday night appeared to be advancing into some parts of Panjshir.
The violence erupted after efforts to negotiate a power-sharing deal with resistance leaders broke down last week.
“The Taliban mind-set is not for talks, not for peace,” said Ahmad Wali Massoud, a former Afghan ambassador to Britain. “They think that they have captured Afghanistan and so, therefore, Panjshir must surrender. But the people who are fighting want to defend their homeland, their territory, their families and their lives. What’s happening in Panjshir is a resistance for all of Afghanistan.”
For the Taliban, the uprising is an unwelcome deja vu of sorts, arriving as the militants form a government and seek international legitimacy. When the Taliban first captured the Afghan capital, in 1996, and controlled the country until 2001, its fighters were never able to take control of Panjshir, despite repeated attempts.
The resistance then was led by Massoud’s brother, Ahmed Shah Massoud, a storied Afghan mujahideen commander known as the “Lion of Panjshir,” who helped expel the Soviets in the 1980s. He was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Today, the guerrillas, known as the National Resistance Front, are led by Ahmed Shah Massoud’s 32-year-old son, Ahmad Massoud, who was educated in Britain, including at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, but has no battlefield experience.
The younger Massoud faces a far different military and geopolitical landscape. The Taliban outnumbers his forces dramatically, is militarily far superior and is flush with American-made weaponry seized from the former government’s army, whose troops surrendered in droves to the advancing militants.
Unlike his late father, who received extensive military aid from the United States and other Western powers, Massoud has received no international support, particularly from a Washington humiliated by the outcome of 20 years of war against the Taliban.
The elder Massoud also had supply routes from neighboring Tajikistan to support his guerrilla army. This time, the Taliban controls all the northern border provinces and can block supply routes.
Despite those disadvantages, resistance leaders say they have geography on their side. Panjshir is a vast mountainous region whose southern end lies roughly 100 miles northeast of Kabul. Nestled in the Hindu Kush mountains, it is filled with narrow ravines and rock formations that create a natural bulwark against invaders and a perfect environment for ambushes and guerrilla warfare.
“Our strategic position is being in the Panjshir,” said Ali Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front. “The Panjshir is fortified. The terrain is not friendly to outsiders who want to invade.”
He said the Soviets were repelled nine times when they tried to take the region in the 1980s. And in the 1990s, he added, the Taliban had a bigger military advantage because they had rocket launchers, scud missiles and jets to bomb the rebels, yet never succeeded in seizing the province.
The resistance forces, Nazary said, number around 10,000. They include local militias and residents of Panjshir, along with volunteers from other provinces. A significant number of former Afghan army soldiers, special forces troops and commandos also have joined, he said.
So has Amrullah Saleh, the country’s former vice president, who arrived in Panjshir shortly after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban entered Kabul. Saleh claims he’s the rightful leader of Afghanistan and has encouraged his followers to come to Panjshir and join the resistance.
Some fighters, such as Zaki, are civilians who have transformed themselves into guerrillas.
Zaki said that two decades of Western support to Afghanistan allowed him to attend university and see the benefits of a society with basic rights and freedoms. And as an ethnic Tajik, he added, he was concerned about the Taliban, who are mostly ethnic Pashtun, targeting other minorities.
“I went to university where I learned freedom,” he said. “It is a historic duty of mine. The Taliban is pushing ethnic agendas.”
Even as his fighters clash with the Taliban, the younger Massoud and his top aides insist that they prefer dialogue to reach a power-sharing agreement. They want a decentralized, federal system of governance in which power is equally distributed among Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic groups.
“Anything less than this will be unacceptable to us, and we will continue our struggle and resistance until we achieve justice, equality, and freedom,” Massoud told Foreign Policy magazine this week in an email interview.
The Taliban has rejected such demands and is expected to announce a new government that appears modeled after Iran’s theocracy, with top Taliban religious and military leaders in key positions.
On Thursday, Muhammad Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesman, said the militants still wanted to “resolve the issue through peaceful negotiations, but if there is a need for military means, it will take no time to capture this area. Panjshir is surrounded by mujahideen from all sides, and it will take no time to defeat the enemies.”
Nazary said the resistance forces are ready: “If they are going to use aggression, then we’ll use force. The past four days has shown we are able to use force.”
The Taliban is using multiple tactics to break the resistance. In Kabul, Taliban fighters are searching houses in at least three neighborhoods inhabited mostly by ethnic Tajiks, looking for those suspected of having ties to the resistance, said two sources.
“The Taliban arrested 10 people today,” said a civil society activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security concerns.
The militants also have cut off phone and Internet service as well as access to other basics in parts of Panjshir. “Taliban fighters have blocked food, shut down electricity,” said Ahmad Hashimi, a local clerk in Panjshir, in a telephone interview. “People lack all basic services, including gas.”
But he said he and other residents remained defiant.
“The inhuman acts of the Taliban will not make people bow to them,” he said.

The Washington Post · September 2, 2021


6. Afghanistan Voice of America, Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe Staff Left Behind

I am glad to see Congressional concern with these journalists and employees.

Excerpt:

Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said only 50 personnel hired by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, were evacuated from Afghanistan, and those were due to the efforts of U.S. allies rather than Washington. About 140 reporters, editorial assistants and other workers remain, plus their families, a congressional aide said.

Afghanistan Voice of America, Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe Staff Left Behind
Lawmakers, media groups call on Biden administration to help evacuate journalists at risk of Taliban retribution
WSJ · by William Mauldin
“We were working on their safe evacuation just as the attack struck the airport perimeter,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday. “Unfortunately, it stood in the way of our ability to bring these individuals to safety before Aug. 31. But I am telling you, we have told them that we have a commitment to these individuals.”
Voice of America and Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe operate under the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent agency of the U.S. government. The two media outlets and others run by the agency are charged with providing “unbiased news and information in countries where the press is restricted.” Though funded by U.S. taxpayers, the outlets are designed to operate free from editorial interference from the government, rather than as a tool of U.S. public diplomacy.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said only 50 personnel hired by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, were evacuated from Afghanistan, and those were due to the efforts of U.S. allies rather than Washington. About 140 reporters, editorial assistants and other workers remain, plus their families, a congressional aide said.
“It is absolutely disgraceful that the U.S. State Department claimed they evacuated their local employees when in reality they abandoned hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families,” Mr. McCaul said. “Some of these journalists were given express assurances by the Biden administration that they would be treated as locally employed staff—but were not.”
Dozens of lawmakers from both parties last month called on Mr. Biden to help the U.S.-affiliated journalists get out, saying they “have been and will continue to be a target for the Taliban due to their association with the United States government.”
“We are incredibly disappointed that our efforts over the past few weeks to get our colleagues safe passage out of Afghanistan have been unsuccessful,” said Yolanda Lopez, acting director of Voice of America, adding that “we have been working day and night, pursuing every available option, only to hit countless obstacles and roadblocks.”
Hundreds of journalists hired by U.S.-based news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, managed to get out of Afghanistan, thanks to help from their media organizations and U.S. officials. But many local journalists working for Afghan publications, including reporters who have faced threats, have been unable to leave, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has documented recent cases of the Taliban attacking reporters.
Write to William Mauldin at william.mauldin@wsj.com
WSJ · by William Mauldin


7. Americans, Afghan commandos evacuated through secret CIA base outside Kabul: report


Americans, Afghan commandos evacuated through secret CIA base outside Kabul: report
The Hill · by Celine Castronuovo · September 2, 2021
U.S. officials reportedly conducted a weeks-long mission last month that evacuated hundreds of American citizens, Afghan special forces and their family members through a secret CIA base outside of Kabul.
The New York Times first reported Wednesday that the CIA base was used in the U.S. military’s ongoing evacuations last month, and Politico reported that based on documents and conversations with a senior administration official, a defense official and a congressional official, the mission included U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghans, including Afghan commandos.
A U.S. official, who like the others spoke to Politico on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, confirmed that the CIA was involved and “worked closely with other agencies to facilitate in various ways access to the airport for American citizens and Afghans at risk.”
In total, at least 1,000 Afghan commandos and their families were evacuated by the U.S., according to Politico.
Some of those evacuated were reportedly transported by air from the secret CIA compound, called Eagle Base, to the Kabul airport in order to get past crowds that had gathered in the area as thousands of people desperately attempted to flee following the Taliban takeover.
Flight data obtained by Politico showed several helicopter flights traveling from the area around Eagle Base to the Kabul airport starting Aug. 15, the same day the Taliban officially seized control over the capital city.
U.S. diplomats who had been relocated to the Kabul airport from the U.S. Embassy reportedly helped with the efforts, as did the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, according to Politico.
Two sources noted that the House Intelligence Committee was briefed about the secret mission in August.
The Hill has reached out to the CIA for comment.
The reports come as the Biden administration has faced bipartisan criticism from lawmakers and advocates over the roughly 100 to 200 U.S. citizens, as well as 150,000 vulnerable Afghan allies, who remain in Afghanistan following the U.S. military’s complete withdrawal from the country.
The Afghan allies, including those who assisted the U.S. military in its 20 years of operations in Afghanistan, have expressed concerns about being targeted by the Taliban as retribution for their work, prompting many to go into hiding.
The Biden administration has said that it has evacuated more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan, though many have continued to press President Biden over how he plans to help out those who remain in the country.
Biden continued to stand by his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan this week, explaining that his national security and defense advisers unanimously recommended that continued evacuations would be much safer if done through diplomatic means.
The Hill · by Celine Castronuovo · September 2, 2021


8. From Saigon to Kabul
Excerpts:

U.S. interests in Afghanistan were not nearly as important as those in Vietnam. Neither were our goals. But over two decades, neither our civilian policymakers nor our military leadership were able to decide what they wanted to achieve and how to know when they had.

Serious Consequences

What can we learn from these two conflicts? First, it is necessary to have some clarity concerning the goals of the war, since they are fought for political objectives. Second, strategy must link those goals to available resources and constantly adapt to shifting circumstances. Third, any strategy must take account of the enemy. As the adage goes, any plan that depends on an enemy’s cooperation is bound to fail.

Finally, defeat in war creates serious consequences for both the defeated and its allies. In defeat, South Vietnam ceased to exist, as has the Afghan government we supported. For the United States, the danger is that the blow to its credibility as an ally is likely to make the world a more dangerous place by inviting adventurism on the part of our adversaries. This happened with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. We can discern it today with a more aggressive China.

From Saigon to Kabul › American Greatness
Defeat in war creates serious consequences for the defeated and its allies. The danger for America is that the blow to its credibility as an ally is likely to make the world a more dangerous place.

September 1, 2021
amgreatness.com · by Mackubin Owens · September 2, 2021
The recent debacle in Afghanistan has elicited predictable comparisons with our exit from Vietnam in 1975. Although there are parallels, we should remember that historical analogies are often misleading. One such analogy is the claim that the United States was predestined to lose both conflicts. But this claim ignores the fact that victory or defeat depends on decisions actually made and strategies actually implemented.
Of course, all agree that the disastrous evacuation from Kabul recalls a similarly chaotic exit from Saigon. But there was a workable, and relatively well-executed plan in 1975, something that doesn’t appear to be the case in Kabul. As Jim Webb observed recently :
From the very outset, one searches in vain for evidence that our senior military and civilian planners came up with anything that indeed prepared for the worst while hoping for the best.
In contrast:
Once the North Vietnamese offensive began in March 1975 our military and civilian planners went into high gear. By the end of April when Saigon fell, refugee camps were already in place in Guam, the Philippines, Camp Pendleton, California, Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. American leaders gave clear signals to the advancing North Vietnamese that any interference with the retrograde would be met with military force. A full naval Task Force was off the coast, scooping up thousands of people . . . who had set out in small fishing boats without knowing whether they would live or die, and then brought to refugee camps that were ready to assist them. In a very short time, under the threat of an advancing army, our military rescued more than 140,000 Vietnamese, with hundreds of thousands of Boat People to follow over the next few years.
The decision to abandon the Bagram Air Base will go down in history as one of the great military blunders of all time.
But beyond the optics of a chaotic exodus from both Kabul and Saigon, the two conflicts diverge. To begin with, they were fought for different purposes. Despite after-the-fact claims to the contrary, our intervention in Vietnam had a strategic purpose based on an understanding of U.S. national interests. As David Halberstam wrote years ago in the context of the Cold War, Vietnam’s geographic position and cultural strengths made it “one of only five or six nations in the world that is truly vital to U.S. interests.”
The conflict in Afghanistan, on the other hand, began as a punitive reaction to the attacks of 9/11. The initial offensive involving cooperation with the Northern Alliance succeeded in routing the Taliban but after the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora, the United States lost its strategic focus and the mission expanded to an attempt to impose a new political regime on a country with no civic tradition in a region of little strategic importance to the United States.
Nation-Building Folly
In the 19th century, Afghanistan was the arena of the “great game” between Britain and Russia. The former absorbed many setbacks there in order to maintain the area as a buffer against a Russian threat to India, the crown jewel of the British Empire. Our “great game” is with China, and the main areas of confrontation in that struggle are the littoral areas of the Indo-Pacific, not the expanses of Southwest Asia.
A relatively small military and CIA footprint, with support to anti-Taliban warlords—as was the case with the Northern Alliance—might well have been sufficient to ensure that Afghanistan did not become a sanctuary for anti-American terrorists. Instead we embarked on “nation building,” a fool’s errand in a place like Afghanistan. The military component of this was counterinsurgency operations executed in places such as Helmand Province, in order to buy time to build an Afghan national army.
Under President Trump, U.S. military operations were ramped back as the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF), with U.S. logistic and fire support, took the lead. U.S. casualties plummeted. This bore some similarity to the “Vietnamization” program that President Nixon put into place in 1969.
As was the case in Vietnam, some Afghan units performed well over the last few weeks, others less so. There are numerous accounts by U.S. soldiers attesting to the courage and skill of some of their Afghan counterparts. But neither the ARVN nor the ANSF were capable of operating without U.S. logistical and fire support. Once that support was precipitously removed, collapse was inevitable.
Vietnamization, which began in 1969 as Nixon sought to extricate U.S. forces from Vietnam, placed the burden of military operations on the ARVN. But U.S. logistical and fire support remained in place. The first test of Vietnamization came in the spring of 1972, when the Peoples’ Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched the massive “Easter Offensive,” which dwarfed in magnitude both Tet of 1968 and the final offensive of 1975. The United States provided massive fire support and although there were inevitable failures on the part of some ARVN units, all in all, the South Vietnamese fought well. Indeed, having blunted the Communist thrust, they recaptured much of the territory that had been lost to Hanoi.
But in an act that still shames the United States to this day, the Democratic Congress that was elected in the wake of Watergate completely cut off military and economic assistance to South Vietnam. In response, the PAVN cobbled together a much weaker military push than the Easter Offensive. Constrained by congressional action, President Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after he resigned, defaulted on promises to respond with force to North Vietnamese violations of the peace terms. Despite the heroic performance of some ARVN units, South Vietnam collapsed.
A Better War
Biden and his supporters are trying to blame Donald Trump for the Afghan debacle, despite the fact that the latter had negotiated a conditions-based plan for extricating U.S. forces. But the fact is that Biden, following in the footsteps of the disgraceful action of Congress in 1975, chose unilaterally to abandon Afghanistan.
The Afghan debacle has led some to recycle the old narrative about Vietnam (For my own views, see this review of the Ken Burns PBS series on the conflict. ): that the Vietnamese Communists were too resolute, the South Vietnamese government too corrupt, and the Americans too clueless to fight the kind of war that would have secured victory. That Vietnam was destined to be a quagmire, and America was destined to lose there. But, again, countries are not predestined to win or lose wars. Victory or defeat depends on decisions actually made and strategies actually implemented.
The United States made plenty of mistakes in Vietnam. Our complicity in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem was one. The subordination of strategy to the “systems analysis” preferred by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the academic theory of “limited war” was another. But I am convinced by revisionist historians such as Lewis Sorley and Mark Moyar that we had opportunities to succeed and that indeed, we were on the track to success after the United States and ARVN forces repulsed the Tet Offensive in early 1968.
As one who served as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam in 1968-1969, I have been heavily influenced by Sorley’s argument as to the change in U.S. operational strategy after Tet under General Creighton Abrams, who replaced William Westmoreland as the commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam.
As Sorley argues in his book, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (1999), during his time as commander in Vietnam, Westmoreland’s operational strategy emphasized the attrition of the PAVN in a “war of big battalions”—multi-battalion, and sometimes even multi-division sweeps through remote jungle areas in an effort to fix and destroy the enemy with superior fire power. The battle of the la Drang Valley in November 1965 was an example of his preferred approach.
But he ignored the political struggle and the “protracted conflict” element of armed struggle. Accordingly, he did little to train the Vietnamese army, a policy endorsed by McNamara, who claimed that by the time the Vietnamese were trained, the Americans would have won the war.
In A Better War, Sorley examines the largely neglected later years of the conflict, concluding that the war in Vietnam “was being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress.” Sorley argues that Westmoreland’s tactics squandered four years of public and congressional support for the war. “Search and destroy” operations, that is, were usually unsuccessful, since the enemy could avoid battle unless it was advantageous for him to accept it. But they were also costly to the American soldiers who conducted them and the Vietnamese civilians who were in the area.
Creighton Abrams succeeded Westmoreland as commander shortly after the 1968 Tet Offensive, joining Ellsworth Bunker, who had assumed the post of U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam the previous spring, and William Colby, a career CIA officer who coordinated the pacification effort. Abrams’ approach emphasized not the destruction of enemy forces per se but protection of the South Vietnamese population by controlling key areas. He then concentrated on attacking the enemy’s “logistics nose” (as opposed to a “logistics tail”): since the North Vietnamese lacked heavy transport within South Vietnam, they had to pre-position supplies forward of their sanctuaries before launching an offensive.
Fighting was still heavy, as illustrated by two major actions in South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley during the first half of 1969: the 9th Marine Regiment’s “Operation Dewey Canyon” and the 101st Airborne Division’s epic battle for “Hamburger Hill.” But now PAVN offensive timetables were being disrupted by preemptive allied attacks, buying more time for “Vietnamization,” the shift of military responsibilities from the United States to South Vietnam.
In addition, rather than ignoring the insurgency and pushing the South Vietnamese aside as Westmoreland had done, Abrams followed a policy of “one war,” integrating all aspects of the struggle against the Communists. The result, says Sorley, was “a better war” in which the United States and South Vietnamese essentially achieved the military and political conditions necessary for South Vietnam’s survival as a viable political entity. Of course, this was all undone in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. support.
U.S. interests in Afghanistan were not nearly as important as those in Vietnam. Neither were our goals. But over two decades, neither our civilian policymakers nor our military leadership were able to decide what they wanted to achieve and how to know when they had.
Serious Consequences
What can we learn from these two conflicts? First, it is necessary to have some clarity concerning the goals of the war, since they are fought for political objectives. Second, strategy must link those goals to available resources and constantly adapt to shifting circumstances. Third, any strategy must take account of the enemy. As the adage goes, any plan that depends on an enemy’s cooperation is bound to fail.
Finally, defeat in war creates serious consequences for both the defeated and its allies. In defeat, South Vietnam ceased to exist, as has the Afghan government we supported. For the United States, the danger is that the blow to its credibility as an ally is likely to make the world a more dangerous place by inviting adventurism on the part of our adversaries. This happened with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. We can discern it today with a more aggressive China.

amgreatness.com · by Mackubin Owens · September 2, 2021


9. Opinion | China’s latest crackdown on video gaming isn’t really about kids. It’s about control.

Yes, a BFO - blinding flash of the obvious. It is about control. Authoritarian control.

Opinion | China’s latest crackdown on video gaming isn’t really about kids. It’s about control.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Alyssa RosenbergColumnist Today at 2:09 p.m. EDT · September 2, 2021
The American entertainment industry has spent years trying to placate the Chinese government to expand its access to the world’s largest market. Companies such as Disney and the National Basketball Association have disgraced themselves by compromising on values such as free speech and human rights in exchange for what they hoped would be boatloads of cash.
Agreeing to censorship in exchange for money is a bad look under any circumstances. As recent developments show, it can also turn out to be a bad bargain.
The buzzy new front in this great-power pop-culture war is the announcement that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime is slapping limits on the time minors can spend playing online video games.
Supposedly, this is for children’s benefit. But really it’s the latest salvo in China’s long-running war on gaming, just one front in its efforts to exert social control by regulating pop culture.
The Xi government targeted video gaming in 2018 as a public health issue, blaming the pastime for an increase in childhood myopia. In 2019, the country limited the hours when children were allowed to play games and the money they could spend on in-game microtransactions, and banned everyone from using games that included “sexual explicitness, goriness, violence and gambling.”
More chillingly, the 2019 rules required people to link their gaming handles and real identities, meaning games were no longer safe spaces for unfettered discussion.
That’s a complicated environment in which to do business. But companies based in the United States, and elsewhere, have done their best to accommodate China.
In 2019, U.S. video game giant Blizzard Entertainment banned a prominent “Hearthstone” player from its esports tournaments for a year for the crime of supporting Hong Kong’s protest movement — on the grounds that he violated company rules against offending “a portion or group of the public.” A South Korean video game company automatically bowdlerizes the word “Taiwan” in text chats in one of its popular titles. And the makers of the Taiwanese game “Devotion” pulled their own title from Steam, a major distribution platform, because it included a meme comparing Xi to Winnie the Pooh; the makers said the uproar had “caused immeasurable harm to Red Candle Games and our partner.”
Maybe, from a purely financial perspective, these compromises would be worth it if the result was unrestrained access to China’s huge population of gamers. But negotiating with Chinese regulators is a lot like trying to strike a deal with Darth Vader — the terms get worse all the time.
Cracking down on microtransactions hits at a critical source of revenue for gaming companies. Developing a game only to have to yank it off sale to avoid collateral damage to a company’s other titles and its reputation, as happened with “Devotion,” is a huge sunk cost. And restricting minors’ access to games could help forestall the growth of a new generation of players in China.
The U.S. movie industry has confronted similar questions and been even more craven in its dealings with China — and now faces an even sharper reckoning that should be a warning for other sectors.
These accommodations range from the cheesy to the very ugly. The former category includes a subplot in one of Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies in which Chinese officials pledge to defend Hong Kong. In the latter was Disney’s decision to thank entities in Xinjiang — the site of China’s massive internment camps for the country’s Uyghur minority — in the credits for the live-action remake of “Mulan.” These rituals are meant to persuade Chinese regulators to let American films into the country.
And to what end? A battered Hollywood may have looked to the Chinese box office as a savior after the country’s crackdown on covid-19 made it possible to open theaters there earlier. But the “Mulan” remake, tailor-made for Chinese audiences, bombed there, and other blockbusters made with expectations of big overseas profits have struggled, too.
And fewer than usual American movies have opened in China in 2021, partly because of shifting release dates in the United States, and partly because the Communist Party locked out foreign releases for longer than usual during commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the party’s founding.
Meanwhile, the box office for Chinese-made movies is booming. The obvious conclusion is that Hollywood let itself get played, accepting censorship and competing fiercely for access to Chinese audiences — all while giving China time to build up domestic competitors to replace the wonders of Tinseltown.
For an industry that prides itself on its savvy and cloaks itself in sanctimonious claptrap about exporting American values, it’s a double humiliation. Not only have these companies agreed to accept foreign censorship, they’re not even raking in the profits they expected in return.
Other industries, including the video game industry, should take note. The game the Chinese government is luring them into is one with prizes that, in the long run, look a lot more like traps.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Alyssa RosenbergColumnist Today at 2:09 p.m. EDT · September 2, 2021


10. Analysis | The U.S. couldn’t build Afghanistan a democracy. That rarely works.

Excerpts:
Those who argue that building good governance is the solution to insurgency routinely point to historical examples to support their claims. Commentators generally cite five successful modern-day counterinsurgency campaigns as models for today’s military interventions: the Malayan Emergency, the Greek civil war, the anti-Huk campaign in the Philippines, the Salvadoran civil war and the campaign in Dhofar, Oman.
This narrative is largely a myth. Instead of using democratizing overhauls to build stability, the threatened governments — backed by great power interveners — defeated insurgents by force. They attacked insurgents directly to break their will to fight, while closely controlling the civilian population to block the flow of resources to the insurgency.
Analysis | The U.S. couldn’t build Afghanistan a democracy. That rarely works.
The Washington Post · by Jacqueline L. Hazelton August 31, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. EDT · August 31, 2021
As the Taliban swept into Kabul after the collapse of the Afghan government, former military and civilian leaders chastised the Biden administration for pulling U.S. troops out too soon. The U.S. military, they argued, could have prevented the disaster and used its might to keep trying to build a democratic state.
To stabilize the country, these critics argued, the United States should have stayed longer, until the Afghan military could stand on its own, until the government was stronger, until the Taliban was defeated.
But the history of great power interventions into insurgencies suggests that efforts to stabilize Afghanistan through democratization would have been futile. My research explains why the success of great power interventions to stabilize countries relies heavily on coercion and corruption, rather than democratizing overhauls.
Successful counterinsurgency involves dirty deals
Those who argue that building good governance is the solution to insurgency routinely point to historical examples to support their claims. Commentators generally cite five successful modern-day counterinsurgency campaigns as models for today’s military interventions: the Malayan Emergency, the Greek civil war, the anti-Huk campaign in the Philippines, the Salvadoran civil war and the campaign in Dhofar, Oman.
This narrative is largely a myth. Instead of using democratizing overhauls to build stability, the threatened governments — backed by great power interveners — defeated insurgents by force. They attacked insurgents directly to break their will to fight, while closely controlling the civilian population to block the flow of resources to the insurgency.
In Malaya, between 1948 and 1957 the British forcibly resettled some 500,000 people into New Villages, prison camps where food was rationed and inhabitants underwent frequent searches for contraband. In Dhofar in the 1960s and 1970s, the British-led military tightly controlled civilian communities, destroyed civilian food crops and livestock, and poisoned community wells.
During the final phase of the Greek civil war, from 1947 to 1949, U.S.-backed governments drove 700,000 civilians out of their homes. They sent civilians and soldiers considered politically suspect to poverty-stricken islands without resources to support them.
And in El Salvador, the U.S.-backed government tried and failed to exert military control over communities. During the war, from 1979 to 1992, security forces assassinated civic leaders, priests and organizers and even destroyed entire communities.
In all these cases, the outside powers backing the government demanded democratizing actions to gain the popular support they believed was necessary to defeat the insurgency. And in all these cases, government elites resisted — and remained in power by accommodating the personal interests of rival elites, often including insurgents and warlords, to gain information, cooperation and fighting power.
In Malaya, for example, the British gave up their hope for a liberal, pluralistic state. Resistance from the politically dominant ethnic Malays forced Britain to support a system of ethnically based political coalitions that still privileges ethnic Malays over ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians.
All these countries achieved relative stability, but none are robust democracies. Greece, for instance, struggles to consolidate its wobbly democracy. El Salvador, with a long history of military-dominated governments, remains fragile and repressive. Oman is a traditional monarchy.
In Afghanistan, successive Western-backed governments haven’t been able to reduce corruption or security forces’ violence against civilians. Afghan military leaders kept “ghost soldiers” on the books to collect the nonexistent soldiers’ salaries despite repeated crackdowns. National leaders paid off warlords and moved repressive governors from province to province rather than pull them from public office.
Afghanistan’s democratic elections left serious concerns about election fraud, as well as the challenges of holding a free and fair vote during a civil war. U.S.-brokered power-sharing agreements helped maintain a facade of political unity.
Why counterinsurgency governments resist restructuring
The governments in these five examples, to varying degrees, relied on co-optation of strongmen and military control of civilians to stay in power. Even the not-corrupt British rulers of Malaya didn’t implement the changes they thought they needed to defeat the insurgency.
These governments saw little incentive to make changes that were likely to strip away wealth and power from the elites in charge. As my recent analysis in Foreign Affairs points out, such changes meant regime suicide — and the United States lacks the power to manipulate political interests within other countries.
In Afghanistan, neither the Karzai government nor the Ghani government was likely to do more than promise to address demands for change. Survival required deals with warlords and other corrupt individuals, which helps explain the bags of dollars the CIA delivered to the president’s office to help keep Hamid Karzai in power.
Afghans did not always welcome Western efforts to bring Afghans democracy. The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reports that pervasive corruption meant Afghanistan’s officials skimmed off external aid as it traveled from the central government to outlying areas. International aid even funded insurgents. U.S. efforts to rebuild and democratize Afghanistan were undercut by bribery at all levels and by a lack of understanding of Afghan governance, society and politics.
What would help Afghanistan now?
A number of experts point out that what matters now, rather than a blame game, is helping Afghans. Research focusing on the significance of a global effort points the way. Methods include accepting and supporting refugees, funding refugee organizations and international organizations like UNICEF, and helping refugee-receiving countries.
Afghanistan shows there are problems the U.S. military cannot fix. But the international community has helped individual Afghans with literacy programs, especially for girls, educational opportunitieshealth care, support for women fleeing family violence, and efforts to develop an independent media.
All this assistance provided individual Afghans with critical resources that they themselves wanted. These efforts, not military force, helped build the societal changes many Afghans hoped to see. Looming changes in many of these areas are what make recent events all the more bitter.
Jacqueline L. Hazelton is an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the author of “Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare” (Cornell University Press, 2021). The views expressed here are her own and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. government.
The Washington Post · by Jacqueline L. Hazelton August 31, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. EDT · August 31, 2021

11. The U.S. Military Got Some Things Right in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
The situation was far from perfect, and many countries restricted how NATO could use their forces. But most militaries were engaged in true combat operations, and their soldiers fought and died alongside ours. Some countries had more combat deaths per capita than the U.S. had. Of the roughly 2,000 letters of condolence I signed over four years to the families of NATO troops killed in action, about 700 went to non-American servicemen and women. Special operations in particular was a multi-national effort, as was intelligence gathering. The lessons we learned in Afghanistan about coalition operations will be part of U.S. military doctrine for decades to come.
Measured against all that the U.S. got wrong, perhaps these achievements provide small comfort. In retrospect, it’s clear we built the wrong kind of Afghan army, underestimated the Taliban and overestimated Afghan leadership. We overshot the goal on attempting to build a new Afghan nation, failed to prevent cross-border sanctuaries for the enemies of that effort, and staged a messy and humiliating final exit. Even so, the U.S. military has learned some things that will prepare it to face the next foreign crisis
The U.S. Military Got Some Things Right in Afghanistan
Despite the mistakes, leaders on the ground made progress toward literacy, military cooperation and other goals.
September 2, 2021, 7:00 AM EDT

Reading lesson. Photographer: Kamran Shefayee/AFP via Getty Images
James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also chair of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation and vice chairman of Global Affairs at the Carlyle Group. His latest book is "2034: A Novel of the Next World War."
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Amid the anger and finger-pointing at the end of America’s flawed 20-year mission in Afghanistan, it’s easy to conclude that it was all a failure from start to finish. While I broadly agree that the effort failed overall — due to mistakes the U.S. made in training the Afghan army, the Taliban’s nimble performance at the end, Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and Afghan leadership failures — certain positive outcomes are worth remembering.
Obviously, for 20 years we prevented another devastating attack on the U.S. from the ungoverned wilderness of Afghanistan. And after a 10-year manhunt, we killed Osama bin Laden. But there were also other, more subtle successes.

The most important of these is literacy. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, most of the population couldn’t read, especially girls and women, who had been denied the benefits of even primary school education. NATO struggled to train the Afghan army, because the soldiers couldn’t read maintenance manuals, understand the wording on a map or communicate in writing on command and control networks. In 2009, as the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, I found myself often complaining in planning sessions about how illiteracy made our job difficult.
At one meeting, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who at the time was a presidential envoy to both Afghanistan and Pakistan, lost patience with my complaining. “Hey Admiral,” he said, “stop whining and teach them to read.”
So we did. The basic literacy program we created, working with various humanitarian organizations, became foundational to the NATO training mission. Nongovernmental organizations were also teaching reading, under our protection, in villages, districts and provinces around the country. Eventually, we instructed hundreds of thousands of Afghan recruits in the basics of reading, and our efforts contributed to a significant improvement in literacy in the country. It may be the most lasting thing we did to help Afghanistan.
The U.S. military also helped advance the rights of girls and women. Several generations of female Afghans were provided education, medical care, the ability to work outside the home and other opportunities — leading to profound shifts in Afghan culture, especially in the bigger population centers. Will these changes survive the return of the Taliban? It’s hard to say. The world has yet to see the real policy direction of “Taliban 2.0.” But I’d bet on at least an improvement over 2001. And if the Taliban leaders of today are serious about entering the international system, accessing the global financial networks, and gaining diplomatic recognition from most countries, they will have to show some progress in this key area.
A third success in Afghanistan was the military’s learning to rise above the frustrations of coalition warfare and work cooperatively with other countries. At the time I led NATO operations in Afghanistan, more than 50 countries had troops on the ground, ranging in numbers from the massive U.S. presence to a small detachment from tiny Luxembourg. Troops from Central America, Mongolia and New Zealand fought bravely and well.
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The situation was far from perfect, and many countries restricted how NATO could use their forces. But most militaries were engaged in true combat operations, and their soldiers fought and died alongside ours. Some countries had more combat deaths per capita than the U.S. had. Of the roughly 2,000 letters of condolence I signed over four years to the families of NATO troops killed in action, about 700 went to non-American servicemen and women. Special operations in particular was a multi-national effort, as was intelligence gathering. The lessons we learned in Afghanistan about coalition operations will be part of U.S. military doctrine for decades to come.
Measured against all that the U.S. got wrong, perhaps these achievements provide small comfort. In retrospect, it’s clear we built the wrong kind of Afghan army, underestimated the Taliban and overestimated Afghan leadership. We overshot the goal on attempting to build a new Afghan nation, failed to prevent cross-border sanctuaries for the enemies of that effort, and staged a messy and humiliating final exit. Even so, the U.S. military has learned some things that will prepare it to face the next foreign crisis.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
James Stavridis at jstavridis@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Mary Duenwald at mduenwald@bloomberg.net


12. Fired Marine’s question about leader accountability should not be dismissed

Excerpts:
But while officers promise only to execute their duties to the best of their abilities, enlisted personnel pledge to obey all those placed over them. Those involved in the chain of decisions that led to the debacle at the Kabul, ­Afghanistan, airport would do well to understand this distinction. Because those out on the security cordon, who gave their lives, had taken that oath. They had promised to obey.
The choices facing senior officers in their dealings with civilian leadership are admittedly limited. They are expected to offer their opinion, even when, or especially when, it conflicts with a proposed course of action. If their advice is not taken, they can choose to resign or ­execute the plan. What they can’t choose to do is absolve themselves of responsibility when that plan goes awry.
Despite two wars that have seen their shares of disasters — not a single general officer has been relieved of his duties for incompetence — and only one has resigned on a question of principle.
Scheller, on the other hand, is just one of many regimental and battalion commanders relieved of their duties over the course of past two decades, and soon the ripples that he caused will subside.
That shouldn’t distract from the fact that many in uniform — and indeed many veterans of all services — are asking the same questions.
If the past is any indication though, these will continue to go unanswered.

Fired Marine’s question about leader accountability should not be dismissed
marinecorpstimes.com · by Andrew Milburn · September 3, 2021
U.S. Marine battalion commander Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was fired on Aug. 27 after he posted a video on ­LinkedIn and Facebook criticizing the “ineptitude” of U.S. military leadership over the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and demanding “accountability” from those involved.
No one was surprised at the decision to fire him — least of all Scheller, who commented in a social media post, “My chain of command is doing exactly what I would do…. if I were in their shoes.”
All of us who have worn the same uniform know that his actions violated the canons of our profession — so did he. Scheller broke the rules, and there is little room to question the rationale for his firing. Unfortunately, the method in which Scheller chose to deliver his message has become a distraction from the message itself.
The question of senior officer accountability over the Afghanistan debacle is not one that can simply be dismissed alongside Scheller with the usual tired trope about “loss of trust and confidence” and dissembling comments about this being an emotional time for all Marines.
RELATED

Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller released a second video Sunday doubling down on calls for accountability, and apparently resigning his commission.
Tomorrow the news cycle moves on, and Scheller’s outburst and subsequent dismissal largely will be forgotten — and that is how it should be. But let’s not conflate his story with the questions that he asked, which were not unreasonable.
Why indeed, despite two decades of grinding deployments, the loss and maiming of thousands of our comrades and the untold misery the war has ­inflicted on the Afghan people, did we find ourselves running for the exits, leaving those who fought with us to the mercy of our erstwhile enemy?
It was the loss of 13 more Americans at the end of August that brought this question into sharp focus.
From the four-star generals at the ­nexus between policy and strategy, down to a squad of lance corporals, with names and backgrounds that span the broad and diverse canvas of our country, there was a chain of command. And a series of decisions. An opportunity to exercise moral autonomy in the gap between receipt of order and execution. An opportunity to advise, dissent — and if that failed — to resign.
Four-star general officers are treated with great respect in the U.S. military — akin to modern day viceroys.
But this adulation isn’t supposed to be all one way. It’s an acknowledgment that these men and women carry the weight of great responsibility, and an ­implicit understanding that they will take ­ownership when things go wrong.
Their exalted position shouldn’t ­permit them to execute without ­question an interminable and costly war to no end. Or, worse, to offer ­continuous assurance that the war was going well when it wasn’t. Or to acquiesce to a hasty withdrawal that blatantly failed the reasonable man test at every level — tactically, operationally and strategically.
Good order and discipline, the very fabric of any military organization, depends on leaders understanding that there will be times when they must order subordinates to do things that will cause them hardship or worse. But if the mission involves risking subordinate lives for the pursuit of goals that are unobtainable or indecipherable, at what point does the leaders’ responsibility shift from the mission to the men?
Those who reply “never,” miss an important distinction.
Officers and enlisted personnel both take an oath of office. Both swear to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
But while officers promise only to execute their duties to the best of their abilities, enlisted personnel pledge to obey all those placed over them. Those involved in the chain of decisions that led to the debacle at the Kabul, ­Afghanistan, airport would do well to understand this distinction. Because those out on the security cordon, who gave their lives, had taken that oath. They had promised to obey.
The choices facing senior officers in their dealings with civilian leadership are admittedly limited. They are expected to offer their opinion, even when, or especially when, it conflicts with a proposed course of action. If their advice is not taken, they can choose to resign or ­execute the plan. What they can’t choose to do is absolve themselves of responsibility when that plan goes awry.
Despite two wars that have seen their shares of disasters — not a single general officer has been relieved of his duties for incompetence — and only one has resigned on a question of principle.
Scheller, on the other hand, is just one of many regimental and battalion commanders relieved of their duties over the course of past two decades, and soon the ripples that he caused will subside.
That shouldn’t distract from the fact that many in uniform — and indeed many veterans of all services — are asking the same questions.
If the past is any indication though, these will continue to go unanswered.
Andrew Milburn retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel in 2019 after a 31-year career. His final position in uniform was deputy commander of Special Operations Central, and prior to that commanding officer of the Marine Raider Regiment and Combined Special Operations Task Force–Iraq. Since retiring, he has written a critically acclaimed memoir, “When the Tempest Gathers.” He is a co-host of the Modern War Institute’s Irregular War Podcast and Irregular War Initiative.

13. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: There’s A Problem In The Upper Reaches Of Our Military

Can we ask (and answer) this question objectively: Do we think the tragedy of Afghanistan is a result of "wokenss" and virtue signaling?

Excerpts:
Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.
The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees. Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?
Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?
Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?
Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people — along with the wars it fights abroad.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: There’s A Problem In The Upper Reaches Of Our Military
It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Joe Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.
In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 service members, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.
On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women’s Equality Day. If so, then is the opposite of diversity — unity — our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram air base in the middle of the night without opposition?
The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI’s active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.
Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.
Yet until Jan. 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.
Recently retired Gen. Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific suggestion that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan, where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump’s border facilities to Nazi death camps.
Other retired high-profile military officials variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving of removal from office sooner than later. None of these retired four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.
More than 50 former intelligence officials on the eve of the November election signed a letter suggesting that incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden’s missing laptop might be “Russian disinformation.” They used their stature for political purposes to convince the American people that the story was a lie.
Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford and retired Adm. Mike Mullen recently blasted retired brass who had questioned Biden’s cognitive ability. OK. But they should have issued a similar warning earlier, when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in election year 2020.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for doing a photo op with Trump, erroneously buying into the narrative that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture. Worse, he leaked to journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he “considered” resigning.
Think of the irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.
Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi’s racialist diatribes.
Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.
The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees. Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?
Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?
Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?
Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people — along with the wars it fights abroad.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.


14. China erases billionaire actress Zhao Wei from history

So does this mean that the old saying that once it is on the internet it is on it forever?

If China has perfected wiping people from the internet perhaps they could market their capability to those who work to repair reputations of people with derogatory information on the internet. (Note sarcasm)

On a serious note I would like to understand what China thinks it accomplishes by this draconian action? Yes the article notes this is all about power.

But surely this could be exploited by those who want to challenge China in the information and influence space. And could there be blowback from within the Chinese population and the elite that is outside of the CCP?


China erases billionaire actress Zhao Wei from history
One of China’s most famous and richest actresses has been completely erased and the Chinese government is thought to be behind it.
adelaidenow.com.au · by Jamie Seidel · August 31, 2021
She has millions of adoring fans. She’s worth billions of dollars. But Beijing has all but erased actress Zhao Wei from history. And they won’t say why.
Zhao’s name won’t be immortal. Her entire internet existence has been scrubbed.
All serials and chat shows featuring her have vanished from major Chinese online streaming sites. She no longer even appears in the online credits for the movies she appears in.
Discussing why is being censored on social media.

Zhao Wei at the Venice Film Festival on September 10, 2016. Picture: Ian Gavan/Getty Images for Jaeger-LeCoultre

The billionaire actress has been erased from the internet in China. Picture: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images for Jaeger-LeCoultre
Zhao Wei shot to fame in the late 1990s in China’s most successful television series ever, My Fair Princess. Since then, she’s progressed from being an A-list actress to director, pop singer and businesswoman.
Such success under Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “opening up” China and embracing the incentives of private enterprise made Zhao very wealthy.
But her business empire struck trouble under Xi Jinping. Zhao was accused of being unpatriotic for hiring a Taiwanese actor to play a leading actor in a 2016 film. Beijing had that choice overturned.
Shortly after, Zhao’s business acquisitions began to attract close regulatory and taxation scrutiny. Last month a public relations agency she owns became embroiled in a nationalistic scandal after one of its clients – actor Zhang Zhehan – took a selfie while visiting Japan’s Yasukuni war dead shrine.

Zhao Wei at Hollywood’s TLC Chinese Theater in 2015. Picture: Todd Williamson/Getty Images for Sun Seven Stars Media
On Saturday, reports emerged on Chinese news sites that Zhao had fled the country on a private jet and was spotted at Bordeaux airport in France, where she and her husband Huang Youlong own a vineyard.
Now Zhao appears to have become the highest-profile victim of a Chinese Communist Party crackdown on celebrities and billionaires.
There can be only one …
Beijing is worried about personality cults. At least any not centred on Xi Jinping.
“Xi Jinping thought” is now compulsory teaching at schools. “Xi Jinping urges” features in almost every state-controlled news report.
But the lives and acts of entertainment celebrities remain much more popular on social media chat rooms. Little wonder celebrity fan culture is not something Xi considers to be a Chinese characteristic.
On Friday, Beijing’s Cyberspace Administration agency issued a set of instructions to social media and internet operators aimed at “rectifying issues” with fan communities.
The purpose was to ensure “political and ideological safety in the cyberspace as well as creating a clean internet”.
Celebrities can no longer be ranked in order of popularity.
Talent agencies must submit themselves to Communist Party oversight.
Fan clubs must be licenced and officially authorised.
Any disagreement between fans of different high-profile personalities must immediately be censored.
The regulatory crackdown follows the publication of a policy guideline, Implementation Outline for the Establishment of a Rule of Law-Based Society, which mandates the establishment of “moral norms” as “legal norms”.
Cancel culture
China’s National Radio and Television Administration in 2018 ordered the banishment of actors whose “morality is not noble”, who was “tasteless, vulgar and obscene”, or whose “ideological level is low and have no class”.
All must ban “actors with stains, scandals and problematic moral integrity”.
At the weekend, the Communist Party-controlled Global Times accused Zhao of having “been entangled in various scandals over the years”.

Zhao Wei at the 73rd Venice Film Festival in 2016. Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
It admits no official reason for her erasure has been given.
“Aside from her celebrity identity, Zhao was also widely known as a billionaire investor surrounded with lawsuits,” it reads. “As early as 2001, Zhao received an overload of criticism for publicly wearing a dress featuring a Japanese military flag …
“Zhao’s removal from video platforms comes two weeks after actor Zhang Zhehan … had all of his accounts and works banned on various social media platforms including Weibo, after posing at Japan’s notorious Yasukuni Shrine, sparking wide outrage.”
The list of fallen Chinese folk heroes is beginning to run high.
Zhang was subject to a similar erasure last month, with all online references to his work deleted.
Actress Zheng Shuang fell foul of Beijing Friday. She’s been accused of tax evasion and ordered to pay a $A63 million fine. If she pays the fine, she won’t be investigated. She may even be able to keep her profile.
Late last year, Zheng’s career ended after her private life exploded across the world. Her former partner accused her of abandoning two surrogate children in the United States. Zheng then vanished from public sight for four months.
Celebrity singer Huo Zhun recently resigned after being publicly attacked for promiscuous behaviour. And Chinese-Canadian singer Kris Wu was charged with “violation of morality” amid rape and underage sex accusations earlier this month.

Kris Wu at the Paris Fashion Week 2020. Picture: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Now state-regulated media is reporting China’s youth as welcoming the celebrity crackdown.
Eunice Zhang, an 18-year-old “fan circle member” said she used to spend hours every day defending her idols and promoting them on social media popularity ratings.
“In the past, when my idols got new commercial endorsements, I would use all my pocket money to buy (their products),” she reportedly said. “But now I only buy useful products.”
Communism strikes back
Chinese censors are busy setting things straight.
State-controlled social media has been promoting messages including “raise the threshold to become a celebrity”, “virtue before artistry”, and “the rewards of a moral society”.
Chairman Xi himself restated China’s commitment to Communist values at a Central Committee for Financial Affairs meeting earlier this month. He stressed that “Common prosperity is the prosperity of all the people, not the prosperity of a few people”.
“Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism and an important feature of Chinese-style modernisation,” he reportedly said. “It is necessary to follow the principles of marketisation and rule of law, and co-ordinate the prevention and resolution of major financial risks.”
It appears Chairman Xi equates independent billionaires with such risk. Especially as growing inequality threatens to undermine his message of eliminating poverty.
But concentrations of wealth are also perceived as threats to the power of the Communist Party, which has imposed strict new regulations on business investment, ownership and control.
In July, tech giant Tencent owner Ma Huateng saw his personal fortune slashed from $A82 billion to $A68 billion at the stroke of a pen.
He’s not the only one. Billionaire Jack Ma vanished from public life after his Ant Group was prevented from launching a public offering. That crackdown came after Ma dared criticise Communist Party regulators for stifling tech sector growth.

Jack Ma speaking during a Shanghai trade forum in 2018. Picture: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
It should be no surprise. Chairman Xi promised to tackle “extreme wealth” when he returned to power for a second term in 2017. But it took until this month’s Central Committee meeting for the formal promise to enforce “reasonable adjustments to excessive income” to be made.
It’s not all about economics. It’s also about power.
In July, Chinese agricultural tycoon Sun Dawu was jailed for 18 years after being convicted under the catch-all “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” offence. He’d been outspoken about a simple property dispute.
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel


15.

Excerpts:
In the end, we sought to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a terrorist safe haven that could threaten the United States. We left behind a country that has both an ISIS-K problem and as many as 500 al Qaeda members, still allied with the Taliban. One must be skeptical that so much evil will be confined to Afghanistan. Today, the Taliban is talking a progressive line, but the tentacles of the Haqqani network and the ignorance of the frontline commanders are much in evidence. Dizzy with success, the Taliban has not even produced an outline of the emirate’s governing structure. Thousands of Americans and sympathetic Afghans were left behind in the evacuation and could become hostages to the Taliban regime, which, of course, is promising freedom to travel and emigrate after the Americans leave.
Constitutional government and coalition-sponsored advances in education, health care, and human rights are in jeopardy. At the same time, the Taliban will learn that the nation that they conquered in 2021 is not the same one that they left two decades ago. Half of the population is under 25 years of age. They don’t remember the first Taliban regime and may well become a resistant element to rule by sharia law. The long war for Afghanistan’s future that began in 1978 continues. Its character will be shaped by decisions made in Kabul, the region, and among the great powers. Without a doubt, Afghanistan and its people will pay a high price for this tragic defeat and the collapse of its republic.

What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?
The next decade will produce many studies to answer that question, but here is a preliminary answer from a long-term Afghanistan watcher.
defenseone.com · by Joseph J. Collins
Just 20 years after its own regime collapsed, a reinvigorated Taliban defeated a U.S.-trained and supported Army and police force that once numbered over 330,000 personnel. With $88 billion in U.S. security assistance, the Afghan army and police led the fight for seven hard years and lost 66,000 uniformed personnel, considerably more than the United States lost in Vietnam. In the end, however, Afghan security forces and the Kabul government collapsed under significant Taliban pressure and perceived U.S. abandonment. What went wrong in Afghanistan? “Plenty” is the short answer, but it took 20 years of mistakes—two decades of mistakes—Afghan and coalition—to create the defeat and debacle that played out in Kabul in the past few weeks.
Each of the U.S. presidents made serious errors. For the first 16 years of its commitment, despite tremendous spending and effort, the United States and its coalition partners were “muddling through” in Afghanistan. President George W. Bush took his eye off the war in Afghanistan and focused on Iraq. He expanded the mission from counterterrorism to nation-building but failed to address adequately the growth of the Taliban power. President Barack Obama surged U.S. forces to over 100,000 but, against military advice, reduced it over five years from over 100,000 to 8,400 troops, even as the Taliban gained strength.
The next two presidents favored full military withdrawal, but in pursuing that goal, they broke faith with our allies. President Donald J. Trump increased forces briefly, but then pushed aside our allies, negotiated directly with the enemy, and agreed, without a ceasefire or significant Taliban concessions, to withdraw all U.S. forces by May 2021. His successor, President Joseph R. Biden, against Defense and State Department advice, doubled down on the Trump policy, further alienating Kabul and our coalition partners. Miscalculations and missteps ultimately found U.S. and coalition forces conducting an evacuation from a Kabul airport whose outside gates were controlled by the Taliban.
President Biden also decided to conduct the withdrawal during August at the height of the traditional fighting season. Washington’s declarations of unending support to Kabul faded as Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the last warfighting commander left the country, the embassy lowered its flag, and U.S. forces stealthily abandoned Bagram, once synonymous with U.S. strength and commitment. Lacking internal and international support, the hard-pressed Afghan forces and the Kabul government fell apart, allowing the rapid, often unopposed advance of the Taliban forces.
In every administration, choices have consequences. Nearly 2,500 dead American service members, 66,000 dead Afghan soldiers and police officers, and a trillion dollars of U.S. expenditures were counted on the road to this defeat. Valiant actions by our men and women in uniform allowed for the evacuation of 6,000 Americans and 117,000 Afghan partners by Aug. 30, but in the process, thirteen service members and over 170 Afghans were killed by an ISIS-K suicide bomber.
What were the major factors that brought about defeat and the demise of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan? First, the Afghan government was ineffective and corrupt. The more the allies pumped resources into the country, the more money flowed to corrupt entities. The coalition’s inability to control narcotics production yielded up to a billion dollars per year to the Taliban. Even the Army and police—fighting for their lives—were steeped in corruption and cronyism. Support from the center to fielded forces was never adequate.
Second, the United States never achieved an effective strategy. Afghanistan was often an afterthought to other policies, like the war in Iraq. U.S. officials often sugarcoated the situation in Afghanistan for a public which never cared much for the commitment. In the end, Presidents Trump and Biden negotiated with the enemy and broke faith with our hard-pressed allies. We created the sense of abandonment that in the end contributed mightily to the disintegration of Afghan forces and government.
Third, the arch-villain of this tale is Pakistan. Our alleged “major non-NATO ally” created the Taliban, advised it, nurtured it, brought it back to life, and provided a secure sanctuary for the Taliban. This safe haven made effective counterinsurgency nearly impossible. Exploiting its role as a nuclear power essential to our supply lines to Afghanistan, the Pakistani generals successfully played a double game. With a goal of blocking Indian influence, Pakistan supported the Taliban while posing as our ally in the war on terror. It was highly symbolic that Osama bin Laden lived for years within the shadow of Pakistan’s version of West Point.
The Taliban’s victory is a triumph of Pakistani treachery. Support for Islamist radicals, however, poses a great risk to Pakistan’s generals and their subordinate politicians. If Islamist militants can take down a state backed by a superpower, they may well believe that Pakistan is easy pickings.
Fourth, we developed an Army and a police force in the American mold. It was not well suited to its mission and required a great deal of logistical support. It relied on allied air support. On the ground, battlefield performance was spotty, except for the Afghan commando units, trained and advised by coalition special operators. When the Afghans took over the fight in 2014, the coalition was well into reducing its support and advice to frontline Afghan units.
Our attempts to build an Afghan Air Force were slow to start and never rose above inadequate. Despite many valorous Afghan airmen, when the U.S. pulled out its maintenance contractors, the 200 aircraft of the Afghan Air force were virtually grounded. More than 40 Afghan aircraft were flown to Uzbekistan. In the end, thousands of vehicles and tens of thousands of armaments fell into Taliban hands.
Finally, the Taliban was a strong opponent to the Kabul government. Animated by Islamist fervor and Afghan xenophobia, the various Taliban groups fought well and were less corrupt than the local government entities. As in many insurgencies, government forces rarely matched the morale and esprit of the Taliban, which was well financed by criminal activities and backed by Pakistan. While we owned all the computers and modern means of communication, the Taliban’s message, closely tied to local conditions and backed by swift “justice” won the day.
In the end, we sought to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a terrorist safe haven that could threaten the United States. We left behind a country that has both an ISIS-K problem and as many as 500 al Qaeda members, still allied with the Taliban. One must be skeptical that so much evil will be confined to Afghanistan. Today, the Taliban is talking a progressive line, but the tentacles of the Haqqani network and the ignorance of the frontline commanders are much in evidence. Dizzy with success, the Taliban has not even produced an outline of the emirate’s governing structure. Thousands of Americans and sympathetic Afghans were left behind in the evacuation and could become hostages to the Taliban regime, which, of course, is promising freedom to travel and emigrate after the Americans leave.
Constitutional government and coalition-sponsored advances in education, health care, and human rights are in jeopardy. At the same time, the Taliban will learn that the nation that they conquered in 2021 is not the same one that they left two decades ago. Half of the population is under 25 years of age. They don’t remember the first Taliban regime and may well become a resistant element to rule by sharia law. The long war for Afghanistan’s future that began in 1978 continues. Its character will be shaped by decisions made in Kabul, the region, and among the great powers. Without a doubt, Afghanistan and its people will pay a high price for this tragic defeat and the collapse of its republic.
Joseph J. Collins is a retired Army colonel and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations (2001-2004).
defenseone.com · by Joseph J. Collins


16. Opinion | How the U.S. Made War Humane and Endless

Our fear of absolute war (the "theoretical ideal" from Clausewitz - if left unchecked or unmoderated by politics and society, war would reach its natural extremes) has led us to perhaps over compensate.

Excerpts:

It is natural to think that humane war is an oxymoron, and understandable to indict “dirty wars.” But that is to miss that a “humane” form of control and surveillance is taking place beyond America’s borders, with death and injury increasingly edited out of public view. And the improved humanity of our wars, ostensible and real, is not without its vices. Old empires justified brutal acts in the service of human civilization and progress. Our version of “humanity” helps compensate for our wars’ extension in time and expansion in space.

When defending withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden made clear that he has no plans to give up counterterrorism. The infrastructure of drone and missile strikes and special forces raids is indeed ramping up again after the fall of Afghanistan, an antiseptic Frankenstein monster loosed even as the gory laboratory that birthed it closes down.

The continuation of America’s war on terror — with strikes from afar and from overhead and in visits to Afghanistan and many other places for the indefinite future — has many authors. But the attempt to make America’s military ways less obviously brutal has contributed decisively to making our wars more acceptable to many and difficult to see for others. That is a syndrome we are only pretending to stop.

Opinion | How the U.S. Made War Humane and Endless
The New York Times · by Samuel Moyn · September 3, 2021
Guest Essay
How the U.S. Made War Humane and Endless
Sept. 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

Credit...Ariel Davis
By
Mr. Moyn is a professor at Yale and the author of the forthcoming book “Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.”
In a speech on Tuesday, President Biden identified his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan with his desire to end the “forever war.” But he also promised that America will “maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and in other countries.” The reality today, he said, is that “we don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.”
In this, Mr. Biden’s speech made explicit what was already obvious. With the last American troops now out of the country, it is clearer what America’s bequest to the world has been over the past 20 years: a disturbing new form of counterterrorist belligerency, at once endless and humane. This has transformed American traditions of warmaking, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan is, in fact, a final step in the transformation.
The desire to fight more-humane war would not have made sense to prior generations of Americans. Originating in constant and pitiless wars against Native people, American fighting was brutal even before it went abroad. Similar violence was later extended against Filipinos in the country’s first overseas imperial counterinsurgency. Air war only intensified American traditions of brutality, and in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, few limits were respected, either in principle or practice. Asian foes were regularly compared to Native Americans — and were legitimate targets of the same violence — by commentators and soldiers.
Those traditions hardly evaporated after Sept. 11, 2001. The Middle East was sometimes treated as a new frontier; Osama bin Laden was reportedly code-named Geronimo by the forces who killed him in 2011. But by that point American culture was already giving rise to a newer tradition — one that continues to characterize the war on terror.
The groundwork was laid after the Vietnam War, which had left many Americans ashamed of their country’s overseas violence. At the same time, global activism pushed to make the laws of war, either ignored or permissive before, more humane in content and honored in practice. In the 1970s, for the first time, the obligation not to target civilians — especially in aerial bombardment — was put on paper, along with a new requirement to strike only when the expected military advantage outweighed collateral damage.
Humanitarian groups began to monitor the ethics and law of fighting. Human Rights Watch, for example, began to do so in 1980s conflicts in Latin America. Even more important, the reputational damage caused by Vietnam led some within the U.S. military to conclude that fighting more humanely and legally was vital. Law became more and more central to the warrior’s code. As the political theorist Michael Walzer remarked, our armed forces had discovered “the usefulness of morality,” which was “something radically new in military history.”
By the end of the Cold War, the die was cast. The 1991 gulf war was the first international conflict that Human Rights Watch examined for violations of the law of war and the first in which military lawyers helped pick targets.
But these developments occurred as antiwar energy, which Vietnam inspired, dissipated. And the rise of legal probity restricted humanitarians and militaries to bickering about whether the United States was following the rules well enough, rather than whether the wars should be fought in the first place.
More humane war became a companion to an increasingly interventionist foreign policy. Earlier wars had not needed to appear humane to win legitimacy from the public, but new ones returned in an altered moral climate. By the post-Cold War era, both American political parties were committed to a more principled use of American power. Doctrines like democracy promotion and human rights became elaborate rationales for doubling down on militarism.
Then came the years after Sept. 11. The specter of torture, like the treatment of detainees at black sites and the detentions at Guantánamo, crystallized a moral sensibility according to which it mattered most to dissidents within George W. Bush’s administration as well as a growing chorus of critics outside not where war went and how long it lasted but whether the laws governing the conduct were respected.
In the wake of the release of the Abu Ghraib photos in April 2004, humanitarian concern helped remove the bug of torture and other indignities from the program of endless war, thereby rebooting it: After all, a critique of a war focused on its egregious conduct can lead to a different and improved version of that war, rather than its end. That is precisely what happened.
In the first years of his presidency, Barack Obama capitalized on the emphases of the years just before. After running as a peace candidate in 2008, he promised in his critical first months to treat prisoners well and earned plaudits for doing so. His administration deleted noxious memos permitting torture and left the ones permitting war.
But it is easier not to mistreat prisoners if you no longer capture them. Mr. Obama vastly expanded the war on terror in scope, taking it beyond the two countries on which Mr. Bush had focused to more than 10, relying on drone strikes and special forces raids. He also went beyond Mr. Bush in formalizing a humane framework for endless war, announcing in policy that it was not the brutal war of the past but one corrected by the new sensibility.
Astonishingly, Mr. Obama even went beyond what the new laws of war required, promising never to strike off battlefields if there was any risk of collateral damage, a standard that was revealing of a new moral sensibility even if it was — like so many such rules — never adhered to in practice.
In his Nobel Peace Prize address at the end of his first year as president, Mr. Obama offered an almost metaphysical case for America fighting forever, while promising to do so humanely: “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” he explained. But its humane conduct was “a source of our strength.”
To a striking and unanticipated extent, the humanization of American might is something even President Donald Trump was forced to retain. True, he called in 2016 to “bring back waterboarding,” but to the extent that he tried he was held in check. (“He better bring his own bucket,” Michael Hayden, the former director of the C.I.A., remarked.) And while Mr. Trump decreased transparency around drone strikes and loosened top-down authority, other humane requirements largely remained in place.
It is natural to think that humane war is an oxymoron, and understandable to indict “dirty wars.” But that is to miss that a “humane” form of control and surveillance is taking place beyond America’s borders, with death and injury increasingly edited out of public view. And the improved humanity of our wars, ostensible and real, is not without its vices. Old empires justified brutal acts in the service of human civilization and progress. Our version of “humanity” helps compensate for our wars’ extension in time and expansion in space.
When defending withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden made clear that he has no plans to give up counterterrorism. The infrastructure of drone and missile strikes and special forces raids is indeed ramping up again after the fall of Afghanistan, an antiseptic Frankenstein monster loosed even as the gory laboratory that birthed it closes down.
The continuation of America’s war on terror — with strikes from afar and from overhead and in visits to Afghanistan and many other places for the indefinite future — has many authors. But the attempt to make America’s military ways less obviously brutal has contributed decisively to making our wars more acceptable to many and difficult to see for others. That is a syndrome we are only pretending to stop.
Samuel Moyn (@samuelmoyn) is a professor of law and history at Yale and the author of the forthcoming book “Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.”
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The New York Times · by Samuel Moyn · September 3, 2021


17. Appoint an 'Afghanistan commission' now

Excerpts:
As national security practitioners for three decades each, we assess that the fall of Kabul and the Afghan government was not simply an unfortunate series of events on the ground, nor was it inevitable. Errors and dysfunctions of policy, strategy and organizational culture turned a stalemate into a rout, put American citizens and service members in an untenable situation, and damaged national interests. In a world replete with state actors and terrorists seeking to attack American interests and allies, we cannot shrug our shoulders and say “it is what it is.” Nor should the post-mortem be left entirely to politicians for partisan theater.
We call on Congress to appoint a serious, qualified, bipartisan commission of objective national security professionals to investigate the proximate and underlying causes of the present disaster, and to recommend appropriate personnel, organizational and procedural remedies at the level of national security and foreign policymaking analogous to those proposed for military and intelligence organizations by the 9/11 and Holloway reviews.
Appoint an 'Afghanistan commission' now
The Hill · by Rich Outzen and J. Darren Duke, opinion contributors · September 2, 2021

The failure of U.S. support to the Afghanistan government and the collapse of that ally are now matters of historical record. The 20-year U.S. campaign to punish the Taliban for supporting terrorism and to prevent them from regaining control of Kabul has ended in defeat. Renewed Taliban control may or may not prompt massive new suffering such as human rights abuses, economic collapse, revenge killings and forced migration. It may or may not seriously undermine U.S. credibility, alliances and international influence. It may or may not have been the likeliest outcome in the long run. It is too soon to know how these propositions will play out with any degree of certainty.
What is unambiguously clear in the immediate aftermath is the systemic policy failure the defeat represents. Tens of billions of dollars in equipment seized by an adversary. Americans stranded in a foreign capital at the mercy of that adversary. Friends and employees of the U.S. government hunted, killed, trapped. U.S. military members and diplomats conducting an urgent evacuation within a tiny, dangerous perimeter. A hasty withdrawal to “protect” our forces leads to the highest U.S. casualty count in a decade. NATO’s primary alliance political-military operation ended with confusion and acrimony. Two decades of American blood and treasure spent with none of the gains preserved.
This was a multifaceted failure, and the American people deserve a detailed, expert investigation of the causes and decisions that led to it. After the hostage rescue Operation Eagle Claw ended disastrously at Desert One in Iran in 1980, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tasked a group of retired senior officers (the Holloway Review Group) to analyze the operation and causes of failure in detail. The report led to significant reforms — albeit after seven years of delay and forceful congressional intervention — referred to as Goldwater-Nichols, which greatly improved joint capabilities and helped restore U.S. credibility.
Unlike the Holloway Review Group, which focused on military technical and operational issues while avoiding policy drivers such as the interagency process, intelligence assessments and presidential decision-making, a macro-level assessment is now needed. This would be akin to the 9/11 Commission, formed in 2002 and concluding in 2004, or the Winograd Commission conducted by the Israeli government following manifest failures in the 2006 Lebanon War.
These commissions delved into policy formulation, interaction of civilian leaders with military and intelligence officials, analytic and decision-making processes. After the reports, specific steps were taken to hold those in positions of leadership and command accountable, and to avoid repetition. Washington needs a thorough and brutally honest examination along these lines today, and the American people deserve one; without it, the chances for repeated strategic error remain high. With it, the confidence of the public and our allies can be placed on firmer footing.
As national security practitioners for three decades each, we assess that the fall of Kabul and the Afghan government was not simply an unfortunate series of events on the ground, nor was it inevitable. Errors and dysfunctions of policy, strategy and organizational culture turned a stalemate into a rout, put American citizens and service members in an untenable situation, and damaged national interests. In a world replete with state actors and terrorists seeking to attack American interests and allies, we cannot shrug our shoulders and say “it is what it is.” Nor should the post-mortem be left entirely to politicians for partisan theater.
We call on Congress to appoint a serious, qualified, bipartisan commission of objective national security professionals to investigate the proximate and underlying causes of the present disaster, and to recommend appropriate personnel, organizational and procedural remedies at the level of national security and foreign policymaking analogous to those proposed for military and intelligence organizations by the 9/11 and Holloway reviews.
Rich Outzen is a retired U.S. Army colonel, nonresident senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and former senior adviser at the Department of State. He now works as a private-sector consultant.
J. Darren Duke is a senior research fellow with the Philos Project and a retired Marine Corps colonel in intelligence and special operations.
The Hill · by Rich Outzen and J. Darren Duke, opinion contributors · September 2, 2021


18. U.S. Retreat from Afghanistan Alarms Allies Like Taiwan

Excerpts:
Such a view is articulated by Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund founder and frequent commentator on geopolitics. Writing in a blog post last September, he argued that any American failure to defend Taiwan would be analogous to Britain’s inability to regain control of the Suez Canal in 1956—a humiliation that portended the disintegration of the British Empire and switch from the pound to the dollar as global reserve currency.
“Even though the United States fighting to defend Taiwan would seem to be illogical (e.g., if there is a 70% chance of the U.S. losing), not fighting a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a big loss of stature and power over other countries who won’t support the U.S. if it doesn’t fight and win for its allies,” he wrote.
These high-stakes scenarios also increase the rewards for Beijing, were it able to pull off a quick victory. Xi has made no secret his desire to see China at the “centre stage of the world.” Taiwan could be the stepping stone.
“From a strategic and geopolitical perspective, I worry that China’s objective is not really Taiwan,” General Vincent K. Brooks, former commander of U.S. Forces Korea, U.N. Command, ROK-U.S. Combined Forces and U.S. Army Pacific, tells TIME.
“Taiwan could be about something very different—a much higher degree of autonomy and hegemony not only in the East and South China Seas, but beyond the Pacific, into the Indian Ocean, to the Horn of Africa and all the strategic choke points.”
Those prospects mean that the Taiwan issue is both a potentially huge strategic headache for Washington, and one that Beijing must handle with extreme caution. For China, “the focus here is not that the United States abandoned Afghanistan, but that the United States was in Afghanistan for 20 years,” says Mastro. “Afghanistan is strategically irrelevant, especially compared to Taiwan. So what does that mean for U.S. willingness to fight for Taiwan?”
U.S. Retreat from Afghanistan Alarms Allies Like Taiwan
TIME · by charlie.campbell@time.com
On Sept. 1, Afghans woke up to a nation without an American presence for the first time in two decades—a situation that most have never known, given that the median age of the nation is just 18 years.
As Taliban combatants picked through the spoils of victory, America’s friends around the globe were left to ruminate on what those jettisoned Black Hawks, Humvees, and fighter jets signified for their own dependence on Washington—perhaps none more so than Taiwan.
Over recent months, it has borne the brunt of increasingly aggressive behavior from Beijing, which considers the self-governing island a breakaway province to be eventually reunited with the mainland—by force if necessary. In July, Chinese strongman President Xi Jinping used the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party to reassert his commitment to bring Taiwan back into the fold and “smash” any notion of Taiwanese independence.
Taiwanese politicians of all stripes have acknowledged that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is a wake-up call. Pro-China voices are urging better relations with Beijing; China skeptics are calling for greater self-reliance in defense. Beijing is meanwhile growing in confidence: anti-China protesters in semi-autonomous Hong Kong have been brought to heel and, following Washington’s latest humiliation, Chinese state media is now dismissing Taiwan’s chief protector as a “paper tiger.”
“Taiwan’s only option is to make itself stronger, more united and more determined to protect itself,” Taiwan’s U.S.-educated President Tsai Ing-wen wrote in a Facebook post on Aug. 18, three days after the Taliban took Kabul. “Relying solely on the protection of others is not an option for us.”
Other nations also see the writing on the wall. Japan’s annual regional security review cited a “greater sense of crisis than ever before” about Taiwan. In June, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that China wants the ability to invade and hold Taiwan within the next six years (though he didn’t believe Beijing had any immediate intent.)
China’s military is now the world’s second largest after the U.S., with defense spending soaring 76% over the last decade to $252 billion last year, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The Chinese navy has been upgraded into a full-scale, blue water force capable of operating in all the world’s major oceans, currently with two aircraft carriers but there are plans to deploy up to six more. In recent months, Beijing has ramped up live fire drills and naval and air sorties around Taiwan.
Of course, Beijing and Taipei have many reasons to avoid war, given the lives that hang in the balance and undoubted economic devastation. Yet the propaganda and strategic benefits to Beijing of sustaining the pressure are undeniable.
“At this point, China is looking to resolve [the Taiwan] issue,” says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a China specialist at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “Peaceful reunification has not been working; the only option is armed reunification. And now the question is: can they do this successfully?”

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen (C) listens while inspecting military troops in Tainan, southern Taiwan, on January 15, 2021.
SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images
What would a China-Taiwan conflict look like?
In the case of conflict, China’s best chance of success would be a quick knockout before the U.S. can rally to Taiwan’s aid. An initial cyber and electronic blitzkrieg could be mounted against Taiwan’s financial system and key infrastructure, as well as U.S. military communications. Meanwhile, Chinese ships and aircraft could blockade Taiwan’s coast to cut off supplies of fuel and food.
Targeted Chinese airstrikes would aim to decapitate Taiwan’s top political and military leadership and destroy defensive positions. PLA warships and submarines could set off across the 80-mile Taiwan Strait carrying an invasion force, seizing outlying islands and neutralizing their defenses as they progressed. Thousands of paratroopers could augment the offensive from the air.
A white paper on the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army, presented to Taiwan lawmakers Aug. 31, conceded that China’s electronic warfare arsenal could “paralyze Taiwan’s air defenses, command of the sea and counterattacking systems.”
However, Taipei has lived under the specter of a Chinese invasion for over half a century and a Chinese victory is not a fait accompli. Eastern Taiwan’s terrain is mountainous, and many of the 100-plus islands that make up Taiwan are riddled with tunnels, bunkers and artillery.
Strategists say Taiwan only has 14 beaches suitable for an amphibious landing, and most of these are heavily defended and hemmed by steep cliffs. There are also thousands of anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles, and mobile missile batteries capable of avoiding detection, that could inflict heavy losses on any invasion force.
Taiwan meanwhile has 175,000 full-time soldiers and more than a million reservists ready to resist an occupation. China’s military numbers over two million but getting these to the island is no easy task. The troops from neither side are battle ready (China has not fought a war since 1979) but as Afghanistan has consistently shown, the side that is defending its homeland has the morale required for a sustained campaign.

Aged anti-landing barricades are positioned on a beach facing China on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen which, at points lies only a few miles from China, on April 19, 2018 in Kinmen, Taiwan.
Carl Court/Getty Images
Would the U.S. defend Taiwan?
Washington signed a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan in 1954, and under its terms, the U.S. Navy came to the island’s aid during the Taiwan Strait Crises of the 1950s—fortunately resulting in little bloodshed. Although the U.S. scrapped the treaty in 1979, when establishing diplomatic ties with Beijing, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act that same year, authorizing American weapons sales to the island in order to “maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.” President BIll Clinton also sent carrier battle groups close to Taiwanese waters in the late 1990s, in response to missile tests conducted by Beijing.
On Capitol Hill, political support for Taiwan remains strong to this day, especially given the deterioration in relations with China in recent years. Many Americans also see the costs of deserting Taiwan to be incalculably worse than those incurred in the retreat from Kabul, claiming that it could fundamentally reshape global security.
Such a view is articulated by Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund founder and frequent commentator on geopolitics. Writing in a blog post last September, he argued that any American failure to defend Taiwan would be analogous to Britain’s inability to regain control of the Suez Canal in 1956—a humiliation that portended the disintegration of the British Empire and switch from the pound to the dollar as global reserve currency.
“Even though the United States fighting to defend Taiwan would seem to be illogical (e.g., if there is a 70% chance of the U.S. losing), not fighting a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a big loss of stature and power over other countries who won’t support the U.S. if it doesn’t fight and win for its allies,” he wrote.
These high-stakes scenarios also increase the rewards for Beijing, were it able to pull off a quick victory. Xi has made no secret his desire to see China at the “centre stage of the world.” Taiwan could be the stepping stone.
“From a strategic and geopolitical perspective, I worry that China’s objective is not really Taiwan,” General Vincent K. Brooks, former commander of U.S. Forces Korea, U.N. Command, ROK-U.S. Combined Forces and U.S. Army Pacific, tells TIME.
“Taiwan could be about something very different—a much higher degree of autonomy and hegemony not only in the East and South China Seas, but beyond the Pacific, into the Indian Ocean, to the Horn of Africa and all the strategic choke points.”
Those prospects mean that the Taiwan issue is both a potentially huge strategic headache for Washington, and one that Beijing must handle with extreme caution. For China, “the focus here is not that the United States abandoned Afghanistan, but that the United States was in Afghanistan for 20 years,” says Mastro. “Afghanistan is strategically irrelevant, especially compared to Taiwan. So what does that mean for U.S. willingness to fight for Taiwan?”
TIME · by charlie.campbell@time.com


19.  The Forever War is Dead. Long Live the Forever War.

Excerpts:

Perhaps the most honest speech of this administration has come from the president’s highest-ranking non-politician, his senior military advisor, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, who reminded Americans and the military community on Thursday of what they had accomplished in Afghanistan.

“Our counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and the region over 20 years has protected the American people from terrorist attack, and the men and women and children who were just evacuated will ultimately be the legacy to prove the value of our sacrifice. For the past 20 years, there's not been a major attack on our homeland,” he said at the Pentagon. “It is now our mission to ensure that we continue our intelligence efforts, continue our counterterrorism efforts, continue our military efforts to protect the American people for the next 20 years, and we in the American military are committed to do just that.”

Another 20 years, in Afghanistan and beyond. No matter how Republican or Democratic presidents spin it, the forever war of counterterrorism operations against violent extremism will and must continue, likely throughout our lifetimes. Pentagon leaders always seem to know it. It may not be good politics to say so, but it certainly is more presidential.

The Forever War is Dead. Long Live the Forever War.
The fight against terrorism will continue, yet our body politic is weakened by double-speak.
defenseone.com · by Kevin Baron
So you thought President Joe Biden would end “forever wars.” Think again.
Deep into the commander in chief’s Tuesday speech to declare the end of the Afghanistan war—yet again—Biden also slipped in yet another recommittal of American forces to fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and anywhere else on Earth that leaders desire as part of the one forever war that matters most: the global war on terrorism.
Far from ending “forever wars;” the president vowed to perpetuate them. The global war on terrorism now belongs to Joe Biden.
“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan—the longest war in American history,” Biden said on Tuesday. A few minutes later, he said, “We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries.”
This doubletalk is maddening. American political leaders are stuck in a loop of dishonesty about the U.S. military’s interventions and missions around the globe. The lines they are feeding voters from the campaign trail to the White House too often are lies of political opportunity. Pledges to end wars flow from their lips like promises of water just over the desert horizon. Yet in the next breath they pledge to be tough on terror, to send U.S. troops to serve, fight, and die fighting terrorists and extremist movements in foreign countries—even ones, like Afghanistan, where we lack the government’s permission.
This rhetorical dance was maddening when Donald Trump campaigned and governed with it, and it’s equally maddening when it comes from a foreign-policy veteran and lifelong leader like Biden. The fact is, the current president is as guilty as his predecessor in promising to end the forever war era, when in fact, nearly all of its conflicts have continued, will continue, and should continue in some form in perpetuity, as long as others threaten the security of the United States and its allies.
The unwillingness of politicians to tell the truth about the purpose, necessity, and reality of sending Americans overseas to fight has backfired. Instead of an electorate honestly educated about national-security policy directions, our body politic is too often misled than led. And it feeds what many bipartisan national security leaders identify as our greatest national security threat of all: America’s partisan divide.
In May, Biden declared that ending the U.S. ground presence in Afghanistan was fulfilling a promise to himself (and his campaign) about which few Americans cared. In March, researchers at Brookings Institution noted, “In a recent poll conducted in the fall of 2020 by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) for researchers Peter Feaver and Jim Golby, only 59% of survey respondents answered the question about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.” That means that nearly two-thirds of Americans didn’t even have an opinion on Afghanistan to give, less than one year ago. Even among those that answered, only 34 percent supported troop withdrawals, which was from 29 percent the previous year, before the presidential campaign.
But when Pew surveyed Americans last week—over the days before and after 13 U.S. troops and more than 100 Afghan civilians were killed by massive bombs at Kabul’s airport—suddenly “69% of the public says the United States mostly failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan.” And yet still, only “54% of U.S. adults say the decision to withdraw troops from the country was the right one.” A full 42 percent said it was the wrong call to leave. Those results feel more like reactions of the televised chaos from Kabul than representative of any consistent policy desires.
The poll also shows that the public will follow and defend their preferred leaders on national security issues, as any others. While in last week’s poll Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly and nearly equally say the war failed to achieve its goals—a debatable fact—there is a large partisan split about Biden ending it, after the fact. Unsurprisingly, more Democrats than Republicans continued to align with Biden, saying he was right to withdraw. More than 40 percent of Democrats said Biden has done a good or excellent job with Afghanistan, compared to just 7 percent of Republicans. And more Democrats appeared to buy into the president’s reasoning: “Republicans (61%) are far more likely than Democrats (33%) to view a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as a major security threat.”
It’s no wonder there’s so much angst and frustration about what the United States is doing overseas at all, including Biden’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the resulting human tragedy of the past several months culminating with the Taliban’s walk-in victory in Kabul.
Politics is an artform, and so is speechmaking, even at the Pentagon.
“America's longest war has come to a close,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon, on Thursday. But a few minutes later, he also said, “It's our duty to defend this nation and we're not going to take our eye off the ball. And that means relentless counterterrorism efforts against any threat to the American people from any place.”
Perhaps the most honest speech of this administration has come from the president’s highest-ranking non-politician, his senior military advisor, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, who reminded Americans and the military community on Thursday of what they had accomplished in Afghanistan.
“Our counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and the region over 20 years has protected the American people from terrorist attack, and the men and women and children who were just evacuated will ultimately be the legacy to prove the value of our sacrifice. For the past 20 years, there's not been a major attack on our homeland,” he said at the Pentagon. “It is now our mission to ensure that we continue our intelligence efforts, continue our counterterrorism efforts, continue our military efforts to protect the American people for the next 20 years, and we in the American military are committed to do just that.”
Another 20 years, in Afghanistan and beyond. No matter how Republican or Democratic presidents spin it, the forever war of counterterrorism operations against violent extremism will and must continue, likely throughout our lifetimes. Pentagon leaders always seem to know it. It may not be good politics to say so, but it certainly is more presidential.
defenseone.com · by Kevin Baron

20.  Americans support Afghanistan pullout — but not the way it was done, a Post-ABC poll finds


Americans support Afghanistan pullout — but not the way it was done, a Post-ABC poll finds
The Washington Post · by Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT · September 3, 2021
Americans overwhelmingly support President Biden’s decision to end the war in Afghanistan, but by a 2-to-1 margin they disapprove of how he handled the chaotic and ultimately deadly withdrawal that included the evacuation of several thousand U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghans, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The Afghanistan withdrawal has contributed to a drop in Biden’s overall approval rating, which for the first time in his presidency is net negative. The poll finds 44 percent saying they approve of how he is handling his job, while 51 percent disapprove. In late June, the numbers were almost reversed, with 50 percent supporting and 42 percent disapproving.
Biden has suffered significant erosion among independents in perceptions of how he is handling his job. The poll shows that 57 percent of independents now disapprove of his performance, compared with 43 percent in late June. His approval rating among Democrats also has dipped, from 94 percent in June to 86 percent now. Republicans remain overwhelmingly negative in their judgment of his performance as president (89 percent disapprove, nearly identical to June’s 88 percent).
For years, polls have shown growing weariness among Americans over the long war in Afghanistan, which began in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has since cost the United States roughly $2 trillion and the lives of 2,461 military personnel. That contributes to the popularity of Biden’s decision to end it.
The new Post-ABC poll shows 77 percent of Americans saying they support the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces. Support crosses party lines, with 88 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of independents aligned behind the decision.
But the widespread support for the departure falls apart when it comes to views of how the departure unfolded, including the deaths of 13 members of the military who were helping refugees at the airport in Kabul.
Roughly half of all adults (52 percent) say they support getting out of Afghanistan but nonetheless disapprove of how Biden handled it, while a quarter (26 percent) support both the withdrawal decision and Biden’s handling of it. Another 17 percent disapprove of the decision to end the war, while 6 percent express no opinion. A bare majority of Democrats support both the decision and Biden’s handling of it, while a bigger majority of Republicans support the withdrawal but not how Biden handled it.
Asked more generally whether they approve or disapprove of Biden’s overall handling of the situation in Afghanistan, 60 percent say they disapprove, compared with 30 percent who approve. A lukewarm majority of fellow Democrats (56 percent) endorse Biden’s handling of the situation, but just 7 percent of Republicans and 26 percent of independents give him positive marks on that measure.
Biden also draws criticism for the deaths of the military personnel in the suicide bombing tied to the Islamic State that occurred outside the airport on Aug. 26. Fifty-three percent of Americans say Biden bears either a “great deal” or a “good amount” of the blame for the attack, while 43 percent say he doesn’t bear much or any blame.
The finding is colored by sharply different views based on party allegiance. About 7 in 10 Democrats say Biden bears little or no responsibility, while nearly 9 in 10 Republicans say he does. A slight majority (52 percent) of independents say Biden is to blame.
Biden has fiercely defended his decision to end the war, delivering a defiant speech the day after the last U.S. troops departed Afghanistan in which he took on his critics and called for an end to U.S. military intervention aimed at nation-building abroad. He has cast the recent evacuation as an “extraordinary success” — although the poll indicates that Americans see the effort as bungled.
He also has cast blame on his predecessor, President Donald Trump, arguing that a deal the Trump administration struck with the Taliban in early 2020 had tied his hands and forced him to choose between getting out hurriedly or being forced to significantly increase the number of troops on the ground.
Biden’s announcement earlier this year that U.S. forces would be gone by Sept. 11 was followed in August by the collapse of Afghan security forces in areas they still controlled and with it the Afghan government itself. Taliban forces quickly overran the remaining areas under government control and took over in Kabul with stunning swiftness, something that Biden had insisted would not happen in the way it did.
Americans had soured on the Afghan war long ago, even as it frustrated a succession of presidents, all of whom bear responsibility for mistakes or misjudgments. The last time a majority in a Post-ABC poll said the war was worth fighting was in late 2009, and then just a narrow 52 percent majority said so. The new poll finds 36 percent saying the war was worth fighting, compared with 54 percent who say it was not, with 38 percent overall saying they “strongly” felt it was not.
Republicans are more likely than Democrats or independents to say the war, which began under GOP President George W. Bush, was worth the cost. Among Republicans, 52 percent share that view, compared with 28 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of independents. The highest support among Republicans for fighting the war was measured in 2009, in the early months of the Obama administration, when 77 percent said the war was worth fighting; their support dipped as low as 39 percent in 2013.
The overwhelming support for Biden’s decision to end the war has nonetheless left some Americans with an unease about future terrorist threats.
Before the war, the Taliban had harbored al-Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. With the Taliban back in control, questions have been raised about whether Afghanistan will again become a breeding ground for terrorism.
Just 8 percent say the decision to leave makes the United States safer from terrorism, while 44 percent say it makes the country less safe. Forty-five percent say the departure makes no difference.
The U.S. withdrawal left behind thousands of Afghans who helped in the war effort and who are now in danger of retribution from the Taliban. But at the same time, the evacuation has brought planeloads of Afghan refugees to the United States for resettlement.
Some Republicans, elected officials and others, have said the United States should not accept refugees, but overall Americans broadly support the resettlement efforts. Nearly 7 in 10 (68 percent) say they support taking in refugees, after security screening, compared with 27 percent who oppose. Support also comes from a majority of Republicans, with 56 percent saying they should be welcomed to 39 percent who oppose it.
That level of acceptance is significantly higher overall than in 2015, when the issue was whether the United States should take in Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict in their country. At that time, 54 percent opposed taking in those refugees.
On the issue of security, 53 percent now say they are very or somewhat confident that U.S. officials can identify and exclude possible terrorists from entering the country alongside the refugees, though a far smaller 16 percent say they are very confident of that. Forty-six percent say they are “not so” or “not at all” confident of the government’s ability to screen out possible terrorists. Confidence in security screening differs heavily along partisan lines, with about 7 in 10 Democrats confident the United States can prevent terrorists from entering the country, compared with just over half of independents and just over 3 in 10 Republicans.
The swiftness by which Biden’s approval rating has gone from net positive to net negative is not unprecedented but puts him in a small group of presidents who have found their popularity plummeting in their first year in office. Trump was net negative in Post-ABC polls within months of his inauguration in 2017, as was President Bill Clinton, whose administration got off to a stumbling start before he won reelection in 1996.
But for most other recent presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, net negative numbers came in their second, third or fourth years in office.
The Post-ABC poll was conducted by telephone Aug. 29 to Sept. 1 among a random national sample of 1,006 adults, with 75 percent reached on cellphone and 25 percent on landline. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.



The Washington Post · by Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT · September 3, 2021


21. Marine Corps revamps infantry school to produce critical-thinking, more advanced infantrymen



Marine Corps revamps infantry school to produce critical-thinking, more advanced infantrymen
Stars and Stripes · by Corey Dickstein · September 2, 2021
Marine infantry students at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practice setting up an ambush, as their instructor looks on, in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — Marine Corps leaders have their eyes on the kind of combat that a war against an adversary such as China or Russia could bring, and they are training their troops to be prepared for that fight by building better-thinking, more well-rounded infantrymen capable of operating in small units with little oversight.
The Corps wants to create infantrymen who will arrive at their first duty station with the critical and creative thinking skills of Marines several years into their career, instead of the robot-like, trigger-pullers that some have accused the service of producing in its longstanding entry-level infantry course, Marine officials said last week.
At Camp Lejeune, N.C., the Corps’ School of Infantry-East is attempting to make those changes, experimenting with a new initial infantry training program that lasts longer, includes more face-to-face time with instructors, and challenges green infantrymen on more difficult skills, said Col. David Emmel, the school’s commander.
“The Marine Corps is going through very large changes … and we are one element of that within the larger service’s efforts,” Emmel told reporters Aug. 27 at Camp Lejeune, as the first group of 194 Marines neared completion of the School of Infantry-East’s first attempt of the new training program, known as the Infantry Marine Course. “That’s making a more lethal, smarter, more elite Marine infantryman — Marines with a strong moral foundation, who are grounded in the Marine Corps ethos, who possess the skill and the will to succeed in the future operational environment. And, as part of that, the critical thinking which allows him [or her] to be adaptive in that environment.”
Those changes have been driven by the vision of Marine commandant Gen. David Berger — who, since becoming the top Marine in 2019, has instituted an overhaul of the service aimed largely at checking Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific region, where he believes his troops will need to work more closely with the Navy and in smaller units to compete with China’s forces. As commandant, Berger has axed the Marines’ tank units, urged Congress to shrink its force size and instructed units to prepare its youngest Marines to make tough battlefield decisions without a higher command’s input.
Marine infantry students at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practice setting up an ambush, as their instructors look on, in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
At Camp Lejeune, Marine instructors are preparing some of the Corps’ newest infantrymen for just that operating environment in the Infantry Marine Course pilot program, which expands initial infantry training from nine weeks to 14 weeks. It marks the second use of the new program, which began with a course at the Marine’s School of Infantry-West at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The new course puts new Marines in the field for about nine weeks, practicing critical infantry skills, fighting each other in force-on-force battles, and training them on advanced weapons that those who have completed traditional Marine initial infantry training have not been exposed.
But the most critical change to the course is how instructors work with their students, Emmel and other officials said.
The new model pairs a single combat instructor — an experienced infantry noncommissioned officer trained to teach new Marines — with a squad of 14 Marines, who the instructor is charged with overseeing, teaching and mentoring throughout the entire course. For decades, instructors taught Marines in infantry school in large groups, 80 to 200-plus Marines at a time, officials said.
Sgt. Jonathon Ritter, a combat instructor in charge of one of the Infantry Marine Course squads, said he has gotten to know his trainees much better during the pilot course than when he has taught in previous iterations of initial infantry training. The one-on-one time allows him to better understand how his students learn, what they respond to and how they react to challenges. His young Marines have advanced quicker than those he has taught in the traditional class, he said.
“Their development is actually exceeding a lot of our expectations,” Ritter said. “I took them from Day 1 where they couldn’t do any infantry skills, and then now to see them on the live-fire ranges, being able to execute, use their weapons for the right target without any [instructor] supervision — that’s extremely rewarding.
“A lot of the stuff they’re learning now is stuff that Marines [who are] traditionally one or two years into the fleet learn, and here we have them learning this stuff at entry level training. That’s huge.”
A Marine infantry student at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practices setting up an ambush in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Marine infantry students listen to their combat instructor’s feedback after conducting an ambush during training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., on Aug. 27, 2021. The students were practicing an ambush during an initial infantry training pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Marine infantry students at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practice setting up an ambush in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
An ambush
The blast from the Claymore mine shot a cloud of smoke billowing dozens of feet into the air. From positions concealed by trees just beyond the mine’s reach, 14 young Marines opened fire with M27 rifles and M240B machine guns.
In minutes, the smoke cleared and the firing ceased. The enemy — robotic targets outfitted in camouflage — had been defeated. For the squad of freshly minted Marines about 12 weeks into the new Infantry Marine Course, the brief live-fire operation was the culmination of a week focused on sharpening the planning and tactical skills that go into executing an age-old combat tactic — an ambush.
For those leading the Marines, it was verification of the new efforts.
The squads each planned their ambushes on their own without their instructors’ input after spending the week learning the tactics that go into planning an ambush and practicing without live ammunition, said Marine Capt. David Allen, the commander of the School of Infantry’s Echo Company, which is conducting the pilot course. Combat instructors then tagged along as the squads conducted their ambushes, offering the occasional pointer, but allowing the Marines to make — and hopefully — learn from their own mistakes, Allen said.
One squad after another on Aug. 27 ran through the exercise on the sandy, wooded training grounds. Some groups executed near-perfect ambushes, Allen said. Others struggled.
In at least one iteration, a Marine’s M240B machine gun jammed, likely because it had not been cleaned well enough before the attack, his instructor said. In another, Marines set their mine off too early, failing to injure any enemy targets. In another ambush, some of the Marines set themselves up in positions where they were ultimately unable to see the enemy targets as they entered the “kill box,” another instructor said.
Despite the shortcomings, none of the Marines were chewed out. Combat instructors rarely yelled, except over the roar of gunfire. Young Marines held their heads high, as their instructors went over what they had done right and wrong just minutes after completing the mission. The Marines asked questions, and they prepared to run ambushes again.
“They're more willing to approach you, ask a question, more willing to engage in the training and just learn,” said Sgt. Govan Walcott, a combat instructor leading one of the 14-man squads in the pilot. “We’re not yelling. We’re here to instruct, to teach and then let them learn it their way and then go out and execute what it is that we’re trying to teach.”
A claymore mine blast sends smoke in the air as Marine infantry students open fire from a tree line on Camp Lejeune, N.C., training grounds on Aug. 27, 2021. The students were practicing an ambush during an initial infantry training pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
A Marine infantry student places a claymore mine during training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., on Aug. 27, 2021. The students were practicing an ambush during an initial infantry training pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Marine infantry students look out at enemy target robots during training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., on Aug. 27, 2021. The students were practicing an ambush during an initial infantry training pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
A Marine infantry student at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practices setting up an ambush in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
‘Not just idiots’
Traditionally, a new Marine infantrymen — a boot, in Marine slang — will arrive at his or her first station with an elementary understanding of infantry tactics and spend the next two or more years learning how to actually operate from unit leaders, Walcott said.
The pilot program is designed to provide boot Marines to the Corps’ infantry battalions nearly ready to fight on the first day.
“We’re speeding up the timeline,” said Emmel, the School of Infantry-East commander.
For the instructors, it takes a shift in mindset. Walcott, who enlisted in 2015, said his instructors at the School of Infantry-East would tell him exactly what to do and when to do it. In the pilot program, instructors explain to students an outcome they want out of a scenario and let the new Marines find their own paths to that result.
“We’re looking at it like, hey, these are not just idiots, you know. These are individuals who can actually think and operate on their own and operate as a unit,” Walcott said. “So it’s — I'm going to give you this knowledge. Let me see how you apply it. And, the way you apply it actually might be somewhat of a different train of thought than I would have had. It might even work better.”
Walcott and other instructors said the pilot course was proving beneficial to the new Marines. He said he believed the Corps should adopt the training, which Corps brass will consider later this year after running at least two more pilot courses, one each at Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune.
Unlike infantry Marines who graduate traditional initial infantry training, those who complete the pilot program will have learned to shoot Javelin anti-tank missiles, fire machine guns, and use other weapons that new riflemen usually would not be trained to do.
The decision to incorporate more advanced weapons than just the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle comes as the Corps considers merging all infantry jobs into a single military occupational specialty. That decision is yet to be made, a Marine spokesman said Tuesday.
A Marine infantry student at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practices setting up an ambush in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Marine infantry students at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practice setting up an ambush, as their instructor looks on, in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
A Marine infantry student at Camp Lejeune, N.C., prepares to practice setting up an ambush in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
A Marine infantry student at Camp Lejeune, N.C., practices setting up an ambush in a live-fire training event Aug. 27, 2021, during their 12th week of initial infantry training as part of a pilot program meant to drastically change the way the Corps trains its infantrymen. The pilot program expands infantry training from nine to 14 weeks and places Marines in 14-person squads under a single instructor. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Training Marines to use multiple weapons systems is a major advantage on the battlefield, Walcott said, adding he had never been exposed to some of the weapons, including the Javelin before becoming an instructor.
“These guys are definitely more trained up, so it wouldn't take as long to spin them up” at their first unit, he said. “And, then these guys are going to bring skills to the fleet that are not there right now.”
The pilot model is also more demanding on the instructors, Walcott and Ritter admitted. Their days often last from sun up to sun down and occasionally well into the night, they said. Nonetheless, they said those challenges were worthwhile.
An influx of new instructors would also be needed to adopt the Infantry Marine Course pilot program as the Corps’ initial infantry training program, officials said. Emmel said the East Coast and West Coast infantry schools were working with Marine headquarters to determine how large a cadre was possible, but he declined to provide a specific number of additional instructors he would require.
Those figures could change as the pilot course is adjusted based on feedback from the first two iterations, he added. Even the number of weeks could be changed.
Nonetheless, Emmel and other School of Infantry officials endorsed the pilot program as sending the Corps in the right direction for the future.
“We're giving the fleet more lethal Marines,” Emmel said.
Corey Dickstein

Stars and Stripes · by Corey Dickstein · September 2, 2021


22. National Resistance Front repels multi-day Taliban assault on Panjshir


National Resistance Front repels multi-day Taliban assault on Panjshir | FDD's Long War Journal
longwarjournal.org · by Bill Roggio & Andrew Tobin · September 2, 2021
After weeks of fruitless negotiations between the Taliban’s political leadership and senior leaders of the National Resistance Front in Panjshir, the Taliban launched a multi-pronged attack on the Panjshir Valley beginning on Aug. 31. The Taliban timed the assault on Panjshir for immediately after the U.S. military pulled out of Kabul airport and ended efforts to evacuate American citizens and Afghan allies.
To this point, the National Resistance Front has mostly successfully warded off the Taliban by virtue of easily defended positions in the mountainous region, inflicting heavy Taliban casualties along the way.
Prior to the Taliban incursions, the nascent resistance claimed it controlled four districts in Baghlan and Parwan provinces outside of the Panjshir Valley. These districts provided a cushion for the anti-Taliban militia to gather Afghan security forces who did not surrender to the Taliban. [See: FDD’s Long War Journal report, Anti-Taliban resistance make modest gains outside Panjshir.]
However, the Taliban recaptured the crucial district of Dih Saleh in eastern Baghlan province, which granted the group access to the Khawak Pass that leads into the heart of Panjshir. Along with Khawak, the Taliban sent militants to the southern gate of the Panjshir Valley at the town of Gulbahar, and Anjuman, a critical pass in the north in Badakhshan province. Despite its numerical superiority, the Taliban was not able to break the defensive lines of the resistance forces.
In the south, the Taliban massed forces in the district of Jabul-Saraj in Parwan in hopes of overrunning the National Resistance Front’s defenses in Gulbahar. Intense fighting waged for two days, as reports emerged of Taliban militants advancing past the initial defensive positions into Shotul district in Panjshir. On social media, pro-Taliban accounts continued circulating videos claiming that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s forces had taken control of Shotul. However, neither Taliban officials nor their more credible social media supporters have posted similar information, indicating that the claims are false. The Taliban does appear to have controlled the pass for a period of time.
Panjshir Province:
The Mujahideen defeated the first line and the enemy fled. More on that in the video. Shotul district of Panjshir has fallen to the Taliban….., //t.co/r9dFploTfF
— Bblos (@Bblos6) September 1, 2021
As of this morning, reports indicated that the NRF was able to expel the Taliban from Shotul as fighting continued further south near Gulbahar. National Resistance Front spokesman Fahim Dashty corroborated those reports, stating “the Taliban has spread rumors that they have entered parts of Panjshir. These are psychological operation (PsyOp) and propaganda. We assure full control over all the entrances of Panjshir. [The] Taliban have made multiple attempts to enter Shotul from Jabul-Saraj, and failed each time.”
Most recent reports suggested that pro-resistance fighters from Andarab have retaken the Khawak Pass, halting further Taliban incursions, although that information could not be independently verified.
In the northeast, the Taliban also attempted to enter the Panjshir Valley through the Anjuman Pass near Badakhshan. Given the lack of reporting on clashes in the northeast, it is likely that this was not a main line of effort for the Taliban and that the resistance forces were able to easily defend the pass from the assault. A former Afghan National Army commando reported that the Anjuman Pass is heavily guarded by elite units who have inflicted heavy casualties on any Taliban fighters who attempted to enter the valley.
Furthermore, reports emerged of the Taliban employing Al Qaeda and foreign fighters to attack in Panjshir. Originally, that claim was propagated by Massoud’s forces in Panjshir. However, videos surfaced of militants speaking Arabic and Persian – among other languages on their way to the Khawak Pass in Baghlan. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the successful NRF ambush at Khawak, militia leaders are claiming that they eliminated both Taliban and Al Qaeda units.
Arabic speaking non-Afghans, supposedly Alqaida fighters among Taliban aiming towards Panjshir, today. The videographer in the video mentions that the group consists of speakers of Arabic, Uzbeki, Turkmeni, Persian, Pashto and Urdo languages. #AlqaidIsBackToPower pic.twitter.com/7IA9RxBnph
— Majeed Qarar (@MajeedQarar) August 31, 2021
While the Taliban do have advantages in both manpower and firepower, Panjshir’s terrain provides the National Resistance Front with easily defendable positions, enabling the resistance to continue to withstand the Taliban onslaught. As a result, the National Resistance Front has thus far been successful in maintaining the territorial integrity of Panjshir and resisting incursions by the Taliban.
As fighting continues, the lack of declarations of victory by the Taliban and its supporters on social media would indicate that the resistance has the upper hand, at least temporarily.
Sources on the ground reported that the Taliban is preparing for another offensive as resistance forces say they remain ready to defend Panjshir.
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longwarjournal.org · by Bill Roggio & Andrew Tobin · September 2, 2021
23. Taliban Says China Will Be 'Main Partner' To Rebuild Afghanistan

Taliban Says China Will Be 'Main Partner' To Rebuild Afghanistan
gandhara.rferl.org · by RFE/RL
September 02, 2021


Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (L) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a photo during their meeting in Tianjin on July 28, 2021.
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Taliban Says China Will Be 'Main Partner' To Rebuild Afghanistan
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The Taliban says China will maintain diplomatic relations with Afghanistan and the new rulers in Kabul will rely on Beijing for economic support after the withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on September 2 that China was the group’s “main partner” to halt an economic collapse and rebuild the country.

The Taliban has pledged to be more moderate since they toppled Afghanistan’s Western-backed government on August 15, promising to protect some human rights and refrain from reprisals against old enemies.

The United States and its allies have closed their diplomatic missions and conditioned any recognition of a Taliban government – as well as economic aid that propped up the previous government – on the group’s actions.

In particular, Western powers are calling on the Taliban to allow people to leave the country, enable access of humanitarian aid, make a complete break with international terrorist organizations, and respect human rights, especially for women.

Without aid, humanitarian organizations have warned of catastrophe as severe drought and war have forced tens of thousands of families to flee their homes. The U.S. government has also frozen Afghanistan’s Central Bank reserves, helping to fuel a banking and payments crisis.

China, however, is unlikely to make aid and political ties contingent on human rights issues, preferring instead hard economic, political, and security interests.

“China is our main partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us because it is ready to invest and rebuild our country,” Mujahid told La Repubblica.

Mujahid said the Taliban are interested in the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure and resource development plan designed to tighten economic and political ties across dozens of countries.

“We own rich copper mines, which, thanks to the Chinese, will be modernized. Finally, China represents our ticket to the markets around the world,” Mujahid.

Another Taliban spokesman said on September 2 that China has promised to keep its embassy in Afghanistan open and “beef up” relations as well as increase humanitarian aid.

Abdul Salam Hanafi, a member of the Islamist group's political office in Doha, Qatar, "held a phone conversation with Wu Jianghao, Deputy Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China," spokesman Suhail Shaheen tweeted.

"The Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said that they would maintain their embassy in Kabul, adding our relations would beef up as compared to the past... China will also continue and increase its humanitarian assistance especially for treatment of COVID-19," he wrote.

Close ties between China and the Taliban could undermine the Western strategy of using economic leverage to pressure the new rulers in Kabul.

Russia, as well, has maintained its diplomatic mission in Kabul.

Relations with Russia are “mainly political and economic. Russia continues to mediate for us and with us to create the conditions for international peace,” Mujahid said.

In a report, Fitch Solutions said on September 2 that it expects Afghanistan's economy to collapse as international money that funded the previous government dries up.

"The highly disruptive manner in which the U.S.'s security forces left the country and the Taliban takeover will mean that the economic pains for the country will be felt acutely over the short term," said the research arm of credit ratings agency Fitch Group.

It expects the country's real gross domestic product (GDP) to shrink by 9.7 percent this year, with a further drop of 5.2 percent next year.

Foreign investment would be needed to support a more optimistic case, Fitch said.

"An alternative and more positive economic scenario would entail Afghanistan's growth averaging around 2.2 percent in 2023-2030, which assumes that some major economies, namely China and potentially Russia, would accept the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and begin major investment projects,” it said.


With reporting by AFP, La Repubblica, and Reuters

gandhara.rferl.org · by RFE/RL
24. The Proper Measure of the Place: Reflections on the Afghan Mission


The Proper Measure of the Place: Reflections on the Afghan Mission
Drawing from two tours, a decade apart, a veteran diplomat explores the competing visions for Afghanistan.
BY KEITH W. MINES

A USAID-funded midwife graduation ceremony in Sheberghan, a city in Jawzjan province of Afghanistan, in December 2012.
Keith Mines
In his account of travels in Afghanistan in 1984 during the civil war against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, British travel writer and novelist Jason Elliot describes being “captive of an unexpected light,” entering a world “in some way enchanted, for which we lacked the proper measure.”
“Enchanted” is not a word one often associates with Afghanistan, but most would agree we have never taken the proper measure of the place. It is a land that has captured the heart of many diplomats and soldiers, smitten by the stunning landscapes and fierce determination of a people who have for centuries watched foreigners arrive to great fanfare with their “national interest,” only to leave sooner or later in frustration.
The United States went through this cycle in 1989, when it turned its attention away from Afghanistan after building up the mujahideen resistance to Soviet occupation. As a new cycle of abandonment and self-doubt is upon us, a flood of questions descends, starting with “How did it come to this?”
Kanishka and Arif: A Clash of Visions

The 2002 Loya Jirga brought together 1,700 Afghans from all parts of the country for 10 days of deliberation to choose a new government.
Getty Images / Natalie Behring
Within a month of my arrival in Kabul in the spring of 2002 as interim economic counselor, I met a Pashtun from Paktika province in the Loya Jirga (general assembly). Mohammed Arif was in his early 40s, tall and slender, with hands that evinced a life of farming, fighting and prayer. He still had a crumpled ID card from the fight against the Soviets that described him as a “model jihadi fighter.”
Arif was open to a relationship with foreigners, but at one point stated clearly that there were limits to what his people would accept, especially if the foreigners sided with the “Panjshiris”—his name for the Northern Alliance. Fighting was clearly always an early option to preserve his vision of a traditionalist Afghanistan.
One evening after the Jirga deliberations, I invited Arif to an embassy photo exhibit on the 9/11 attacks at the National Gallery in Kabul, a way to raise awareness of what brought America to Afghanistan in the first place. My translator at the time provided a stark contrast in the range of Afghan society. Kanishka Bakhshi, a Tajik, spoke fluent English and had been a translator for CNN before coming to work for the embassy.
Kanishka sought an Afghanistan in which his very spirited wife and young daughter would have opportunities for education and a profession. He was comfortable with foreigners and hopeful and bold about the future, and just as willing as Arif to take risks for his vision; several years later he was almost killed in a terrorist attack.
As we encountered the exhibit together, I realized we Americans had inserted ourselves between two worlds: one seeking a progressive modern existence for the country and one determined to impose a narrow version of tradition. And it was a complex struggle, not one that could be comfortably divided between regions or tribes; in many cases it was a raw fight for power. The Taliban would give military expression to the traditionalists, but they were hardly the only ones involved. As the struggle ground on for decades, it came to encompass technocrats vs. warlords, youth vs. elders, the periphery vs. the center, insular Islamist vs. pluralistic multiculturalists, militias vs. the army—and, significantly, the Taliban vs. the flawed democratic state.
The contest played out initially in the Loya Jirga itself. For the first time in decades, the Afghan nation, represented by 1,700 delegates from every part of the country and every slice of society, came together with vital international support for 10 days to accuse, hope, rant, plan, commiserate and select their new government. With the immediate humanitarian crisis over, Afghans were streaming home from exile. Everyone, it seemed, had something to sell or harvest or build.
Looming over these successes, though, were the seeds of the unraveling. The Taliban was not allowed representation in the Loya Jirga; the Pashtuns were frustrated with their relative lack of power; the periphery of the country continued to function with near total autonomy; unstructured aid flows led to corruption and distortions in the economy; and the larger conflict between a modern vision and a traditional one was not resolved.
Nation-Builders and Sheriffs: Afghanistan as Partner or Platform?
These competing visions of Afghanistan, we soon learned, would be caught up in an equally fraught contest between two tribes in the United States. On the one side were the nationbuilders, who concluded after diverse experiences, most recently in the Balkans, that the only way to guarantee American security interests in a country as shattered as Afghanistan was by reestablishing all the functions of the state while facilitating a process for the Afghan people to cohere around a vision for their nation.
Ambassadors James Dobbins and Ryan Crocker were reflective of this tribe, arguing for a robust peacekeeping mission, a rapid buildup of the security forces and a reset of the moribund economy. The nation-builders were a minority tribe that had no vote and little voice.
The tribe in power was the sheriffs. Their vision was that when America is threatened, the sheriff will put on his badge, pick up his six-shooter and round up a posse. The posse will seek and find the outlaws, kill some, jail others and return home. The late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a sheriff by disposition, as was then–Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. This tribe was bolstered politically by campaign rhetoric about not “using the military to escort little girls to school” and by eschewing any cooperation with the United Nations or even other allies.
We Americans had inserted ourselves between two worlds: one seeking a progressive modern existence for the country and one determined to impose a narrow version of tradition.
The embassy was at this time building up to receive the dozens of new staff needed to manage U.S. interests. But already our attention was drifting. Like many of my colleagues, I would be in Iraq nine months later.
For a decade the sheriffs and nation-builders vied for primacy in U.S. policy, with Afghanistan at times treated like a partner and at others used as a platform. After the willful neglect of the post-2002 period led to whole swaths of the country falling to Taliban control, the U.S. and NATO adopted more of a nation-building model starting in 2006, with a surge in forces that by 2009 totaled 100,000. Diplomats, agricultural advisers and aid workers conducted their own surge, increasing from 340 in 2008 to more than 1,300 in 2012, many working on provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) across the country with their military and NATO colleagues. PRTs were led by a military contingent providing security and mentoring local security forces while their civilian counterparts carried out development and agricultural assistance, institution building and local engagement, and political and economic reporting.
The Afghans could do little more than hold on to the roller coaster we had strapped them to, realizing that the seat belt did not unbuckle until the end of the ride.
Warlords and Youth: A Decade of Progress
I returned to Afghanistan as consul general in Mazar-e Sharif in the spring of 2012, the peak of “expeditionary diplomacy,” to manage U.S. efforts across the nine provinces of northern Afghanistan. Ambassador Crocker had returned, as well, structuring our presence around four regional consulates in Herat, Mazar, Kandahar and Jalalabad.
Frustrated by the persistent complaint that we had not done enough, we produced a fact sheet on the country’s progress over the last decade: four democratic elections; Afghanistan’s first two appearances in the Olympics in 20 years, with its first two medals ever; telephone use from 1 million to 12 million; a tripling of access to electricity; education from a million boys and zero girls to 5.4 million boys and 3 million girls; and a wheat harvest that went from 2 million to 3.8 million metric tons a year.
It was, by any measure of human progress, extraordinary. And yet it was all very tenuous, and it was matched on the negative side by persistently high levels of violence, a grinding political instability born in large measure of corruption that included high levels of drug trafficking, and structural dependence on outside funding and support. Significantly, the struggle for political primacy between the Pashtuns and Panjshiris, and for cultural primacy between traditionalists and moderns, remained unresolved.
During my travels to each of the nine provinces, I always visited the local university and met with youth, who as part of the Afghan university network came from all over the country, a natural mixing pot of ethnic groups and social classes. The students were bright, hopeful and determined, often traveling at great personal and family cost to attend school. In one encounter we tried to explain the U.S. electoral system, which they found both baffling and encouraging; certainly their much simpler system, they thought, would one day yield a good outcome. Afghans’ determination to pursue an education was not new, but it was something that finally found expression.
We also spent a good deal of time with the power brokers and warlords who had controlled the country for the past decades, generally with ruinous results. In one engagement I spent a day at the compound of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek commander who had led the key forces that collapsed the Taliban in 2001. Dostum retained a brutal but effective control in parts of the north but was convincing in his assertion that the “new AK” (or Kalashnikov) for the Afghan family was the voting card, promising that going forward he would put his efforts into developing an effective electoral strategy, not marshalling fighters.
I mused in a cable about a “post-warlord” society. But, like the Taliban and other ethnic leaders, Dostum had a very difficult time giving up the raw expression of power he had been accustomed to and continued to hold an absolute lock on the Uzbek voting bloc. The youth would have to wait until his generation faded from the scene.

The Noh Gumbad Mosque restoration project, shown in April 2013, in Balkh province was funded by the U.S. embassy.
Keith Mines
The Kabul Museum and Noh Gumbad

At the 2002 Loya Jirga, Hamid Karzai, at right, was chosen president.
U.S. Department of State
During my first tour, Kanishka and I visited the Kabul Museum, which had suffered the depredations of the Taliban against anything that smacked of religious pluralism or celebrated the country’s multiethnic heritage. The curator had heroically tried to preserve as many of the objects as possible, with boxes full of the crushed pieces of statues and a showcase full of the shredded canvas of paintings. He had built a false wall to hide the films from Afghanistan’s once-active movie industry.
A decade later, one of our quiet projects in the north was the restoration of the Noh Gumbad Mosque, Afghanistan’s oldest religious building, dating to the 9th century CE. It was a beautiful structure, laced with wonderful stonework and a graceful architecture, but what remained was in danger of collapse and it was deteriorating quickly. Our funding, along with other donations, allowed the Aga Khan Foundation to save the mosque and recover this piece of Afghanistan’s heritage.
The contrast between these two experiences hit hard on a soul-crushing day in April 2013, when we received word that Foreign Service Officer Anne Smedinghoff (my former intern) had been killed in Zabul province along with six others while traveling to a school for a book donation. By then cynicism had set in, many expressing doubt that the Afghanistan mission could have ever been worth the life of a young diplomat or soldier. Even our measure of time was affected by pessimism; a decade had somehow become “forever.”
But to many of us on the ground, it was the continuation of the struggle that had been going on for decades, a struggle, as I wrote home at the time, “between two competing models for civilization—one violent, ignorant, depraved; the other enlightened, hopeful, just. Where one kills educators and those who support them, there one will also kill the future; where one destroys millennia-old cultural monuments, there one will also destroy cities.”
By the time I left, five of our PRTs were closed and “transition” was the order of the day. Policymakers had never been honest about the length of time required for political consolidation in a broken state, so the mission—even at a time when casualties were extremely low—was to withdraw, a long process that has now reached its natural conclusion.
I wrote in a 2013 cable of the ambivalence many of us felt: “It is debatable whether Afghanistan will ever be a fully functional, inclusive country; it is simply hard work to pull a medieval country into the modern age. But it is nearly guaranteed to fail without our continued focus and resources.”
The Afghan mission was always cursed with a blinding self-doubt and persistent impatience. As the late Ambassador Lawrence Pezullo told The New York Times in 1981: “We’re a developed nation that is accustomed to quick answers because we produce quick answers in almost every other area. But when you throw yourselves into a revolution, there are no quick answers.”
Several thousand diplomats have now served in Afghanistan. For most, the experience will turn bittersweet as it is increasingly difficult to see the future portending anything other than yet another civil war. Few could have done more than they did. But with or without us, the struggle between Afghanistan’s competing visions will go on, and the Afghan people, tenacious to a fault, will continue to fight for the future they believe in. As in so many other parts of the world, on a tightly globalized planet there is no guarantee that we won’t once again be drawn in. If you still have your Dari-language CDs, you might want to hold on to them.

Keith W. Mines retired from the State Department Foreign Service in 2019 after a career including tours in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He was interim economic counselor in Kabul in 2002 and consul general in Mazar-e Sharif from 2012 to 2013. His book Why Nation-Building Matters (University of Nebraska Press, 2020; discount code 6AS20) recounts these experiences, along with seven other conflicts in Colombia, Grenada, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Iraq and Darfur.
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25. What is Infrastructure? Doctrine’s Failure to Define the Word and the Military’s Inability to Understand It

I do not think Congress agree o a definition either.


Excerpts:
A definition like Larkin’s or one akin to the concepts found in FM 3-24—focused on infrastructure as a network of connections rather than a series of physical structures—might better equip the military to accomplish its complex missions by enabling servicemembers to push the boundaries of what was previously considered as infrastructure. New definitions might even enable us to understand people as infrastructure.
Such an ideological shift would not only impact the military; it could also have broad-sweeping implications for Department of State missions overseas and development projects within the United States itself. Instead of limiting funding to physical buildings, imagine if the United States could spend infrastructure money to increase worker salaries, pay for professional education, or support various forms of transportation like the Biden administration is attempting. Currently, we tend to fund massive contracts to build new facilities (like hospitals) in underserved communities and war-torn regions hoping that they become useful to the population. Often, the facilities are not fully completed, they do not end up serving their purpose, or they fall into disrepair. Instead of obsessing over the physical structures alone, what if we could tap into infrastructure funding to pay salaries that entice high-performing professionals to work in those facilities, fund employee training programs to improve the services provided, and reimburse the transportation costs of staff as they commute to and from their jobs? We could spend our money ensuring that infrastructure thrives within the scope of a broader community network instead of simply stopping at the building itself. With a new understanding of infrastructure, we might do more than construct powerplant and roads. We might build a community and foster the growth of a nation.


What is Infrastructure? Doctrine’s Failure to Define the Word and the Military’s Inability to Understand It - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Chris Liggett · September 2, 2021
As President Joe Biden advocates for the largest infrastructure development project in history, critics are claiming that efforts to train workers in new skills, to provide in-home medical care for the disabled, and to support energy-efficient transportation do not count as infrastructure development. Military doctrine seems to share this thinking: that infrastructure does not include people, ideas, social networks, or anything other than physical structures. As we might assess from the recent condo collapse in Miami or our limited success in developing lasting infrastructure in Afghanistan, we are doing something wrong. I suggest that one of our failures—one we can readily address—is an inadequate and flawed understanding of what infrastructure is.
The military has a historical connection to the word infrastructure. As anthropologist Ashley Carse points out, the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition specifically refers to “the permanent installations forming a basis for military operations, [such as] airfields, naval bases, training establishments, etc.” But this understanding of infrastructure—obsessed with physical buildings, roads, pipes—does not fully represent the US military’s use of the term; nor is it entirely useful for the military’s efforts to achieve foreign policy objectives overseas. If this narrow view of infrastructure limits our ability to perform, perhaps we should look at it differently.
As it turns out, we can view infrastructure through an entirely different lens, one that is more inclusive and treats infrastructure as a rapidly evolving system of various parts in a flexible network. Brian Larkin, for example, an anthropology professor at Columbia University, suggests that we should not focus on what infrastructure is as much as how it impacts the communities built from it. In a 2013 article, Larkin introduces a useful and broad definition: “Infrastructures are built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space.” He does not focus on the physical makeup of the infrastructure—there is no attempt to establish whether it is made of people, roads, or wires. Rather, he centers on the exchanges that take place across vast networks of connections and ultimately form the basis of our societies. Infrastructure, through this lens, includes things like medical care and professional training because it views the people within the system as an integral part of the infrastructural network: connecting structures to the communities they are intended to serve.
While Larkin provides a useful definition of the term, military doctrine does not. In fact, there is no current definition for infrastructure found in joint doctrine. Strangely, the DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms uses the term infrastructure thirty-four times but never defines it. How can this be? Is infrastructure so well understood that we all know its meaning? Do we all know what it is composed of? Usually, DoD is outstandingly dedicated to the minutiae of detail surrounding specific words and their nuanced definitions, but in this instance, joint doctrine fails to define the term altogether. This oversight is disconcerting for a word that is used so regularly and around which so many missions are centered.
Through an analysis of doctrine and by examining how the military thinks of infrastructure, we can see that the relationship is awkward at best. The military is confused by the word and tries to make it fit different situations with haphazard modifications, but there is no clear foundational concept of what it includes and what it does not. Understanding this limitation, we can see how this lack of clarity leads to operational failures and recognize the need for a more comprehensive and universal definition. We might even agree that Larkin’s definition (or something similar) should be added to the DOD Dictionary and applied elsewhere throughout the joint publications.
How the Military Defines Infrastructure
To begin with, let’s look at the most readily available definition of infrastructure that obsolete military doctrine has to offer. By readily available, I am referring to the ease with which the average servicemember can find the definition. This is important because most of us do not walk around with a library of doctrinal references in our back pockets. Resources must be quickly accessible to serve the warfighter. A Google search for “Army infrastructure definition” leads to two references: Joint Publication (JP) 4-01.8, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Joint Reception, Staging Onward Movement, and Integration (replaced by JP 4-01, The Defense Transportation System in 2017) and a Wikipedia page that defines “military infrastructure” from a 2005 revision of the DOD Dictionary. Both of these references are no longer current and have since been replaced. No current publications have any definition for infrastructure. Instead, references provide examples in a list—such as telephone wires, fiber-optic cables, or satellite dishes to hone us in on communications infrastructure—or modify the term to provide more specificity, like critical infrastructure, foreign infrastructure, and civil infrastructure. These terms narrow the focus but still leave a lot of room for interpretation. Since there is nothing in current doctrine for the overarching term itself, let us move forward with the only definition we can find, outdated as it is.
The 2000 edition of JP 4-01.8 defines infrastructure as “all building and permanent installations necessary for the support, redeployment, and military forces operations [sic] (e.g., barracks, headquarters, airfields, communications, facilities, stores, port installations, and maintenance stations).” This definition is entirely focused on the physical support structures necessary for enabling troops to accomplish a mission. It views infrastructure as a set of physical structures through which people, equipment, and information move. It does not allow for the people, the equipment, or the information to be a part of the infrastructure itself. Furthermore, the definition makes no distinction between installations that are friendly, enemy, or neutral, obscuring the fact that infrastructure can itself serve as a threat or a direct source of combat power.
This definition can cause serious problems. As an example, it leaves no room to consider a civilian school as a piece of infrastructure unless it is being used by the military in some way. Even though a school is an integral part of public, educational, and social infrastructures, this definition does not allow us to see it that way. Unless it was occupied by an enemy force, a soldier on the ground would probably pass by the school without seriously considering it at all. Imagine how this impacts a unit tasked to support stability operations. As the commander passes the school, she would see nothing but a toneless backdrop to her operation—a gray background, merely the setting in which her mission takes place. Such infrastructure would not register to her as something to be interacted with at all; neither friendly nor enemy, it would be classified as neutral. She would likely pass by without giving it a second thought.
Unfortunately for our commander and her mission, the school she ignores might actually be a piece of key terrain. As an essential part of the community, it could be the most influential structure in a network of connections that unite the people with the government and keep the enemy at bay. A school serves many functions: it is a place where parents send their children to learn, a uniting system where the government exercises its legitimacy and provides for the common good, a career pathway where educators find rewarding and fulfilling employment. Ignoring its role as infrastructure or assuming it does not impact the mission is a problem. So is allowing it to be destroyed, manipulated, or neutralized by the enemy. Perhaps the school does not hinder a successful kinetic operation on that specific day, but our military is tasked with winning wars, not just battles. Understanding the flawed nature of JP 4-01.8’s definition (not to mention its typos), let’s leave it behind and acknowledge that current doctrine does not define the term. If the military does not define infrastructure, maybe we can ask: How does current doctrine use and understand the word?
How the Military Uses and Understands Infrastructure
Confusingly, joint publications like JP 3-57, Civil-Military OperationsJP 3-34, Joint Engineer OperationsJP 3-24, Counterinsurgency, and JP 3-07, Stability use the term infrastructure differently depending on the type of unit conducting the operation. Engineers, civil affairs operators, and infantry soldiers can support the same operation but understand infrastructure quite differently. And instead of uniting the different publications with a common definition, each one modifies the word over and over to give it greater specificity: to make it fit that type of unit’s mindset. As mentioned before, doctrine uses variations like critical infrastructure, force-protection infrastructure, expeditionary infrastructure, and support infrastructure (the list goes on) to add specification, but these terms require the servicemember to assume a definition. It’s as if the term “support infrastructure” is obvious enough for someone to get the point. “What is support infrastructure? Well . . . it is infrastructure that supports.” Current doctrine, which elsewhere can be so specific, leaves room for flawed assumptions about what support infrastructure actually is. Different units can view it quite differently. This is problematic.
Aside from endless modifications of the term, the most unifying and meaningful way that the military conceptualizes infrastructure is as an operational variable. Army Doctrine Publication 3-0, Operations defines operational variables as “those aspects of an operational environment, both military and nonmilitary, that may differ from one operational area to another and affect operations.” The definition goes on to include that “operational variables describe not only the military aspects of an operational environment, but also the population’s influence on it.” There are eight variables listed: political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time (PMESII-PT). Soldiers are expected to consider these variables as they plan and conduct operations because of the impacts that these variables might have on mission success.
Similarly, the military employs an additional set of variablescivil considerations—to accompany an analysis of the operational variables. Civil considerations are designed to help identify specific aspects of infrastructure that might not otherwise seem applicable to mission success. The civil considerations are listed as: areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people, and events (ASCOPE). ASCOPE and PMESII-PT are often analyzed in a matrix that looks for overlapping relevance. This sort of analysis is undoubtedly useful, but it shows that the military understands infrastructure as an additional consideration that might impact the mission rather than a primary one (like the enemy) that will impact the mission.
Contrasting with this widely accepted view of infrastructure, irregular warfare doctrine offers a more nuanced understanding of what infrastructure is, what it can be, and how it might play a role in operations. Field Manual 3-24 / Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5, Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies explains that the operational variable of “infrastructure” is “composed of the facilities (buildings and equipment), personnel, and services needed for the functioning of a community or society.” It describes how infrastructure creates the ability for new interactions and relationships within society that “can change how a person views the world and change that person’s values.” Within counterinsurgency doctrine, we see that some of the military understands how infrastructure extends far beyond physical structures and enters the realm of people and the services that they provide.
Unfortunately, this explanation of infrastructure is not available within a joint publication or within other doctrine covering more general military operations. To be useful for everyone, this description of infrastructure should not be buried in a Marine or Army publication solely dedicated to counterinsurgency. It should be present in the DOD Dictionary or JP 3-0, Joint Operations, which more generally apply to all military branches and all types of missions. This explanation—or one like Larkin’s—should be turned into a definition and applied through doctrine from the top down.
Why is the Doctrinal Definition Important and Who Does it Affect?
I am arguing that servicemembers cannot interact with infrastructure in a meaningful way because military doctrine has failed to afford them the language to address it appropriately. So what if it is not explicitly laid out in doctrine? you might ask. We don’t need a verbatim definition for everything. Don’t we get the point of infrastructure already? No, we do not. And here is why the lack of doctrinal language is a problem. It is a common experience within the military to brief an entirely reasonable operational plan that is immediately dismissed because of its lack of doctrinal terminology. If soldiers do not use the correct terms known as tactical tasks or if their vernacular is not spot-on in doctrine, then the presentation of their ideas are not seen as legitimate. Try telling a commander that you are going to “obliterate” the “bad guys,” take all their “things,” and “save the day.” Good luck. Such a lack of doctrinal language can be deemed unprofessional and lead to serious reputational and career damage.
How, then, are we to discuss operations like reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq or government advisory missions led by special operations forces or security force assistance brigades without a doctrinal vocabulary for infrastructure? Such attempts turn into an awkward dance as soldiers try to apply well-defined terms like seize, occupy, clear, secure, and destroy (each with a dizzying level of specificity in their respective definitions) to a mission focused on building partner capacity and increasing stability in a region through infrastructural development. “Ma’am, we will destroy the inefficiency of government corruption by occupying the water treatment facility and securing the human rights of the people.” The US military has been asked to support, and even spearhead, government and civil construction projects over the last twenty years, but it has yet to incorporate useful doctrinal terminology to support such missions. The fact that infrastructure is poorly defined indicates it is both poorly understood and largely undervalued by the military as a whole. This lack of vocabulary and emphasis limits our communication, our thinking, and our effectiveness as we conduct operations focused on building the legitimacy of a government or winning the support of the population instead of directly fighting an enemy.
New Definitions Create New Possibilities
A definition like Larkin’s or one akin to the concepts found in FM 3-24—focused on infrastructure as a network of connections rather than a series of physical structures—might better equip the military to accomplish its complex missions by enabling servicemembers to push the boundaries of what was previously considered as infrastructure. New definitions might even enable us to understand people as infrastructure.
Such an ideological shift would not only impact the military; it could also have broad-sweeping implications for Department of State missions overseas and development projects within the United States itself. Instead of limiting funding to physical buildings, imagine if the United States could spend infrastructure money to increase worker salaries, pay for professional education, or support various forms of transportation like the Biden administration is attempting. Currently, we tend to fund massive contracts to build new facilities (like hospitals) in underserved communities and war-torn regions hoping that they become useful to the population. Often, the facilities are not fully completed, they do not end up serving their purpose, or they fall into disrepair. Instead of obsessing over the physical structures alone, what if we could tap into infrastructure funding to pay salaries that entice high-performing professionals to work in those facilities, fund employee training programs to improve the services provided, and reimburse the transportation costs of staff as they commute to and from their jobs? We could spend our money ensuring that infrastructure thrives within the scope of a broader community network instead of simply stopping at the building itself. With a new understanding of infrastructure, we might do more than construct powerplant and roads. We might build a community and foster the growth of a nation.
Major Chris Liggett served as a special operations civil affairs officer with the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion. He deployed as a team commander to counter terrorism in Burkina Faso and he worked as the assistant operations officer in support of missions in Syria, Northwest Africa, and Somalia. Before joining special operations, he deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry platoon leader with 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He is currently attending graduate school at the University of Colorado Boulder before returning to the Department of English and Philosophy at West Point to serve as an instructor.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Master Sgt. Ben Bloker, US Air Force
mwi.usma.edu · by Chris Liggett · September 2, 2021

26. Why Some of America’s Diplomats Want to Quit
Wow. I had no idea.

Why Some of America’s Diplomats Want to Quit - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by George Hovey · September 3, 2021
Bureaucratic failures are common at the State Department, but they rarely get international press attention. The last few weeks have been different. The chaotic handling of the evacuation of America’s Afghan allies in the wake of the Taliban takeover has put a rare public spotlight on consular affairs. While heroic last-minute efforts from U.S. diplomats helped evacuate more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghans who supported the United States were left behind, likely to face retaliation. This is in part due to the 18,000 Afghan allies and 53,000 dependents who remain in processing backlogs for arduous special immigration visas. On Aug. 2, the State Department announced a program that allows Afghans who worked directly with the United States to claim asylum. But it had a rough start and came too late for the majority of Afghans eligible for visas: The Taliban already controlled border crossings and blocked Afghans from reaching the airport, while the Islamic State in Afghanistan targeted the evacuation, killing 13 U.S. servicemembers and nearly 200 Afghans.
Those familiar with the State Department will not have been surprised by its bureaucratically stymied, inflexible, and reactive handling of the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul. In fact, these are some of the same institutional shortcomings that have led to the Foreign Service’s attrition rate to trend above average since 2015, including a quarter of the senior Foreign Service leaving since 2017. This trend shows no signs of abating: One-third of the current U.S. diplomatic force is eyeing the exit door while actively looking for a new job.
The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and Harvard Kennedy School recently published an alarming report on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association detailing an ongoing retention crisis within the State Department. In addition to a survey showing that 32 percent of U.S. diplomats are actively exploring exit options, the report cited the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s 2020 findings that underrepresented groups disproportionately account for attrition. The alarming results reflect more than merely an instance of a broader, pandemic-driven trend toward career changes. The average age of a Foreign Service officer is 52 — much older than the average career-change candidate. In addition, the relatively high barrier to entry and lack of a mid-level entry point to a Foreign Service career mean that the cost of attrition is disproportionately high for both the Foreign Service and its departing officers. The report indicates that this trend predates the pandemic and the Trump administration.
Discontent in the Foreign Service is rooted in its inflexible assignments and development processes, corrosive in-grouping caused by subjective decision-making, and an accountability deficit that makes self-correction difficult. To stem the exodus, the State Department should investigate the causes of Foreign Service officer attrition with an eye to institutional reform. It should overhaul the promotion and evaluation process to inject objectivity and an evidence-centric approach into its culture. Gains can be made by strengthening the training and development of its workforce, building feedback mechanisms, and fixing incentive structures to encourage smart risk-taking that aligns more closely with U.S. interests. The United States needs to take this problem seriously: Strengthening its diplomatic institutions is an essential component of ensuring U.S. national security and preventing some of the failures that were so evident during the evacuation from Kabul.
Lack of Accountability
Foreign Service officers are motivated, talented individuals who made it through a grueling selection process to serve America’s diplomatic mission. When they get stuck on the rigid hierarchical structure of the State Department and demoralized by a culture that penalizes dissent and diversity of thought, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they seek employment at organizations better able to utilize their talent and initiative.
The fact that the Foreign Service’s retention crisis was reported by outside organizations and not the State Department itself should be shocking. But this is just one example of the Foreign Service’s poor track record of collecting and utilizing data. When talented officers leave, there is no exit interview and no attempt to capture the insights that would help the State Department prevent attrition in the future. The department spends tens of millions of dollars a year in diversity recruitment, yet captures no data on its effect or on attrition of minority Foreign Service officers.
The Foreign Service’s disregard for evidence-based decision-making is both a symptom and a cause of its larger accountability gap. Data, insofar as it is used, is applied post hoc to justify positions that leadership has already decided on. Personal relationships have long been a key diplomatic tool for furthering national interests. However, the defining ethos of the Foreign Service has flipped this on its head, making personal relationships within the service the basis of defining national interests. Transparency, openness to change, and critical evaluation are all aspects necessary for accountability. The Foreign Service’s personality-driven culture lack these elements, and as a result, when Foreign Service officers repeatedly take the blows from their leadership’s decisions, they become disillusioned with an institution incapable of self-correction.
For the Foreign Service to shift toward a culture of accountability, it needs to evaluate its personnel practices to embrace objective, equitable, evidence-based models of decision-making. To this end, it should start by improving its poor knowledge-management practices and create mechanisms to capture data at every level of policy, operations, and personnel. It should use this data to improve performance attribution by designing metrics that measure the contribution of actions to the policy process and then tie individual incentives to long-term institutional outcomes and development. To make this change, the Foreign Service needs to foster a culture where decisions are supported by evidence, arguments, and probabilities. To prevent the system from being gamed by selective control of data and transparency, the Foreign Service should ensure that data, decisions, and justifications are internally transparent to the maximum level allowed under data privacy and classification. To keep the system honest, robust feedback mechanisms should be put in place throughout the organizational structure and a healthy culture of dissent should be encouraged.
The Power of “Corridor Reputation”
Many of the decisions made inside the State Department are determined on the basis of personal relationships. This is especially manifest in the concept of “corridor reputation” — institutionalized gossip that serves as an informal, word-of-mouth mechanism to weigh the contribution of each officer based on the officer’s reputation. Corridor reputation is especially important in the bidding process — the search for a new position that all Foreign Service officers go through every one to three years. Ideally, corridor reputation informs hiring managers about the character of prospective candidates, helps weed out bad apples, and constitutes an important source of information, as Foreign Service officers are spread throughout the world. In practice, corridor reputation is toxic. It functions as a mechanism for in-groups to further their collective advantage. This inequity is exacerbated by the historically “pale, male, and Yale” composition of the service. Furthermore, the power of corridor reputation deters officers from raising legitimate concerns about policy or management for fear of upsetting supervisors.
At best, corridor reputation blocks problematic officers from certain assignments. But those officers will keep circulating in the service, leaving the Foreign Service with the same composition as if corridor reputation didn’t exist. If the State Department wants to solve the root problem of underperforming or toxic officers, such as a Foreign Service officer who reportedly runs an anti-Semitic blog, it needs a mechanism to remove them based on sustained and objective measures, not gossip. The service should start collecting objective performance data and logs of verified incidents and complaints and make assignment and curtailment decisions on this basis.
Corridor reputation is just one part of the subjective nature of the bidding process. The opaque bidding process is frustrating and stressful and consumes weeks of productivity. Although there is nominally an objective system in place, Foreign Service officers seeking to secure a desirable post can do an end run around the official process by leveraging their networks to obtain an informal “handshake” offer. This emphasis on personal relationships pushes out better-qualified officers who lack the same connections. Frequently, officers with no expertise in the position’s subject matter but with a personal connection to the hiring manager will get the assignment over an officer with graduate experience in that area.
The subjectivity in the assignment process is compounded over Foreign Service officers’ career trajectories because assignments are the single largest determination of promotion and future assignments. Officers who fail to get good assignments feel, often justifiably, that their accomplishments were passed over by those in the in-group who came to the bidding game with a stacked deck.
The Foreign Service needs to scrap the tarnished legacy of the bidding process and replace it with a transparent, fair, and equitable assignment-matching system that is centrally controlled by human resources (a recommendation also made by the American Foreign Service Association in the latest edition of its journal). The system should match officers’ skills to the position requirements and equitably match officers’ preferences and special requirements. Not only will the Foreign Service benefit from a more transparent system and more optimal talent-matching but removing the stress and time investment from the lobbying process will be universally appreciated. Reforming the assignments process will have an important tertiary effect: By altering the assignment mechanism away from networking in favor of talent-matching, officers will be incentivized to divert the energy previously spent on lobbying toward working on accomplishments and building skills.
Incentives Favor the Status Quo
On my second day at the U.S. consulate in Shanghai, my first post, my training officer stressed the importance of “C.Y.A.” — in that context, taking notes and making adjudication decisions not for accuracy, but so as to leave no legal or personal vulnerabilities. It didn’t take long to realize that this mentality is embedded up and down the department’s organizational structure. Actions taken by individuals, offices, and bureaus are designed to deflect culpability, in defiance of accuracy or mission. Besides creating unnecessary bureaucracy which drags down efficiency, this approach encourages an institution-wide aversion to risk, fostering an addiction to the status quo. It also incentivizes the shirking of responsibility. Unless a problem is explicitly defined as a certain party’s responsibility, it is in that party’s interest to pass it on to a different party, who in turn passes it on or ignores the request, creating a vicious cycle of buck-passing. This is likely the cause, in part, of the slow processing of refugee and special immigrant visas that encumbered the Afghanistan withdrawal. Before the takeover of Kabul prompted high-level attention, each Afghan applicant was probably viewed primarily as a liability or at best a distraction from routine work. Any plans to carve out exceptions, such as for refugee visas, would have been stalled as they passed through an infinite loop of clearances.
The Foreign Service’s incentive structure feeds a cult of personality by rewarding compliance, deference to authority, entrenched interests, and self-promotion. The culture of compliance aided by the threat of corridor reputation suppresses critical evaluation. Innovation and critique are stifled as voices of dissent are drowned out by the cacophony of institutional back-patting.
Idealists who joined the Foreign Service eager to effect change often become disillusioned when they discover that taking principled stands and challenging assumptions are frequently penalized in the bureaucracy. These reformers are disproportionately those taking their talents to the private sector. Making the Foreign Service a safe place for risk-taking and honest appraisal will require loosening entrenched interests and making a cultural shift that starts from the top down. The Foreign Service should make a practice of giving policy predictions in terms of probabilities with degrees of confidence attached. When predictions are not realized, the reasons for the divergence should be studied: If the missed prediction is the result of failed assumptions or faulty data and not just stochasticity, then the models that produced them should be updated.
Likewise, the Foreign Service should acknowledge that needs are fluid and weigh the status quo equally with other options. Missed opportunities should be regarded as failures. The awards and promotions processes should give special consideration to smart risk-taking and delivering improvements. They should be decoupled from compliance: Merely satisfying predetermined requirement statements should not be grounds for special recognition. Finally, dissent should be encouraged throughout the organization, not just for the major policy issues that the arduous and political process of the dissent channel currently provides. Major policies and memos should include dissenting opinions as a matter of course. Information should be allowed to flow freely throughout the department: Colleagues should be allowed and encouraged to communicate with each other without supervisor clearance.
Flexibility
Foreign Service officers often feel they are treated as interchangeable by the bureaucracy. Their abilities are underemployed, and their individual circumstances go ignored by the assignment process.
Historically, diplomats were white men. The Foreign Service and its support structures are designed as if this were still the case, even as the service evolves from this traditional model in rhetoric and composition. It is assumed that a spouse will be present during the middle of workdays for logistical and housekeeping matters. Social events are structured around nuclear families. Professional spouses are given little support except for contingent opportunities for post-dependent, entry-level positions. Single parents are left to grapple with balancing childcare expenses and logistics each time they switch posts. Tandem couples (where both spouses are Foreign Service officers) find limited posts where they can serve together, almost always forcing one of them to sacrifice his or her career opportunities to make it work. Not enough effort is made in the assignments process to address concerns of LGBTQ officers who might be posted to countries with a history of homophobic violence. LGBTQ persons should be provided a choice to avoid these assignments, given that they would be incurring risk and hardship that their straight, cis-gendered colleagues do not face.
The Foreign Service currently takes a laissez-faire approach to officer development. The lack of strong institutional training and development means that Foreign Service officers’ career trajectories are largely dependent on their networking ability and luck. Building in additional training and feedback will not only help build a more capable diplomatic corps but will also contribute to a more equitable one.
When management doles out an undesirable assignment, it is fond of trotting out a particular phrase: Officers should be prepared to meet “the needs of the service.” It is not unreasonable to expect that Foreign Service officers be flexible in their expectations for where they work and what they do — this is, after all, the career they signed up for. However, it is unreasonable that the State Department should not show similar flexibility in creating accommodations for its workforce in the 21st century.
Evaluations
Employee Evaluation Reports are the ritual essay-writing contests that put a halt to U.S. diplomatic operations for a month every year. During the process, officers write narratives about their performance, supervisors add to them, and more senior reviewers provide a stamp of approval. These eventually make their way to the promotion panel, which reviews and ranks officers on their potential according to how well their combined narrative exemplifies the 31 subsections of the “promotion precepts.”
Although this is billed as a meritorious, performance-based process that promotes the officers best equipped to succeed, it features several notable aspects that make it perhaps the single largest driver of counterproductive workplace culture and discontent in the Foreign Service.
The first is its impact: All promotions, grade increases, tenure decisions, performance counseling, and/or terminations of Foreign Service officers happen on the basis of their last five evaluations. With no alternative avenue of proving one’s mettle, those unable to succeed in the system are trapped by it.
Second, the entire process is narrative-driven. The lack of data or any comparable performance metrics means that an officer’s success aligns solely with pleasing those higher in the command structure. It also means that officers spend days that could be spent pursuing U.S. foreign policy goals instead composing and refining personal essays.
Third, the evaluation system is strictly hierarchical. Officers are evaluated only by their supervisor and a more senior “reviewer.” It should be no wonder that a lopsided incentive structure not only enables a culture of kissing up and kicking down but also discourages dissent and minimizes feedback from peers and subordinates.
Fourth, all parts of the evaluation reports are visible to all parties. As a result, managers withhold honest feedback, knowing that candid criticism would torpedo their subordinate’s career, heighten workplace tensions, and negatively impact their own corridor reputation. Officers often draft their supervisor’s and reviewing officer’s portions, an obvious conflict of interest that benefits most those who are already in in-groups. The visibility of the reports strips the evaluation process of honest feedback mechanisms and value as a meaningful development tool.
Fifth, as the evaluations’ use as a performance indicator loses value, the largest differentiators between individual officers are the responsibilities and projects they take on. This incentivizes officers to focus on promotion rather than mission success. Moreover, officers are pushed to compete for high-profile projects that their managers have prioritized rather than pursue projects they are best qualified for. This problem is aggravated by managers giving their favorite subordinates preferred, career-enhancing opportunities. The lack of meaningful evaluation metrics results in recognition being given to officers who obtaining high-priority projects instead of those who do high-quality work.
Sixth, promotion panel decisions rely on the subjective interpretation of the narratives by a panel that is staffed by peers with no expertise in personnel decisions. They have the unenviable task of sifting through hundreds of evaluations in search of subtle tone differences that hint at the reviewer’s praise while parsing out how well an officer matches vaguely defined promotion precepts. It is no wonder that their ability to predict an officer’s future performance is no better than a roll of the dice.
The frustration that Foreign Service officers feel toward an evaluation system that perpetuates real and perceived biases with no objective oversight and a lack of quantifiable measures should not be ignored. Neither can the misalignment such a system creates between individual interests and the mission goals of the Foreign Service. The current system promotes compliance, in-grouping, and avoiding responsibility for necessary but unprioritized work.
To ensure that Foreign Service officers are promoted based on the merit of their work, the State Department should rebuild the evaluation system from the ground up. It should start by decoupling the evaluation function from the feedback and development functions. A modified version of the current narrative format may be appropriate for the latter functions, so long as it is no longer tied to promotion outcomes. The evaluation function is better served by metrics captured by improved data collection and analysis tools. The State Department should design comparable performance metrics that track officers’ performance and conduct. The performance metrics would be adjusted for each position to capture each officer’s contribution to the mission. These metrics, with short comments by the officer’s supervisor indicating any mitigating factors, would form the first part of the evaluation. The second part would be a 360-degree review system conducted through an annual survey sent to all officers that requires them to anonymously rate their direct supervisors and supervisees in addition to a random selection of their peers on a handful of metrics rated on a numerical scale. An algorithm can automatically normalize the scores to account for different positions and posts and consistently high or low graders. A 360-degree review system that keeps management accountable to its subordinates and peers accountable to each other will foster a healthier work environment.
Looking Ahead
The Foreign Service’s attrition crisis is real and is self-inflicted. It has institutional roots in the State Department’s culture of personality, risk-averse tendencies, and inflexibility. Uprooting the entrenched interests preventing the State Department from adapting to the 21st century will require a concerted effort to adapt data-driven methodologies and a complete revamp of assignment and evaluation processes.
America’s national security depends on the strength of its diplomatic institutions. A robust State Department is vital to projecting power around the world. The United States needs the Foreign Service at full force and in good morale to maintain a robust network of alliances, establish advantageous economic and people-to-people ties, facilitate travel to and from the United States, and elicit cooperation from other countries in achieving geopolitical objectives.
Foreign Service officers are incredibly talented, driven individuals working in a system seemingly designed to suppress their unique contributions. If the Foreign Service does not change its culture and personnel system to align the goals of its workforce with the goals of its mission, it will not deserve the talent it can no longer retain.
George Hovey is a former Foreign Service officer whose work in mission China included mitigating illicit technology transfer, shaping the U.S. response to the COVID-19 outbreak, and countering foreign disinformation. He is interested in policy areas including China, science and technology, ethics, and national competitiveness.
warontherocks.com · by George Hovey · September 3, 2021

27. What Trump understood and Biden gets right about America's new role in the world


Excerpts;
All of this demonstrates that Trump was not an aberration. While Trump was ruthless in confronting China, he was incapable of working with what he viewed as America’s free-riding NATO allies and partners in Asia. While Biden has maintained Trump’s forceful containment policy, unlike Trump, he has indicated his support for working with NATO and expanding U.S. commitments in the Quadrilateral Dialogue. And although Biden defines the great power competition with China in terms of democracies versus autocracies, America’s rivalry with China is more Trumpian. That is, it is about power and influence.
The liberal world order America once led is now dead and buried. Trump understood that. If Biden is serious about establishing a foreign policy for the middle class, he must secure passage of his infrastructure measure, research and innovation industrial plan, and new investments in education, health care, and childcare. These domestic initiatives are vital to containing China’s rise and mitigating the resurrection of Russian power.
What Trump understood and Biden gets right about America's new role in the world
The Hill · by Chris J. Dolan, opinion contributor · September 2, 2021
With the end of the war in Afghanistan, America’s role in the world is undergoing considerable change. From the Cold War to the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans were happy to serve as the leader of the “free world,” underwriter of global security, architect of free trade, and the promoter of democracy and human rights. Today, most Americans reject those roles.
The American people turned against America’s global leadership roles for several reasons. After the Great Recession of 2008-2009, globalization made the wealthy wealthier and eroded the incomes and aspirations of middle- and working-class Americans. The opioid epidemic was symptomatic of this erosion as globalization offshored American jobs. The average American began thinking their government was no longer representative, not looking out for them, and that America’s institutions were corrupt. Americans were not willing to support deploying U.S. military personnel to far off lands in the Middle East and Central Asia to promote democracy and improve the lives of others.
As the military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq expanded into long occupations and with interventions in Libya and Syria, Democrats, Republicans, and independents turned against these deployments. People watched as precious American resources were sent abroad. As they saw it, the more the U.S. promoted democracy around the world, the more life deteriorated at home.
They demanded that the U.S. focus more attention on domestic needs. Donald Trump understood this. In 2016, he defeated Hillary Clinton with “Make America Great Again” and “America First.” He even criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq and negotiated America’s exit from Afghanistan with the Taliban. In 2020, Biden promised Americans he would “Build Back Better” and proposed new investments in domestic programs, ended the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, and followed through on Trump’s negotiated withdrawal from Afghanistan.
On a strategic foreign policy level, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq proved there are no American military solutions to complex civil wars where U.S. interests are not clearly expressed. Trump and Biden’s commitments to end endless wars demonstrated that America’s role as the world’s policeman is now over with nation-building having failed.
Biden must now follow through on his pledge to forge a “foreign policy for the middle class.” Eschewing isolationism, he should pursue a more restrained foreign policy guided by careful diplomacy, soft power, and the State Department, not military interventions and the Pentagon. This should be complemented with new domestic investments in education, infrastructure, and high-tech research and development. As Richard Haas maintains, “foreign policy begins at home.”
This will help Americans prepare for what is already an intense security competition with China and Russia. Unlike the Cold War, this great power struggle will center on cyberoperations, information, artificial intelligence and machine learning, quantum computing, network security, and 5G and 6G telecommunications. Building resilient infrastructure, investing in biodefense, and addressing climate change are fundamental in this competitive multipolar environment.
While America cannot do this on its own, its NATO allies must do more to shoulder the burden. The U.S. must allow European allies some measure of autonomy in defense investments. This will be difficult. President Obama accused NATO of not putting “skin in the game” and President Trump took this one step further by calling NATO “obsolete.” While European leaders questioned American commitments to NATO following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, most NATO members are still not meeting their 2 percent of defense-to-GDP commitments and have entered contracts with China’s Huawei.
All of this demonstrates that Trump was not an aberration. While Trump was ruthless in confronting China, he was incapable of working with what he viewed as America’s free-riding NATO allies and partners in Asia. While Biden has maintained Trump’s forceful containment policy, unlike Trump, he has indicated his support for working with NATO and expanding U.S. commitments in the Quadrilateral Dialogue. And although Biden defines the great power competition with China in terms of democracies versus autocracies, America’s rivalry with China is more Trumpian. That is, it is about power and influence.
The liberal world order America once led is now dead and buried. Trump understood that. If Biden is serious about establishing a foreign policy for the middle class, he must secure passage of his infrastructure measure, research and innovation industrial plan, and new investments in education, health care, and childcare. These domestic initiatives are vital to containing China’s rise and mitigating the resurrection of Russian power.
Chris J. Dolan is a professor of politics and global studies at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa.
The Hill · by Chris J. Dolan, opinion contributor · September 2, 2021






V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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