Quotes of the Day:
"Resistance! Resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance!"
- Henry Highland Garnet
"Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words"
- Ursula K. Le Guin
"Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."
- Sun Tzu
1. Top U.S. General Steps Down in Afghanistan
2. China’s Afghanistan Gambit
3. US Army Special Ops veterans take matters into their own hands to get trusted ally out of Afghanistan
4. Danger from China ‘Clear and Present Already,’ INDOPACOM’s Top Intel Officer Warns
5. What the assassination of Haiti’s president means for US foreign policy
6. U.S. Dismisses Chinese Claim It Drove Away Warship in South China Sea
7. Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold Why America Failed in Afghanistan
8. Becoming Strong - The New Chinese Foreign Policy
9. The US Desperately Needs a Civilian Cybersecurity Corps
10. U.S. Cyber Chief in Limbo During REVil Attacks Set to Start Work
11. They Are Not ‘Broken Shower Shoes’
12. Murder Mystery: What Were Colombian Military Vets Doing in Haiti?
13. Guam hosts Army's Forager 21 exercise
14. World Health Org To Distribute Chinese Vaccines Over U.S. Objections
15. Opinion | Wall Street is finally waking up to the reality of China
16. 9/11 Museum’s 20th-Anniversary Exhibitions Become Victims of Cuts
17. Russia Warns Against 'Outside Interference' After Cuba Protests
18. Afghan special forces moved in on Taliban, only to find they had melted away
19. From Russia with hate: How pro-Kremlin bots are fuelling chaos and lies about the pandemic
20. Montgomery Meigs, former commander of US Army Europe, dies at 76
21. Farewell Montgomery C Meigs, III
22. Wild Bill Donovan, the Grandfather of American Intelligence
23. Seeing America from the ground
24. Impersonations of Military Members on Social Media On the Rise, New Report Says
25. History of integration in the US Armed Services
1. Top U.S. General Steps Down in Afghanistan
Again, Thomas "TM" Gibbons-Nefff is writing the first draft of the history of the last chapter and our withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Top U.S. General Steps Down in Afghanistan
Gen. Austin S. Miller is leaving as the United States prepares to end its two-decade war in Afghanistan, and as Taliban fighters sweep across much of the country.
Gen. Austin S. Miller greets Gen. Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, the Afghanistan defense minister, during the change of command ceremony in Kabul on Monday. Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, is at center.Credit...Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times
By
July 12, 2021Updated 1:48 p.m. ET
KABUL, Afghanistan — The top American general in Afghanistan stepped down on Monday, a symbolic moment as the United States nears the end of its 20-year-old war and Taliban fighters sweep across the country.
At a muted ceremony at U.S. and NATO military headquarters in Kabul, Gen. Austin S. Miller ended his nearly three-year term as commander. His duties will be filled by two officials. Rear Adm. Peter G. Vasely, who recently served as operations director for the Defense Intelligence Agency, will take charge of the security mission at the United States Embassy in Kabul. He will report to Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, who will take over the broader military mission in Afghanistan.
“It’s important for me to say farewell,” said General Miller, who is expected to retire after a 38-year career in the U.S. Army. The ceremony, which lasted less than an hour, was attended by high-ranking Afghan officials, including Abdullah Abdullah, who is leading peace negotiations. “Our job is now just not to forget,” General Miller said.
General McKenzie, who arrived in Kabul on Monday, spoke afterward, assuring those present that the Americans were not abandoning the Afghan people in such dire times.
“It’s not the end of the story,” General McKenzie said. “It’s the end of a chapter.”
Admiral Vasely brings a background in special operations and intelligence missions, and used to be a member of SEAL Team 6, the secretive U.S. Navy unit best known for killing Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.
The ceremony came on the heels of a Taliban military offensive that has taken swaths of the country, sometimes without firing a shot. The campaign, which has displaced tens of thousands and wounded or killed hundreds of civilians, is a constant indicator of the United States-led mission’s inability to groom an effective Afghan military despite spending billions of dollars on the effort since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
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Top U.S. General in Afghanistan Hands Over Command
Gen. Austin S. Miller stepped down as commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan, as the United States prepares to end the 20-year-old war and as the Taliban has taken swaths of the country.
It’s important that the military sides set the conditions for a peaceful and political settlement in Afghanistan. We can all see the violence that’s taking place across the country. But we know that with that violence that what is very difficult to achieve is a political settlement. So again, what I tell the Taliban is they’re responsible too. The violence that’s going on is against the will of the Afghan people. And it needs to stop. This ceremony marks an important milestone in the transition of our involvement in Afghanistan. But it’s not the end of the story. It’s rather the end of a chapter. We will remain focused on four things over the course of the coming period. First, protecting our diplomatic presence in this country. Second, enabling the safe operation of the airport here in Kabul. Continuing to provide appropriate advice and assistance to Afghan national defense and security forces. And finally, as I’ve noted before, supporting our counterterrorism efforts.
Gen. Austin S. Miller stepped down as commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan, as the United States prepares to end the 20-year-old war and as the Taliban has taken swaths of the country.Credit...Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times
General Miller oversaw a military campaign aimed at keeping the Taliban at the negotiating table and the Afghan forces unified in the face of political uncertainty.
Despite thousands of airstrikes, increased civilian casualties and short-term tactical gains, it is unclear how successful the U.S. military effort was: The final agreement between the insurgent group and the United States in February 2020 clearly favored the Taliban, and the Afghan government was completely cut out of the deal.
The Taliban have seized control of more than 160 of the country’s roughly 400 districts in the last two months, and hundreds of Afghan troops have surrendered, giving up their U.S.-supplied equipment and fleeing, sometimes into neighboring countries. Key provincial cities in both the north and south are under siege, and Afghan government counterattacks have had limited success.
U.S. intelligence assessments, though often wrong, have included dire warnings that the government could collapse, opening the door for the insurgents to take over.
“We’re trying to recover and regroup and reorganize,” Hamdullah Mohib, the Afghan national security adviser, told reporters after the ceremony.
Addressing fears that the Taliban could dominate the country by force in the coming months, he was blunt: “There will be no takeover,” he said.
In a desperate bid to hold off the Taliban, the Afghan government has encouraged the rise of local militias, a chilling throwback to the brutal civil war of the 1990s.
“Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if it continues on the trajectory it’s on,” General Miller told reporters during a news conference last month. Though the past 40 years of conflict in Afghanistan could be seen as a civil war, a return to a fractious era of warlords and armed fiefs has long been feared.
Earlier this month, the U.S. military quietly left its largest and last base in the country, Bagram Air Base, in the middle of the night. It was a move prompted by security concerns, Pentagon officials said, but emblematic of the entire U.S. military withdrawal that officially began in May.
The flags of the nations with forces remaining in Afghanistan — the United States. the United Kingdom, and Turkey (not pictured) — fly atop poles inside the Resolute Support base in Kabul on Monday.Credit...Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times
President Biden promised an end to the United States’ longest foreign war in April while trying to assure the Afghan government that it was not being abandoned as Taliban forces surged across the country.
For now, the American military mission will continue through Aug. 31, though most troops and equipment have already left. Around 650 soldiers will remain to defend the American Embassy and the country’s airport alongside a contingent of Turkish forces.
There are also around 250 Pentagon contractors still in the country, mostly helping the Afghan Air Force. At the peak, there were 18,000 contractors. Afghan pilots and aircraft crews heavily rely on the foreign support to keep things running, and even now they are stretched to the breaking point as they face the Taliban alone.
But even with a residual force and Afghan officials’ hope that American airstrikes on the Taliban would continue into the future, Mr. Biden made it clear that the U.S. military mission in the country was ending.
“Let me ask those who wanted us to stay: How many more?” Mr. Biden said in remarks in the East Room of the White House on Thursday. “How many thousands more of America’s daughters and sons are you willing to risk? How long would you have them stay?”
The president insisted that the United States had not abandoned the thousands of Afghans who served as interpreters or provided other assistance to the American military and diplomatic missions.
Mr. Biden said evacuations were underway, and he promised those Afghans that there was “a home for you in the United States, if you so choose. We will stand with you, just as you stood with us.”
And on Monday, the American Embassy in Kabul resumed immigrant visa interviews after a lockdown because of the coronavirus.
In a sign of the Pentagon’s growing concern that the deteriorating security situation could hamper efforts to relocate the former Afghan interpreters, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has created a high-level team to coordinate broader military assistance for the State Department, the agency leading the effort.
Until now, the Pentagon’s role has been primarily to identify countries that could support the Afghan visa applicants and their families for a period of months if needed.
But the Defense Department wants to be ready to provide State Department with additional support, such as military transportation, if needed, a senior Pentagon official said. The Pentagon team, which will hold its first meeting on Monday, will be led by Garry Reid, a senior department official.
Though the future is uncertain, peace talks between Taliban and Afghan negotiators continue in Qatar, though infrequently. Last week, Taliban and some Afghan political figures met in Iran’s capital to discuss an end to the conflict, but concluded with little progress, officials said.
The Taliban has carried out a diplomatic blitz in the region, traveling to Russia and Turkmenistan, following the group’s recent advances across the country.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
2. China’s Afghanistan Gambit
A chance to see how China will deal with a complex political-military problem.
Excerpts:
Becoming a more active player would require China to once again modify its long-standing policy of non-interference. However, China has done so in the past, so there is room for it to become more engaged, particularly if the security situation were to deteriorate further. This particularly possible as other countries might push Beijing to fill the vacuum – whether China likes it or not.
For instance, last year a report by the Brookings Institution cited NATO officials as saying that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, during negotiations with the Taliban briefed Beijing “far more frequently than NATO allies who complained of being left out and considered less important than China.” In addition, Beijing has already used its influence to push Islamabad to release the Taliban deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar from a prison in Pakistan.
All this suggests that China might be in too deep at this point to just sit tight. Beijing might be forced to use its regional influence to try to manage one of the most challenging conflicts in the past few decades, and so reaffirm its position as an aspiring regional hegemon.
China’s Afghanistan Gambit
The pace of the Taliban’s military advancement on the eve of the U.S. pullout not only stokes worries of regional spillover, but also shines a spotlight on China.
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As the United States approaches the final deadline to withdraw its last troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban are rapidly overrunning districts and gaining control of large swaths of the country. The group is doing so faster than anyone had imagined, to the point that the U.S. military has reportedly moved its forecasted timeline for a possible collapse of the civilian government to only six months after its pullout.
Indeed, with June being the deadliest month in Afghanistan in two decades, the former Afghan President Hamid Karzai now openly calls the Western deployment a “failed mission” underlying the rise in terrorist attacks both by the Taliban, as well as the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), which is also active in Afghanistan.
This worry is now particularly echoed when looking at potential scenarios of regional spillovers. Last week, at least 1,000 Afghan security service members fled into Tajikistan. More importantly, the Afghan government has now abandoned the Wakhan district in Badakhshan province, one of the most strategically important areas for China. Badakhshan province, and the Wakhan corridor, in particular, are now all but lost to the Taliban. Unless the group is able to keep a lid on rising tensions, China will be pushed to once again modify its long-standing principle of non-interference.
One of the main goals of the U.S. mission was to eradicate the threat of al-Qaida and make sure Afghanistan will cease to provide a safe haven for terrorist groups active in the region. This commitment is one of the main pillars of the U.S. deal with the Taliban, which pledged to keep the foreign fighters out of the country. However, the most recent U.N. report on Afghanistan published in June 2021 says that the Taliban and al-Qaida continue to enjoy close ties “based on ideological alignment” and forged via “common struggle and intermarriage.” In addition, the document clearly states that al-Qaida and like-minded militants celebrate developments in Afghanistan as a “victory for the Taliban and thus for global radicalism.” In this case, any hope that the Taliban are dealing in a good faith and will live up to their commitments appears largely misguided, if not outright misplaced.
It is now clear that there are two possible scenarios for the future of Afghanistan, none of which will lead to a more stable Afghanistan. In a slightly better outcome, the United States keeps its promise to protect its foreign mission in Kabul and provides a certain level of support for the Afghan military. In this case, Kabul will go on to live isolated from the rest of the country, much of which will probably succumb to the rule of the Taliban. For now, there have been various proposals of foreign deployment in Kabul, one including Turkey and Hungary in a joint mission at the Kabul airport. However, in the most recent sign of the Taliban’s real long-term strategy, Suhail Shaheen, a member of the Taliban negotiation team, cast doubts when speaking to BBC this week on whether the Taliban will be able to accept any foreign troop deployment.
The Taliban’s evolving rhetoric together with their rapid military advancement takes us to the second question: How long can Kabul resist outside military pressure?
As the fighting hits up in the northern part of Afghanistan, the Taliban are now approaching Badakhshan, one of the most strategically important areas for China. Beijing has concerns about the potential of Islamist militancy spilling over to China or Uyghur militants using Afghanistan to regroup and train. Indeed, the country’s regional significance directly led to China’s rising military presence in Tajikistan only 10 miles from the Afghan border, while there have also been reports of Chinese activities in Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor directly. Another side of the coin is China’s own economic projects, although the real economic value of those could be disputed.
Similar to the U.S., China might have its own reservations as to whether the Taliban will be able to keep the security situation in check. Beijing has long developed ties with the Islamist group, going all the way to the 1990s, and China has always maintained a pragmatic approach to the group. But rising attacks on its interests in neighboring Pakistan, where Beijing finds itself fending off grievances from local militant groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army, demonstrate a worrying precedent for its growing exposure to local militancy. Even if the Taliban decide to lay down their weapons, the group does not exercise full control over other foreign elements active in Afghanistan. Indeed in June alone, ISKP carried out several attacks in the country, raising fears that the militants are regrouping.
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The group China is most concerned about, the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), is according to the U.N. still active in Afghanistan. It participated in the siege of Kuran wa Munjan District in Badakhshan in July 2020, and most recently was also reportedly a part of recent clashes there in early July. More worryingly for Beijing, the U.N. also reported that the group has a larger presence in Syria, while facilitating the movement of fighters from Afghanistan to China to establish an Islamic state in Xinjiang. To what extent these claims reflect the current reality is hard to assess; however, they all demonstrate a reason for China to play a more constructive role in Afghanistan to ensure regional stability.
Becoming a more active player would require China to once again modify its long-standing policy of non-interference. However, China has done so in the past, so there is room for it to become more engaged, particularly if the security situation were to deteriorate further. This particularly possible as other countries might push Beijing to fill the vacuum – whether China likes it or not.
For instance, last year a report by the Brookings Institution cited NATO officials as saying that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, during negotiations with the Taliban briefed Beijing “far more frequently than NATO allies who complained of being left out and considered less important than China.” In addition, Beijing has already used its influence to push Islamabad to release the Taliban deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar from a prison in Pakistan.
All this suggests that China might be in too deep at this point to just sit tight. Beijing might be forced to use its regional influence to try to manage one of the most challenging conflicts in the past few decades, and so reaffirm its position as an aspiring regional hegemon.
3. US Army Special Ops veterans take matters into their own hands to get trusted ally out of Afghanistan
US Army Special Ops veterans take matters into their own hands to get trusted ally out of Afghanistan
Former Green Beret and former Army Ranger work toward a plan B to secure the safety of their interpreter after being let down by the State Department’s SIV program.
The lives of thousands of Afghan interpreters hang in the balance as districts in the unstable nation continue to fall to the Taliban amid the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Having little faith that the U.S. government will pull through on its promise to these heroes on the ground, some have begun to seek alternative ways to ensure their safety.
Greg Adams, a former Green Beret in the U.S. Army Special Forces, decided to take matters into his own hands after years of being let down by the State Department’s Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program.
He started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the immediate evacuation of his former interpreter and the man's wife from Afghanistan. So far more than $28,500 has been donated since the fund started in June.
Adams worked closely with Moneer, the Afghani civilian, in 2009 and 2010.
"Moneer was instrumental in everything that we did." Greg Adams told Fox News. "This is somebody who was a trusted adviser for me and was tied into decision-making every single day."
As Adams described on the GoFundMe page, Moneer has grown up among the Special Operations Forces since the age of 18 and has served with Special Forces Teams, Rangers and Navy SEALs.
"His efforts kept elite U.S. service members alive on hundreds of dangerous missions and resulted in adversaries behind bars and more stable communities." wrote Adams. "He shares our values and sense of integrity deeply."
Matthew "Griff" Griffin, former Army Ranger who graduated from West Point with Adams in 2001, joined the initiative to get Moneer, whom he has also worked with, out of Afghanistan.
"Guys like Moneer, who have been in more firefights than 95% of veterans – he’s served our nation more than 99% of our population, and he can't get his paperwork through," Griffin told Fox News.
Adams has been supporting Moneer on his SIV process for over a decade to no avail.
"I trusted that there was a system in place in 2010 when I wrote his letter of recommendation and then basically what you find over time is there's a bunch of bureaucratic red tape in a deeply flawed system," Adams said.
"In my case, nobody's really asked me a question about whether Moneer is somebody that I would trust – which I have over and over again – with my life," he noted. "Griff has done the same thing. And we don't really count in this process at all whatsoever."
Despite the State Department claiming that thousands of visas are in the process of being reviewed, neither Adams, Griffin nor Moneer has heard anything to confirm this and the department has yet to provide any additional information, including a list of names.
"Right now, trying to fix the program, that's not going to happen. What we need to do is get these people out and figure out the paperwork later," urged Adams
After multiple rejected SIV applications and appeals, the Special Ops veterans got to work on a Plan B for their trusted ally.
As of July 6, Moneer and his wife were evacuated from Afghanistan to an undisclosed third country by way of a 30-day visa. Here they will visit foreign embassies and consulates with hopes of furthering their visa process and securing a more permanent solution.
President Biden addressed the safety concerns of these Afghan allies on Thursday while discussing the end of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
"Our message to those women and men is clear," Biden said. "There is a home for you in the United States if you so choose. We will stand with you, just as you stood with us."
When asked why Afghan translators can’t be evacuated to the U.S. to await their visa processing – like some immigrants at the U.S. southern border – Biden said: "Because the law doesn’t allow that to happen."
"I think what we're seeing is a lot of speeches regarding the issue and very rarely do speeches turn into great plans, and it’s very rare that great plans turn into well-executed operations," observed Griffin.
"If we're looking at past performance as an indicator of future performance, I think the United States government is going to fumble this hard," he continued. "I believe that the government is just going to trust that the American people are going to forget and move on to the next major thing."
"This is a major national security issue," warned Griffin. "We're going to be kneecapping our foreign policy for the next 20 years if we don't come through on this simple promise that's within our reach."
"If this isn't who we are, this is who we want to be. The country that will follow through on this," said Adams. "This is our opportunity. It's in front of us on a silver platter."
4. Danger from China ‘Clear and Present Already,’ INDOPACOM’s Top Intel Officer Warns
The PACOM J2, Admiral Studeman,continues to receive a lot of press coverage for his recent remarks.
Excerpts:
Studeman’s and INDOPACOM’s calls for more attention from Washington will not be the last.
“So those messages have always been there, but I think they’re becoming more dire as the Chinese are getting more aggressive and their capabilities are growing, like accelerating and growing,” Sadler said. “Which makes understanding their intentions and getting as far out into the future, what their intentions are, not just necessary, but vital, critical. And so this is what Studeman, I think he’s feeling both of those.”
Danger from China ‘Clear and Present Already,’ INDOPACOM’s Top Intel Officer Warns
Rear admiral urges Washington policymakers to take Beijing's threats more seriously.
Rear Adm. Mike Studeman has an urgent message from the middle of the Pacific Ocean: The threat from China is more pressing than leaders in America’s capital seem to realize.
“I'm wondering in Washington how many folks are truly persuaded by the warning which the intelligence community has already provided, regarding the dangers that exist within this decade, soon, now, with regard to the nature of the Chinese threat, and how it manifests, and what to do about it,” said Studeman, the U.S. military’s top intelligence officer for the Asia-Pacific region. “We would say the danger is clear and present already.”
He spoke last week at a virtual event last week with the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, becoming the latest Indo-Pacific Command official to voice such sentiments publicly.
The Pentagon’s 2022 budget request has been criticized for not reflecting the threat of China’s military and economic rise to America and its interests, though the country is a major focus of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and declarations from top defense leaders, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Studeman also questioned whether the United States, even with enough warning, is prepared to move military capabilities into the region.
“We have built up the capacities and the capabilities that we need to be able to handle the type of scenario, which may be unfolding. And that's been part of INDOPACOM’s feedback from multiple combatant commanders over time, which you can read about in the testimonies that they have given with regard to whether or not we are accurately understanding the time elements associated with the danger,” he said.
Studeman's comments come after similar recent public remarks by INDOPACOM leaders. In March, former INDOPACOM commander Adm. Philip Davidson said the threat against Taiwan could manifest “during this decade, in fact in the next six years.” During his Senate confirmation hearing that same month, the current INDOPACOM commander Adm. John Aquilino concurred with Davidson about the threat to Taiwan, and agreed that there must be American and allied forces postured west of the international dateline to be able to respond quickly.
Washington does appear to be listening to some of these messages. Congress has written several laws to stand up against human rights abuses by the Chinese government and to support the democratic governance of its territories, such as the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 and the Taiwan Assurance Act.
Congress also established the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, or PDI, in the 2021 budget as a means to provide more support and improve America’s competitive edge in the region. However, the Pentagon’s 2022 budget has fallen short of the PDI’s intended goals, said Brent Sadler, a senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.
“I’d say it is largely tone-deaf on answering the specific request of INDOPACOM. And it rather is a laundry list of acquisitions that the services—the Navy, Air Force most notably—already had planned and needed to do for overall force structure,” Sadler said.
While the command would benefit from having another destroyer, he said, what Davidson had asked for was more about establishing infrastructure, basing, and a presence in the region.
One issue is there is no additional money specifically for the PDI, so it must come from the services’ budgets and on top of all their other requirements, he said.
The “tension” between the services and the combatant commands on how to address the urgency of China as a pacing threat is primarily structural, Sadler said. The services are future focused regarding manning, training, and equipping their forces, while the combatant commands are primarily focused on competing in the next few years and having to establish infrastructure and partnerships in the region.
This balancing act between the military services, the combatant commands, and the Pentagon on budget priorities is not new, said Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“In the real world, you are always making tradeoffs and you are always accepting risks. And you always have to deal with this process of triage,” he said.
While INDOPACOM is demanding urgency regarding China in the region, Cordesman said it takes time for America to strategize, fund, and procure assets, as well as to build partnerships with allies in the region who may view things differently.
“I don't think there is an intelligence head of any of the major combatant commands that doesn't feel there isn't some area where we aren't spending enough and you really need to make urgent changes,” he said.
Cordesman also disagreed with Studeman that there is a lack of attention on the global threats posed by China, from space operations to influence. He questioned what specific recommendations the command may have that are time sensitive enough to jump the line and have their region and threats prioritized first.
“Again, you have to make a choice between all these different elements of the Chinese threat, remembering Russia hasn't gone away, we still have Iran and North Korea, we have a host of extremist and terrorist groups. You have to work with your strategic partners, which often view the threats differently and the priorities differently. So, I think you have to be very careful,” Cordesman said.
Studeman’s and INDOPACOM’s calls for more attention from Washington will not be the last.
“So those messages have always been there, but I think they’re becoming more dire as the Chinese are getting more aggressive and their capabilities are growing, like accelerating and growing,” Sadler said. “Which makes understanding their intentions and getting as far out into the future, what their intentions are, not just necessary, but vital, critical. And so this is what Studeman, I think he’s feeling both of those.”
5. What the assassination of Haiti’s president means for US foreign policy
Excerpts:
Moise’s assassination leaves Haiti with an unstable government and an increasingly frustrated population. In addition to the current state of siege implemented by Prime Minister Joseph, Haiti’s interim government has formally requested the US to send security assistance to protect infrastructure including Haiti’s seaport, airport, and gasoline reserves as a precautionary measure. During a briefing Friday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki offered measured support from the White House, saying, “we will be sending senior FBI and DHS officials to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible to assess the situation and how we may be able to assist.”
It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will react but if US troops are sent to Haiti it could begin to feel like political deja vu. Haiti has a long history of American military intervention.
What the assassination of Haiti’s president means for US foreign policy
America and Haiti’s complex relationship, explained.
Vox · by Maryam Gamar · July 10, 2021
Police patrol outside the Embassy of Taiwan in Port-au-Price on July 9, 2021, after 11 suspected assassins of Haitian President Jovenel Moise broke into its embassy in an attempt to flee but were later apprehended by police.
Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP via Getty Images
The assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise has sent the country into shock and turmoil, sparking discussions in the international community on how to help bring stability. But Haiti’s long history of foreign involvement can’t be ignored, nor can the fact that often, aid was provided whether or not Haiti itself benefitted.
On Wednesday, July 7, President Moise was shot 16 times when Hatian officials allege a group of “professional killers’’ stormed his home in a suburb located near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. Prime Minister Claude Joseph assumed leadership and promptly declared a two-week state of siege in the country in an attempt to control backlash. However Joseph’s authority is being questioned by some as President Moise had declared Ariel Henry the new Prime Minister only two days before his assassination. Henry was meant to be sworn in this past week. Complicating the issue is the fact that Haiti currently has two conflicting constitutions that give different instructions on what to do when the president is no longer in power.
Moise’s hunger for power defined his presidency
Moise himself had a tumultuous presidency beginning in 2017, highlighted by his authoritarian tactics and inability to gain the Haitain people’s trust. Soon after he was elected, Moise revived the nation’s army which had been disbanded two decades before. This was a controversial decision in a country still dealing with the aftermath of its catastrophic 2010 earthquake, stoking fears that the army would drain already limited resources. Further skepticism came from the army’s history of human rights abuses and the multiple coups it carried out. The decision to bring the army back set the tone for Moise’s presidency as he continuously prioritized his interests and power over those of the people. In the absence of a functioning legislature, Haitian law allows the President to rule by decree, and in January 2020, Moise refused to hold Parliamentary elections and dismissed all of the country’s elected mayors, consolidating his power.
Further exacerbating problems, in February Moise refused to leave office despite legal experts and members of an opposition coalition claiming that his term ended on February 7th. Moise claimed that his presidency was meant to last until 2022, due to a delay in the 2017 election, and his refusal to step down led to mass anger and frustration culminating in public protests and chants of “no to dictatorship”.
While the identity of the killers has not been confirmed, speculation seems to be determined by party alignment. Moise supporters have stated that he was shot by a predominantly Colombian group of hitmen while some opposition politicians claim that he was killed by his own guards. Others have said that the Colombians were hired as personal guards to protect Moise from external threats. Fifteen Colombian suspects are currently in custody along with two Hatian-American suspects, and others still believed to be at large.
Haiti’s current call for intervention is reminiscent of its past
Moise’s assassination leaves Haiti with an unstable government and an increasingly frustrated population. In addition to the current state of siege implemented by Prime Minister Joseph, Haiti’s interim government has formally requested the US to send security assistance to protect infrastructure including Haiti’s seaport, airport, and gasoline reserves as a precautionary measure. During a briefing Friday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki offered measured support from the White House, saying, “we will be sending senior FBI and DHS officials to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible to assess the situation and how we may be able to assist.”
It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will react but if US troops are sent to Haiti it could begin to feel like political deja vu. Haiti has a long history of American military intervention.
Foreign intervention in Haiti has often worsened the situation
The United States’ involvement began as early as the 1790s, when it provided support to French colonists in an effort to subdue revolting groups of enslaved Haitians. As the revolution grew, so did US hostility toward Haiti, fearing that the revolutionary discourse would spread to the enslaved population in the US. And although Haiti gained independence in 1804, the United States did not recognize it as an independent nation until 1862.
This attitude towards Haiti drastically changed in 1915, after President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated a few months after he entered office due to his authoritarian rule and repressive actions. In the face of heightened turmoil, President Woodrow Wilson sent US Marines into Haiti to build the nation back up and restore political and economic stability. However the military occupation lasted for nearly 20 years during which time the US controlled parts of the country’s government and finances. In 1917 the Wilson administration tried to force a new constitution onto the Hatian government that would allow foreign land ownership which had been prohibited as a way to protect domestic resources and prevent foreign powers from taking control.
A more recent intervention occurred in 1994 when the US sent troops to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to presidency and neutralize the militant group that had overthrown him and taken power. Known as Operation Restore Democracy, the intervention was ultimately successful since Aristide returned to the presidency but questions about the longevity of the operation and if US involvement was necessary linger to this day.
“The intervention in Haiti was a short-lived success,” James Dobbins, a US Special Envoy during the operation told Time Magazine. “Haiti illustrated that these things take a long time — they don’t transform a society overnight.”
In fact, foreign interventions have a record of transforming Haitian society but not necessarily in a good way. In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, the United Nations deployed peacekeepers to assist with rebuilding efforts. However, that following October, sewage from a peacekeeping base contaminated a major water supply causing a cholera outbreak. In an economy already weakened by the earthquake, and with health and sanitation facilities severely underfunded, the outbreak was disastrous, affecting almost 800,000 Haitians and killing approximately 10,000 people. It took the UN six years to admit to its responsibility.
In the wake of Moise’s assassination, many questions remain about the role of the US, including how to successfully effect long-lasting change.
Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born historian and political science professor at the University of Virginia spoke to Time Magazine about the harm that international involvement in Haiti has caused. “[After the intervention], Haiti became a country dependent on international financial organizations for its funding, its budget — it was and still is at the mercy of what the international community is willing to give,” he said.
Vox · by Maryam Gamar · July 10, 2021
6. U.S. Dismisses Chinese Claim It Drove Away Warship in South China Sea
U.S. Dismisses Chinese Claim It Drove Away Warship in South China Sea
July 13, 2021 08:24
The U.S. Navy dismissed as "false" China's claims that it "drove away" a U.S. warship that passed through the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Monday.
The USS Benfold destroyer sailed near the small archipelago, located south of China and east of Vietnam, in a move known as a freedom of navigation operation, according to the Navy. The operation challenged "the unlawful restrictions on innocent passage imposed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam," the Navy said in a statement.
All three countries claim the islands and require either permission or advance notification before a military vessel passes through, which the U.S. did not give Monday.
Guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold sails in the Philippine Sea on June 15, 2018. /Reuters
The Navy added it would continue to carry out these operations "as long as some countries continue to assert maritime claims that are inconsistent with international law."
"Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight, free trade and unimpeded commerce," the Navy said. "No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms."
Chinese authorities on Monday called the move "provocative" and urged the U.S. to stop, according to Reuters. The freedom of navigation operation comes on the fifth anniversary of an international court ruling in The Hague that held China had no historic title over the South China Sea. Beijing has ignored the ruling.
Other islands and atolls in the South China Sea are contested by Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. China considers much of the resource-rich sea its territory -- overlapping with the territorial claims of other nations -- and has created hundreds of hectares of artificial islands to bolster its territorial claims.
The U.S. frequently conducts freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to dispute China's claims and to promote free passage through international waters that carry half the world's merchant fleet tonnage, worth trillions of dollars each year.
- Copyright © Chosunilbo & Chosun.com
7. Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold Why America Failed in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
Those “noble” achievements are not negligible, however. There are now 3.5 million Afghan girls in school (although more than two million still do not go). Women are working in all sorts of fields: law enforcement, cinema, robotics. The health-care system has been transformed, and life expectancy for Afghan women has increased by almost ten years. Afghanistan has flourishing media. Even the presence of cell phones indicates a society connected with the rest of the world. Young Afghans will not easily give up these hard-won rights.
The fear is that these gains may now be threatened. Since the peace deal was signed, there have been dozens of assassinations of judges, journalists, and human rights activists, as well as the horrific bombing of a girls’ school. And however U.S. policymakers may seek to dress it up, to the Taliban, the American pullout is a victory. As the oft-quoted Taliban adage goes, “You have all the clocks, but we have all the time.”
The Afghans, after all, never believed that the Americans would stay. Back in 2005, in the remote village of Shkin, a place of intense fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, I watched local villagers happily accept health care and other help from U.S. soldiers in the day, then rocket their base at night. When I asked them why, they had a simple explanation: “In the end, they’ll be gone, and the bad guys will still be here.”
Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold
Why America Failed in Afghanistan
Foreign Affairs · by Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World. · July 2, 2021
In 2008, I interviewed the United Kingdom’s then outgoing military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, in a dusty firebase in Helmand Province, where international troops had been battling the Taliban on a daily basis for territory that kept slipping away. The war in Afghanistan could not be won militarily, Carleton-Smith told me. He was the first senior coalition military officer to say so publicly, and the story made the front page of the British Sunday Times. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates promptly denounced Carleton-Smith to the news media as “defeatist.”
Thirteen years on, U.S. President Joe Biden appears to have reached the same conclusion as the British brigadier. In April, Biden announced that the United States would pull all its remaining troops out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, ending what he referred to as “the forever war.” But by now, such a withdrawal was all but a foregone conclusion: the Taliban had proved a stubborn enemy that was not going anywhere and that indeed controlled close to half the country’s territory.
How the conflict once known as “the good war” (to distinguish it from the war in Iraq) went so wrong is the subject of a new book, The American War in Afghanistan, which claims to be the first comprehensive account of the United States’ longest war. Its author, Carter Malkasian, is a historian who has spent considerable time working in Afghanistan, first as a civilian official in Helmand and then as a senior adviser to the U.S. military commander in the country. A sprawling history of more than 500 pages, the work stands in stark contrast to Malkasian’s previous book, War Comes to Garmser, which tells the compelling story of one small district in Helmand. In his new book, Malkasian considers just how it could be that with as many as 140,000 soldiers in 2011 and some of the world’s most sophisticated equipment, the United States and its NATO allies failed to defeat the Taliban. Moreover, he asks why these Western powers stayed on, at a cost of more than $2 trillion and over 3,500 allied lives lost, plus many more soldiers badly injured, fighting what the British brigadier and others long knew was an unwinnable war.
Fatal Beginnings
The Afghan intervention seemed, at the start, a success story. The United States entered Afghanistan in October 2001 with the backing of the United Nations and fueled by worldwide outrage over the 9/11 attacks. It dispatched B-52 bombers, laser-guided missiles, and Green Berets, who worked alongside local militias to topple the Taliban within 60 days, with the loss of only four U.S. soldiers (three a result of friendly fire) and one CIA agent. The operation seemed a model of intervention and cost a total of $3.8 billion: President George W. Bush described it as one of the biggest “bargains” of all time. Observes Malkasian: “The ease of the 2001 success carried away sensibility.”
The Taliban fell, Osama bin Laden fled to Pakistan—and the Bush administration no longer seemed to know what it was trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Bush made much of women’s rights, declaring in his State of the Union address in January 2002 that “today women of Afghanistan are free,” after “years as captives in their own homes,” when the Taliban forbade girls from going to school and women from working, wearing lipstick, or laughing out loud. But Washington had no appetite for rebuilding Afghanistan and almost no understanding of the war-ravaged country, let alone of how much work would be needed to secure and reconstruct it.
The Afghan intervention seemed, at the start, a success story.
Malkasian argues that the United States made mistakes between 2001 and 2006 that set the course for failure. The catalog of errors he recounts is by now familiar. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not want to invest in the Afghan army—and by the end of 2003, just 6,000 Afghan soldiers had been trained. Warlords, whom most Afghans blamed for the country’s descent into violence in the first place, roamed free and even became ministers and members of parliament. At the same time, the United States and its allies shut the Taliban out of talks on a political settlement, failing to appreciate that the group represented a point of view that many among the majority Pashtuns shared. The United States should have pressed its advantage, Malkasian suggests, at a time when the Afghan government had popular support and the Taliban were in disarray. Instead, it empowered militias and conducted overly aggressive counterterrorism operations that alienated ordinary Afghans and led the excluded Taliban to resort once more to violence.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration classed Afghanistan as a success and turned its attention to Iraq. The Taliban fled across the border to Pakistan, where they regrouped, raised funds, recruited in the madrasahs, and trained with the assistance of Pakistan’s security service, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Many ISI officers had worked with Taliban leaders for decades and shared their worldview. Moreover, Malkasian notes that Islamabad’s strategic thinking centered on its rivalry with India. Pakistan had fought four wars with its neighbor and feared that India would encircle it by gaining influence in Afghanistan. India had 24 consulates in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials complained; in fact, it had only four.
Pakistan’s role turned out to be fatal. Even as the United States prosecuted its war in Afghanistan, those it fought found refuge and training in the country next door. But the Bush administration not only turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s machinations; it provided Pakistan with $12 billion, more than half of which was a reimbursement for military operations, as American officials believed that Islamabad was helping in what they saw as the more important fight against al Qaeda.
The Heart of Afghanistan
Afghan officials like to blame Pakistan for the deepening war. But the Taliban had something more in its favor—something Malkasian calls “the Taliban’s tie to what it meant to be Afghan.” The heart of Afghanistan, by Malkasian’s description, is the atraf, or countryside, with its mud-walled homes, hidden-away women, and barefoot children, a realm where “other than cell-phones, cars, and assault rifles, the 21st century was invisible.” Into this space came American soldiers with night-vision goggles and missiles the price of Porsches. The last foreigners the villagers had seen were the Russians who occupied their country in the 1980s. The Taliban were able to use that memory as a powerful motivator in a country that prided itself on defeating superpowers and never having been colonized.
Malkasian believes that the Taliban profited from their posture as a force for Islam, against infidels. But my own reporting in Afghanistan suggests a somewhat more ambiguous dynamic. Mullahs in villages would rage against the foreign presence, but they collected their salaries from a government dependent on foreigners. Ordinary Afghans I spoke to suggested that religion was less important to them than pride in their history of defeating superpowers. The fact that the Taliban paid unemployed farmers further boosted the group’s advantage. Moreover, as Malkasian details, the Taliban exploited tribal rivalries that Western forces didn’t understand. Many powerful Pashtun tribes, such as the Ghilzais, the Ishaqzais, and the Noorzais, felt cut out. They resented foreign troops for disrespecting their culture (entering women’s quarters, bombing wedding parties) and attempting to eradicate their poppy crops.
The United States had created conditions that called for a more robust Afghan state than it had built. As Malkasian writes, “If a state faces a hostile safe haven on its border and mistreats various segments of its population, it had best have capable military forces of one form or another.” When the Taliban reemerged in earnest in 2006, their forces were estimated at only 10,000, which should have been containable. But the foreign forces in Afghanistan were unfamiliar with the terrain, both geographic and cultural; the U.S. leadership was distracted by Iraq, where a civil war was spinning out of control; and Afghanistan had not even a small, capable army.
U.S. soldiers in Laghman Province, Afghanistan, December 2014
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
As for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he was furious about NATO airstrikes and what he saw as British meddling in Helmand, where he had been forced to remove a governor. Increasingly paranoid, rather than unite tribes that might have stepped in to fight the Taliban, he tried to divide them, lest they become a political threat. Later, the Afghan security forces were ramped up and gained numerical superiority over the Taliban and at least equivalent ammunition and supplies. Still, they threw in the towel at decisive moments. “The Taliban had an edge in inspiration,” writes Malkasian. “The average soldier and policeman simply wanted to fight less than his Taliban counterpart. Many could not reconcile fighting for Afghanistan alongside an infidel occupier and against a movement that represented Islam.”
In stressing the religious dimension, however, Malkasian overlooks more material conditions that sapped motivation from many Afghan fighters. Some were reluctant to fight for a government whose insatiable demand for bribes they felt was the bane of their lives. Others were well aware that there would be no medevacs for injured security forces and that corrupt commanders were siphoning off their fuel and supplies, as well as pocketing the pay for “ghost fighters,” who existed only on the books. They saw little utility in risking their lives for a predatory government when the Taliban seemed just as likely to return.
The Clocks and the Time
The United States, sucked in ever deeper, seemed to exhaust every strategy, from maintaining a light footprint to surging U.S. troops, increasing them almost threefold, to more than 80,000 by 2010. President Barack Obama, who was constitutionally wary of pouring troops and dollars into military interventions, and who had opposed the war in Iraq at its inception, found himself sending more and more Americans to prop up a government that had lost the trust of its people. But he never considered getting out altogether: the cost was just too high. “The United States was stuck,” writes Malkasian. And the Taliban expanded their influence with the support of Iran and Russia, both of which were interested in making life hard for the Americans.
So how did Washington come unstuck, and why now? U.S. President Donald Trump, with his “America first” policy, was never going to have much time for Afghanistan; indeed, one of his campaign promises was to end the war. By the autumn of 2018, with midterm elections approaching, Trump raged to his generals that their strategy had been “a total failure” and he wanted out. For the first time, talks with the Taliban took on real urgency. In February 2020, Washington signed a deal promising withdrawal by May 1, 2021. The Afghan government had been completely excluded from these negotiations. When Biden came into office, Kabul hoped the new president would not only delay the withdrawal but also leave a permanent force in place. In the end, it got only four months’ grace.
In announcing a September pullout, Biden argued that the United States should “be focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again. We did that. We accomplished that objective.” But even this point is not entirely clear-cut. True, there hasn’t been an attack from Afghanistan since 9/11. But al Qaeda has not gone away. In fact, the situation is more complicated than before, as there is not only al Qaeda to contend with but also Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K, which is small in numbers but has conducted deadly suicide attacks in Afghanistan, including on maternity hospitals and schools, particularly in Kabul.
The current U.S. plan is to contain terrorism from afar, using drones, intelligence networks, and special operations raids launched from bases somewhere in the region. William Burns, the CIA director, admitted that this plan involved “a significant risk.” It was “not the decision we hoped for,” said the British defense chief, Nick Carter.
“These are professional understatements,” William Hague, a former British foreign secretary, wrote recently in response. “Most western security officials I know are horrified.”
Even if the United States’ war is over, Afghanistan’s is not.
Even if the United States’ war is over, Afghanistan’s is not. In the last 15 years, more than 40,000 civilians have been killed. The Afghan government and the Taliban began peace talks in Qatar late last year—but since then, the fighting has intensified, causing even more casualties. When peace talks got underway between the Taliban and the United States in 2019, I asked young Afghans what peace would mean to them. “Being able to go for a picnic,” said one. “Not having to wonder if you will come back again when you leave for work or study,” said another. Most, however, could not answer at all. Fully 70 percent of the Afghan population is under the age of 25, and fighting has gone on since the Soviet invasion in 1979. These Afghans have only ever known war.
Malkasian’s book raises a disturbing question: In the end, did the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan do more harm than good? “The United States exposed Afghans to prolonged harm in order to defend America from another terrorist attack,” he writes. “Villages were destroyed. Families disappeared. . . . The intervention did noble work for women, education, and free speech. But that good has to be weighed against tens of thousands of men, women, and children who died.”
Those “noble” achievements are not negligible, however. There are now 3.5 million Afghan girls in school (although more than two million still do not go). Women are working in all sorts of fields: law enforcement, cinema, robotics. The health-care system has been transformed, and life expectancy for Afghan women has increased by almost ten years. Afghanistan has flourishing media. Even the presence of cell phones indicates a society connected with the rest of the world. Young Afghans will not easily give up these hard-won rights.
The fear is that these gains may now be threatened. Since the peace deal was signed, there have been dozens of assassinations of judges, journalists, and human rights activists, as well as the horrific bombing of a girls’ school. And however U.S. policymakers may seek to dress it up, to the Taliban, the American pullout is a victory. As the oft-quoted Taliban adage goes, “You have all the clocks, but we have all the time.”
The Afghans, after all, never believed that the Americans would stay. Back in 2005, in the remote village of Shkin, a place of intense fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, I watched local villagers happily accept health care and other help from U.S. soldiers in the day, then rocket their base at night. When I asked them why, they had a simple explanation: “In the end, they’ll be gone, and the bad guys will still be here.”
Foreign Affairs · by Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World. · July 2, 2021
8. Becoming Strong - The New Chinese Foreign Policy
Excerpts:
Of course, a club-based international system will bring complications of its own: a country that joins some coalitions led by Washington and others led by Beijing will be a less trustworthy partner for both powers. It could also become common for members of the same coalition to punish one another for actions required by their membership in other clubs. For instance, both Australia and China are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a trade agreement among a dozen states in the Asia-Pacific, yet disputes over human rights recently led Australia to cancel its BRI deal with China, which responded by suspending an economic dialogue between the two countries. Likewise, eastern European states have often told Chinese diplomats that their membership in the EU forces them to side against China on political matters. The same countries, however, cooperate with China on infrastructure investment and technology, at the risk of violating EU regulations, citing their participation in the Cooperation Between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, a diplomatic forum in the region initiated by China.
Such conflicts are likely to heighten political instability and accelerate the trend toward deglobalization in the decade ahead, but they are preferable to a world split into rigid geopolitical blocs. As long as individual states remain members of clubs on both sides of the divide, it will not be in their interest to throw in their lot with one side only. This bipolar configuration will cause some tension, but on the whole, it will be far less dangerous than all-out, Cold War–style competition.
China’s post-pandemic foreign policy is just beginning to take shape. Beijing has always adjusted its policies to shifting domestic and foreign circumstances, following Deng Xiaoping’s approach of “crossing the river by feeling the stones.” The coming era will be no different: achievements and failures will inform China’s path and choices. The backdrop to these adjustments, however, will be a radically altered global landscape, in which unilateral decisions by Washington and the various alliances and issue-specific coalitions it leads will no longer be as viable as they once were. As many states prepare for a return to life after the pandemic, they should come to terms with this new reality.
Becoming Strong
The New Chinese Foreign Policy
In March, China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, made headlines when he told U.S. officials at a summit in Alaska that they did “not have the qualification . . . to speak to China from a position of strength.” Even after years of heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, the remark seemed unusually harsh, especially coming from a seasoned diplomat. The setting, too, was noteworthy: Yang was speaking at the first high-level diplomatic meeting between China and the United States since U.S. President Joe Biden entered the White House. It seemed like an unmistakable warning to the new administration.
At home, Yang’s comment circulated widely on social media, resonating with the belief of many Chinese that their country has found its voice on the global stage. International media read the statement as reflective of a post-pandemic China: ambitious and outspoken in its claim to global leadership.
Yang’s statement did, indeed, reflect a paradigm shift underway in Beijing: China believes that its rise to great-power status entitles it to a new role in world affairs—one that cannot be reconciled with unquestioned U.S. dominance. Beijing’s initial hopes that a Biden administration would ease tensions with China have been dashed. Instead, it views Biden’s attempts at isolating China diplomatically as a serious threat and is working on multiple fronts to make the country less vulnerable to U.S. aggression and pressure.
Beijing’s newfound confidence does not mean it will challenge Washington in every single domain. China rejects U.S. leadership on some issues, but as a developing country, it will limit competition to areas in which it feels it has an advantage, such as the fight against COVID-19, poverty reduction, trade, international infrastructure and development, digital payment systems, and 5G technologies, among others. Across the board, however, a post-pandemic China will make its voice heard with greater determination than before and will push back forcefully against any attempts to contain it.
china’s dual identity
To be the world’s “largest developing country” (a popular moniker in Beijing) once meant that China’s capabilities surpassed those of its immediate peers. Nowadays, it means the country’s power is second only to that of the United States. Consider the sharp contrast between Chinese success and American failure in the fight against COVID-19: China suffered the least among all major powers during the pandemic and is the only major economy to have grown over the past year. By the end of 2020, its GDP had reached 71 percent of U.S. GDP, up from 66 percent in 2019, and Chinese policymakers are confident that they will close the remaining gap in the coming decade. In their eyes, China has gone through the stages of standing up and getting rich and is now advancing to the stage of becoming strong. The U.S.-led unipolar order is fading away, its demise hastened by China’s rise and the United States’ relative decline. In its place will come a multipolar order, with U.S.-Chinese relations at its core.
Until recently, Beijing viewed this once-in-a-century shift with unalloyed optimism, predicting a “bright future for Chinese national rejuvenation.” The turmoil of the Trump years—especially Washington’s decision in 2017 to label China a “strategic competitor”—caused Chinese officials to dial down their enthusiasm. China’s most recent five-year plan strikes a more sober tone, listing opportunities in the realm of technology and development and warning of the instability fueled by “unilateralism, protectionism, and hegemonism.” Yet the bottom line, in Beijing’s eyes, remains the same: China has become a global power that can meet the rest of the world on an equal footing.
China’s global reach still has its limits. Despite being a major power, China also thinks of itself as a developing country—and rightly so, considering that its GDP per capita remains far behind those of advanced economies. (The International Monetary Fund puts China’s 2020 GDP per capita at only $10,484, compared with $40,146 for Japan, $45,733 for Germany, and $63,416 for the United States.) The “developing country” label is also meant to signal Beijing’s geopolitical alignment: even if China catches up with the West economically, the thinking goes, its loyalties will still lie firmly with the developing world—it will, as Chinese President Xi Jinping put it in a 2018 speech, “forever belong to the family of developing countries.”
China will limit competition to areas in which it feels it has an advantage.
This dual identity will color all aspects of China’s post-pandemic foreign policy. As a developing country, China still lacks the resources required of a true world leader, with globe-spanning responsibilities, especially in the military realm. As a great power, however, it will not follow the United States’ lead, and on some issues, competition with Washington will be inevitable.
Take the issue of ideological rivalry. On the one hand, China is anxious not to frame relations with the West as a new Cold War: leaders in Beijing believe that Soviet-style ideological expansionism could trigger a backlash that might hinder their country’s continued growth, and they do not expect their ideology to become as popular as Western liberalism is today—hence their insistence that China is a developing country “with Chinese characteristics,” a phrase meant to imply that its political system and governance model cannot merely be exported to other countries.
On the other hand, China will try to shape an ideological environment favorable to its rise, pushing back against the notion that Western political values have universal appeal and validity. The United States defines democracy and freedom in terms of electoral politics and individual expression, for example, whereas China defines them in terms of social security and economic development. Washington will have to accept these divergences of opinion rather than try to impose its own views on others.
The same conviction will animate China’s post-pandemic diplomatic strategy. Contrary to the common perception, Beijing does not reject multilateral rules and institutions out of hand. It will not, however, accept rules that the United States makes without consultation with China. Instead, Beijing’s objective is for international norms to rest on a truly inclusive multilateralism. Such is the idea behind the China-based multilateral forums that Beijing has been building with a host of states and regions, such as its cooperation forums with African, Arab, Latin American, Pacific island, and Southeast Asian states. From other major powers, meanwhile, Beijing expects treatment based on equality and mutual respect, as illustrated by its assertive retaliatory sanctions strategy. When the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 14 high-ranking Chinese officials over the disqualification of some Hong Kong lawmakers, China took revenge with sanctions on 28 American officials, including then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Likewise, Beijing quickly retaliated against British and EU sanctions over the Xinjiang issue. On both of these matters, the Chinese government considers any sanctions or criticism of its policies as interference in its internal affairs.
Chinese soldiers patrolling on the Spratly Islands, February 2016
Stringer / Reuters
China’s economic policies are shifting, too, impelled both by the pandemic, which revealed the vulnerability of global supply chains, and by U.S. attempts at economic decoupling. In fact, the Chinese government believes that protectionism, a slowing world economy, and shrinking global markets will outlast the pandemic. Under a new “dual circulation” strategy, which was unveiled at a high-profile Chinese Communist Party meeting in May 2020, Beijing therefore aims to lessen its dependence on foreign markets. The goal is to shore up China’s massive internal market and to build robust domestic chains of supply, distribution, and consumption, thus reducing the country’s vulnerability to outside economic pressure, especially from the United States. Science and technology will be at the center of this effort, laying the groundwork for future development. The resulting domestic boom, it is hoped, will in turn improve economic relations with other states and aid the recovery of the world economy.
Beijing will also seek to reduce its exposure to U.S. financial sanctions, including by promoting the use of the renminbi in foreign trade and investment. Last year, it started trials of a digital currency in a handful of large cities, an innovation that could one day allow China and its business partners to conduct international transactions outside SWIFT, the financial messaging system, which is under de facto U.S. control and a major source of American geopolitical leverage. China will, of course, not turn inward altogether: the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s massive global infrastructure campaign, will continue, although progress has been slow during the pandemic. Since the “dual circulation” strategy enshrines the domestic market, and not global linkages, as Beijing’s primary political focus, the BRI’s projects will henceforth be based more on market demand than on political considerations. China will also continue to seek technological cooperation with other countries, provided they can resist U.S. pressure to decouple from China on this front.
China’s military strategy, by contrast, will remain largely unchanged in the post-pandemic world. Beijing seeks to turn the People’s Liberation Army into a world-class fighting force ready for war at any moment, emphasizing quality over quantity, cyber-capabilities over conventional prowess, and artificial-intelligence-based weapons systems over individual combat skills. Yet the PLA’s mission will remain one of deterrence, not expansion. China’s 2021 military budget, albeit larger than that of other major powers, is less than a third of what the United States spends on defense. On top of this budget disparity, China’s military lacks experience: the PLA has not been involved in a shooting clash since 1989 and has not fought a real war since 1979. As a result, Beijing remains wary of direct military confrontations and will continue to reject military alliances, which could drag it into an unnecessary war. For the same reason, China has been careful not to let territorial conflicts in the South China Sea and on the Sino-Indian border escalate into live-fire clashes.
A HEALTHY COMPETITION
Biden’s election initially raised hopes among Chinese officials and media that Washington’s China policies were due for a fundamental rethink. That optimism quickly faded. Instead of a radical break, Biden’s policies to date are in many ways a continuation of his predecessor’s confrontational approach. As a result, U.S.-Chinese relations are unlikely to grow any less tense or competitive than they have been in recent years.
The Biden administration’s forays into exclusive multilateralism—that is, its attempts to form issue-based coalitions in opposition to China on technology and human rights—are bound to be a particular source of tension in the years ahead. Beijing views this as the most serious external threat to its political security and the biggest obstacle to its national rejuvenation. U.S.-led anti-China technology coalitions are an obstacle on China’s path to technological superiority, and similar ideological coalitions will encourage secessionists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Both involve core interests on which China will not make concessions.
To counter U.S. attempts at forming such coalitions, Beijing has already begun shoring up its bilateral strategic partnerships. Within weeks of the public clash between American and Chinese representatives at the Alaska summit earlier this year, Beijing embarked on an extensive diplomatic campaign, dispatching its defense minister to the Balkans and its foreign minister to the Middle East, where the latter official signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement with Iran and pledged $400 billion in Chinese investment in the country. At home, China received foreign ministers from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea and signed a joint statement with Russia that, in a departure from tradition, omitted the usual assurances that Chinese-Russian cooperation does not target any third party. (In the years ahead, Moscow is likely to be an important partner of Beijing’s in pushing back against the politicization of human rights issues and in promoting alternative models of democracy and nonideological multilateralism.) Xi also sent the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a message stating his willingness to further consolidate Beijing’s relations with Pyongyang.
A post-pandemic China will make its voice heard with greater determination than before.
Beijing still hopes it can confine tensions with Washington to the economic realm and avoid an escalation to military clashes. Yet the risk of a conflict over Taiwan, especially, is growing. Beijing’s most recent five-year plan reiterates its commitment to pursuing peace and prosperity across the Taiwan Strait, a policy that has long prevented a potential U.S.-Chinese war over the island. Although China has not given up the principle of peaceful unification to date, it may abandon it if Taiwan announces de jure independence. The more other countries support Taiwan’s secessionist policies, the more the PLA will carry out military exercises to deter Taiwan. In the meantime, Beijing hopes to reach a tacit understanding with Washington that maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait is a shared interest.
This is not to suggest that cooperation with Washington is out of the question. Beijing has expressed its willingness to play an active role in reforming global governance regimes, in aiding the global economy’s post-pandemic recovery, and in tackling transnational challenges in concert with Washington. Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, has already met with his U.S. counterpart, John Kerry. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has signaled that China does not oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to relaunch the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and U.S. and Chinese diplomats have discussed plans for each side to recognize the other’s COVID-19 vaccinations for the purposes of overseas travel. Meanwhile, China is open to trade negotiations based on the so-called Phase One agreement signed by the Trump administration in 2020, and even some U.S. officials, such as Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, have noted that China has so far made good on the promises made in that agreement.
Even if competition carries the day, it would be best thought of as a race, not a boxing match: each side is doing its best to get ahead, but neither has any intention of destroying or permanently changing the other. In 2019, prior to becoming high-level national security officials in the Biden administration, Kurt Campbell (the National Security Council’s top Asia official) and Jake Sullivan (now the national security adviser) argued as much in these pages. “The basic mistake of engagement,” they wrote, “was to assume that it could bring about fundamental changes to China’s political system, economy, and foreign policy.” A more realistic goal, they continued, was to seek “a steady state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favorable to U.S. interests and values.” That view is not too far removed from Wang’s hope that both sides should engage in “healthy competition” based on “improving oneself and illuminating the other side, rather than mutual attacks and a zero-sum game.” If neither Beijing nor Washington intends to subjugate the other, their rivalry will be fierce—but milder than the existential great-power struggles of the twentieth century.
NEW BATTLEGROUNDS
How will such competition play out in practice? It will, for one, unfold on novel battlegrounds, chief among them cyberspace. As the digital sphere takes over more and more of people’s lives, cybersecurity will become more important than territorial security. Already, the digital economy is growing rapidly as a share of major powers’ GDPs, making it an essential source of national wealth. The race for leadership on 5G and 6G telecommunications networks will increasingly shape the contest, and for the time being, China seems to be in the lead. By February 2021, Chinese companies, including the technology giant Huawei, accounted for 38 percent of approved 5G patents, compared with around 17 percent for U.S. companies. (In other areas, however, American digital platforms remain ahead of their Chinese counterparts, and U.S. digital platforms account for some 68 percent of the global digital economy in terms of market capitalization, compared with just 22 percent for Chinese companies.)
Meanwhile, international cooperation will increasingly take the form of issue-specific coalitions instead of truly international (or even regional) institutions. At times, Beijing and Washington might belong to some of the same clubs: for example, when it comes to the nonproliferation of cyberweapons and certain kinds of artificial intelligence tools. In the long run, the digital superpowers could even have a shared interest in introducing and enforcing some international tax regulations to protect their own companies from being overtaxed by other countries. For the most part, however, China and the United States will build rival teams, with other countries deciding which to join on a case-by-case basis, depending on which arrangement best serves their national interests. Most governments will welcome this trend, having already adopted hedging strategies to avoid picking sides between the two powers.
China’s post-pandemic foreign policy is just beginning to take shape.
Of course, a club-based international system will bring complications of its own: a country that joins some coalitions led by Washington and others led by Beijing will be a less trustworthy partner for both powers. It could also become common for members of the same coalition to punish one another for actions required by their membership in other clubs. For instance, both Australia and China are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a trade agreement among a dozen states in the Asia-Pacific, yet disputes over human rights recently led Australia to cancel its BRI deal with China, which responded by suspending an economic dialogue between the two countries. Likewise, eastern European states have often told Chinese diplomats that their membership in the EU forces them to side against China on political matters. The same countries, however, cooperate with China on infrastructure investment and technology, at the risk of violating EU regulations, citing their participation in the Cooperation Between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, a diplomatic forum in the region initiated by China.
Such conflicts are likely to heighten political instability and accelerate the trend toward deglobalization in the decade ahead, but they are preferable to a world split into rigid geopolitical blocs. As long as individual states remain members of clubs on both sides of the divide, it will not be in their interest to throw in their lot with one side only. This bipolar configuration will cause some tension, but on the whole, it will be far less dangerous than all-out, Cold War–style competition.
China’s post-pandemic foreign policy is just beginning to take shape. Beijing has always adjusted its policies to shifting domestic and foreign circumstances, following Deng Xiaoping’s approach of “crossing the river by feeling the stones.” The coming era will be no different: achievements and failures will inform China’s path and choices. The backdrop to these adjustments, however, will be a radically altered global landscape, in which unilateral decisions by Washington and the various alliances and issue-specific coalitions it leads will no longer be as viable as they once were. As many states prepare for a return to life after the pandemic, they should come to terms with this new reality.
9. The US Desperately Needs a Civilian Cybersecurity Corps
Maybe we need one. We have professional military personnel. We have the Foreign Service Officer corps, and we have Intelligence Officers. Maybe we need a dedicated professional cyber corps of civil servants. Frankly I do not think putting our cyber expertise in the National Guard is very practical.
The US Desperately Needs a Civilian Cybersecurity Corps
Bipartisan legislation aims to augment the National Guard’s cyber reservists, but a wholly civilian component could be larger and more flexible.
The pace at which the Biden administration and the 117th Congress are addressing gaps in our national cybersecurity strategy, including by nominating and appointing incredibly talented and experienced individuals like Chris Inglis for national cyber director, Jen Easterly as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Anne Neuberger for the National Security Council is impressive. And so is the pace at which our adversaries act. The clock is ticking and we must adopt a posture that is as bold, agile and creative as the criminals and nation-states that are embedded in our networks and carrying out operations against us.
Recently, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation to create a “Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve,” a National Guard-like program under the auspices of both the Homeland Security and Defense departments to address growing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and breaches faced by the U.S. government.
Under the bill, which is being co-sponsored by Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and in the House by Reps. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., and Ken Calvert, R-Calif., the DOD and DHS secretaries would appoint members of the cyber reserve to six-month positions in the department as federal civil service employees. Joining the reserve corps would be voluntary and by invitation only and requires prior federal government or military service.
This effort would augment the work being done already by the National Guard’s reserve corps, which has successfully leveraged civilian talent to build cybersecurity capability within its ranks to both defend its own networks as well as provide support when called into service by states or the federal government. The proposal follows the recommendations of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and builds on the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that directed DOD officials to look into options for building a cyber reserve force.
There is no question that finding ways to shore up cybersecurity talent and mobilize that talent in times of crisis is critical and while the Civilian Cybersecurity Reserves proposal should help address existing talent gaps when responding to federal, state and perhaps local government entities, it still leaves a critical gap with respect to cybersecurity needs in the private sector, which is under similar assault by both malicious nation-state adversaries as well as criminal organizations. While starting with a reserve corps that addresses U.S. government needs makes sense, Congress should consider quickly organizing and funding a similar program focused on private-sector needs, tapping private-sector expertise, especially with respect to technical knowledge of private-sector networks.
Today, by and large, the targets of ransomware attacks are small- and medium-sized businesses and government entities that hold valuable information but are under-resourced when it comes to IT and cybersecurity. These organizations often do not have the budget to build specialized security teams, and even if they do, have difficulty recruiting and retaining top talent. As a result of their limited resources, they have limited ability to respond to ransomware attacks in real time. Ultimately it is the communities that suffer when their schools, hospitals and small businesses are taken down by cyber adversaries. While the current proposal would potentially support municipalities in recovering from these attacks, the private-sector organizations impacted would still have to fend for themselves.
Much as there is a pool of government and military workers who can be tapped for a government reserve corps, there is a vast pool of private-sector cybersecurity talent that can be cultivated and mobilized when there is a widespread incident impacting tens of thousands of organizations simultaneously as we are experiencing right now.
As pointed out by Natasha Cohen and Peter Singer of New America, in their proposal for a Cybersecurity Civilian Corps over two years ago, true civilian corps could tap (a) older and retired cybersecurity professionals, (b) professionals working in the cybersecurity field, with a desire to do volunteer work and perform civic service using their skills, (c) “white hat” hackers, who don’t work full time in a cybersecurity job; (e) people who are in job transition; (f) independent contractors looking to fill gaps in their time and expand their networks; and even (g) stay-at-home parents. Removing the physical fitness, citizenship, age, and clearance requirements, as well as prior government or military services, creates the opportunity to tap this vast pipeline of talent.
There is no question that the Biden administration and Congress are moving fast. But our adversaries are faster, more creative, persistent and unconstrained by law and regulation. Unless we change our approach, they will continue to identify vulnerabilities in software used across varied networks for maximum impact with little to no fear of retaliation. They will continue to advance intrusion tools and tradecraft faster than gaps in cyber defenses can be closed. They will continue to use common anonymization platforms, open source capabilities, generalized toolkits, and leverage inherent functionality built into operating systems to obfuscate their activity and make attribution difficult. They will continue to leverage our laws and regulations to enable their operations for maximum effect. And they will do all this at a pace and on a scale that will continue to be breathtaking.
The first half of 2021 has been, should be, a wake-up call. And let’s be clear, there are no silver bullets when it comes to cybersecurity. It will take a series of actions, persistent and purposeful, to prevent, defend and have resilience to cyber threats. The Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve proposal builds on our existing military reserve programs and it is an important step forward.
We need to begin taking leaps.
Niloofar Razi Howe is a fellow in New America's International Security Program. She is on the board of directors of Pondurance (as Chair), Morgan Stanley Bank, NA, Recorded Future, and Swimlane.
10. U.S. Cyber Chief in Limbo During REVil Attacks Set to Start Work
U.S. Cyber Chief in Limbo During REVil Attacks Set to Start Work | Bloomberg Government
The White House plans to swear in the country’s first national cyber director Monday and the Senate expects to consider the nominee for director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, ending weeks-long delays on filling the Biden administration’s top cyber posts.
In the three weeks that the top cyber nominees were stuck in bureaucratic and political delays, the U.S. was hit by one of the largest ransomware attacks in history, affecting Kaseya Ltd.’s IT management software and more than 1,000 businesses.
Some lawmakers say the stall in moving Chris Inglis to be national cyber director and Jen Easterly to be CISA director shows there’s not enough urgency in combating growing cyber threats, which also include attacks earlier this year on SolarWinds Corp. and Colonial Pipeline Co.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) last month stressed that cyber and ransomware attacks would continue as the top officials to combat these incidents are delayed.
“We urgently need a qualified and Senate-confirmed leader in place before the next major breech, which could be even worse,” Peters said in a floor speech on June 24 – just eight days before the ransomware attack reportedly executed by the Russian-based REvil cyber group.
Instead, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) put a hold on all Homeland Security Department nominees, including Easterly, until Vice President Kamala Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border. Harris eventually did visit the border on June 25. Scott said he would then lift the hold, and is expected to do so on Monday when the Senate returns from its two-week recess, McKinley Lewis, Scott’s spokesperson, told Bloomberg Government.
Peters warned ahead of the July 4 holiday that a delay on Easterly’s vote due to Scott’s hold could give ample time for another cyberattack.
“We must be prepared for attacks that could disrupt trains or flights over the holiday weekend,” Peters said in the June 24 floor speech. “We must confirm Mrs. Easterly as the CISA director now, not in two weeks, not in two months.”
Peters expects to ask for unanimous consent next week to move Easterly’s nomination in an expedited Senate floor process, according to a Democratic aide for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Peters’ committee advanced Easterly’s nomination on June 16, more than three weeks ago.
Easterly, who heads Morgan Stanley’s cyber efforts and formerly worked at the National Security Agency, would be the first Senate-confirmed director of CISA, which partners with government agencies and private companies to defend against and respond to cyber and ransomware attacks. The previous CISA director — Chris Krebs — was confirmed in an earlier DHS cyber role before CISA was formally created in November 2018.
Cyber Director to Swear In
Inglis will officially be sworn-in as national cyber director in the White House’s executive office of the president on Monday morning, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans. The White House didn’t comment about an official start date. If sworn in Monday, Inglis will start 25 days after the Senate confirmed him on June 17.
Inglis, who also formerly worked at the National Security Agency, will lead the new office focused on creating a national cybersecurity strategy and overseeing federal agencies’ cyber budgets in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget. The role was recommended by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and signed into law in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 116-283).
Advancing Biden’s cyber nominees is long overdue for Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), the co-chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission that was tasked with recommending national cyber policies. Inglis was a member on the commission as well.
“Senator King has not missed any opportunity to share his thinking on the urgency to get a National Cyber Director in place and Inglis’ new office and operations stood up,” Matthew Felling, King’s spokesperson, told Bloomberg Government. “Barely a day goes by without a hack, an information theft or a ransomware destabilizing our information technology infrastructure.”
Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), also a member of the commission, says it’s time for the nominations to advance, after he pushed for a national cyber director for a decade.
“The never ending stream of cyber incidents has made it clear that we need a cybersecurity expert like Chris Inglis to coordinate cyber strategy across government to fully confront the national security threats of the 21st century,” Langevin said.
Mark Montgomery, the senior adviser to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said Inglis will help build out the Biden administration’s cyber team, which includes the National Security Council’s Anne Neuberger and hopefully Easterly once she’s confirmed.
“There are so many issues to handle in the NCD’s remit — building the public private collaboration, getting federal agencies more secure, and planning for adversary malicious cyber campaigns,” he said.
Congress has yet to appropriate funding for the national cyber director office. The White House has asked for $15 million in its fiscal year 2021 budget request, the same amount allocated in the House Appropriations’ Legislative Branch funding bill. In the meantime, the salary for Inglis and a small office staff will be covered by the president’s unanticipated needs fund for this fiscal year, according to a White House official.
With assistance from Courtney Rozen
To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Kern in Washington at rkern@bgov.com
11. They Are Not ‘Broken Shower Shoes’
Food for thought for all services and all organizations.
And we should remember this story: #OTD in 1908, Ensign Chester Nimitz ran the destroyer USS Decatur (DD-5) aground in the Philippines. He was court-martialed, found guilty of neglect of duty and issued a letter of reprimand. It was a different era, so he was still able to make fleet admiral despite the incident.
Excerpts:
What to do with relieved commanding officers is a tough discussion, but we should not shy away from it. There are also different ways to look at situations where our Navy tends to fire COs. Once during an exercise overseas, a U.S. Navy destroyer and a British frigate “traded some paint” during a small boat transfer. The next day at a gunnery exercise, the British ship was on the gun line, and the U.S. ship was headed to port to embark the investigation team. The British admiral running the exercise was surprised at this decision. “It’s a warship; it’s a bump; it happens. Move on,” he said. One of my British colleagues added that he had experienced a minor collision in command and had received a letter from the First Sea Lord that read, “You became a better naval officer today.”
To revisit the “broken shower shoe” analogy, my wife insists I buy quality shoes, and if they suffer minor damage, I get them repaired and put them back in service. Good leaders do not grow on trees, and no organization ever has enough of them—and the rest are watching.
They Are Not ‘Broken Shower Shoes’
The Navy should examine how it treats those who took the challenge of command and fell from grace—and how others could learn from their experience.
By Captain John P. Cordle, U.S. Navy (Retired)
July 2021 Proceedings Vol. 147/7/1,421
Over the past few years, I have had a number of long discussions with friends who did not make it to the end of their command tours. None of them committed treason or sexual assault, ran their ships aground, or suffered collisions or allisions. Their unfortunate mistakes did no lasting damage to any ship or person (except maybe themselves). They did not break any laws or Navy regulations (outside of the “catch-all” Article 134). But their mistakes cost them the most precious thing a naval officer can have: their superiors’ “confidence in their ability to command.” To be fair, I had my share of close calls during my command tours. But this is not about who gets away with what; it is about the way we treat those who took the challenge, rose to the occasion, and then at some point—before the band played at their outgoing change of command—fell from grace in the eyes of their superiors. As one put it, “We are like broken shower shoes—the Navy can’t decide whether to keep us or throw us out, but our presence is annoying.” It need not be this way.
Those who fail to succeed at the apogee of their careers, in command tours they sacrificed a great deal to achieve, should be treated better by the Navy—especially when, as John Paul Jones said, they made well-intentioned errors and not acts of malice. We must also consider, as a service, if the “zero defect” culture for commanding officers (COs) is what we really want to cultivate. The threat (or the perception of the threat) of being relieved for a single mistake leads to timid leadership at all levels. It is a main ingredient in creating leaders who fear risk and avoid it at all costs; they know a single mistake may sack their careers. Managing risk wins battles; avoiding risk loses them.
Command at sea is both the pinnacle of a Navy officer’s career and a position where failure is not an option. Yet many smart, talented, exceptional officers do not successfully complete their command tours; the Navy should not just discard them. Credit: U.S.Navy (Markus Castaneda)
Before discussing what should happen to someone who falls short in command, it is worth looking at the career path that brought him or her to command. Through a series of selection boards, mostly consisting of individuals who have successfully completed at least one command tour, the Navy has put its “stamp of approval” on every individual who ascends to command at sea. It should stand to reason, therefore, that each failure should prompt introspection and even some level of investigation into the selection process and the individual’s history for signs of shortcomings that could be used to improve the selection, training, and preparation processes. To my knowledge, nothing like this occurs either in the immediate aftermath of a CO’s dismissal or in the long term. The Navy simply makes a decision to fire a CO and moves on. An investigation is conducted, usually by someone several paygrades senior to the commander, but (except when deaths or massive damage occurs) the results are rarely shared within the Navy, and they certainly are not made public. Thus, on a recurring basis, opportunities are lost to be a learning organization where it matters most.
I am not advocating leniency for commanders guilty of criminal behavior or gross negligence. On the contrary, this is a discussion of non-criminal, well-intended mistakes that lead to relief—and in those cases there should be a process to provide counseling, follow-up, and evaluation beyond the immediate chain of command. Every former CO is a person—with family, friends, shipmates, and colleagues who will be curious about what happened. The following is a set of ideas gathered from my own experiences as a chief of staff and in discussions with a number of former COs who were relieved of command early:
1. First, do no more harm. Unless there are criminal charges, the Navy should eliminate the almost automatic default to a “detachment for cause” and a “show cause” process for non-criminal events that would not or do not result in non-judicial punishment or court-martial for the individual. Once told he or she no longer has upward mobility, a former CO can be removed from command and allowed to separate or retire as soon as possible or begin another tour, now as a non-due-course officer.
2. Standardize the investigation process. When I conducted the USS Porter (DDG-78) 2012 collision investigation, I did so on two days’ notice with no planning or training. I have since attended the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Coast Guard Mishap Investigation courses; the Navy should have a cadre of well-trained officers prepared to conduct investigations such as these, given the sensitivity of such situations. There are formal mishap investigation classes led by the Navy Safety Center, the Coast Guard, and the NTSB. Such training should be part of the training pipeline to be a commodore or immediate superior in command (ISIC).
3. Facilitate mental health counseling. Any CO who is relieved for cause will likely suffer from depression and feelings of guilt, shame, loneliness, and grief. One former CO told me he experienced suicidal ideations as a result of his early relief, and although he did not act on those impulses, he had never once felt similar thoughts earlier in his life. He sought help on his own, but not all will do so.
4. Facilitate family counseling. The family is part of the equation. They will have challenges adjusting to the relief from command of their husband, wife, father, or mother. The relief will likely play out in the news, meaning that the officer’s failures become public knowledge and will stay with them forever (the internet never forgets).
5. Provide solid legal counsel. Given the gravity of what a dismissal for cause means for an officer’s livelihood, more should be done to explain the process, the officer’s rights, and possible outcomes. These individuals deserve good counsel with their interests in mind. Some who have been through the process shared that this area was lacking.
6. Revisit the process. The overall process (relief for loss of confidence/detach for cause/show cause for continued service) should be more structured with a defined opportunity and process for appeal, even if the individual has been removed in the short term. A “show cause” board may be triggered as well, and that board’s recommendation is a separate decision that can affect the individual’s retention and retirement options, depending on his or her time in the Navy. There are other avenues to upgrade a servicemember’s post-Navy status in terms of rank and benefits, such as the Board of Corrections to the Naval Record, but these are time-late processes, and no real data exists as to their chances of success.
7. Leverage their experience. There are learning opportunities in mistakes, from an institutional and personal level. Establish a process to capture these lessons—even without direct attribution—and share them. Perhaps knowing what happened to a peer will help someone make a better decision or ask for help later. Many relieved COs built a career serving others; allow them to use their unfortunate circumstance to help others (should they choose to do so). If allowing them to teach and help others gives them closure, why squander that opportunity? In many cases, the perceived threat of the process outlined in (6) above suppresses any inclination to share lessons. As one individual who had been through the process put it, “I find myself having to protect my future and my family from the very organization that I love—when I could have made it better.” Is this the desired outcome?
8. Should they choose to remain on active duty, detail to them to the right position. These individuals could fill billets where their exceptional skills could be put to good use. For example, if a former CO was a superb operational planner he could work as a plans officer at a numbered fleet headquarters. Lack of success in the most challenging position in the Navy does not equate to total failure as a naval officer—or a lack of future value to the organization.
Credit: Shutterstock
What to do with relieved commanding officers is a tough discussion, but we should not shy away from it. There are also different ways to look at situations where our Navy tends to fire COs. Once during an exercise overseas, a U.S. Navy destroyer and a British frigate “traded some paint” during a small boat transfer. The next day at a gunnery exercise, the British ship was on the gun line, and the U.S. ship was headed to port to embark the investigation team. The British admiral running the exercise was surprised at this decision. “It’s a warship; it’s a bump; it happens. Move on,” he said. One of my British colleagues added that he had experienced a minor collision in command and had received a letter from the First Sea Lord that read, “You became a better naval officer today.”
To revisit the “broken shower shoe” analogy, my wife insists I buy quality shoes, and if they suffer minor damage, I get them repaired and put them back in service. Good leaders do not grow on trees, and no organization ever has enough of them—and the rest are watching.
12. Murder Mystery: What Were Colombian Military Vets Doing in Haiti?
Murder Mystery: What Were Colombian Military Vets Doing in Haiti?
July 11, 2021
At least 20 Colombians have been implicated by Haitian officials in the plot to assassinate the president. But their role in the killing, if any, is murky.
Weapons, communication devices and documents seized by Haitian police in connection to the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti. Credit...Estailove St-Val/Reuters
July 11, 2021
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — One evening in early June, Mauricio Javier Romero, a decorated 20-year veteran of the Colombian military, received a call from an old army buddy.
The friend wanted to recruit him for a job — “legal” and “safe” work that would send him abroad, according to Mr. Romero’s wife, Giovanna Romero.
“This person told him that he wouldn’t get in trouble,” she said, “that it was a good opportunity for professional growth, for economic growth — and knowing what a quality professional my husband was, he wanted him to be part of the team.”
A month later, Mr. Romero, 45, is dead, one of several men killed in Haiti in the aftermath of the assassination last week of President Jovenel Moïse, and one of at least 20 Colombians implicated by Haitian officials in a murder that has plunged the Caribbean nation into chaos.
At least 18 of the Colombian men are in Haitian custody, and at least two are dead.
Mauricio Javier Romero in 2019, when he was named an expert lancer, a distinction given to members of an elite force equivalent to the U.S. Army RangersCredit...Giovanna Romero
But while the interim prime minister and members of his cabinet have presented the Colombians as centerpieces of a well-organized plot carried out by “foreign mercenaries” to kill Mr. Moïse, critical questions remain about what part they played in the murder.
A potential clue to the Colombian presence landed late Sunday, when the Haitian authorities said they had arrested a Florida-based Haitian-born doctor whom they described as a central figure in the assassination plot.
The doctor, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 63, was said to have hired the private Florida security company that recruited at least some of the Colombians.
“He arrived by private plane in June with political objectives and contacted a private security firm to recruit the people who committed this act,” said Chief Leon Charles of the Haitian national police.
The country’s lead prosecutor has also begun looking into what role Haitian security forces may have had in an operation that killed the president and wounded his wife but harmed no one else in the household or in the president’s security retinue.
On the streets in Haiti there is widespread skepticism of the official government line, with many wondering how the assailants got through such a fortified compound defended by Haitian security forces with no other deaths.
And in Colombia, some family members of the detained Colombians say the men went to Haiti to protect the president, not kill him, adding to the many murky and often contradictory claims surrounding the assassination.
“Mauricio never would have signed up for such an operation,” said Ms. Romero, 43, “no matter how much money he was offered.”
Colombia, which has suffered decades of internal conflict, has one of the best trained and best funded militaries in Latin America, long aided by the United States. Because of this, Colombians veterans are highly sought after by global security companies, which have deployed them as far away as Yemen and Iraq, sometimes paying each person up to $3,000 a month — a substantial sum when compared to salaries of several hundred dollars a month they could expect in Colombia.
Mr. Romero had joined the military in his 20s, at a time when left-wing guerrillas and paramilitary groups terrorized much of Colombia. By the time he retired in 2019, he was a first sergeant who had served all over the country and had earned the distinction of “expert lancer,” a specialized training for elite troops similar to the U.S. Army Ranger program.
Ms. Romero described her husband as a stickler for rules. “If you do things right,” he used to say, “life will go well.” He was adjusting to civilian life, she said, and sometimes said he missed the camaraderie and sense of purpose he got from the military.
The call he received in June came from his friend Duberney Capador, 40, also a retired member of the military with special forces training. Mr. Capador had also left the army in 2019 and was living on a family farm with his mother in western Colombia.
Duberney Capador, a former Colombian soldier, was among those who died in the aftermath of the assassination of the Haitian president.Credit...Jenny Capador Giraldo/Reuters
According to his sister, Yenny Carolina Capador, 37, he left the farm and traveled to Haiti in May after receiving a job offer from a security company. The siblings spoke often, and Mr. Capador told his sister that his team was in training, and was charged with protecting a “very important” person.
“What I am 100 percent sure of is that my brother was not doing what they are saying, that he was hurting someone,” Ms. Capador insisted. “I know that my brother went to take care of someone.”
Mr. Capador sent his sister pictures of himself in his uniform, a dark polo shirt emblazoned with the logo of a Florida security company called CTU, the company Haitian authorities said Dr. Sanon had hired for the plot.
CTU is run by a man named Antonio Intriago. He did not respond to messages requesting comment and CTU’s office was shut when a reporter stopped by on Saturday.
Now, Mr. Capador was trying to convince Mr. Romero to join him.
Ms. Romero said that she and her husband talked it over that June night, and decided it was a good opportunity to get ahead financially. They had a mortgage to pay and two children to take care of, and Mr. Romero’s army pension only covered the basics.
Mr. Capador, in a shirt bearing the logo of CTU, a security company.Credit...Yenni Carolina Capador
“If you do it,” Ms. Romero said she told her husband, “I’ll support you just like I have during the 20 years we’ve been together.”
Mr. Romero arrived at the airport in Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, on Saturday, June 5, where he picked up his plane ticket and headed to the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbor.
Ms. Romero said that the last time she spoke with him was last Tuesday. He told her that he had been protecting a man he referred to as “the boss,” and that he had limited cell connection, but wanted to check in.
“I’m OK,” he told her. “I love you so much.”
“We’ll speak again,” he went on.
It was rushed, but Ms. Romero wasn’t worried.
The next day, though, she heard on the news that Haiti’s president was dead, and that Colombians might be involved. When she couldn’t reach her husband, her head began to spin.
By last Friday, Colombia’s defense ministry had released the names of 13 Colombians found in Haiti. Her husband was among them.
The defense ministry also said it was investigating four businesses that it believed had recruited Colombians for a job in Haiti.
Not long after, Ms. Romero’s daughter, 20, received a message with a video that showed a man’s limp body. It seemed to be her father.
“Mami, am I right that it’s not him?” her daughter asked. “Right, Mami? It can’t be.”
But Ms. Romero recognized the rosary hanging from the chest of the dead man. It was her husband.
Haitian officials say that a group of assailants stormed Mr. Moïse’s residence on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, last Wednesday at around 1 a.m., shooting him and wounding his wife, Martine Moïse, in what authorities called a well-planned operation that included “foreigners” who spoke Spanish.
Haitian police officers searching for members of the assassination team in Port-au-Prince on Friday.Credit...Joseph Odelyn/Associated Press
In videos filmed from nearby buildings and synchronized by the The New York Times, the people who appear to be arriving to assassinate the president shouted that they were part of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operation.
The D.E.A. has said it was not involved.
It is unclear what part the Colombians played in the operation.
Later Wednesday morning, Ms. Capador said she began receiving calls and texts from her brother, Duberney. He told her that he was in danger, holed up in a home with bullets flying around him. Ms. Capador could hear the gunfire in the background.
Ms. Capador said her brother told her that he had arrived “too late” to save the “important person” he claimed he was hired to protect.
Haitian authorities have also detained at least two Haitian Americans in connection with the president’s death.
Haitian officials have presented little evidence linking any suspects with the crime.
In an interview, Judge Clément Noël, who is involved with the investigation, said the two Haitian Americans had claimed they were working only as interpreters in the operation and that they had met with other participants at an upscale hotel in the Pétionville suburb of Port-au-Prince to plan the attack.
The goal was not to kill the president, they said, but to bring him to the national palace.
Days after the killing, Steven Benoit, a former senator and a prominent opposition figure, was among those who said he found it hard to believe that the Colombians were responsible for the assassination.
“The story simply does not add up,” Mr. Benoit said in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince. “How come there isn’t one security guard at the presidential compound who got shot, who has even a scratch?”
Colombian passports and other items reportedly taken from men accused in the assassination plot against the president.Credit...Estailove St-Val/Reuters
Mr. Benoit also questioned why the Colombians who were at the site of the assassination didn’t immediately try to flee the country after Mr. Moïse was killed. Instead, they stuck around and were killed or captured.
On Saturday, Ms. Romero broke the news to her six-year-old son that “Daddy was not going to return.”
She said she had yet to hear from Colombian or Haitian investigators, but urged them to get to the truth so that the families of all involved “could find some peace.”
Julie Turkewitz reported from Bogotá, Colombia, and Simon Romero from Albuquerque, N.M. Reporting was contributed by Sofía Villamil in Cartagena, Colombia; Anatoly Kurmanaev in Mexico City; Edinson Bolaños in Bogotá, Colombia; Ernesto Londoño in Trancoso, Brazil; Mirelis Morales Tovarin in Doral, Florida; and Catherine Porter and Frances Robles in Miami. Jack Begg contributed research.
13. Guam hosts Army's Forager 21 exercise
We should look for Chinese news reports and propaganda about this exercise. It wil be interesting if we can determine how the Chinese assess this and other exercises that are taking place throughout Asia (er... I mean INDOPACOM)
Guam hosts Army's Forager 21 exercise
guampdn.com · by Pacific Daily News | Pacific Daily News
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Military prepares for exercise Valiant Shield
Lightning strikes in the Pacific as F-35Bs join Valiant Shield 2018
Courtesy Department of Defense, Pacific Daily News
America’s First Corps will lead U.S. Army Pacific’s Forager 21, the primary training exercise in support of Defender Pacific 21, to be held on Guam.
It’s designed to test and refine the Army’s ability to deploy land forces to the Pacific, execute command and control, and effectively conduct multi-domain operations throughout Oceania, according to a news release.
It will be held from July 11 through Aug. 6.
“America’s First Corps is proud to lead Forager 21, a premiere training and operational partnership opportunity enabling U.S. Army Pacific and First Corps to practice its mission in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Maj. Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, commander of First Corps.
Approximately 4,000 U.S. personnel are directly participating in Exercise Forager 21. It will consist of several major events, to include:
An 82nd Airborne operation, a bilateral airborne operation with the Japan Ground Self Defense Force and 1st Special Forces Group.
An H-64 live fire exercise, with multi-domain operations including movements of Strykers, Avengers and high mobility artillery rocket systems by land, air and sea.
guampdn.com · by Pacific Daily News | Pacific Daily News
14. World Health Org To Distribute Chinese Vaccines Over U.S. Objections
We still have a lot of work to do with the WHO and other international organizations that have co-opted and coerced by China.
World Health Org To Distribute Chinese Vaccines Over U.S. Objections
- ADAM KREDO JUL 12, 2021 12:20 PM
The World Health Organization is set to buy and distribute more than 100 million doses of China's coronavirus vaccine, against the Biden administration's wishes.
The White House notified Congress on Monday that COVAX, the WHO's vaccine distribution network that primarily aids poorer countries, will buy the Chinese-made vaccine, which is widely seen as less effective than the American versions. COVAX has struggled with a shortfall in available vaccines even as the United States shares millions of doses with the world. Chinese pharmaceutical companies Sinovac and Sinopharm are now in line to sell COVAX millions of doses, according to Bloomberg. The Biden administration warned COVAX against relying on the Chinese-made vaccine, and no U.S. funds will be used by the organization to complete the purchase, congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon.
COVAX's reliance on the Chinese-produced vaccine comes amid questions about its efficacy. China has obfuscated data on the vaccine's effectiveness, which some studies say is just 79 percent effective in blocking COVID infections. That is lower than most of the U.S.-made vaccines, which are closer to 95 percent effective. The U.S. government has also published reams of data on vaccines to promote transparency on the issue and encourage Americans to get at least one shot.
Some countries—including the United Arab Emirates, Seychelles, Mongolia, Uruguay, and Chile—that have relied on China's vaccine have seen a growth in COVID cases. In some cases, doctors who took that vaccine still fell ill. The New York Times reported in June that countries that relied on the Chinese-made vaccine are battling COVID outbreaks, raising further questions about the vaccine's effectiveness.
COVAX was established by the United Nations and member countries to distribute vaccines across the world and has been partnering with the United States on the effort. The Biden administration shared 80 million doses of surplus American vaccines with COVAX in June. The doses have been distributed to 46 countries, including South Korea, Mexico, Canada, and Pakistan. At least six million doses were sent to the Middle East, including the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen.
COVAX is run by the WHO, which has faced questions about its early efforts to cover up China's role in allowing the coronavirus pandemic to spread. The Trump administration pulled $62 million in funding from the WHO last September, citing the organization's close ties to China and efforts to help the Chinese Communist Party mislead the world about the virus.
It also became clear last year that the WHO lied when it claimed China reported the coronavirus's existence early on. The organization was forced to correct the claim. This also contributed to accusations that the WHO helped China obfuscate the virus's origins from the international community.
The White House referred comment to the U.S. Agency for International Development. A spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
15. Opinion | Wall Street is finally waking up to the reality of China
Excerpts:
“The Communist Party is busy asserting tighter control of Chinese tech companies in an effort not only to break any sense of independence among China’s technology leaders but also to ensure that they are acting in line with Beijing’s strategic goals,” said Jonathan D.T. Ward, author of “China’s Vision of Victory.”
But there is a silver lining to the Didi IPO debacle. No more can Wall Street pundits, asset managers, lawyers and lobbyists argue with a straight face that Chinese firms are anything but under the effective control of the CCP. That means admitting Beijing can squash them or pilfer their coffers at any time — for any reason. Wall Street must now acknowledge that the risk of investing in these companies can’t be known, much less disclosed. Therefore, U.S. investors shouldn’t be trusting their futures to China Inc.
Admitting you have a problem is just the first step. Now the Wall Street clique must change its behavior to acknowledge that funneling Americans’ money into Chinese companies that have zero transparency, zero accountability and zero independence from the CCP is both bad for investors and bad for America.
Opinion | Wall Street is finally waking up to the reality of China
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Josh RoginColumnist July 8, 2021|Updated today at 6:44 p.m. EDT · July 8, 2021
This week, Xi Jinping dealt a humiliating blow to Wall Street, crushing a major Chinese tech firm shortly after U.S. investors had handed it billions. It’s a watershed moment that has even the most die-hard Wall Street China boosters finally admitting that the game has fundamentally changed. Investing Americans’ futures in Chinese companies is no longer a risk Wall Street can calculate, much less defend.
On July 2, just two days after Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley launched an initial public offering for the Chinese ride-hailing app Didi on the New York Stock Exchange, Chinese regulators cracked down on the company hard. Citing data privacy concerns, the Chinese government ordered the removal of Didi’s app from app stores, pending an opaque national security review process. As a result, the stock has lost 30 percent of its value since shortly after its IPO, when investors, most of them from the United States, put $4.4 billion into the company. Shamelessly, the Wall Street firms that set up the Didi IPO collected millions of dollars in fees regardless.
Some Wall Street pundits — perhaps for the first time — realized they had been acting as useful idiots by encouraging Americans to throw money into the Chinese tech firm. CNBC host Jim Cramer said just last week about Didi, “I would try to get as many shares as you can … I doubt they’ll have much trouble with the regulators.”
This week he’s singing a different tune. “You’re a moron if you buy a Chinese deal after this. You’re a moron. I don’t care if it pops,” Cramer said Tuesday. “Why do you need to put your capital at risk after this?”
Cramer, the new China skeptic, is now echoing the concerns national security types in Washington have been screaming in Wall Street’s direction for the past several years. Chinese companies raising capital in the United States can’t be audited. And now that Beijing is determined to increase its control over all Chinese industries, these companies can’t credibly claim to be independent from the Chinese government.
Of course, there were plenty of signs that Beijing was cracking down on its tech giants (and even setting their sights directly on Didi). But rather than heed those warnings, the New York financial gurus told their audiences and themselves that investing in China was a sure bet. Now, the financial consequences will fall not on those gatekeepers at the top of the financial industry, but on their clients — millions of unwitting U.S. investors.
As U.S.-China tensions have worsened, Wall Street financial service firms, asset managers and hedge funds have been racing to increase their holdings in Chinese companies of all kinds, including those Washington was trying to sanction for complicity in human rights atrocities or links to the Chinese military.
Seduced by the lucrative Chinese market, Wall Street firms and U.S. regulators have eagerly helped a flurry of Chinese companies raise money from U.S. investors, who then find themselves holding these risky assets because their savings are tied up in pension funds or other vehicles they don’t personally manage.
Until now, many in the financial world wanted to believe the Chinese Communist Party was fundamentally pragmatic. They insisted that Beijing would never risk its economic development by killing its Wall Street cash cow, and that investors could always count on rational decision-making and solid returns. None of that is defensible anymore. With the Didi move, Xi has put an end to business as usual.
The situation is getting worse, not better. Chinese tech firms like Alibaba and Tencent are facing huge fines for various alleged offenses. The Chinese government is going after more Chinese firms that have raised money in the U.S. markets. Realizing that some U.S.-China decoupling is certain, Xi may want to manage the process on his own terms, bringing Chinese companies back home to help bolster the country’s own capital markets.
“The Communist Party is busy asserting tighter control of Chinese tech companies in an effort not only to break any sense of independence among China’s technology leaders but also to ensure that they are acting in line with Beijing’s strategic goals,” said Jonathan D.T. Ward, author of “China’s Vision of Victory.”
But there is a silver lining to the Didi IPO debacle. No more can Wall Street pundits, asset managers, lawyers and lobbyists argue with a straight face that Chinese firms are anything but under the effective control of the CCP. That means admitting Beijing can squash them or pilfer their coffers at any time — for any reason. Wall Street must now acknowledge that the risk of investing in these companies can’t be known, much less disclosed. Therefore, U.S. investors shouldn’t be trusting their futures to China Inc.
Admitting you have a problem is just the first step. Now the Wall Street clique must change its behavior to acknowledge that funneling Americans’ money into Chinese companies that have zero transparency, zero accountability and zero independence from the CCP is both bad for investors and bad for America.
Read more:
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Josh RoginColumnist July 8, 2021|Updated today at 6:44 p.m. EDT · July 8, 2021
16. 9/11 Museum’s 20th-Anniversary Exhibitions Become Victims of Cuts
Will 9/11 fade from our collective memories?
9/11 Museum’s 20th-Anniversary Exhibitions Become Victims of Cuts
At an important vantage point in history, there will be no special shows looking back at the 2001 attacks, and critics say the museum keeps too tight a rein on the story.
One of the reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
By
July 12, 2021Updated 2:22 p.m. ET
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan has dropped plans for special exhibitions commemorating the 20th anniversary of what was perhaps the most traumatic day in modern American history, museum officials said.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, curators had discussed a large anniversary exhibition examining music’s role in uniting Americans after 9/11 and other tragedies, such as the Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando, Fla. But when more than half of the exhibitions department was laid off, museum leaders shelved the project, according to three former department members.
A spokeswoman, Lee Cochran, said the decision was to focus on the “core museum experience” — the existing permanent exhibitions that drive attendance.
Administrators said that the layoffs and the elimination of special anniversary programming had been approved by the institution’s chairman, Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor.
“Leadership put together the best possible plan to navigate this extraordinarily challenging time,” Marc La Vorgna, a Bloomberg representative, said in a statement, adding that Bloomberg had personally donated $30 million to the museum and raised another $15 million for the institution during the pandemic.
“The Board supported and approved plans that were necessary to prevent this vitally important institution from suffering long-term harm, and to preserve its mission to remember and honor the victims of Sept. 11,” La Vorgna said.
A video installation in the museum that captures people’s voices and memories of Sept. 11, 2001.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
Now in the museum, the remains of a truck from New York City Fire Department’s Ladder Company 3 that was scorched, melted and partly crushed on Sept. 11.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
More views of the mangled truck, whose occupants were all killed in the North Tower while responding to the attack. The truck was destroyed in the collapse.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
A planned traveling exhibition about the history of 9/11 has been replaced with downloadable posters created in partnership with the American Library Association.
The museum and memorial will resume its live reading of the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorist group Al Qaeda hijacked several planes and used them as weapons. Two crashed into the World Trade Center towers and a third flew into the Pentagon. A fourth plane was headed toward Washington but passengers and crew members fought back, bringing it down in a field in Pennsylvania.
Officials of the 9/11 Museum said that the special music exhibition was “on hold.” According to Jason Allen, the former exhibitions project manager, early ideas included selections from Ariana Grande’s tribute to victims of the 2017 suicide bombing of Manchester Arena, where she was performing in England, and Lorde’s benefit concert for victims of the 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The 9/11 Museum is largely dependent on ticket sales; its temporary closure and limited capacity left the institution with an $18 million deficit last year.
The museum’s reopening last September brought hope of relief, but it saw only a trickle of visitors. In June, Alice M. Greenwald, its chief executive and president, said in an interview that attendance was “about 25 percent of our normal size.” There has since been a gradual rise, with attendance close to 4,000 visitors last week, compared with the 8,500 visitors on an average day in 2019.
The museum said it is hoping to end 2021 with a $21 million positive cash balance through a combination of fund-raising, admission revenue and a federal loan after previously projecting a $36 million deficit for the year in January.
Financial difficulties at the museum are baked into its architecture, which weaves a subterranean network of galleries through about 110,000 square feet beneath the memorial’s two large pools of water. Engineering, security and maintenance fees account for more than a third of all expenses.
Anthoula Katsimatides, a museum trustee who lost her brother, John, in the attack on the World Trade Center towers, said that while the board had had to make tough choices during the budget crisis, a decision to cut new programming for the 20th anniversary wasn’t hard.
“We don’t need bells and whistles,” said Katsimatides. “We go to that institution to pay respect to those who died. It’s a serious subject. Whether or not we have some fancy-schmancy singer won’t make things better. Just to gather with each other and recite loved ones’ names, which we couldn’t do during Covid-19, is important.”
A 20th anniversary observance of Sept. 11 will be held at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., for those on board, who thwarted an attack on the U.S. Capitol. At the Kennedy Center in Washington, the National Symphony Orchestra will present a “Concert of Remembrance” for 9/11 victims and those lost to Covid.
Visitors outside the 9/11 Museum last month, waiting for it to open.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
But some founders of the 9/11 Museum criticized its decision to scrap new anniversary exhibitions, saying that the museum has become frozen in time, a point that has revived feuds between factions in old and new leadership.
Michael Shulan, the museum’s founding creative director, said in an interview that he thought the museum was reluctant to initiate programming for the anniversary that might challenge the existing narrative.
“Twenty years marks a turning point where one begins to look at things with a certain kind of hindsight,” said Shulan. “Not asking questions just leads to further crises.”
Former museum executives and some victims’ families have accused curators of telling a reductive story about the events of Sept. 11 that fails to ask complicated questions about terrorism and its aftermath leading into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The subject has become more timely, they say, because of the recent troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
While the 9/11 museum’s website says its mission is “exploring 9/11, documenting its impact, and examining its continuing significance,” these former employees have complained that Greenwald’s administration holds an unusually tight grip on history, closely monitoring researchers and limiting free speech at the site.
Diane Horning, the mother of one victim, Matthew Horning, has opposed the museum since its opening, saying its planners dishonored her son’s memory by building a gift shop at the location where he died. Still, she had hoped that the museum would revisit its curatorial choices for the anniversary and explore the lasting impact of Sept. 11.
“Stars of the Forest: Elegy for 9/11,” a painting by Naoto Nakagawa, is a new addition to the display in the 9/11 Museum.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
“The deaths didn’t stop after 9/11,” Horning said, referring to the illnesses that rescue workers contracted during cleanup. “The people who tried to bring my son home and died as a result should be honored. The undocumented workers who were sent to clean up ground zero who became ill and received no help should be honored.”
(The museum said that in 2019 it built a memorial glade above ground honoring rescue workers and those who have died from 9/11-related diseases.)
Elizabeth Miller, the daughter of a fireman who died on 9/11, joined the museum in 2019 as an exhibitions research coordinator to help tell the story of a tragedy that had personally affected her family. But she said that executives often rejected attempts on the part of staff to introduce new programming that might invite difficult conversations about the relationship between the rise of American nationalism after Sept. 11 and a spike in Islamophobia.
“The museum is a historical institution with an obligation to relay all parts of the story,” Miller said in an interview.
Cochran, the museum spokeswoman, said in an email, “We document the continuing impacts of 9/11 in all different ways.”
Even before the museum opened there were creative differences. According to five people close to the discussions, there were originally plans to devote a section to the impact of Sept. 11 on American society: how it changed nationalism, for example; how it was linked to the notion of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and what intentions lay behind the “war on terror.” That plan was scrapped during deliberations when museum developers felt the pressure to produce a definitive narrative. The resulting core exhibition uses artifacts, recordings and images to discuss the attacks and their immediate aftermath.
In the lower level of the museum is a wall, left, for flood control and what is called the Last Column, a structural support that remained embedded in bedrock.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
One of the two reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
A flower placed in one of the names of the dead inscribed in a memorial pool.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
Tom Hennes, a principal of Thinc Design and the original lead exhibition designer of the museum, said he left the project twice because of creative differences with other executives, including Greenwald.
“In the beginning, we understood that the museum would absolutely have to evolve because we were in the beginning of an unfolding situation,” Hennes explained.
Michael Frazier, who left in April as the museum’s deputy director of external affairs after more than a decade, and has since made an immersive film about survivors of the attacks, expressed surprise at the lack of special programming. “The 20th anniversary should be used to chart out the future of the institution,” he said.
In an interview, Greenwald said that the permanent exhibitions had been forged through eight years of conversations between “equally legitimate, but not necessarily compatible, groups.” Changing fundamental pieces of that story could distract from the museum’s mission, she said.
“We are constantly aware that people are highly sensitive to what gets said about the museum and its history,” she explained. “We exercise a great deal of consideration over what gets said.”
A forthcoming documentary, “The Outsider,” which will be released online in August, recalls the conflicts among museum executives and includes six years of footage from private meetings in which some leaders were critical of Greenwald’s approach to codifying history.
Alice Greenwald, the president and chief executive of the 9/11 Museum.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
The documentarians, who in 2009 donated more than 500 hours of archival recordings from 9/11, one of the museum’s biggest gifts, say their understanding was that scholars would be free to access the archives. The filmmakers say researchers are asked to sign a contract that gives the museum the right to review and reject scholars’ papers before publication. (The museum said its research consent form gives it “the right to conduct an advance review of a publication’s ‘portrayal of the information’ to ensure accuracy.”)
Lawyers representing the institution recently requested that the documentarians remove 36 scenes from “The Outsider,” which the museum described as “inaccuracies and distortions.”
“If somebody is going to be loose with the facts, then it’s going to be called out,” Greenwald, the chief executive, said. “There is a desire to make sure the institution is presented correctly.”
The filmmakers have resisted their suggestions. “Their decision has been to codify, control and limit,” said Rosenbaum.
But those debates seemed far away on a recent summer day inside the museum. Visitors said that the institution’s current exhibitions are powerful tools for teaching a generation born after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Some visitors gazed at a new painting along the museum’s Tribute Walk. Titled “Stars of the Forest: Elegy for 9/11,” by Naoto Nakagawa, a New York artist, the work memorializes victims as stars in the sky. The parents of a flight attendant on American Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower, helped support its installation.
Paula Amaya, a visitor, guided her three young children past the massive wall originally built to prevent flooding at the World Trade Center. The family had traveled from Florida to remember not just the victims of 9/11, but also those who died during the pandemic.
“It’s a helpful place to grieve,” said Amaya. “The museum houses a sad story, but I wanted my children to understand the history here.”
17. Russia Warns Against 'Outside Interference' After Cuba Protests
Russia Warns Against 'Outside Interference' After Cuba Protests - The Moscow Times
Russia on Monday warned against any "outside interference" in Cuba after thousands took part in rare protests against the Communist government on the island nation.
"We consider it unacceptable for there to be outside interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state or any destructive actions that would encourage the destabilization of the situation on the island," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
She did not explain who might be trying to interfere in Cuba, but the warning appeared directed at the United States, which has urged Cuba not to target protesters and where thousands of Cuban-Americans have taken to the streets to support the demonstrations.
"We are closely following the development of the situation in and around Cuba," Zakharova said.
"We are convinced that Cuban authorities are taking all necessary measures to restore public order in the interests of the country's citizens and within the framework of the Constitution."
Cuba was an important Cold War ally of the Soviet Union and Moscow has continued to have good diplomatic relations with Havana since the 1991 collapse of the U.S.S.R.
18. Afghan special forces moved in on Taliban, only to find they had melted away
Afghan special forces moved in on Taliban, only to find they had melted away
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A member of the Afghan Special Forces drives a humvee during a combat mission against Taliban, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, July 11, 2021. Picture taken July 11, 2021. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 12 (Reuters) - Soldiers from Afghanistan's special forces paused for a short prayer late on Sunday night on a deserted stretch of highway in the southern province of Kandahar. They do so each time they prepare to face Taliban militants in battle.
The highly trained troops had been called in to flush out insurgents who attacked regular forces and local police hours earlier, only to find that the Taliban had disappeared into the darkness leaving behind a few civilians and wounded soldiers.
"We received a report that the enemy had infiltrated here and wanted to overthrow the district," Major Mohammad din Tasir, a member of the special forces unit deployed in the Taliban's former stronghold of Kandahar, told Reuters after the operation.
The report had suggested up to 300 Taliban fighters were present in the area, he said.
"Unfortunately, what we heard in the report and what we saw on the scene did not match."
Tasir said the absence of Taliban fighters showed that claims by the group that they now controlled up to 85% of the country's territory were exaggerated.
It also underlined the difficulty in facing an enemy that mixes open assaults on checkpoints, villages, towns and cities with hit-and-run tactics that tend to avoid heavy casualties.
Recent territorial gains by the Taliban come as foreign troops led by the U.S. military withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, leaving the task of pulling the country from a spiralling security crisis to local forces.
TALIBAN ADVANCES
Kandahar is one of many provinces to see a recent surge in offensives by the Taliban, which says it wants to be involved in running the country peacefully although it has always opposed the presence of foreign forces.
The special forces unit had been called in after insurgents attempted to take control of Khan Baba village in the Dand district of Kandahar, unleashing RPGs and heavy machinegun fire at Afghan security forces and local police.
The soldiers travelled there under cover of darkness, using night vision equipment and moving in Humvee vehicles scarred with bullet holes from previous missions, some of them carried out with U.S. allies.
When they arrived they found the village largely abandoned. Air strikes by the Afghan Air Force had helped push back Taliban fighters.
Special forces personnel moved swiftly and silently from house to house, entering through doors and jumping walls to locate Taliban remnants who may still be hiding in the area.
They found only a few mainly elderly locals who said that other residents had fled when the fighting began. The troops also tended to soldiers wounded in the earlier clashes before evacuating them to the nearest military base.
In the distance sporadic gunfire rang out.
An Afghan defence official said on Twitter on Monday that 26 insurgents had been killed in operations and air strikes a day earlier in two Kandahar districts, including Dand.
Reuters could not independently verify this.
Once the operation was complete, the special forces caught a short rest, before preparing to receive orders for their next mission.
Writing by Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Mike Collett-White
19. From Russia with hate: How pro-Kremlin bots are fuelling chaos and lies about the pandemic
From Russia with hate: How pro-Kremlin bots are fuelling chaos and lies about the pandemic – Metro
Saturday 10 Jul 2021 7:00 am
On May 26, Sam*’s phone buzzes with a new WhatsApp message. She sees it’s from her father in Australia, who she hasn’t seen before the pandemic, and her heart sinks.
The article is from a fringe news website banned from major social media platforms for sharing disinformation. It quotes a Nobel Prize winner who claims, falsely, that Covid-19 jabs will cause new variants to emerge.
It doesn’t mention the Nobel laureate in question — Professor Luc Montagnier — is so famous for making unreliable claims that more than a hundred scientists signed a petition denouncing him as ‘dangerous’ in 2017.
At first she tried to challenge them. But the posts — anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown, anti-mask — just kept on coming.
They’re full of false claims designed to frighten and enrage: that Bill Gates orchestrated the pandemic to make money or that Jewish people funded the development of vaccines designed to kill.
Disturbed and overwhelmed, eventually she just stopped messaging back.
Sam is one of many thousands of people whose family members have been taken in by fake stories — often pre-covid conspiracy theories repackaged for the pandemic — that have sprang up on social media since the early days of the outbreak.
Some of this disinformation emerges organically, from blog writers selling sham remedies and niche news sites searching for clicks. And some of it’s manufactured by propaganda outlets like Russia’s RT and Sputnik News.
Fuelled by the emotions they provoke, these stories can spread faster on social media than accurate news.
As Alexandra Pavliuc, a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, explains, people might share ‘novel, surprising, and shocking information’ because they want to protect their families, or perhaps they like feeling ‘in the know.’
But the ability to incite fear and anger isn’t the only reason these stories spread so quickly. As new US research shows, malicious bots are the primary pathogen of covid-19 disinformation on social media.
‘Drowning out’ real news
Bots are able to spread content around the web faster than any human could (Getty)
‘Bots’ are algorithms designed to perform repetitive tasks like posting on social media, Pavliuc explains. They’re often the work of ‘bot farms’ or ‘troll farms’: individuals or groups who use this software to amplify posts.
‘Let’s say you control one thousand bots,’ explains Sophie Marineau, a doctoral student at Canada’s Catholic University of Louvain. ‘With one bot you share an article, a meme, a YouTube video, or anything really on Twitter or on Facebook. Then, with the 999 other bots, you comment on, like and share that post.
‘In a matter of seconds, your initial post is shared or liked a thousand times.’
These bots spread content faster than a human being ever could. ‘They can literally drown real news and real stories with their fake news,’ Marineau explained.
Some troll farms focus on automatic amplification, using numerous fake accounts to share material that aligns with their goals.
But others also share content manually, with staff carefully choosing which messages will spread most effectively in smaller online communities.
Many bad actors use bots to spread content that suits their ends. But Russia, with its decades-long history of pushing propaganda, is easily the most notorious.
Its state disinformation efforts — which involve both creating and amplifying false material — are so prolific that the EU has set up a dedicated database to track and debunk misleading pro-Kremlin content.
Pro-Russian farms can be sophisticated as well as prolific, in some cases operating in office-style environments like the notorious Internet Research Agency.
‘If you work in a troll farm in Russia — or places like West Africa, where Russians export their farms — you are educated about your target,’ Marineau said. ‘You have real training and a schedule, and you’re working shifts.’
But bot farms can also operate without an obvious physical presence. ‘One individual can run a computer program that creates multiple accounts that automatically share certain pieces of information,’ Praviuc explained.
It’s worth noting that much of the material spread by bot farms doesn’t take off at all, as an investigation by tech firm Graphika into a six-year pro-Russian disinformation campaign known as ‘Secondary Infektion’ previously found.
Investigators tied some 2,500 disinformation articles to the campaign, but just one topic — leaked trade documents about UK-US trade agreement — actually ended up going viral.
Not only do social media sites actively try and wipe such material, they also tend to prioritise posts from friends and family members on a user’s feed.
But cloaked in ambiguous key words and shortened URLs, plenty of material continues to evade moderation efforts.
And the better major platforms get at rooting it out, the more disinformation agents, whether they use bots or not, shift their focus to less moderated services like Telegram, Parler and Gab.
Farming chaos
It’s hard to know exactly why pro-Kremlin actors push fake messages about Covid-19 and other topics in the news. But experts have plenty of ideas.
First and foremost, it’s highly likely this content is used to sow discord in countries and regions like the US and Europe, which may be considered adversarial to Russia. A good example of this came last summer amid a wave of protests, and a conservative backlash, after the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin.
Pro-Russian trolls amplified this discord, Marineau said. They created some Facebook pages that (ostensibly, at least) support the Black Lives Matter movement, and others that praised police. These pages received hundreds of thousands of likes.
Disinformation agents favour chaos over facts (Credit: Sophie Marineau/Facebook)
‘They don’t care about their message,’ Marineau says. ‘It’s not about what they believe in, it’s about what can provoke civil unrest.’
Russia likely has financial reasons to spread disinformation too.
Take Western vaccines like those made by Pfizer and Moderna. These have become a key target of pro-Kremlin disinformation efforts during the pandemic, in what Pavliuc thinks is an effort to boost sales of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine abroad.
‘I think they are trying to promote the narrative that their own vaccine, Sputnik V, is superior,’ she said. They’re probably also trying to advertise Russia’s scientific prowess, she added.
But for the average person engaging with this material, these high-level goals are hardly obvious.
Marineau thinks most people sharing disinformation probably don’t realise it might be being pushed by trolls. ‘I mean, why would I share or like a post if I knew it was made up by a Russian kid behind his computer in St Petersburg?’ she said.
Whatever its source, disinformation can have a devastating impact on families.
Sam says fake news has put enormous strain on her relationship with her father. Once she sees him in person again, she says, he won’t be allowed to spend time alone with her children in case he frightens them with conspiracy theories.
Keeping in contact, even if that means setting boundaries in certain social situations and avoiding triggering topics, has been especially important for her father, who lives alone and is otherwise relatively isolated.
Maintaining lines of communication also means he has social connections outside of the groups that share his conspiratorial beliefs.
‘No-one wants to be made to feel shame or feel rejected for their beliefs,’ Sam says. ‘You can push people away like that.’
Spotting fake news
There are ways to tell if a news story is trustworthy (Getty)
If you’re not sure whether news you’ve been sent is trustworthy, Marineau says there’s a number of ways you can identify a fake story.
‘Personally, if I can’t verify who originally wrote something, chances are, I probably won’t trust the information I read or watched,’ she says. ‘Another step is to check if there are multiple reliable sources reporting the same information. Not tweets or YouTube videos.’
Publishing similar disinformation articles across a wide range of niche outlets is a common tactic used by pro-Kremlin sources to make a story seem more trustworthy, so making sure it’s covered by reliable news sites is really important.
‘Always ask yourself if a story is too good or bad to be true, and try to focus your attention on trustworthy media, which abides by journalistic standards and practices,’ says Pavliuc.
‘If you think something is fake and want to speak up,’ she added, try not to link to the original story or post itself. ‘Take a screenshot and draw a red X across it and share that, so that no one can take the screenshot and spread it further without your X marking.’
Tap to expand
And if you’re in doubt as to whether a news story is real or fake, Marineau says, just ‘don’t share anything at all.’
*Names have been changed to protect identity.
20. Montgomery Meigs, former commander of US Army Europe, dies at 76
Oh no. This is sad news. I have a personal story about the kind of leader he was.
I was a 1st LT and I PCS's to Germany and was assigned to the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment in Nuremberg in 1983. I was an infantry officer assigned to a Cavalry unit. There was only one other Infantry officer assigned to the unit and he was a Major assigned in his (now defunct) functional area as the Organizational effectiveness officer. So I was assigned as the Assistant Regimental Adjutant working on the Unit Status Report (actually assisting the S1 NSOIC!) and managing such fun tasks as the duty officer roster and all the other mundane tasks of a DLJO (dirty little jobs officer). I worked for an excellent armor officer who was the Adjutant - MAJ Jim Vreeland. General Meigs was then a LTC and the Regimental XO. After about almost two months LTC Meigs called me into his office and asked what I was doing in the 2d ACR. I was confused and said I am assigned here. He said yes but why am I here as an infantry officer? I said I did not know but this is where my orders sent me. He understood that but asked if I would rather be in an infantry unit rather than a cavalry unit. I hesitated only a second wondering if this was a trick question and then blurted out yes of course. At the time we were undergoing the DIvision 86 reorganization (going through Bradley transition )and adding the 4th (Delta) companies to infantry battalions. He said he had a friend who was battalion commander in the 3d ID in Schweinfurt. He told me to take the train up there and interview with him and see if he would accept me. I did that and the battalion commander told me he would accept me if I could PCS to Schweinfurt. I went back and reported to LTC Meigs and he told me that he would arrange for my orders but I would have to remain for another month. I of course did not argue and was happy to work another month. But the reason he wanted me to work another month was so that I could have 90 days in the unit so he could give me an OER. He not only gave me an OER he wrote an outstanding evaluation and gave me a top block rating (the old system on a 1-10 scale though senior raters had no restrictions on the number of top blocks they gave).
Now LTC Meigs did not have to do this for me. I only met him a couple of times up to that point. He could have kept me in the position and just used me until I PCS'd. I probably would have left the Army at best as Captain after that experience. But instead he did what was best for the Army. Infantry officers were needed elsewhere and he could take care of one officer even if it meant there would be a vacancy in his unit that would probably not be filled any time soon. I always remembered this example of leadership for the rest of my career. I saw him twice after this. Once he was visiting Leavenworth and I was in SAMS. I went up to him and thanked him for what he did for me. The second time he was the head of BENS and he brought a delegation to Ft Bragg to USASOC for a day on the range with SOF soldiers and I was able to spend the day with him. He later taught at Georgetown in the Security Studies Program but left just before I started there as the Associate Director so I did not have a chance to work with him.
I will always be grateful for his leadership and I am sad to hear of his passing.
Montgomery Meigs, former commander of US Army Europe, dies at 76
BY JOHN VANDIVER• STARS AND STRIPES • JULY 9, 2021
Gen. Montgomery Meigs, the outgoing commander of U.S. Army Europe, speaks at his change of command ceremony at Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg, Germany, in 2002. Meigs died July 6, 2021. He was 76. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
STUTTGART, Germany — Retired Gen. Montgomery Meigs, a combat veteran who commanded the Army in Europe for four years and hailed from a storied line of military officers, died Tuesday in Texas. He was 76.
Meigs led U.S. Army Europe from 1998 to 2002, overseeing about 60,000 soldiers on the Continent. He also commanded NATO’s peacekeeping force in Bosnia, when thousands of U.S. soldiers fanned out across the Balkans.
As the USAREUR boss in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Meigs was in charge as garrisons across Europe went from having relatively relaxed post-Cold War security conditions to becoming the highly secured compounds of today.
An obituary from an Austin, Texas, funeral home did not mention the cause of Meigs’ death.
Meigs was an Annapolis, Md., native and a 1967 graduate of West Point. His father, a lieutenant colonel, was killed during World War II in France, months before he was born.
Meigs also was a third great-nephew of the Civil War general Montgomery Meigs, who was a quartermaster general for the Union and was instrumental in the establishment of Arlington National Cemetery. He is also credited as “engineer of the Capitol” in Washington.
Decades before assuming command in Europe, Meigs began his Army career with cavalry units in Germany and Vietnam.
He later came back to West Point as an instructor and earned his doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982, said the Association of the United States Army, where Meigs was a life member. He also led the Germany-based 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division into Operation Desert Storm in Iraq.
Deputy V Corps commander Maj. Gen. Reginal Clemmons and U.S. Army Europe commander Gen. Montgomery Meigs inspect the troops at a V Corps change of command ceremony in Heidelberg, Germany, in November 1999. Meigs died July 6, 2021. He was 76. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Four years after his Army retirement, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked Meigs to lead the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, as roadside bombs became regularly employed against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Meigs had a common touch when it came to relating to junior soldiers, who expressed condolences online for their former commander.
“He was squadron commander of 1/1 Cav when I was there in 85-86,” wrote Raymond Anguiano, a junior enlisted soldier who at that time was trying to get a compassionate reassignment because his son was sick.
Anguiano had been trying for months to get reassigned when he had a chance encounter with Meigs while pulling guard duty and shared his story. Three weeks later, he had orders with a handwritten note from Meigs that read: “The man must fly!”
Another former soldier, a driver for Meigs when he was in command at 7th Army Training Center in Grafenwoehr, Germany, said the general understood his goal of eventually becoming an Army officer.
“To that end, he ensured I was exposed to almost everything he was involved with. This meant that I went into the field with him at Hohenfels to watch unit rotations, gunnery ranges on Graf, and senior leader meetings in Heidelberg,” wrote Christopher “Mac” McGarry.
Years later, after McGarry’s enlistment had ended and he had gone on to graduate college, Meigs offered to be there for his commissioning.
“True to his word he was there and pinned on my 2LT rank. In many ways he treated me as one of his sons,” McGarry wrote. “I felt more like a family member than a lower enlisted member.”
21. Farewell Montgomery C Meigs, III
Another tribute to General Meigs.
Farewell Montgomery C Meigs, III
For John, BLUF: In life one sometimes meets and works with a person who is impressive in his actions and contributes. General Meigs was such a person. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The Stars and Stripes, by Reporter John Vandiver, 9 July 2021.
Here is the lede plus one:
Retired Gen. Montgomery Meigs, a combat veteran who commanded the Army in Europe for four years and hailed from a storied line of military officers, died Tuesday in Texas. He was 76.
Meigs led U.S. Army Europe from 1998 to 2002, overseeing about 60,000 soldiers on the Continent. He also commanded NATO's peacekeeping force in Bosnia, when thousands of U.S. soldiers fanned out across the Balkans.
Back when I knew him, as Monty, he was an Army Colonel Section Chief in the Joint Staff (J-5) Strategy Division. In that position he was not just innovative, buyt creative. It was his work that changed the US Military Current Strategy to anticipate an Iraqi Attack on the critical oil facilities of the Arabian Peninsula. Soon after the next Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan President Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait. By that time Monty had moved on to be Commander of an Armored Brigade..
I remember Colonel Meigs, a fine officer who adapted and created and worked well with people, above him, below him and as his peers.
He had the academic training to learn from the past, having a History PhD, which resulted in a book on the World War II Battle of the Atlantic, Slide Rules and Submarines. My youngest Son, Randy, played a very small part, helping to retrieve the manuscript off of a computer hard drive that had crashed.
Farewell friend and patriot.
Regards — Cliff
22. Wild Bill Donovan, the Grandfather of American Intelligence
Wild Bill Donovan, the Grandfather of American Intelligence
1 day ago
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An Unorganized Intelligence Scene
Before World War II, the United States had no national intelligence apparatus. Intelligence gathering was strictly on an ad hoc basis with no sharing of information between government entities.
So, at the start of the war, President Franklin Roosevelt was forced to rely on his circle of friends. His friends would travel to Europe and report on what they found directly to him. One of those people was Wild Bill Donovan. He had been awarded the Medal of Honor in WWI and although a political rival, he was a trusted friend of Roosevelt (something quite unimaginable by today’s standards).
Nevertheless, FDR was searching for more effective ways to gather intelligence to protect American interests in Europe and the Pacific.
Upon his return from an intelligence-gathering trip to Europe, Donovan lobbied hard to Roosevelt to create a national intelligence agency. Hoover, who wanted to maintain the only pipeline to information, openly opposed this. Yet, Donovan, aided by British officials, succeeded in convincing President Roosevelt.
Wild Bill Donovan Takes the Helm
FDR appointed Donovan as coordinator of information (COI) in charge of forming a civilian intelligence organization. The coordinator of information was to “collect and analyze all information and data which may bear upon the national security” for the president and his designees. Donovan was given the authority, “with the approval of the president,” to request data from other agencies and departments. Nonetheless, he was specifically ordered not to interfere with the president’s military advisers.
Hoover, however, insisted that the COI would not and could not conduct any intelligence gathering in South America, as that remained strictly the FBI’s domain.
FDR split the duties of the COI between Donovan, who handled military intelligence and covert operations, and Robert Sherwood, a playwright and one of the president’s primary speechwriters. Sherwood would head up the dissemination of domestic information and foreign propaganda.
Sherwood would begin The Voice of America a radio program that would broadcast on occupied Europe and the Axis countries. The Voice of America’s pledge was that “The news may be good or bad for us — We will always tell you the truth.”
The British gave invaluable assistance to Wild Bill Donovan who modeled the COI after British practices. He centralized the analysis of information into actionable intelligence for the first time.
Although Donovan still believed that a civilian professional intelligence service was needed, he suggested to Roosevelt that, during the war, the COI should fall under the newly formed Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to support the war effort.
The Office of Strategic Services Is Born
Wild Bill Donovan relied heavily on the British for the model of the U.S. intelligence agency as well as with training.
President Roosevelt liked the idea. However, he wanted to keep COI’s Foreign Information Service (FIS), which conducted radio broadcasting, out of the military’s control. It was then decided that the “black” (covert) and “white” (overt) propaganda missions be separated giving FIS the official side of the business. FIS and half of COI’s staff were sent to the new Office of War Information.
The remainder of COI’s operatives were then earmarked for what was to become the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
On June 13, 1942, the OSS was formed. Donovan chose the name that reflected his sense of the strategic importance of intelligence and special operations.
The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. However, due to the wartime footing, other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, covert operations, guerrilla warfare, and post-war planning.
Donovan had already provided the State Department with desperately needed French-speaking officers in French-held North Africa to act as “vice-consuls.” Thus, he the OSS had won the grudging respect of the State Department. With Donovan’s leadership and outstanding training by the British, OSS began to quickly build a worldwide clandestine intelligence capability.
The Glorious Amateurs and the British Teachers
The first COI/OSS officers arrived in Britain in November 1941 before the U.S. was even in the war. They leaned heavily on the British for training and information to get off the ground. The British, used to operating on more of a shoestring budget, happily partook of the seemingly endless resources of the new American unit.
The relationship was slow to blossom. The British were cautious at first, worrying that the neophyte Americans could compromise their hard-earned operatives in Occupied Europe. Despite this, the two sides grew interdependent on one another by the war’s end. The operational marriage would be extremely beneficial to both sides and lay the groundwork for the close cooperation and trust the two countries still enjoy.
OSS officers with Wild Bill Donovan, his “Glorious Amateurs” or the collection of “PhDs who can win a barfight.”
Donovan recruited an eclectic group of volunteers that he described as “Glorious Amateurs.”
Donovan described the perfect OSS men as “PhDs who can win a bar fight.” OSS wanted smart self-starters who could think on their feet.
At the peak of war operations in late 1944, OSS had grown to over 13,000 personnel. About one-third of whom were women.
These men and women formed the backbone of the CIA and later the U.S. Army Special Forces.
Enter the CIA
The CIA’s seal and emblem found in the lobby of the agency’s Original Headquarters building. (CIA)
When the war ended, the handwriting was on the wall for OSS. President Truman disliked Donovan and the OSS. Donovan’s plan to keep a peacetime intelligence service was filed away but ignored. OSS was disbanded on October 1, 1945.
Two years later Truman approved the new organization called the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) until the National Security Act of 1947 turned CIG into the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was to perform many of the missions that Wild Bill Donovan had advocated for his proposed peacetime intelligence service. CIA became what General Donovan had initially proposed.
The modern-day CIA and the U.S. Special Operations Command owe a great deal of their legacy to OSS and Wild Bill Donovan. They still employ some “PhDs that can win a bar fight.”
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23. Seeing America from the ground
Excerpts:
I found early in my career in covering politics that parachuting into a city for an event or an interview or a rally or an election gave me little understanding of what was happening in the region. Yet if I made my way there, taking the back roads, I was able to see how things were changing for the better or worse.
When I stop to talk to people, I learned early on that listening was much more important than talking and that my duty was not to report their stories from my perspective or experiences but instead from theirs.
The story of America isn’t exclusively the story that comes from the perspective of larger cities. Unfortunately, that is what often happens because those are the base of our cultural narrative-makers: news organizations, institutions, academia, think tanks, major league sports, and entertainment.
They are so disconnected from most places, it would astound them if they took the time to get on the road and ask them how they feel about the issues of the day. They don’t want their police departments defunded. They want their bridges and roads fixed and their water to be clean. They don’t want critical race theory jammed down their children's throats. They are horrified at how political the military has become and are worried about the long-lasting impact of the crisis at the border.
They are good neighbors. They love God and aren’t ashamed to show it as much as they like pickles in their beer and ranch dressing on everything.
Seeing America from the ground
| July 11, 2021 12:00 AM
OTTAWA, Ohio — This is not a story about politics. Instead, it is a story about America and how sometimes, you can discover something new when you try to absorb the country’s character one mile at a time and when you take in a place on its own terms and not simply the terms of wherever you came from.
A couple of weeks ago, a native Long Islander who has called New York City his home for half a dozen years took his first trip to the Midwest for a news assignment to discuss what he found different about the way of life out here.
US 20 is an east west highway that stretches from the Pacific Northwest east towards New York and New England; portions of the transcontinental road date back to the late 1830s.
He flew to both Chicago and Detroit to learn about this foreign land.
The social media criticism of the resulting story was swift and brutal. The piece wasn't any worse than the typical story flyover country folk read about themselves. But the oddest thing was that he tried to find the "Midwest" solely in the big cities of Chicago and Detroit. The true measure of the Midwest begins somewhere near the Pennsylvania state line.
Had he driven the 21 hours and 18 minutes it would take on the back roads between New York City and Chicago, he would have had one heck of a story to write about the country and the Midwest.
A mere one hundred miles from his front door, he would have found himself culturally beginning to understand what lies ahead.
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, is a beautiful town surrounded by the mountains of Pisgah Ridge and is dotted with architectural styles that range from Federalist, Greek revival, Romanesque revival, and Queen Anne to Richardsonian Romanesque. How the former town of Mauch Chunk was renamed for the Native American sports legend is, in microcosm, the story of this town: the ingenuity of civic leaders who deeply care about preserving a place in a changing world.
Then, at the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, by some measures the official threshold of the Midwest, he would have found himself in Ashtabula, Ohio. There, he could have begun his education as to how the Great Lakes Midwest has struggled and adapted to the tides of progress and technology that has stripped it from its robust industrial past as both a major port city as well as a railroad hub.
Deep poverty, crime, and despair, associated with the collapsed inner-city neighborhoods of Chicago and Detroit, would have greeted him in a different form had he driven down Lincoln Highway and found himself in Ford Heights, Illinois. Once a blue-collar, middle-class black suburb, Ford Heights has died so hard, it has been consistently the poorest suburb in America since the beginning of this century.
I remember the first time I came through this town nearly a decade ago and found a makeshift altar on the side of an abandoned gas station lined with bottles of hard liquor, candles, a wilted red rose, and the word "love" spelled out with decals. I wept for all of the loss that happened here. A visitor here, with his or her eyes open, learns quickly that deindustrialization is colorblind in sowing despair.
For the majority of my career as a journalist, I have had the opportunity to report on this country from the vantage point of taking the back roads to get from point A to point B for whatever assignment I was given.
I found early in my career in covering politics that parachuting into a city for an event or an interview or a rally or an election gave me little understanding of what was happening in the region. Yet if I made my way there, taking the back roads, I was able to see how things were changing for the better or worse.
When I stop to talk to people, I learned early on that listening was much more important than talking and that my duty was not to report their stories from my perspective or experiences but instead from theirs.
The story of America isn’t exclusively the story that comes from the perspective of larger cities. Unfortunately, that is what often happens because those are the base of our cultural narrative-makers: news organizations, institutions, academia, think tanks, major league sports, and entertainment.
They are so disconnected from most places, it would astound them if they took the time to get on the road and ask them how they feel about the issues of the day. They don’t want their police departments defunded. They want their bridges and roads fixed and their water to be clean. They don’t want critical race theory jammed down their children's throats. They are horrified at how political the military has become and are worried about the long-lasting impact of the crisis at the border.
They are good neighbors. They love God and aren’t ashamed to show it as much as they like pickles in their beer and ranch dressing on everything.
Whether you take a ride for a half an hour or a half a day or for an entire week or even a month, there is more good than not out here in this country despite what you may read in the New York Times or Washington Post; it cannot be seen or smelt or heard or felt with a mask on in an airplane. It can be experienced if you take the time.
24. Impersonations of Military Members on Social Media On the Rise, New Report Says
Excerpts:
“In terms of the victimology, the military is always a hotbed. There’s a very romantic story about a military member who is perhaps deployed overseas. And they’re either divorced or lonely or want to get back home,” said Allen.
He says that while the military has become better and faster at responding, the trend is likely to continue so long as social media companies continue to be lax in verifying the identities behind new profiles.
Impersonations of Military Members on Social Media On the Rise, New Report Says
Be skeptical of that admiral who just asked you out on Twitter.
A series of official portraits, courtesy of the U.S. Defense Departments DVIDS
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Be skeptical of that admiral who just asked you out on Twitter.
Technology Editor
July 13, 2021 12:00 AM ET
Social media companies intentionally make it very easy to set up new accounts and profiles. After all, the greater the number of users, the more the company is worth. This poses some challenges for the way the public forms opinions about the Defense Department. You see, the same convenience that allows you to join a new social network with no hassle has has enabled online scammers to set up profiles impersonating members of the military, a trend that’s rising rapidly, according to threat analysis firm ZeroFox.
Last year, ZeroFox took down 40,000 social media accounts that impersonated others, up from 1,000 three years ago, the company says in a new white paper. During that same time span, the FBI saw complaints about impersonations of government officials and employees rise 40 percent. ZeroFox expects another big increase this year.
Zack Allen, the company’s senior director of threat intelligence, says that military personnel make particularly attractive targets for fake profiles, especially when there’s a change in administration.
“When there is a changing of commands or when there are now senior offices installed, whether it’s at a base or higher leadership within the government, we will see surges in impersonations of those senior military officers. That’s just natural in the sense that a lot of these officers are used to not being in the public sphere,” Allen said in an interview. “But when you get into these offices that are in the public sphere, that’s just more open source intelligence for these fraud actors to take your likeness, take your picture, look at your bio from the base website, construct these fake profiles and then go and create them and start engaging with people.”
Case in point, in December 2014, a tweeter purporting to be Ash Carter said he was “honoured and happy” [sic] to be nominated to the position of the Secretary of Defense. One problem: it wasn’t him but online prankster Tommasso Debenedetti.
The vast majority of online military impersonations aren’t pranks or sophisticated information attacks by Russia or China, but rather simple financial scams from places like Nigeria. Yet such scams netted around $421 million over the last five years, Allen said. Many are “romance scams” whose victims believe they have found love with someone in the military.
“In terms of the victimology, the military is always a hotbed. There’s a very romantic story about a military member who is perhaps deployed overseas. And they’re either divorced or lonely or want to get back home,” said Allen.
He says that while the military has become better and faster at responding, the trend is likely to continue so long as social media companies continue to be lax in verifying the identities behind new profiles.
25. History of integration in the US Armed Services
History of integration in the US Armed Services
Despite the fact that nearly 2 million African Americans served with distinction in World Wars I and II, (for example, the Tuskegee Airmen and Black soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge) the U.S. military did not even really start integrating the forces until July, 1948, when President Harry Truman issued an executive order ending segregation in our armed forces.
When it was issued, Truman’s executive order met with great public resistance from the uniformed and civilian leadership of all of the services, except the Air Force. Army Chief of Staff General Omar Bradley argued that the military should not be used as an instrument of social change and that complete integration would affect morale and battle efficiency. While Bradley did endorse expanded opportunities for African Americans, he wanted to keep the units segregated. According to Bradley, this would have several advantages for African Americans because they would be competing for promotion with other African Americans, and not with the, theoretically, more capable white soldiers.
His civilian boss, Kenneth Royal, himself a retired general, claimed that integrating the force would affect enlistments and reenlistments, not only in the South, but in other parts of the country and would adversely impact the morale of the white soldiers.
In fact, the Army did not really begin integrating its forces until the Korean War, when it was forced to do so, because it did not have enough white soldiers to replace those killed or wounded in the all-white units that it deployed to Korea. Moreover, the Army did not desegregate its last Black unit until September 1954.
Even after the Army abolished its all-Black units and integrated African Americans into the force, it took some time for them to achieve their share of promotions. For example, in 1978, Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander, was given a list by promotion board for colonels who should be promoted to general. However, since there was not a single African American on the list, Alexander, who himself is an African American, held up the list and asked for one that included Blacks. The board then added several African American colonels to the list, one of whom was then Colonel Colin Powell, who went on to become chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the only African American to attain that rank.
The Marines were even more hostile to integration than the Army. They did not even allow African Americans to enlist until 1942 when they established separate training facilities and separate units for them. In 1947, right after the war in which many Black Marines fought bravely in the Pacific campaigns, the Marines forced African Americans to choose between leaving the service or becoming stewards. The Marines did not begin unified training until 1949 nor allow full integration until 1960.
The Navy ignored Truman’s executive order for more than 20 years. Until President Nixon appointed Admiral Elmo (Bud) Zumwalt as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in 1970, racism was an integral part of the Navy’s tradition. As a result, the Navy never had a Black Admiral and Black officers had few prospects for advancement. For the most part, Black sailors were confined to cooking and cleaning tasks. Moreover Zumwalt’s efforts to allow African American sailors to enter all the Navy specialties met with great resistance from many active and retired admirals.
Zumwalt correctly believed that the antipathy to his changes reflected racial prejudice and in 1972 , he summoned senior officers to the Pentagon and accused them of ignoring his directives on race relations. Despite this resistance, during his four years as CNO, the number of Black personnel increased as did reenlistments and the first Black admiral was appointed.
On the other hand, after Truman’s Executive Order, when some Air Force officers raised many of the same objections that the army leadership did, these objections were met firmly by the Secretary of the Air Force, W. Stuart Symington. In 1947, Symington argued that Blacks should be able to enter the Air Force on the basis of their merits rather than race. After Truman’s executive order, he told his generals that didn’t agree with it to resign. Under Symington’s guidance, the Air Force became the first service to completely integrate.
The military displayed many of these same prejudices against gays and women. From 1980 until 1993, DOD policy was that homosexuality was incompatible with military service. Over the opposition of most military leaders, the policy was modified in the Clinton administration to allow gays, who kept their sexual orientation secret, to serve. The policy was called, don’t ask don’t tell, and was not fully repealed until the Obama administration
The military and its leaders also displayed similar prejudices against women, refusing to drop all the combat restrictions until 2018. In fact until 1969, women were not allowed to even comprise more than 2 percent of the military.
For currently serving troops to be aware of this history, as General Milley suggests, is good for them and the country and something that those who criticize and threaten them should be aware of. It is not going woke but will help them work more effectively with each other regardless of their race, sexual orientation or gender. As Winston Churchill pointed out in a speech in 1948, the same year as Truman issued the executive order, “those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
Lawrence Korb a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Regan administration. He served four years on active duty as a naval flight officer and retired from the Navy Reserve with the rank of captain.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times senior managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
