Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the day:

"It is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them."
- Xenophon

"War is what happens when language fails."
- Margaret Atwood

"The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene."
-Nannah Arendt



1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 26 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Roots of the Resistance: Understanding National Identity in Ukraine
3. Some Clausewitzian Thoughts on the Ukrainian Defense
4. Russia reports blasts in south that Ukraine calls payback for invasion
5. Blasts reported in 3 Russian regions bordering Ukraine
6. U.S., Ukraine, and Neutrality Law | SOF News
7. The US needs a new approach to producing weapons. Just look at Ukraine.
8. Going Underground: Ukraine’s Subterranean Fighters Highlight the Benefit – and Long History – of Tunnels in Warfare
9. Modernizing the Military May Require Modernized Oversight
10. From Electronic Warfare to Cyber and Beyond: How Drones Intersect with the Information Environment on the Battlefield
11. What We Know About Future Maritime Wars
12. As Raytheon struggles to replenish Stinger missiles, lawmaker pushes Defense Production Act
13. Why Xi Is Trapped in Ukraine
14. America is now thinking of “winning” the war in Ukraine
15. How does Ukraine keep intercepting Russian military communications?
16. Biden’s National Security Strategy still unavailable
17. U.S. diplomats return to Ukraine for first time since Russia's invasion
18. Russian Leaders Know They’re Committing War Crimes. Their Laws of War Manual Says So.
19. Interview: Can the Russian Military Overcome Its Manpower Problems In Ukraine?
20. Taiwan aims to learn lessons of Ukraine in annual military drills
21. Former Marine Trevor Reed freed in prisoner swap with U.S., Russia says
22. Rethinking Indonesia’s non-aligned foreign policy
23. Don’t Fight in Another Country’s War
24. NATO’s Nordic Expansion: Adding Finland and Sweden Will Transform European Security
25.  What War Is Still Good For
26. A Real Foreign Policy for the Middle Class
27. The Bizarre Russian Prophet Rumored to Have Putin’s Ear
28. China grapples with political challenges as Covid death toll mounts
29. China condemns latest U.S. sailing through Taiwan Strait
30. Vicious Blame Game Erupts Among Putin’s Security Forces
31. Fuel And Ammo Depots Keep Blowing Up In Russia. Ukraine’s Ballistic Missiles Might Be Why.
32. Ramstein meeting gives birth to global 'contact group' to support Ukraine




1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 26 (PUTIN'S WAR)

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 26
Apr 26, 2022 - Press ISW

Frederick W. Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Karolina Hird
April 26, 6:30 pm ET
Russian forces have adopted a sounder pattern of operational movement in eastern Ukraine, at least along the line from Izyum to Rubizhne. Russian troops are pushing down multiple roughly parallel roads within supporting distance of one another, allowing them to bring more combat power to bear than their previous practice had supported. Russian troops on this line are making better progress than any other Russian advances in this phase of the war. They are pushing from Izyum southwest toward Barvinkove and southeast toward Slovyansk. They are also pushing several columns west and south of Rubizhne, likely intending to encircle it and complete its capture. The Russian advances even in this area are proceeding methodically rather than rapidly, however, and it is not clear how far they will be able to drive or whether they will be able to encircle Ukrainian forces in large numbers.
Russian forces on the Izyum axis likely benefit from the absence of prepared Ukrainian defensive positions against attacks from the Kharkiv direction toward Donbas. Ukraine has prepared to defend the line of contact with Russian-occupied Donbas since 2014, and Russian troops continue to struggle to penetrate those prepared defenses—as shown by repeated Russian efforts to take Avdiivka, just north of Donetsk City, or to advance through Popasna, just beyond the original line of contact.
Russian troops continued to attack Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol, including in the Azovstal Plant, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims that there is no more fighting in the city. Ukrainian forces likely still hold important positions beyond the plant itself, and Russian forces continue to fight outside the plant, bomb the plant, and assault positions near the plant. Putin’s order not to chase Ukrainian defenders into the tunnels and catacombs of the facility evidently did not preclude continued efforts to secure at least the entire perimeter of the plant and likely also the important M14 highway that runs along it to the north and northwest.
Russia is staging false-flag attacks in Transnistria, Moldova, likely setting conditions for further actions on that front. The two motorized rifle battalions Russia has illegally maintained in Transnistria since the end of the Cold War are not likely sufficient to mount a credible attack on Odesa by themselves, nor are the Russians likely to be able to reinforce them enough to allow them to do so. They could support more limited attacks to the northwest of Odesa, possibly causing panic and creating psychological effects to benefit Russian operations in the south of Ukraine.
Russia may also seek to destabilize Moldova itself, however. Comments by the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic and other Russian officials and proxies raise the possibility that Putin might recognize the self-styled Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) in Transnistria as he recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The PMR could then ask for additional Russian protection, and Putin could attempt to send some additional forces or capabilities to Transnistria. Any such activities would greatly raise tensions and fears in Moldova and neighboring Romania, putting additional pressure on NATO, possibly giving Putin a cheap “win,” and distracting from Russia’s slog in eastern Ukraine.
Continued indications that Russian forces intend to hold referenda to establish “people’s republics” in occupied areas of southern Ukraine raise the possibility that Putin intends to unveil an array of new “independent” “people’s republics” as part of a Victory Day celebration. The forecast cone is wide, and there is as yet no solid basis to assess one path as much more likely than another. But the false-flag attacks and Russian and Russian proxy reactions to them are alarming, and it behooves NATO and the West to consider the most dangerous courses of action and prepare to meet them.
Key Takeaways
  • Russian forces continue to make slow but steady progress south from Izyum and northwest of Rubizhne, but Russian offensive operations elsewhere along the line in eastern Ukraine remain unsuccessful.
  • Fighting continues in Mariupol, where Ukrainian defenders apparently still hold positions beyond the Azovstal Plant.
  • Russia and/or Russian proxies have staged false-flag attacks in Russian-occupied Transnistria, possibly to threaten a (very likely unsuccessful) attack on Odesa, possibly to destabilize Moldova.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
  • Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
  • Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
  • Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
  • Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued ground and air assaults against remaining Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol on April 26 but were unsuccessful in storming the Azovstal Steel Plant.[1] Donetsk Oblast Administration Head Pavlo Kyrylenko said that Russian forces launched 35 airstrikes at Azovstal on April 26, which resulted in a fire at one of the plant’s shops.[2] Russian President Vladimir Putin nevertheless falsely claimed that all fighting has ceased in “liberated” Mariupol in a telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.[3] Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushchenko stated that any Russian claims of humanitarian corridors for evacuation from Azovstal are a ”trap.”[4] Footage of continuing Russian tanks shooting at residential and commercial buildings outside the Azovstal Steel Plant indicates that Ukrainian defenders likely still hold positions beyond the boundaries of the Azovstal plant proper.[5]

Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to shell the entire frontline in Donetsk and Luhansk and made marginal advances during ground offensives on April 26.[6] The General Staff stated that Russian efforts are focused on taking Rubizhne, Popasna, and Marinka, where intense fighting is ongoing.[7] Forces of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) militia claimed to have taken control of Rubtsi and Yatskivka, located on the administrative border between Donetsk and Kharkiv Oblasts.[8] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that elements of the 90th Guards Tank Division of the Central Military District are moving in the direction of Kreminna.[9] Head of Luhansk Regional State Administration Serhiy Haidai notably claimed that top-level LNR leadership and collaborator elements were killed in a suspected gas explosion during a meeting in Kreminna on April 25.[10] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally noted that elements of the 12th Separate Guards Engineering Brigade of the Central Military District are operating in the direction of Severodonetsk.[11]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast; defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to the Izyum axis)
Russian forces continued ground offensives south of Izyum in the directions of Barvinkove and Slovyansk.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army, 20th Combined Arms Army, 35th Combined Arms Army, and 68th Army Corps are making measured advances in the direction of Barvinkove, about 50 kilometers southwest of Izyum.[13] A Pro-Russian source claimed that Russian naval infantry units are operating in the direction of Slovyansk, about 50 kilometers southeast of Izyum.[14] The Pro-Russian source additionally claimed that Ukrainian defenders are holding Dovhenke, which is the last settlement in Kharkiv Oblast in the Slovyansk direction. The Izyum- Barvinkove and Izyum-Slovyansk advances are likely meant to drive toward the administrative borders of Donetsk in order to merge offensives south of Izyum with offensives on the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Barvinkove and Slovyansk are on different roads leading south from Izyum.
The objective of the Russian advance toward Barvinkove is not immediately obvious, as it leads Russian troops further away from their comrades pushing on Slovyansk. The road continues southeast from Barvinkove to the Donetsk Oblast boundary, however, and it is possible that Russian forces from the Izyum axis are meant to take up positions along much of the boundary to support claims that Russia has “secured the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts” even if the Russians have not actually secured the entire oblast itself. These advances could also be intended to conduct a deep encirclement of Ukrainian forces to the east as well, although it is far from clear that the Russian troops assigned to this advance are strong enough to accomplish such a task.
Elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army and the Baltic and Northern Fleets maintained a partial blockade of Kharkiv City and continued shelling settlements around Kharkiv City and throughout Kharkiv Oblast on April 26.[15]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to shell the entire line of contact on the Southern Axis and are carrying out ground offensives in the direction of Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih.[16] Russian forces are reportedly forcing residents of Velyka Oleksandrivka (roughly 15 kilometers from the Kherson-Mykolaiv administrative border) to evacuate their homes.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported that Russian forces suffered losses in the towns of Novodmytrivka and Bilousove, both within 20 kilometers of the Kherson-Mykolaiv administrative border.[18] The Russian presence in areas near the border likely indicates preparation for an offensive in the direction of Mykolaiv. Russian missiles hit Odesa, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv on April 26.[19] The mayor of Melitopol claimed on April 25 that Russian forces are blocking men from leaving the city and forcing them to mobilize into the Russian army.[20]

Russian forces likely conducted additional false flag attacks in the illegally-occupied territory of Transnistria on April 25-26. In addition to the grenade attack on the Transnistrian Internal Affairs Ministry that ISW reported on April 25, explosions were reported in Percani and Maiac on April 26.[21] Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin claimed that the explosions necessitate the next stage of the Russian military operation for the benefit of Transnistria and similar Russian border regions.[22] The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) claimed on April 26 that Russia is likely preparing an attack on Transnistrian civilians and that the explosions were planned provocations by the Russian FSB to ”instill panic and anti-Ukrainian" sentiment.[23] The GUR stated that Russia may wish to involve Transnistria in the war in Ukraine either to capitalize on Transnistrian reserve forces or to launch attacks on Ukraine from Transnistrian territory.[24] The recent activity in Transnistria is consistent with earlier reports that the airbase at Tiraspol was likely preparing for Russian aircraft on April 6 and 7.[25]

Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
Russian forces shelled areas in Sumy Oblast near the Russian border between April 23 and 26. The Ukrainian Border Guard reported that Russian forces fired over 15 times at five different settlements in Sumy on April 26.[26] Head of the Sumy Regional State Administration Dmytro Zhyvystkyy previously stated that Russian forces carried out “provocative shelling” of communities on the border with Russia on April 23.[27]
Immediate items to watch
  • Russian forces will likely continue attacking southeast from Izyum, west from Kreminna and Popasna, and north from Donetsk City via Avdiivka or another axis.
  • Russian forces will likely attempt to starve out the remaining defenders of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol and will not allow trapped civilians to evacuate.
  • Russia may continue false-flag attacks in and around Transnistria or might move to generate a more serious crisis in Transnistria and Moldova more generally.

[3] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/68283
[14] https://t dot me/sashakots/31791
[17] https://t dot me/denisovaombudsman/5457
[20] https://www dot ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3467251-russia-intends-to-forcibly-mobilize-men-in-ukraines-melitopol.html 46.85599080336098, 35.3628264302217; https://iz dot ru/1326428/2022-04-26/pushilin-prizval-uchest-pridnestrove-pri-sleduiushchikh-etapakh-spetcoperatcii ; https://military.pravda dot ru/news/1702502-dnr_pushilin_specoperacija/
[22] https://iz dot ru/1326428/2022-04-26/pushilin-prizval-uchest-pridnestrove-pri-sleduiushchikh-etapakh-spetcoperatcii ; https://military.pravda dot ru/news/1702502-dnr_pushilin_specoperacija/
[25] https://www dot mvdpmr.org/povyshaia-professionalizm-zk/37574-ucheniya-v-sobre-terroristy-obezvrezheny.htmlhttps://www.pravda dot com.ua/rus/news/2022/04/6/7337692/https://www.eurointegration dot com.ua/rus/news/2022/04/6/7137359/https://www.ukrinform dot ua/rubric-ato/3451503-ukrainska-ppo-zbivatime-vijskovi-litaki-rf-pri-sprobi-potrapiti-do-pridnistrova-genstab.html
[27] https://t dot me/Zhyvytskyy/1759



2. Roots of the Resistance: Understanding National Identity in Ukraine

Excerpts:
Ukrainian citizens’ strong rejection of the Russian occupation spotlights how Russia’s war in Ukraine is one of attempted imperial expansion and certainly not one of national reunification. And, while imperial powers can adopt different techniques to rule their conquered territories, Russia’s current rhetoric and actions suggest that any Ukrainians in territory conquered by Russia will be subject to Russian attempts to extirpate their Ukrainian identity. In this regard, the Russian occupiers are likely to go even further than they did in Donbas, where the teaching of Ukrainian language has almost been wiped out. Indeed, the banning of symbols of Ukrainian identity, outlawing of Ukrainian language instruction in schools, and the covering historical narratives in the media and in education that fit Putin’s distorted version of the facts are likely to compose key elements of Russian occupation.
This kind of authoritarian rule is exactly the type of scenario Timur Kuran envisioned when he developed the idea of preference falsification. Given the possibility of harsh repression or even death under Putin’s regime, Ukrainians who currently share their opinions freely with the world will likely be forced to falsify their preferences under Russian occupation if Putin is able to consolidate his rule.

Roots of the Resistance: Understanding National Identity in Ukraine - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Aaron Erlich · April 27, 2022
Were Ukrainians sending signals to the world prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion that they believed, as Putin does, that they and Russians were part of “one people?” In the aftermath of the first stage of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, reporting has emerged that Russia expected to quickly win the war and consolidate its military victory by coopting local elected officials and citizens, who were expected to rejoice in or at least countenance Russian occupation. Social science research from a broad range of scholars conducted prior to Russia’s invasion, however, did not support Russia’s expectations and rather suggested that Ukrainians would strongly oppose Russian occupation and feel loyalty to Ukraine.
Why pro-Kremlin forces believed they could count on broad popular support in Ukraine has sparked speculation and debate among politicians and pundits alike. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview with Russian television, accused Viktor Medvedchuk, a leader of the pro-Russian opposition in Ukraine, of encouraging Russian authorities to believe that there was widespread underlying support among Ukrainians for Russia’s purported liberation. Others have suggested that Putin was misled by oligarchs and “yes men” close to him. Yet another option is that Russia’s FSB security agency, which itself commissioned surveys in Ukraine, cherry-picked survey results that fit its narrative. They also potentially misunderstood how polling in a democracy is different than in an autocracy like Russia.
Regardless of who convinced Putin and his supporters, clearly, Russian decision-makers were severely misled about Ukrainian support for their military ambitions. Indeed, Ukrainian citizens have volunteered to take up arms en masse, and, overwhelmingly, support the war effort.
It is important to understand that the source of this resistance comes from the majority of Ukrainians’ civic identification with Ukraine and loyalty to the Ukrainian state, regardless of the language they speak or their ethnic heritage. Ukrainian patriotism is not a recent phenomenon and not predominantly a product of a rally round the flag. Moreover, it is important to highlight that social science research, including my own, provided strong evidence that Ukrainians did not support unification with or occupation by Russia prior to the invasion. Indeed, Ukrainian identity was already strong and likely getting stronger.
There existed, prior to Russia’s invasion, a large body of survey evidence that demonstrated that Ukrainians did not support a closer relationship with Russia. For example, the political scientists Graeme Robertson and Grigor Pop-Eleches, in examining changes before and after the Euromaidan revolution and ensuing Russian invasion that began in 2014, explicitly asked Ukrainian survey respondents at two points in time (2012 and 2015) whether they saw “Ukraine,” “Russia,” “the USSR,” or “a region of Ukraine” as their homeland. They found a vanishingly small percentage of people chose “Russia,” and this was true both in 2012 and 2015. Moreover, they found that between 2012 and 2015, the percentage that said “Ukraine” increased 11 percentage points from the already high 80 percent to 91 percent, mainly at the expense of those who had responded that the USSR was their homeland. This increase occurred despite the fact that the percentage of respondents who spoke Russian at home remained stable at approximately 30 percent over the same time period (with another 20 percent speaking both Ukrainian and Russian). The research also found a large drop in support between 2012 and 2015 for a customs union with Russia across both Ukraine’s linguistic and ethnic divides, suggesting that, when asked to state their explicit preference, most Ukrainians did not support closer ties with Russia after the invasion of Donbas in 2014. Indeed, as Siamak Tundra Naficy wrote recently, Putin may have “overlooked the utility of violence and war in remaking identities,” a process that has been at work in Ukraine for seven years now.
Despite this evidence, Russian policy-makers could potentially have argued that asking Ukrainians what they believed prior to the Russian invasion did not yield valid insight because Ukrainians may have been hiding their true opinions due to pressure from the West and its allies in Ukraine to hold certain beliefs. To investigate whether this explanation is realistic, it is necessary to introduce two terms used in survey research to explain the ways in which citizens’ stated beliefs may differ from their true beliefs and to examine whether these mechanisms were at play in Ukraine.
The first term is “preference falsification,” which the noted social scientist Timur Kuran developed to discuss citizens’ support for authoritarian regimes. Kuran distinguished between the views that citizens state in public and those they state in private. He argued that the prevailing mood of a country might lead citizens to say they supported the regime in public but privately state that they were opposed to it. In the case of Ukraine, if respondents were falsifying their preferences, they would state in public that they supported an independent Ukraine but in the privacy of their own homes might tell their neighbors or close friends that they supported reunification with Russia or the recreation of the USSR. If preference falsification was at play, then, as soon as Russia took over Ukrainian territory, these citizens would no longer need to falsify their preferences and could openly state they supported Russia’s occupation.
This theory of preference falsification, however, assumes an authoritarian (or at least non-pluralistic) state where survey respondents do not feel comfortable sharing their true policy positions in public due to fear of politically motivated repercussions. Given that Ukraine is a democracy where wide-ranging opinions, even about topics considered sensitive in North America, are often publicly shared, ample reason exists to question whether citizens would feel the need to falsify their publicly stated preferences. There are, of course, other reasons survey respondents might not share their private views with a survey interviewer. For example, respondents may want to give what they think is a socially desirable answer, even if they are not afraid of the political repercussions of stating their true opinion. But increasingly surveys in Ukraine and around the world are carried out online, which provides respondents more anonymity to share their opinions even if they may not be popular. Nevertheless, the concern about private and public preferences remains an important one.
Even if it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why respondents’ private preferences might differ from ones they publicly espouse on surveys, there exists a wide variety of techniques in the social sciences designed to elicit respondents’ true private preferences by shielding these responses from the survey interviewer. In several research projects I have conducted in Ukraine, I have used these techniques to examine respondents’ opinions across a wide variety of topics, such as corruption — a hot-button issue in Ukraine — or voting for female politicians. I have not found any evidence of Ukrainians hiding their privately held preferences. While these studies were not specifically about Ukrainians’ preferences regarding Russia, they do support the position that, unless given overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we should take Ukrainians at their word and not believe that preference falsification is at play when examining their expression of public opinion.
The second term is “dissociation.” According to this concept, individuals may implicitly (at a subconscious level) have an underlying predisposition for a policy or course of action even if they explicitly state support, be it publicly or privately, for a different policy. If this had been the case prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion, while Ukrainians might have explicitly stated that they did not support integration with Russia or the Russian occupation of Ukraine, their underlying subconscious processes might suggest that they would support such an outcome. Given the Russian-backed war in Donetsk and Luhansk starting in 2014, dissociation could potentially have become more salient because while subconsciously Ukrainians may have felt positively towards Russia, they may have felt the need to explicitly state a pro-Ukraine position because their government was fighting a war against Russian-backed separatists in Donbas.
Researchers in psychology have developed a range of tests to investigate these implicit preferences, and these tools have been increasingly used in the field of political science. In a study I recently published with Calvin Garner in the journal International Studies Quarterly, based on data primarily from 2015, we set out to empirically test the idea that Ukrainian citizens were dissociating between what they said explicitly and how they implicitly felt. We focused on running these studies in the east of the country in Kharkiv, Kherson, and Odesa, where attitudes towards Russia were particularly geopolitically important. We also conducted the study in Kyiv.
To get at Ukrainians’ implicit attitudes, we used a technique called the implicit association test, examples of which readers can take online. Implicit association tests ask respondents to associate many words with a given category (“Ukraine” or “Russia” in our study) or a given attribute (positive or negative in our study). In the test, a word that is associated either with a category or an attribute is shown in the middle of the screen, while the corresponding categories or attributes are shown in the upper two corners. For example, a user might see category word like “Suffering” in the middle of the screen, and “Russia or Negative” in the upper left and “Ukraine or Positive” in the upper right. (In other tasks “Russia” will be paired with “Positive” and Ukraine with “Negative”). The respondent is asked to use specific keys on the keyboard to associate the word in the middle of the screen with the relevant category-attribute combination as quickly as possible. The computer tracks the time respondents take to carry out each of the many association tasks, generating a metric referred to as the response latency. The validity of the implicit-association test comes from the fact that if a respondent does not associate the word in the middle with the combination of a category (e.g., Russia) in combination with the attribute (e.g., Negative) listed on the same side of the screen, then the respondent will be much slower in choosing the side of the screen to which the word in the middle belongs. In our example, respondents will be slower to associate “Suffering” from the middle of the screen with “Russia or Negative” if they view Russia positively. Each respondent’s implicit bias toward either Ukraine or Russia is the standardized performance difference (known as the “IAT d-score”) between that respondent’s response latencies on blocks where the negative attribute is paired with Ukraine and the positive attribute with Russia and blocks where the negative attribute is paired with Russia and positive attribute with Ukraine.
In addition to the implicit association test, we also asked respondents to explicitly tell us whether they felt positively or negatively toward Ukraine and Russia. Getting measurements of both explicit and implicit attitudes allows us to quantitatively measure whether pro-Russian dissociation was occurring. If we saw a lot of bias toward Russia on the implicit test, but heard little explicit support for Russia, that would suggest that Ukrainians either did not feel they could admit to “pro-Russian views” or were subconsciously predisposed toward Russia. But that is not what we found. Across all the cities in which we ran the study, we found that the majority of respondents were both implicitly and explicitly pro-Ukraine. And there was very little evidence of large-scale dissociation — that is, people’s explicit and implicit attitudes coincided. This study provides even more evidence that Ukrainians did not harbor underlying pro-Russian predispositions that Russians simply had to expose by invading the country.
In summary, Russia grossly mis-assessed the level of support a Russian invasion would receive from the Ukrainian population. Their assumptions were not supported by contemporary social science research, which has found that Ukrainians strongly supported their homeland before the Russian-back war in Donbas, which started in 2014, and did so even more after 2014. Russia’s current invasion has only further strengthened Ukrainian national cohesion and sense of identity.
Ukrainian citizens’ strong rejection of the Russian occupation spotlights how Russia’s war in Ukraine is one of attempted imperial expansion and certainly not one of national reunification. And, while imperial powers can adopt different techniques to rule their conquered territories, Russia’s current rhetoric and actions suggest that any Ukrainians in territory conquered by Russia will be subject to Russian attempts to extirpate their Ukrainian identity. In this regard, the Russian occupiers are likely to go even further than they did in Donbas, where the teaching of Ukrainian language has almost been wiped out. Indeed, the banning of symbols of Ukrainian identity, outlawing of Ukrainian language instruction in schools, and the covering historical narratives in the media and in education that fit Putin’s distorted version of the facts are likely to compose key elements of Russian occupation.
This kind of authoritarian rule is exactly the type of scenario Timur Kuran envisioned when he developed the idea of preference falsification. Given the possibility of harsh repression or even death under Putin’s regime, Ukrainians who currently share their opinions freely with the world will likely be forced to falsify their preferences under Russian occupation if Putin is able to consolidate his rule.
Aaron Erlich is an assistant professor of political science at McGill University where he is a member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.
warontherocks.com · by Aaron Erlich · April 27, 2022



3. Some Clausewitzian Thoughts on the Ukrainian Defense


Clausewitz will always be relevant - his "intellectual software" stands the test of time. And the human domain remains the most important.

Excerpt:

It is unsurprising that the defensive power of people today looks remarkably similar to the way Clausewitz described it, because humans are still human.

Conclusion:

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be unsatisfied with the extent of international support, in terms of ammunition and assistance, Ukraine has still successfully marshaled the means to conduct its defense. Although Clausewitz’s view of the defense may seem antiquated or too particular to his time, a more modern reading unlocks the potential. The continued ability of Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion is a textbook example of the means of the defense in action. The population has taken up arms, from AK-47s to tractors, and urban combat has entailed deadly sacrifice, information about which has been flooding social media and the internet, prompting allies to supply arms as well as cooperate to punish Russia economically. If Clausewitz were here to observe and was given a few moments to calibrate to tanks and TikTok, none of the dynamics underlying the inspired Ukrainian defense would surprise him. The intellectual software he provides us remains just as valuable as it was when it was written almost two hundred years ago.

Some Clausewitzian Thoughts on the Ukrainian Defense - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Olivia Garard · April 25, 2022
Much of the analysis on the Russian invasion of Ukraine has focused on the Russians. Why did analysts overestimate the strength of the Russian forces? Why is the Russian military performing so poorly? Why did Vladimir Putin miscalculate? The list goes on.
This article seeks to answer none of these questions. Instead, it sets out to reorient focus onto the Ukrainians. In doing so, it reveals a fundamental reason why they have been successful so far: because they have been fighting on defense.
According to Carl von Clausewitz, not only is the defensive form of warfare stronger than its attacking counterpart, but the defense also has access to additional means. These means arise out of the structure of the defense itself and are uniquely afforded to the defender. Enumerated in book six, chapter six of On War, the means include the Landwehr, fortresses, the people, the people in arms, and allies. Observing through the fog, it seems that not only has Ukraine valiantly used all of these means to its advantage, but also in a way that helps to elucidate how these means operate today.
Briefly, the defense is about awaiting the chance to strike. The attack, by contrast, chooses when to strike, but not exactly where. The defender is defending something—in this case the territorial integrity of the state of Ukraine—and that something is not completely up to the attacker. The Russians may have debated along which avenues of approach to attack Ukraine, but they ultimately had to end up somewhat southwest, where Ukraine is located. While seemingly trivial, much of the strength of defense emerges from this very fact—that the defender already exists somewhere.
As we cast a provisional glance at the war between Russia and Ukraine, we can see the dynamics of the defense in action, especially with respect to the additional means afforded to the defender. While Clausewitz’s view on the defense is mesmerizingly rich—it comprises nearly a quarter of On War—we will limit our glance to a view of the means themselves: the Landwehr, fortresses, the people, the people in arms, and allies.
First, the Landwehr, literally land defense, was an important Prussian reform that emerged in the wake of catastrophic defeat in 1806 to Napoleon at the Battles of Jena and Auerstedt. The Landwehr was a component of the Prussian response to the French employment of the levée en masse, intended as a way to generate more military capacity. While these forces can be used in the attack, they are more valuable to the defense because of moral forces, like patriotism. In order to appeal to these particular forces, the Landwehr’s use is generally circumscribed to a local area. Today, Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces are akin to the Landwehr. While the Territorial Defense Forces may be united with regular military forces, their use is intentionally local. Like the Landwehr, they comprise a formal system that enables citizens to defend their homes.
Fortresses provide the defense with a kind of “immovable means” that, as fixed prepared defensive positions, often factor into an adversary’s decision. As Clausewitz wrote in his Two Letters on Strategy, the strategic effectiveness of a position depends on how it affects the adversary’s decision. An attacking force can bypass a position “without regard to the enemy being left behind,” but if the attacking force must outflank the position, then the position has determined, in some part, the attacking force’s dispositions. Additionally, in the chapter on fortresses, Clausewitz demonstrates the synergy between social and local conditions. Fortresses provide “indirect protection of the country, which they secure by their strategic importance as knots which hold together the strategic web.” They actively protect the place, while also possessing “a certain influence over the adjacent country, even beyond the range of its guns.” Fortresses may seem obsolete today, but in the sense that Clausewitz described them, they have functionally been replaced by modern military bases or urban centers. Both provide advantages to the defender and influence beyond the weapon systems within. Kyiv, among other cities, has withstood the Russian sieges. The difficulties of modern urban combat have only amplified this structural defensive advantage.
The people contain a wellspring of moral strength for the defensive. Clausewitz observes, in a quote oddly reminiscent of Sun Tzu, that the influence of the individual is imperceptible, because it is mixed in like “the cooperation of a drop of water in a whole river.” The influence accumulates and collectively the people create a kind of atmospheric resistance. Additionally, Clausewitz shrewdly notes that since the state already maintains a certain level of control over its own population, it can increase assistance “through the long-used channels of submission to the State on the part of the citizens.” Still, the most important contribution of the people is intelligence. This is not “special, great and important information” acquired by spies, but “the innumerable little matters in connection with which the daily service of an army is carried on in uncertainty.”
It is unsurprising that the defensive power of people today looks remarkably similar to the way Clausewitz described it, because humans are still human. What has changed is how technology interfaces with people at scale and at speed. Ukrainians developed apps to leverage locals well versed in patterns of life by providing a means to observe and report on what is happening in their hometowns. What Clausewitz identified as a latent distributed surveillance network, digital technology has scaled, accelerated, amplified, and distributed. Clausewitz certainly could not have foreseen the internet or social media, but he did identify the value of what we call today open-source intelligence by noting how the power of accumulating small facts, rather than great spy-worthy insights, provides a cascading means for the defender. The informational strength of the Ukrainian people has been exceptional, generating moral support, international solidarity with Ukraine, and condemnation of Russia, in addition to information of tactical value.
As the people become more and more involved in the war, however, their role is transformed. It becomes “chiefly a War carried on by the people themselves.” Clausewitz recognized the potential of this “new power,” whereby the popular sentiment of resistance converts into forcible resistance. Detailed in chapter twenty-six of book six, “Arming the Nation,” Clausewitz outlines the components of guerrilla warfare. He describes these forces as being like a “mist,” and writes that they should “collect at some points into denser masses, and form threatening clouds from which now and again a formidable flash of lightning may burst forth.” As a kind of “nebulous vapoury essence” these insurgents can persistently threaten an enemy’s flanks and lines of communication. The potential threat of a long and persistent insurgency remains a potent force. The tactics may vary, from farmers towing tanks to citizens preparing Molotov cocktails, but the purpose remains the same—harassment.
Lastly, there are defensive allies. Unlike the adversary, who is, at least, predictably adversarial, everyone else is undetermined as to whether they will be friendly, neutral, or adversarial. Defensive allies are not ordinary, Clausewitz notes, because they are “essentially interested in maintaining the land of another.” They are not like the allies an attacker may have because the interest of defensive allies derives from the conditions of the form of warfare itself. Ordinary allies, on the other hand, are only “the result of special or accidental conditions.” While the United Nations vote on the resolution to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not indicative of actual Ukrainian allies, it does demonstrate the difference in demonstrative support for the defender versus the abstention or tacit approval for the attacker. Defensive allies emerge out of concern from how the potential loss of the attacked state reverberates to the global community’s “interwoven” connections. When the map changes, the facts change. While the defensive allies’ essential interest is a kind of enlightened self-interest, it is one that is integrated into the strength of the defense as a whole.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be unsatisfied with the extent of international support, in terms of ammunition and assistance, Ukraine has still successfully marshaled the means to conduct its defense. Although Clausewitz’s view of the defense may seem antiquated or too particular to his time, a more modern reading unlocks the potential. The continued ability of Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion is a textbook example of the means of the defense in action. The population has taken up arms, from AK-47s to tractors, and urban combat has entailed deadly sacrifice, information about which has been flooding social media and the internet, prompting allies to supply arms as well as cooperate to punish Russia economically. If Clausewitz were here to observe and was given a few moments to calibrate to tanks and TikTok, none of the dynamics underlying the inspired Ukrainian defense would surprise him. The intellectual software he provides us remains just as valuable as it was when it was written almost two hundred years ago.
Olivia A. Garard served as an active duty officer in the US Marine Corps from 2014 to 2020. She holds a bachelor of arts in philosophy from Princeton University and a master of arts in war studies from King’s College London, and is currently studying at St. John’s College. She recently published her first book, An Annotated Guide to Tactics: Carl von Clausewitz’s Theory of the Combat (Marine Corps University Press, 2021). She tweets at @teaandtactics.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: palinchak, via depositphotos.com
mwi.usma.edu · by Olivia Garard · April 25, 2022


4. Russia reports blasts in south that Ukraine calls payback for invasion

Sabotage? Missile attacks? Are the Ukrainians taking the fight to Russia? 

Will this take away some Russian freedom of movement on their own territory and help reduce the effectiveness of their interior lines which provide an advantage for the war in Eastern Ukraine.

Karma is a ....
Russia reports blasts in south that Ukraine calls payback for invasion
Reuters · by Reuters
April 27 (Reuters) - Series of blasts were heard in the early hours of Wednesday in three Russian provinces bordering Ukraine, authorities said, and an ammunition depot in the Belgorod province caught fire around the same time.
Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a fire at the ammunition depot near the Staraya Nelidovka village had been extinguished and no civilians have been injured.
Russia this month accused Ukraine of attacking a fuel depot in Belgorod with helicopters and opening fire on several villages in the province.

The Belgorod province borders Ukraine's Luhansk, Sumy and Kharkiv regions, all of which have seen heavy fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago.
Separately, Roman Starovoyt, the governor of Russia's Kursk province, which also borders Ukraine, said that explosions had been heard in Kursk city early on Wednesday which were most likely the sounds of air defence systems firing.
In Voronezh, the administrative centre of another province adjacent to Ukraine, Russia's TASS news agency cited an emergencies ministry official as saying that two blasts had been heard and the authorities were investigating.
Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a "special operation" to degrade its military capabilities and root out what it calls dangerous nationalists. Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.

Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Tom Hogue, Jacqueline Wong and Kim Coghill
Reuters · by Reuters



5. Blasts reported in 3 Russian regions bordering Ukraine


Blasts reported in 3 Russian regions bordering Ukraine 
From Svitlana Budzhak-Jones and Hannah Ritchie
Blasts were heard early Wednesday in three Russian regions bordering Ukraine, local authorities and Russian state media reported.
The depot fire in Belgorod: The blast was followed by a fire at the ammunition depot in the village of Staraya Nelidovka, about 10 miles north of the Ukrainian border, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram on Wednesday. He added that there were “no casualties among civilians.”
Explosions in Kursk: In the region of Kursk, residents “heard explosions” around 2:45 a.m. local time. The governor, Roman Starovoyt, said the details surrounding the explosions are still "being clarified," but that there were no casualties or destruction.
The Kursk explosions come just two days after two Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian air defense crews in the region's village of Borovskoye, according to Starovoyt. 
Bangs heard at dawn in Voronezh: Two loud bangs were heard by residents in the Shilovo neighborhood of the Russian city Voronezh at 4:40 a.m., according to Russian state media TASS, citing authorities. 
"A civil defense and emergency response team and a team of the Russian Emergencies Ministry are currently at the site of the incident. An Investigative Committee official is about to arrive," a district civil defense and emergency official reportedly told TASS.
Voronezh is located roughly 200 miles from the Ukrainian border and is a major military and transport hub. 
Russian officials have repeatedly accused Ukraine of mounting cross-border attacks on fuel depots and military installations, claims which Ukrainian government agencies say are intended to stoke "anti-Ukrainian sentiment."
CNN could not independently confirm that there was no damage to residential buildings, or that there were no civilian casualties following Wednesday’s explosions.


6. U.S., Ukraine, and Neutrality Law | SOF News

Excellent analysis from the Congressional Research Service. Thank you to SOF News for flagging it.

U.S., Ukraine, and Neutrality Law | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · April 27, 2022
Is there a difference between providing defensive vs. offensive weapons to Ukraine when it comes to international neutrality laws? Not really. At least, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service entitled International Neutrality Law and U.S. Military Assistance to Ukraine. The United States, the European Union (EU), and other nations have supplied many forms of security assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022. Many of these weapons have been defensive in nature – anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles, body armor, helmets, and medical supplies.
The provision of more ‘offensive weapons’ such as tanks, armored personnel vehicles, and assault helicopters has been taken place in recent weeks. This, despite strident warnings by Russia and the threats of a nuclear response. Russia is accusing the United States and other nations of being belligerents to the conflict.
International neutrality law defines a country not taking part in an international armed conflict as a neutral state and one engaged in a conflict as a belligerent. The international agreements that were drafted over 100 years ago state the neutral states cannot provide ammunition or war material of any kind to belligerents.
Scholars are describing the traditional law of neutrality as one that does not work well in the new age of warfare. Some countries have adopted the doctrine of qualified neutrality; where states can take non-neutral acts when supporting the victim of an unlawful war of aggression (such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine). 20th century developments have overtaken some aspects of the law of neutrality. The United Nations charter weighs in on this issue – and lends justification to the concept of qualified neutrality. Modern international law, according to some scholars, allow for an intermediate position in which countries can actively assist victims of unlawful wars.
Neutrality law does not distinguish between defensive and offensive weapons. In any event the qualified neutrality doctrine would seem to give the United States the ability to provide defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine without being classified as a belligerent. The Congressional Research Service report cited above explains this in greater detail.
International Neutrality Law and U.S. Military Assistance to Ukraine, CRS, April 26, 2022, PDF, 5 pages.


7. The US needs a new approach to producing weapons. Just look at Ukraine.

Excerpt:

The war in Ukraine has highlighted lethality of modern precision weapons on the battlefield, but also the fragility of the current munitions base. The United States cannot enter the next war with inadequate stocks of precision munitions, nor would it be acceptable to cut off allies from resupply in order to husband limited stockpiles for its own defense. Rather, the United States needs to work with its close allies to both increase their collective munitions stockpiles and production capacity while also adopting innovative approaches to munitions production.
The US needs a new approach to producing weapons. Just look at Ukraine.
Defense News · by Thomas G. Mahnken · April 26, 2022
The war in Ukraine has offered vivid testimony of the effectiveness, and the high usage rate, of modern precision weapons. Ukraine has so far been fortunate to receive a massive supply of such munitions from the United States, Britain and other NATO states.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Congress the West has delivered 60,000 antitank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Kyiv. Weapons such as the Javelin anti-tank guided weapon and Stinger surface-to-air missile played an important role in halting Moscow’s initial offensive and forced the Russian leadership to scale back its expansive objectives. However, it has become increasingly apparent such weapons are neither cheap nor available in unlimited numbers. Indeed, the United States has reportedly provided Kyiv one-third of its overall stockpile of Javelins.
Unless things change, and soon, the United States may be far less fortunate in a future conflict. Put bluntly, although the United States and its allies have been able to resupply Ukraine, the United States cannot count on similar help should the roles be reversed. U.S. allies’ stocks of precision weapons are limited, and they may have an urgent need for these munitions in a future coalition conflict.
The United States will also need large numbers of longer-range weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile – Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) that are not as widely available as the Javelin and Stinger are today. It is thus imperative for the United States and its allies to both increase their munitions capacity and adopt innovative approaches to munitions production.
The war in Ukraine is but the most recent reminder that 21st century warfare is munitions intensive. As NATO found out in its 2011 air campaign over Libya, and as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates discovered in their war against the Houthis in Yemen, military operations against even relatively unsophisticated adversaries can require the use of large quantities of precision weapons. As recently as 2015, the U.S. Air Force ran dangerously low on Hellfire air-launched missiles in its campaign against ISIS.
The effectiveness of precision weaponry against invading Russian forces has been impressive but has also highlighted the fact that the current U.S. munitions infrastructure is not robust enough to support a high-intensity, protracted conflict against a major adversary such as Russia or China. In fact, in 2019 the Congressionally-mandated National Defense Strategy panel warned of the inadequacy of the current munitions base and highlighted the need to expand and sustain it.
Similarly, the requirement for greater investment in munitions is a recurring finding of wargames and strategic choices exercises that the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has conducted over the course of years. The current U.S. munitions production base lacks capacity, and manufacturing methods are not always tailored to the needs of 21st century warfare. For example, it reportedly takes 18-24 months to manufacture a production run of Stinger missiles. Too often, the capacity of the industrial base rests on second-tier suppliers with even more limited capacity and supply chains that are vulnerable to disruption.
The United States should consider its munitions requirements in coordination with key allies and partners. The United States needs to do more to meet its own munitions needs but may also need to supply allies with large numbers of munitions as well. It is in America’s interest to have sufficient munitions capacity to be able to supply frontline states without having to draw down its own stocks to perilously low levels. Some U.S. allies, such as Australia, are making considerable investments to build up their own munitions industry, but more needs to be done.
The Defense Department needs to analyze U.S. and allied munitions requirements for 21st century warfare, both for Ukraine and beyond. The ongoing war with Russia offers a valuable set of data, but a war against China may have very different requirements: the need for many long-range weapons, for example, as well as for lots of anti-ship missiles. How many munitions do we and our allies require, and of what type? To what extent must our current production capacity be expanded to meet that demand? How many munitions and of what types need to be stockpiled, and what sort of surge production capacity is needed on top of that? Would it make sense to stockpile certain long-lead-time components, such as seekers, and if so, where?
Transforming the U.S. munitions base will take time and investment and would benefit from innovative approaches to yield greater capability and capacity while reducing unit cost. The need to expand the munitions base offers an excellent opportunity to bring new firms into the defense industrial base. The task of fielding modern precision weapons is much more achievable than, say, building a next-generation combat aircraft, and new entrants can bring innovative design and manufacturing approaches to the table, such as modular or multi-mission designs. The Defense Department should also consider innovative approaches to precision weapons, such as the adoption of loitering munitions and guided projectiles that can be purchased in large numbers at low cost for both offensive and defensive missions.
The war in Ukraine has highlighted lethality of modern precision weapons on the battlefield, but also the fragility of the current munitions base. The United States cannot enter the next war with inadequate stocks of precision munitions, nor would it be acceptable to cut off allies from resupply in order to husband limited stockpiles for its own defense. Rather, the United States needs to work with its close allies to both increase their collective munitions stockpiles and production capacity while also adopting innovative approaches to munitions production.
Thomas G. Mahnken is president and chief executive officer of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a senior research professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.


8. Going Underground: Ukraine’s Subterranean Fighters Highlight the Benefit – and Long History – of Tunnels in Warfare



“In difficult ground, press on; In encircled ground, devise stratagems; In death ground, fight.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War


Going Underground: Ukraine’s Subterranean Fighters Highlight the Benefit – and Long History – of Tunnels in Warfare


Faced with the prospect of sending Russian troops into subterranean combat, Vladimir Putin demurred. “There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground,” he told his defense minister on April 21, 2022, ordering him to cancel a planned storming of a steel plant in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
While Putin’s back-up plan – to form a seal around trapped Ukrainian forces and wait it out – is no less brutal and there are reports that Russians may still have mounted an offensive on the site, Putin’s hesitancy to send his forces into a sprawling network of tunnels under the complex hints at a truth in warfare: Tunnels can be an effective tool in resisting an oppressor.
Indeed since the war began in February, reports have emerged of Ukrainian defenders using underground tunnel networks in efforts to deny Russian invaders control of major cities, as well as to provide sanctuary for civilians.
As an expert in military history and theory, I know there is sound thinking behind using tunnels as both a defensive and offensive tactic. Such networks allow small units to move undetected by aerial sensors and emerge in unexpected locations to launch surprise attacks and then essentially disappear. For an invader who does not possess a thorough map of the subterranean passages, this can present a nightmare scenario, leading to massive personnel losses, plummeting morale and an inability to finish the conquest of their urban objective – all factors that may have factored in Putin’s decision not to send troops underground in Mariupol.
A history of military tunneling from ancient roots
The use of tunnels and underground chambers in times of conflict is nothing new.
The use of tunnels has been a common aspect of warfare for millennia. Ancient besieging forces used tunneling operations as a means to weaken otherwise well-fortified positions. This typically required engineers to construct long passages under walls or other obstacles. Collapsing the tunnel weakened the fortification. If well-timed, an assault conducted in the immediate aftermath of the breach might lead to a successful storming of the defended position.
One of the earliest examples of this technique is depicted on Assyrian carvings that are thousands of years old. While some attackers climb ladders to storm the walls of an Egyptian city, others can be seen digging at the foundations of the walls.
Assyrian engraving of the siege of an Egyptian fort. The Trustees of the British MuseumCC BY-SA
Roman armies relied heavily upon sophisticated engineering techniques such as putting arches into the tunnels they built during sieges. Roman defenders also perfected the art of digging counter-tunnels to intercept those used by attackers before they presented a threat. Upon penetrating an enemy tunnel, they flooded it with caustic smoke to drive out the enemy or launched a surprise attack upon unsuspecting miners.
The success of tunneling under fortifications led European engineers in the Middle Ages to design ways to thwart the tactic. They built castles on bedrock foundations, making any attempt to dig beneath them much slower, and surrounded walls with moats so that tunnels would need to be far deeper.
Although tunneling remained an important aspect of sieges through the 13th century, it was eventually replaced by the introduction of gunpowder artillery – which proved a more effective way to breach fortifications.
However, by the mid-19th century, advances in mining and tunnel construction led to a resurgence in subterranean approaches to warfare.
During the Crimean War in the 1850s, British and French attackers attempted to tunnel under Russian fortifications at the Battle of Sevastopol. Ten years later, Ulysses S. Grant authorized an attempt to tunnel under Confederate defenses at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. In both cases, large caches of gunpowder were placed in chambers created by tunneling under key positions and detonated in coordination with an infantry assault.
Tunneling in the age of airpower
With warfare increasingly relying on aircraft in the 20th century, military strategists again turned to tunnels – undetectable from the skies and protected from falling bombs.
Listening in under enemy lines during the First World War. adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images)
In World War I, tunneling was attempted as a means to launch surprise attacks on the Western Front, potentially bypassing the other side’s system of trenches and remaining undetected by aerial observers. In particular, the Ypres salient in war-ravaged Belgium was the site of hundreds of tunnels dug by British and German miners, and the horrifying stories of combat under the earth provide one of the most terrifying vignettes of that awful war.
During World War II, Japanese troops in occupied areas in the Pacific constructed extensive tunnel networks to make their forces virtually immune to aerial attack and naval bombardment from Allied forces. During amphibious assaults in places such as the Philippines and Iwo Jima, American and Allied forces had to contend with a warren of Japanese tunnel networks. Eventually they resorted to using high explosives to collapse tunnel entrances, trapping thousands of Japanese troops inside.
The Viet Cong tunnel networks, particularly in the vicinity of Saigon, were an essential part of their guerrilla strategy and remain a popular tourist stop today. Some of the tunnels were large enough to house hospital and barracks facilities and strong enough to withstand anything short of nuclear bombardment.
Diagram of typical tunnel structure in Cu-Chi, Vietnam. Didier Noirot/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The tunnels not only protected Vietnamese fighters from overwhelming American airpower, they also facilitated hit-and-run style attacks. Specialized “tunnel rats,” American soldiers who ventured into the tunnels armed only with a knife and pistol, became adept at navigating the tunnel networks. But they could not be trained in sufficient numbers to negate the value of the tunnel systems.
Tunnels for terrorism
In the 21st century, tunnels have been used to facilitate the activities of terror organizations. During the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, military operatives soon discovered that al-Qaida had fortified a series of tunnel networks connecting naturally occurring caves in the Tora Bora region.
Not only did they hide the movement of troops and supplies, they proved impervious to virtually every weapon in the U.S.-led coalition’s arsenal. The complexes included air filtration systems to prevent chemical contamination, as well as massive storerooms and sophisticated communications gear allowing al-Qaida leadership to maintain control over their followers.
And tunneling activity in and around Gaza continues to provide a tool for Hamas to get fighters into Israeli territory, while at the same time allowing Palestinians to circumvent Israel’s blockade of Gaza’s borders.
Soviet tunnels and Ukraine
Many of the tunnels being utilized today in Ukrainian efforts to defend the country were built in the Cold War-era, when the United States routinely engaged in overflights of Soviet territory.
To counteract the significant air and satellite advantage held by the United States and NATO, the Soviet military dug underground passages under major population centers.
These subterranean systems offered a certain amount of shelter for the civilian population in the event of a nuclear attack and allowed for the movement of military forces unobserved by the ever-present eyes in the sky.
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These same tunnels serve to connect much of the industrial infrastructure in Mariupol today – and have become a major asset for the outnumbered Ukrainian forces.
Other Ukrainian cities have similar systems, some dating back centuries. For example, Odesa, another key Black Sea port, has a catacomb network stretching over 2,500 kilometers. It began as part of a limestone mining effort – and to date, there is no documented map of the full extent of the tunnels.
In the event of a Russian assault on Odesa, the local knowledge of the underground passages might prove to be an extremely valuable asset for the defenders. The fact that more than 1,000 entrances to the catacombs have been identified should surely give Russian attackers pause before commencing any attack upon the city – just as the tunnels under a steelworks in Mariupol forced Putin to rethinks plans to storm the facility.
Paul J. Springer, Professor of Comparative Military Studies, Air University

9. Modernizing the Military May Require Modernized Oversight

Yesss.....


Excerpts:
In many ways, this concept supports Congress in operating more like most modern corporate boards. Boards aren't effective at controlling the details of a company's execution, and it is difficult to make a recalcitrant CEO pursue a board initiative. Instead, board controls tend to be broad and binary -- approving strategies after proper vetting, agreeing to major initiative investments, or firing a CEO in extreme cases. 
While portfolios certainly won't resolve all the ills of a lumbering defense modernization process, Congress and the Department should cooperate on promptly starting a pilot to help inform the findings of the PPBE Commission. More importantly, we don’t have a moment to waste in the race to modernize in the face of rising threats. 


Modernizing the Military May Require Modernized Oversight


From tours of Silicon Valley to testimony on the Hill, the Department of Defense is acknowledging its struggle to effectively harness advancing commercial technology and compete with a rapidly modernizing and expansionist Chinese military. Notably, members of Congress, Department officials, and industry associations are pointing to the process for planning and approving its budget as a culprit. The most frequently cited complaint is that starting a new acquisition requires insertion in the budget request two years ahead of time, and waiting up to another year to get funds approved by Congress. Holding the Department accountable is critical, but for our military to remain competitive, we must adapt oversight to flexible processes.
One opportunity for potential improvement is a recently formed Congressional Commission tasked with recommending actionable improvements to the Department's Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process. The PPBE system is essential to internal management and decision-making. But it also supports Congressional oversight as it divides spending into required pieces, delivers annual detailed budget requests and reports, and produces reams of justification documentation. As a result, the military departments, the offices of the secretary of defense, and Congress are all stakeholders in the PPBE process and its products. 
However, calls to modernize oversight are complicated by a lack of timely and complete transparency between the executive and legislative branches of government. On the executive side, it is common for leaders to call for additional budget flexibility from congressional appropriators. Military leaders lament the difficulty in trying to build a budget that has accurate predictions of threats, state of technology, and opportunities two or three years in advance. They point out how this can lock the Department into acquisition plans with obsolete baselines. Within the legislative branch of government, there is suspicion that the Department will abuse increased flexibility and insistence on carefully executing congressional duties in oversight. 
But new tools could help resolve the classic impasse. One promising idea that will be worth examination by the PPBE Commission is that of a portfolio, where existing budget line items are bundled together under the authority of a portfolio manager, who could rebalance execution issues and onramp new technologies and performers as opportunities arise. Tight portfolio scope and modern reporting like that available through the Advancing Analytics platform would help Congress hold the manager accountable for the results of their work rather than the quality of their predictions. 
While tools for budgetary flexibility exist at present, they are so limited, complicated, and time-consuming that they often go unused. Currently, financial managers exercise authority to transfer funds between most accounts across the Department as long as it is below a specified threshold. To exceed this threshold, which has not been increased for years, the Department uses a lengthy reprogramming process that ultimately requires Congressional approval. Instead of enduring this process, program offices are often motivated to make the best of an obsolete plan. This means that they will continue spending in order to stay the course on obligation and execution rates, even if they know there is a better alternative, rather than attempt the unpredictable and lengthy reprogramming process. 
By contrast, a budget with a portfolio structure would push decisions to the person responsible for their execution and outcome. Instead of controlling budgetary flexibility through dollar limits, a portfolio would scope flexibility around a strategy. While individual programs would still be responsible for meeting their approved requirements, it would be the task of the portfolio manager to rebalance funding across budget activities and individual programs to pursue the overall objectives and strategy. In essence, it delegates authority and responsibility to the portfolio manager (for example, a program executive officer or PEO) in exchange for the expectation of superior outcomes from their decision-making. This structure could improve execution by allowing transfer from an underachieving effort to one that is exceeding performance targets. It would also enable cost savings by consolidating funding for common infrastructure, such as cloud computing. With limited authority to start new efforts during the year of execution, a portfolio would also partially alleviate the technology valley of death, smoothly reallocating funding as technologies mature. 
In many ways, this concept supports Congress in operating more like most modern corporate boards. Boards aren't effective at controlling the details of a company's execution, and it is difficult to make a recalcitrant CEO pursue a board initiative. Instead, board controls tend to be broad and binary -- approving strategies after proper vetting, agreeing to major initiative investments, or firing a CEO in extreme cases. 
While portfolios certainly won't resolve all the ills of a lumbering defense modernization process, Congress and the Department should cooperate on promptly starting a pilot to help inform the findings of the PPBE Commission. More importantly, we don’t have a moment to waste in the race to modernize in the face of rising threats. 
Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a former Acting Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller). 
Dan Patt is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) official.





10. From Electronic Warfare to Cyber and Beyond: How Drones Intersect with the Information Environment on the Battlefield

Conclusion:
Ultimately, we can confidently predict that the nexus between drones and information warfare will become an increasingly significant one on the future battlefield. Yet, although that connection is critical to the future use of drones, our understanding of it is rudimentary. That needs to change.

From Electronic Warfare to Cyber and Beyond: How Drones Intersect with the Information Environment on the Battlefield - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Zachary Kallenborn · April 27, 2022
Editor’s note: This article is derived from “InfoSwarms: Drone Swarms and Information Warfare,” forthcoming in Parameters.
In the ongoing war in Ukraine, both sides have used drones. The Ukrainian military has used Bayraktar TB-2 drones to carry out strikes, conduct reconnaissance, and collect video that features in propaganda. Even Ukrainian civilians have joined the effort—just as civilians from widely divergent backgrounds have volunteered by assembling Molotov cocktailsmanning defensive positions, and facilitating the movement of supplies, an NGO made up of volunteers is customizing drones used daily in the war. On the other side of the blurred front lines, the Russian military is also using small drones to direct artillery, while the Orion carries out occasional strikes.
Together, the unfolding conflict offers a glimpse into the future of drone warfare. But what we’re seeing is just the beginning. Global militaries are building unmanned ground vehicles like the Russian Uran-9large unmanned surface vessels, unmanned undersea vehicles, and large aerial swarms like the Perdix.
Drones have become an increasingly broad category of platforms—and will only become more so as technology continues to advance. They can be used on land, at sea, or in the air, and will soon likely feature in space. Beyond all of these domains, drones’ interaction with warfare’s information environment requires special attention. In particular, how do they relate to specific dimensions of information warfare—from electronic warfare to psychological operations? And how do they intersect with the information components of the space and cyber domains? Modeling, simulation, wargaming, exercises, policy analysis, strategic analysis, and everything in between—all are needed to fully understand the military implications of drones. All of these, however, need to be based on a fundamental initial understanding of the nexus between drones and the information environment, both where that nexus is today and where it will migrate in the future.
Electronic Warfare
Drones typically depend on the electromagnetic spectrum to receive commands. This may include where to move; when, what, and where to attack; and everything in between. Jamming those signals would disrupt the drone, regardless of whether it’s flying in the air, sailing at sea, or driving on land. Soldiers can think for themselves and strategize without communications, but drones cannot. Unsurprisingly, jammers are the most common form of counterdrone system with over 70 percent of counterdrone systems incorporating jamming as a standard feature.
Greater autonomy may reduce dependence on the electromagnetic spectrum, because fewer commands are needed for operation. Yet, greater autonomy may also increase cyber and space warfare vulnerabilities, because the system will require more complex computing, perhaps using GPS to navigate. Greater autonomy may also mean the drone is more vulnerable to manipulation: In 2011 Iranian forces captured an American RQ-170 Sentinel drone, claiming to have sent it false GPS signals to get it to land. US officials publicly dismissed Iran’s claim, saying instead that operators lost control of the drone—but the episode nonetheless draws attention to the very real prospect that increased autonomy could lead to increased vulnerability.
Cyber Warfare
Drones rely on complex computer systems for operation. Drone operators use specialized software often on specially designed ground control stations to issue commands. Onboard the drone, microcontrollers—basically, small computers—manage the drone’s operation. Drone operators issue commands and the microcontroller adjusts the motors, rotors, or other mechanical components as required. Microcontrollers also allow preprogrammed autonomous flight and obstacle avoidance.
Cyber dependence means cyber vulnerability. An adversary could use cyberattacks to deauthenticate the drone from the ground control station, disable the drone engines or propellers, or issue false commands. In July 2015 researchers used cyberattacks to disable the brakes on a Jeep Cherokee. Similar cyberattacks could disrupt drone operations, cause the drones to crash, collect information to inform future attacks, or redirect the drones to attack friendly targets.
Space Warfare
Compared to electronic and cyber warfare, the relationship between drones and space warfare is at a more rudimentary stage, making projections on the form that relationship might take more variable. Satellites support drones by providing communication links for flight that extends beyond visual line of sight and localization through GPS. Small aerial drones use GPS to support autonomous navigation, to include simple actions like hovering over an area; however, GPS is not technically required (though in the United States, it is required to meet various Federal Aviation Authority regulations). Larger systems like the MQ-9 Reaper that fly thousands of miles from their operators definitely need GPS, though the Air Force is developing technology for navigation in GPS-denied areas. Targeting satellite constellations would allow an adversary to disrupt numerous unmanned systems over a broad area, in addition to whatever systems rely on those satellites.
Psychological Warfare
Drones are great vehicles for collecting and disseminating propaganda. The Ukrainian military has released several videos of Bayraktar TB-2 drones loitering above—and then destroying—Russian vehicles. Ukrainian patriots even wrote an uplifting ballad using the videos to celebrate the TB-2. The Ukrainians are not the first to recognize this potential. The Islamic State has also used drones to photograph, record, and share its battlefield successes. Drones can also be propaganda themselves by helping an organization show itself as a powerful, modern power.
At the same time and also related to the information effects of drone use, there is growing public concern around the use of autonomous weapons. A January 2016 Ipsos poll found 61 percent of respondents opposed autonomous weapons, including strong majorities in several NATO countries. As autonomous weapons scale into drone swarms those concerns are likely to grow. And as these swarms grow in size, weaknesses of artificial intelligence may result in drone swarms becoming future weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction carry significant normative and policy implications, where use may bring into play international treaties, economic and diplomatic sanctions, and military interventions. This would likely incentivize states to use information campaigns to tap into those norms and weaken adversaries’ political standing. The challenges of verifying autonomous weapons use offer ripe opportunities for disinformation to create uncertainty around the fundamental question of whether an autonomous weapon was really used.
Policy Recommendations
All of this means several things for the US military. First, at the tactical level, commanders need to consider the information environment when deploying drones on the battlefield, especially in mass. Commanders may need to deploy dedicated defenses against electronic warfare, take appropriate countermeasures to protect a range of vulnerabilities, and at times perhaps even rethink the deployment. Commanders also need to think about how information warfare systems interact with other systems in countering drones. For instance, if a platoon faces a mixed swarm of ground and aerial drones, how might jamming support antiair and antivehicle weapons? Commanders will require appropriate training and education prior to battle—and be able to rely on appropriate doctrine when challenges emerge—to help them make informed decisions.
Second, larger, technical analyses are needed to better understand how information warfare interacts with drones in various situations. The descriptions above are simply a starting point. Modeling and simulation should be conducted to identify the most effective information warfare means to counter different types of drones, in different numbers, working across different (or multiple) domains. Wargames, exercises, and simulations may also explore the effects of unmanned systems in various offensive information roles, like electronic attack, to better understand the trade-offs between unmanned and manned systems and develop attendant concepts of operations.
Third, to the degree unmanned systems will increasingly define the future of warfare, the US military must also prioritize information warfare. Developing new technical, doctrinal, and strategic approaches to waging information warfare—electronic warfare, in particular—and to refining concepts for both cyber and space warfare will help the United States defend against adversary measures while protecting friendly unmanned systems. Because the United States faces significant challenges and competition across each dimension of information warfare, this may require significant new investments and organizational developments. Specifically, the United States should conduct a review across the armed forces and critical supporting civilian agencies of information warfare capabilities and gaps.
Ultimately, we can confidently predict that the nexus between drones and information warfare will become an increasingly significant one on the future battlefield. Yet, although that connection is critical to the future use of drones, our understanding of it is rudimentary. That needs to change.
Zachary Kallenborn is a policy fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, a research affiliate with the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, an officially proclaimed US Army “Mad Scientist,” and national security consultant. His research on autonomous weapons, drone swarms, and weapons of mass destruction has been published in a wide range of peer-reviewed, wonky, and popular outlets, including the Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy, Slate, War on the Rocks, and the Nonproliferation Review. Journalists have written about and shared that research in the New York Times, NPR, Forbes, the New Scientist, and Newsweek, among dozens of others.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Mykola Lazarenko via Petro Poroshenko / Flickr
mwi.usma.edu · by Zachary Kallenborn · April 27, 2022


11. What We Know About Future Maritime Wars


What We Know About Future Maritime Wars
Fine Print
April 26th, 2022 by Walter Pincus, |
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. [...] Read more
OPINION — Remember the April 13, announcement that the U.S was sending Ukraine “unmanned coastal defense vessels” from U.S. Navy stocks as part of an $800 million security assistance package?
At the time, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters, “Coast defense is something that Ukraine has repeatedly said they’re interested in. It is particularly an acute need now, as we see the Russians really refocus their [Ukraine] efforts on the east and in the south.”
“It’s an unmanned surface vessel (USV) that can be used for a variety of purposes in coastal defense. I think I’ll just leave it at that,” Kirby said.
The inclusion of an unknown number of unidentified, unmanned Navy vessels to Ukraine caught my interest, so I looked into the growing role that these unmanned maritime systems seem to be playing in Navy strategy. The Navy had already integrated manned ships with unmanned aerial systems, such as the MQ-4C Tritons, the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator (BAMS-D) systems and MQ-1 Predators.
Back in September 2021, in order to help rapidly integrate unmanned vessels and artificial intelligence (AI) into the Navy’s maritime operations, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command established Task Force 59 in Bahrain, headquarters to the 5th Fleet.
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, named head of Task Force 59, described his plans last September when the task force was formed. “We’re going to take today’s unmanned systems – which are largely in the air,” Cooper said. “They will be augmented with unmanned surface vessels…We haven’t had them in the past. We have them now. It will be augmented with even more unmanned undersea vessels.”
Task Force 59 has since served as a test bed for the Navy’s first employment of unmanned sea vessels (USV), and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) in numbers that combine their capabilities with manned platforms for multi-domain operations in all areas of the maritime battlespace from air to below the sea.
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“We’re taking off-the-shelf emerging technology in unmanned, coupling with artificial intelligence and machine learning, in really moving at pace to bring new capabilities to the region. I think in 2022, we’re going to see continued efforts in this regard into the operational realm and impacting operations. It will be exciting,” Cooper said.
The task force has also been a test bed for handling personnel. Its commodore is Capt. Michael Brasseur, an expert in maritime robotics, and its early roster has included reservists, such as the CEO of a 1,000-person cyber security company; a D.C. think-tanker working toward a Ph.D. from Harvard and an advisor who was one of Snapchat’s earliest employees, according to a Navy press release.
“This is not the B team,” Brasseur said in an interview. “I was floored by the caliber of people,” Cmdr. Tom McAndrew, the task force’s No. 2, said in a separate interview.
Having such high caliber people may be hard to replicate. Ten of the 21 early Task Force 59 members were reservists, including McAndrew, meaning eventually they will go back to their day jobs outside the Navy.
To help the Navy expand its unmanned systems testing across domains, Task Force 59 developed working relationships with regional partners, first with Bahrain, and later with Jordan. Late last year, it planned International Maritime Exercise (IMX 2022) as an opportunity to demonstrate use of unmanned systems along with allies and partners in various operational scenarios.
Beginning January 31, 2022, IMX 2022 took place in various Middle East waters as an 18-day training event — the largest unmanned maritime exercise in the world with more than 80 unmanned systems and 9,000 personnel from 10 nations participating.
One day after IMX 2022 ended, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told the U.S. Naval Institute WEST 2022 conference in San Diego, “Based on the integrated battle problem that we just did over in 5th Fleet [IMX 2022] with some 100 unmanned platforms over the past few weeks, I’ve concluded, consistent with the analysis, that we need a naval force of over 500 ships…[and] looking into the future, 150 [would be] unmanned.”
The eventual aim, Gilday said, was to take an “evolutionary approach” where the service introduces smaller, less sophisticated unmanned platforms into the fleet in the near term, but will be ready to scale up in the next decade.
Gilday said he wants “to get to the point, hopefully in the 2030s, where we really do have a hybrid fleet, where we can make Distributed Maritime Operations come alive in a way that would be highly effective if we actually had to fight.”
The unmanned ships would extend the range of the sensors and provide remote weapons magazines that could fire when cued by a crewed warship. Those ships – some as large as a 2,000-ton corvette – are subject to the Congressional land-based testing requirement.
Meanwhile, the questions remain, what unmanned U.S. Navy USVs had been sent to Ukraine and where are they being used?
The most obvious place is the north portion of the Black Sea near Odessa.
Last Friday, Russian Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekayev stated that one of Russia’s goals was, “full control of the Donbas and southern Ukraine.” He said that would allow Russia to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, “through which agricultural and metallurgical products are delivered” to other countries.”
In short, Moscow’s aim has become to turn Ukraine into a land-locked country.
Up to now, despite repeated attacks, Russia has failed to seize Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, including Odessa, a fortified city of one million people. Last Saturday’s Russian missile attack on Odessa appeared to illustrate Minnekayev’s new set of military objectives, and will require Ukraine to increase its maritime defenses in the northern portions of the Black Sea.
As of January 2022, Ukraine had three armed former-U.S. Mark VI patrol boats based in Odessa to help Ukraine “patrol and defend its territorial waters.” According to Ukraine’s navy, these Mark VIs carry short-range missile systems. The crew members for the last Mark VI obtained were trained in the U.S. At that time, the Ukrainian crew received some coaching on the USVs being sent to Ukraine in the April 13, $800 million package, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
Among the U.S. Navy USVs tested during IMX 2022 was the Mantis T-12, a 12-foot long vessel that can carry a 140-pound payload at speeds up to 30 knots. Its modular design allows for rapidly tailoring sensor packages to meet specific operational requirements. It was operated alongside manned U.S. patrol craft and Bahrain Defense Force maritime assets during IMV 2022 according to a Navy statement.
Brent Sadler, senior fellow for naval warfare at the Heritage Foundation, told the FEDSCOOP website that the Mantas T-12, might be what was sent to Ukraine. “If there was a system that could be provided to Ukraine, it’s going to be something that was in that [IMX 2022] exercise, in my mind, and this Mantas T-12 comes to mind as an unmanned surface vessel,” Sadler said.
It was one thing to use unmanned Mantas T-12 in an exercise, it would be another to see how the Ukrainians use them in real wartime situations.
Sadler recognized that benefit saying, “What it does for the United States is it allows us to better refine how we [might] actually use these systems in combat, too. So we also learn and are able to benefit from the combat experience that the Ukrainians get from these and how they employ them.”
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Fine Print
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.

12. As Raytheon struggles to replenish Stinger missiles, lawmaker pushes Defense Production Act
Has "kryptonite" (or apathy) eroded our superpower: defense production? Or was it lack of priority and profit potential?

As Raytheon struggles to replenish Stinger missiles, lawmaker pushes Defense Production Act
Defense News · by Joe Gould · April 26, 2022
WASHINGTON ― The U.S. may not be able to make more of the shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles it has been sending to Ukraine until at least 2023 due to parts and materials shortages, the head of manufacturer Raytheon Technologies said Tuesday.
The revelation, during Raytheon’s quarterly earnings call, underscores the challenge facing the Pentagon and defense industry as they seek to boost arms production in response to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The bottleneck is fueling recommendations from Capitol Hill that President Joe Biden invoke the Defense Production Act to prioritize supplies of components for weapons like the Stinger.
Greg Hayes, Raytheon’s chief executive, said the company is working to find some of the materials for the missile. Because some components are no longer commercially available, the company will have to redesign electronics in the missile’s seeker head.
“That’s going to take us a little bit of time,” Hayes said. “We’re going to ramp up production this year, but I expect this is going to be ‘23-’24 where we actually see orders come in for the larger replenishments, both on Stinger as well as on Javelin, which has also been very successful in theater.”
The remarks follow a meeting earlier this meeting between top DoD officials and industry leaders at the Pentagon to discuss weapons supplies for Ukraine, the U.S. and allies.
RELATED

As the Army sends off Stinger and Javelin missiles to Ukraine, the service begins the process of replacing its aging Stinger missiles for short-range air defense.
By Jen Judson and Joe Gould
While Hayes noted Raytheon has been working closely with DoD in recent weeks, he said the U.S. hasn’t been a sustaining customer.
“We are actively trying to source some of the material, but unfortunately DoD hasn’t bought a Stinger in 18 years,” Hayes said. “As far as the Stingers, we should keep in mind we are currently producing Stingers for an international customer, but we have a very limited stock of material for Stinger production.”
Last month, Washington finalized the fiscal year 2022 $1.5 trillion spending bill, which provides $13.6 billion in new aid for the Ukraine crisis. The money was in large part to restore military stocks of equipment already transferred to Ukrainian military units through the president’s drawdown authority.
As of last week, aid from U.S. military stockpiles for Ukraine included more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems and 5,500 Javelin anti-tank weapons. However, neither Stingers nor Javelins were included in the administration’s latest $800 million drawdown package.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday on the defense industrial base, multiple senators called on Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act to help address supply chain issues in replenishing Stingers and other munitions.
“We have a significant usage rate for the Stingers that we’re moving over there ― Javelins also ― and we have to not only be able to help the Ukrainians, we have to maintain our stocks,” committee chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told Defense News after the hearing. “It might require that kind of support. And that’s something we’ll look at closely.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Tuesday repeated his call to invoke the Defense Production Act, after urging Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to do so at hearing earlier this month.
Echoing a Center for Strategic and International Studies assessment, Blumenthal said the U.S. had likely sent Ukraine one-third of its Javelins and that it would take a year to ramp up Javelin production and 32 months to replenish Javelin supplies.
“The cupboard is empty, or it will be very, very shortly unless the president invokes the Defense Production Act to provide that demand signal on an expedited basis,” Blumenthal said.
RELATED

In its effort to quickly arm Ukraine against Russia, the Pentagon has announced the equivalent of an open casting call for companies to offer weapons and commercial systems that can be rushed to the fight.
At the same hearing, former Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord said the bottleneck on Stinger and Javelin systems points to broader defense-industrial base problems, particularly with munitions.
Lord noted the U.S. has already sent about a quarter of its Stinger stocks to Ukraine.
“We cannot over the next couple of years produce more because we have a problem with the government not paying to maintain production capacity,” she said. “When that happens, you have test equipment become bottled and not work. You have supply chains with links broken in them, and especially if we had key elements of that supply chain supplied by now-adversarial countries.”
Lord also endorsed invoking the Defense Production Act to incentivize companies to produce additional munitions such as Stingers. She floated loosening restrictions on sharing technical knowledge to manufacture those munitions with close U.S. allies such as Australia, noting Washington has been “very conservative” so far in its information sharing.
“Even with the Javelin, which we do have a hot production line right now, we are still five years out to probably developing all the munitions we need,” said Lord.
The SASC hearing comes after House Armed Services chairman and ranking member Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Mike Rogers, R-Ala., pushed Austin and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, on Stinger replenishment in a letter last month.
They pointed to “the apparent absence of a Department of Defense plan to meet [short range air defense] replenishment requirements for not only our U.S. stocks of Stinger systems, but those of other contributing allies and partners.”
“Therefore, the committee strongly urges that the Department prioritize acceleration of a [short range air defense] modernization or replacement that will deliver a low-cost, exportable evolution of a system, within 36 months,” they wrote.
About Joe Gould and Bryant Harris
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and national security in Washington since 2014. He previously wrote for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.


13. Why Xi Is Trapped in Ukraine


Excerpts:
But the real blow will be to Xi’s ego as Putin is seen around the world as having taken up the autocratic mantle. To make matters worse, the more pugnacious paradigm put forward by Putin will be far more chaotic and unpredictable than anything Xi ever envisioned. And, like it or not, Xi will have little choice but to embrace Putin’s more violent vision—not because it is better per se, but because Putin managed to deliver on his revisionist promises while Xi dithered. Whereas Xi’s legacy was predicated on a partnership with Putin aimed at remaking China into a great power, Putin always recognized that Russia never stopped being one. In other words, Putin always had the upper hand.
That realization, more than anything, is why Xi cannot actually win in Ukraine, even if his partner eventually does.
Why Xi Is Trapped in Ukraine
Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton · April 26, 2022
Now, it is Russia, not China, sitting in the geopolitical driver’s seat.
By Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. diplomat.
Xi and Putin in Moscow
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at a Chinese tourism event in Moscow on March 22, 2013. SERGEI ILNITSKY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Among the Ukraine war’s surprising geopolitical takeaways—such as Russia’s military ineptness and the transatlantic alliance’s unexpected resilience—is that China is not yet a great power. Beijing has proven incapable of influencing either Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculus in Ukraine or the West’s response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion. What’s more, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been reduced to a bystander seemingly at the mercy of decisions made not in Beijing but in Washington, Brussels, and, more importantly, Moscow.
None of this was part of Xi’s plan. His vision for a “new democratic world order” was predicated upon Russia playing an important, albeit supporting, role in advancing Beijing’s own revisionist agenda. Putin, it seems, had other plans. Now, it is Russia, not China, sitting in the geopolitical driver’s seat.
Certainly, Xi’s decision to tacitly back Putin has contributed to China’s growing international isolation. That extends to the United Nations, where China was widely criticized for being the lone veto-wielding Security Council member to abstain from condemning Russia’s belligerence. But make no mistake: Xi is not about to turn his back on Putin—even if Beijing has called reports about widespread Russian human rights violations in Ukraine “disturbing.” The reason is because Xi’s “Chinese dream” is first and foremost about rewriting China’s story to make up for the country’s perceived humiliation by the former colonial powers—the very ones that have now teamed up to punish Putin.
Among the Ukraine war’s surprising geopolitical takeaways—such as Russia’s military ineptness and the transatlantic alliance’s unexpected resilience—is that China is not yet a great power. Beijing has proven incapable of influencing either Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculus in Ukraine or the West’s response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion. What’s more, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been reduced to a bystander seemingly at the mercy of decisions made not in Beijing but in Washington, Brussels, and, more importantly, Moscow.
None of this was part of Xi’s plan. His vision for a “new democratic world order” was predicated upon Russia playing an important, albeit supporting, role in advancing Beijing’s own revisionist agenda. Putin, it seems, had other plans. Now, it is Russia, not China, sitting in the geopolitical driver’s seat.
Certainly, Xi’s decision to tacitly back Putin has contributed to China’s growing international isolation. That extends to the United Nations, where China was widely criticized for being the lone veto-wielding Security Council member to abstain from condemning Russia’s belligerence. But make no mistake: Xi is not about to turn his back on Putin—even if Beijing has called reports about widespread Russian human rights violations in Ukraine “disturbing.” The reason is because Xi’s “Chinese dream” is first and foremost about rewriting China’s story to make up for the country’s perceived humiliation by the former colonial powers—the very ones that have now teamed up to punish Putin.
It is therefore a safe bet that Xi will take concrete, perhaps even provocative, steps to help Putin outwit the West, all in the name of keeping China’s revisionist hopes alive. The problem, whether Xi realizes it yet or not, is that he almost certainly cannot accomplish the former while still securing the latter. That is, unless he is prepared to embrace a different kind of world order than what he initially envisioned—one with primarily Russian, not Chinese, characteristics.
Xi and Putin’s marriage of convenience has always been more symbolic than substantive. The partnership is rooted in a mutual loathing of the United States rather than a shared vision for the world. Putin, for the better part of two decades, has relished Russia’s role as a spoiler, often resorting to political and military aggression to subvert and shock the liberal international order. Xi, meanwhile, has waxed poetic about “reforming and improving” the international system to “collectively safeguard international security.” Put plainly, Putin’s impatience to dismantle the post-Cold War architecture was destined to collide with Xi’s long-term desire to co-opt it.
Disavowing Putin is a non-starter, as doing so would represent a complete repudiation of Xi’s judgement.
That divergence is now playing out in Ukraine, where China is scrambling to frame the war as a byproduct of the West’s belligerence rather than a preview of the “more just and rational” world order foreshadowed by Xi.
Central to Xi’s dilemma, however, is that he mistakenly bought into the conventional wisdom that Russia’s status as a great power had waned, condemning Moscow to ride on Beijing’s revisionist coat tails, not the other way around. Needless to say, if the true test of a great power lies in its ability to control the world’s fate by influencing the decisions of others, Putin put any such doubts to rest the moment his tanks rolled into Ukraine. As a result, Xi suddenly found himself trapped between supporting his “no limits” partner and avoiding any actions that could allow Putin’s barbaric brand of revisionism to become synonymous with Xi’s own.
Just as troubling for Xi is that Putin’s aggression and the resulting fallout have exposed, for all the world to see, that China remains incapable of operating completely outside the existing order—let alone remaking it in Beijing’s image. That realization stands at odds with Xi’s claims that his policies have put China on “the road to self-reliance,” a neo-Maoist throwback often parroted by the Chinese Communist Party to justify its push for autarkic independence. If anything, the war has revealed that China appears as reliant as ever on Western capital and technology to drive its development.
Look no further than China’s inability to shape, let alone stop, sweeping Western sanctions levied against Russia, many of which place China’s already faltering economy directly in Washington’s regulatory crosshairs. While Beijing rejected the sanctions outright, the same cannot be said for Chinese banks or companies. They began complying with Western sanctions almost immediately, likely fearing that doing otherwise could result in being excised from the dollarized economy or being stripped of their ability to source from U.S. and European suppliers. Either possibility could seriously imperil Xi’s ambitious yet still very nascent reform agenda, which is why Xi will almost certainly look the other way when his own companies defy his edicts to ignore Western sanctions.
Xi’s tacit backing for Putin’s messy, brutal, and half-baked incursion has also given ammunition to his domestic detractors, many of whom have criticized Xi’s fervent attempts to eschew the established liberal order’s largesse. In one widely read essay, Hu Wei, an advisor to China’s State Council, asserted that “China cannot be tied to Putin and needs to be cut off as soon as possible.” He added, “being in the same boat with Putin will impact China should he lose power.” Other influential historians and academics have since piled on in open letters and petitions. Their message, which has resonated on Chinese social media, is clear: However well-intentioned Xi’s desire to support Putin may be, it must not come at the expense of the aspired “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” or China’s already fraught relationship with the West.
Unfortunately, Putin has left Xi with few good options to turn the geopolitical tide. Disavowing Putin is a non-starter, as doing so would represent a complete repudiation of Xi’s judgement. It would also be seen, at home and abroad, as a capitulation to the Western powers and likely further set back Xi’s great-power ambitions. Alternatively, significantly ramping up support for Putin also appears unthinkable because Western nations could impose sanctions on China at a time when China’s economy is weakening and Xi’s efforts to re-orient it faltering. That leaves Xi with only one viable option: to muddle along like most every other middle power, knowing full well that China lacks either the means or the political will to meaningfully influence the war’s outcome.
Certainly, Xi will continue to pursue face-saving tactics aimed at securing a resolution to the war that is favorable to China’s long-term interests. Beijing will also devise creative work arounds to some Western sanctions to sustain trade and defense ties with Moscow while likely making sure that such moves fall short of antagonizing Washington and Brussels. China may even go so far as to provide Russia with non-lethal military support, particularly in the event of a protracted conflict, although it will almost certainly not supply Moscow with advanced weaponry out of concern that the West could retaliate. However, these and other balancing acts will only compound Xi’s troubles by reinforcing the growing tension between China’s great-power ambitions and its current limitations.
When the war in Ukraine ends, Xi will be forced to contend with a dramatically different geopolitical landscape than the one he so confidently surveyed just months before. Despite Russia’s many battlefield setbacks, Putin will almost certainly succeed in extracting some concessions from Kiev, likely maintaining quasi or semi-permanent control over some of Ukraine’s easternmost provinces. In doing so, Putin will have proven, yet again, that he is capable of redrawing Europe’s borders by force. For his part, Xi will seek to shift his focus back to China’s interests in the Indo-Pacific, although not before claiming a role in mediating a cessation of hostilities in Europe. However, both Russia and China’s reputations will be much worse for the wear. Xi will also bear the burden of propping up Russia’s badly battered economy while contending with a Western world even warier of Beijing’s stated commitments to territorial integrity and mutual non-aggression.
But the real blow will be to Xi’s ego as Putin is seen around the world as having taken up the autocratic mantle. To make matters worse, the more pugnacious paradigm put forward by Putin will be far more chaotic and unpredictable than anything Xi ever envisioned. And, like it or not, Xi will have little choice but to embrace Putin’s more violent vision—not because it is better per se, but because Putin managed to deliver on his revisionist promises while Xi dithered. Whereas Xi’s legacy was predicated on a partnership with Putin aimed at remaking China into a great power, Putin always recognized that Russia never stopped being one. In other words, Putin always had the upper hand.
That realization, more than anything, is why Xi cannot actually win in Ukraine, even if his partner eventually does.
Craig Singleton is a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. diplomat. Twitter: @CraigMSingleton

14. America is now thinking of “winning” the war in Ukraine

Excerpts:
How will the war end? Nobody really knows. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, will visit Moscow on April 26th to push for a ceasefire. That has angered the Ukrainian president, who says Mr Guterres should first have witnessed the devastation and atrocities caused by Russian forces. Mr Blinken has said he expects Mr Guterres to deliver “a very strong and clear message to Vladimir Putin, which is the need to end this war now.”
Some Europeans foresee a stalemate followed by negotiations in the summer and a deal in the autumn, before the next winter sets in. Many experts see echoes of the “Winter war” of 1939-40, when Finland valiantly fought off the Soviet Union for months but was eventually forced to cede territory and, for decades after the second world war, had to maintain a precarious neutrality.
“I used to think the Winter war was the best that Ukraine could achieve. I now think it’s the best Russia can achieve,” says Dan Fried of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank in Washington. “Another scenario is possible: the defeat of Imperial Russia by the Japanese in 1905.” If there is a partition, he argues, it is unlikely to be a stable peace but, more probably, a dangerous armed truce.

America is now thinking of “winning” the war in Ukraine
A furtive trip to Kyiv by two cabinet members signals a new American mindset
THEY CAME as Ukraine celebrated Easter, according to the Orthodox Christian calendar. They certainly did not bring peace. Yet the furtive visit to Kyiv, the capital, by Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, America’s secretaries of state and defence, brought hope of eventual salvation. “We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around for a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene,” declared Mr Blinken.
The Americans were not the first to visit wartime Kyiv; other leaders have already made the pilgrimage to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president. Nor were the Americans the most flamboyant; they did not go for an impromptu walkabout in the city, as Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, did on April 9th. And some of their visible offerings were limited, among them the belated reopening of the American embassy in Kyiv, and the nomination of an ambassador to the country which, more than a year into Joe Biden’s administration, came inordinately late.
Still, the pair’s trip may be the most consequential yet. America has provided more military and civilian aid to Ukraine than all other countries combined. Messrs Blinken and Austin announced an additional $713m in financing to pay for weapons for Ukraine and allied countries.
Perhaps more striking still is America’s changing attitude. To judge from the secretaries’ comments, America is embracing the idea that Ukraine might not only survive, but emerge victorious against Russia. “They have the mindset that they want to win; we have the mindset that we want to help them win, and we are going to do that,” declared Mr Austin.
To that end, on April 26th America will convene a meeting in Germany of dozens of friendly countries—NATO allies, but also partners in Asia, the Middle East and Africa—to show solidarity with Ukraine and and co-ordinate further assistance to it. The 40-odd states on the guest list stretch from Morocco to New Zealand and include countries such as Israel that have hitherto hesitated to criticise Russia. They will discuss, among other things, stepped-up training and how to shift Ukraine more quickly from Soviet-era weapons and ammunition to NATO-standard arms, which allies can provide more easily and plentifully. They have already started sending NATO-standard 155mm howitzers (Ukrainian ones use 152mm shells) and trained the first batch of Ukrainian artillerymen.
Just as important, Mr Biden’s administration appears to have a clearer idea of its endgame in Ukraine. At first, as Russian troops were massing, its objective seemed limited to imposing costs: by giving Ukraine some defensive weapons, and by placing sanctions on Russia. As Ukraine demonstrated a remarkable ability to fight, that changed to saving Kyiv. Critics accused the president of being “weak”. But Mr Biden said he would not get drawn into “world war three”; his officials said a rout of the Russian army might be a trigger for nuclear escalation by Russia. Ukrainian officials suspected America of simply trying to bleed Russia, at the cost of Ukraine’s destruction.
Now the administration seems less worried about the risks—and it may even be raising its ambition. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” said Mr Austin, usually the quiet man of the administration. “So it has already lost a lot of military capability, and a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.” On the same day, Ben Wallace, Britain’s defence minister, told parliament that his government thought 15,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the two months of war.
America and Western allies have shifted to delivering more offensive weapons—not just anti-tank weapons but now tanks and howitzers; and not just anti-aircraft missiles but also parts for fighter jets (and perhaps soon aircraft, too). Russia has responded, predictably, by issuing yet more shadowy warnings about its nuclear weapons. Shortly after Mr Blinken and Mr Austin visited Kyiv Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said in a television interview that the risks of nuclear war “now are considerable”. But the threat seems to have less leverage than it once did.
War’s end
Before thinking of victory, though, Ukraine must survive the coming onslaught. Having given up on taking Kyiv, at least for now, Russia has massed its troops in the east and south in the hope of taking more territory—maybe enough to declare a great victory by May 9th, when Russia celebrates Victory Day marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. On April 24th Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region advanced slightly, seizing small towns around Sievierodonetsk.
A Russian general, Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia's central military district, was quoted as saying that the country’s objective is to take full control of all of southern Ukraine. This would create not only an eastern land corridor between Crimea and Donbas (regions it conquered in 2014) but also a western one to link to the enclave of Transnistria, a separatist region of Moldova. That would mean taking over Mariupol, where a last group of Ukrainian soldiers is still holding out in the Azovstal steel plant, as well as Mykolaiv and Odessa, which seem out of Russia’s reach for now.
How will the war end? Nobody really knows. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, will visit Moscow on April 26th to push for a ceasefire. That has angered the Ukrainian president, who says Mr Guterres should first have witnessed the devastation and atrocities caused by Russian forces. Mr Blinken has said he expects Mr Guterres to deliver “a very strong and clear message to Vladimir Putin, which is the need to end this war now.”
Some Europeans foresee a stalemate followed by negotiations in the summer and a deal in the autumn, before the next winter sets in. Many experts see echoes of the “Winter war” of 1939-40, when Finland valiantly fought off the Soviet Union for months but was eventually forced to cede territory and, for decades after the second world war, had to maintain a precarious neutrality.
“I used to think the Winter war was the best that Ukraine could achieve. I now think it’s the best Russia can achieve,” says Dan Fried of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank in Washington. “Another scenario is possible: the defeat of Imperial Russia by the Japanese in 1905.” If there is a partition, he argues, it is unlikely to be a stable peace but, more probably, a dangerous armed truce.
Correction (April 26th 2022): António Guterres will visit Moscow on April 26th, not April 25th as we first wrote.
Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis.


15. How does Ukraine keep intercepting Russian military communications?

So much information available in the public domain.

How does Ukraine keep intercepting Russian military communications?
NPR · by Greg Myre · April 26, 2022

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko (right) and his brother Wladimir Klitschko check a phone at city hall on Feb. 27. When Russia invaded Ukraine, many expected Moscow to knock out the Ukrainian communications network. But Ukrainian systems, for both civilians and the military, continue to function. Ukraine, meanwhile, has regularly intercepted Russian military communications. Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Russia is regarded as one of the world's most advanced countries when it comes to anything and everything related to spying, and that includes secretive, high-tech military communications.
For Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a former intelligence officer, this is a particular point of pride. Yet Russia's reputation has taken a major blow with the often bumbling way the military has handled communications in Ukraine.
Here's a look at how the Ukrainians have effectively countered the Russians on multiple fronts:
⚡️ The interception by @DI_Ukraine: a conversation between the occupiers, which refers to an order to kill all the @ArmedForcesUkr in the #Popasna district, #Luhansk region
The #russians violate all the laws of war. But war crimes have no statute of limitations#RussianWarCrimes pic.twitter.com/rsnjOUkmLC
— National resistance: Ukraine (@ResistUA) April 20, 2022
Q. Ukraine keeps publicly releasing what it says are intercepted Russian communications from the battlefield. Wouldn't Ukraine want to keep this under wraps?
Ukraine feels there are huge public relations benefits in releasing intercepted material that's either embarrassing to Russia or points to Russian wrongdoing, possibly even atrocities.
Ukraine's military intelligence recently put out audio on social media, saying that as two Russian military members were speaking, one called for Ukrainian prisoners of war to be killed.
"Keep the most senior among them, and let the rest go forever. Let them go forever, damn it, so that no one will ever see them again, including relatives," a voice says on the tape.
NPR can't confirm the authenticity, and there's no indication that the Russians acted on this statement.
But collectively, the ongoing stream of audio released by the Ukrainian government and military points to Ukraine's sustained ability to intercept Russian military communications.
While the public releases are limited, military analysts say the Ukrainians are certainly capturing additional calls that provide important battlefield intelligence, which is not being shared publicly.
Q. How are the Ukrainians intercepting these calls?
This is probably happening in several ways. But at the most basic level, some Russian troops have apparently been far too casual in their communications.
The Russians brought their own cellphones into Ukraine. When the Ukrainians figured this out, they cut off Russian phone numbers from the Ukrainian network — so the Russian phones stopped working.
Russian troops then began seizing cellphones from Ukrainian civilians, according to Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection.
"We call on Ukrainians whose mobile phones were taken away by representatives of enemy troops to inform the operator as soon as possible," the Ukrainian agency said in a statement last month.
Ukrainian civilians have complied, and this let the Ukrainian government know which phones were stolen by the Russians — and effectively became listening devices for the Ukrainians.
Dmitri Alperovitch, a cyber expert who heads the Silverado Policy Accelerator, says this is just one way the Ukrainians are tapping into Russian communications. The overall result, he said, has been a huge Ukrainian advantage in intelligence.
"The intercepted phone calls are just invaluable in getting a sense into what the Russians are thinking, the state of their morale," said Alperovitch. "There was an intercepted phone call where the Russian officer was saying how half of his troops have frostbite on their feet, how they don't have any hot stoves for food. They're sleeping in trenches."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talks with Pope Francis on a phone call from Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 22. Most Ukrainian communications networks continue to function. Also, the U.S. and other partners are helping Ukraine with intelligence that includes intercepted Russian communications. AP
Q. If this has been happening since the beginning of the war, why can't the Russians figure out how to prevent it?
This has been a real mystery, especially since the Russians have a long history of having strong military intelligence and communications.
The Russians have a modern, secure radio system for the military. Russian intelligence has been extremely active in Ukraine for years. But Russia has so far squandered these advantages, according to military analysts.
Inexplicably, the analysts say, Russia has used basic, off-the-shelf, unencrypted radio communications in many cases that made it relatively easy for the Ukrainians and others to listen in.
Also, it's not clear why Russia hasn't simply bombed Ukrainian communications networks to rubble.
Russia expected a quick and easy takeover of Ukraine, and there's been speculation that Moscow wanted to keep the phone system, the railways, the electrical power grid and other infrastructure in place so Russian forces could use it.
And, no doubt, Russia is also tapping into Ukrainian communications and would like to continue these operations.
But whatever the reasons, Ukraine's phone and internet systems are functioning in most places, in contrast to what was predicted before the war.
Q. Are the Ukrainians getting any outside help?
The Ukrainians are getting significant intelligence help from the United States and other NATO countries, according to U.S. officials.
Most of this assistance remains secret, but some is easily visible on social media.
"If you look at the flight radar right now, almost constantly, you see U.S. Air Force planes that are flying near the Ukrainian border, collecting intelligence," said Alperovitch.
The U.S. planes are not entering Ukrainian airspace but are nearby over the skies of Poland, Romania and elsewhere in the region.
"I'm sure that they're collecting radio communications and other forms of intelligence that they then pass on to the Ukrainians that is invaluable in their prosecution of this fight," said Alperovitch.
Q. Is this intelligence sharing new, or has this happened before?
There's history here, and it's dripping with irony.
Russia waged a major cyberattack in Ukraine in 2015, taking down parts of the electricity grid, and then Moscow interfered in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
These Russian actions prompted the U.S. and Ukraine to work together to counter Russian cyber measures.
NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone doesn't say much in public. But he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about U.S. cooperation with Ukraine on March 10, just a couple of weeks after the war started.
"The intelligence that we're sharing is accurate. It's relevant and it's actionable," Nakasone told the committee.
CIA Director William Burns offered a similar assessment in a rare public speech earlier this month.
"We have been equally committed to rapid and effective intelligence sharing with our Ukrainian partners throughout the fighting and for months beforehand," Burns said.
Putin probably doesn't appreciate this irony, but his cyber actions against the U.S. and Ukraine several years ago helped forge a partnership that's now being used very aggressively to undermine his war in Ukraine.
Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.
NPR · by Greg Myre · April 26, 2022


16. Biden’s National Security Strategy still unavailable
In all fairness to the White House, in addition to the interim strategic guidance the White House published a very detailed INDOPACIFIC strategy.which is the stated priority of the administration. 

 
Biden’s National Security Strategy still unavailable
If he understands the threats, it won't be what he planned
washingtontimes.com · by Clifford D. May

OPINION:
Dear President Biden,
I hope this note finds you well. You’re a busy guy, so I’ll get straight to the point. You’ve now been in office for over a year, and you still don’t have a National Security Strategy, which, as you may know, you’re legally obliged to send to Congress. That’s a tad pokey, don’t you think?
Last March, you did issue a placeholder: “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.” That document was primarily concerned with “the climate crisis” and “those who argue that, given all the challenges we face, autocracy is the best way forward.” As has since become apparent, the latter is the real crisis because the autocrats are not just arguing.
On Feb. 4, 2022, the presidents of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, proclaimed a new partnership “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era” with “no limits” and “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Twenty days later, Mr. Putin sent tanks, troops and missiles into Ukraine. His mission: to overthrow the democratically elected government and turn an independent nation-state into a Russian colony.
Since then, Mr. Putin’s barbarity — mass executions, torture, rape, forced population transfers — has been shocking and criminal. William Burns, your CIA director, last week observed that Mr. Xi is “a silent partner in Putin’s aggression.”
Given these developments, can we agree that you have some serious work to do on your NSS, and that the final product should be significantly different from what your interim guidance — which mentions Russia just five times, two in a positive context — suggests?
And may I lend a hand?
Your NSS should be predicated on “peace through strength.” That’s not just a Reagan-esque concept. It traces back to an ancient Roman general who wrote: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
It makes sense if you think about it. Bad guys are less likely to throw a punch if they think you can hit harder. The corollary: If they see you as weak, they’re apt to take their best shot.
To achieve “peace through strength” requires deterrence. That comes in two flavors. The more effective is “deterrence by denial.” Imagine if Mr. Putin had looked at Ukraine and said: “Those SOBs are armed to the teeth! I won’t succeed in conquering them. And I may get clobbered if I try!”
Your policy instead was to refrain from provoking Vladimir the Terrible. That undoubtedly encouraged him.
However, you did attempt to establish “deterrence by punishment,” warning that if he butchered his neighbors, economic sanctions would follow. He factored that in and proceeded anyway.
One reason: He knew Germany and other European countries were addicted to Russian fossil fuels and would keep writing checks and remain reluctant to provide Ukraine with weapons.
You encouraged such thinking by limiting American energy production and exports, and relinquishing America’s status as an energy superpower.
That was necessary, you argued, to address the aforementioned “climate crisis.” Perhaps, in your NSS, you might consider alternative policies.
Like what? Replacing coal overseas with American liquefied natural gas. According to a credible analysis, that would “have the environmental impact of electrifying every vehicle in the United States, putting solar on every household in America, and adding 54,00 industrial-scale windmills.”
One more point on deterrence: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been talking about “integrated deterrence.” If he’s implying a “whole of government” approach, that’s fine but hardly new. But count me among those who fear he really means talking softly and carrying a smaller stick.
Mr. Austin recently said that integrated deterrence “will give any adversary pause.” Uh-oh. You do see why “pausing” is not as good as deterring, don’t you?
In your interim guidance, you emphasize the importance of “our alliances and partnerships around the world.” Right you are! But you’ve also been talking about a “pivot toward Asia,” which by definition means turning your back on alliances and partnerships in Europe and the Middle East — even as common enemies are attacking them. How about dropping the pivot and reinforcing deterrence everywhere?
One swath of silver lining: Mr. Putin may have reawakened NATO. Germany and other member nations haven’t been contributing adequately to the collective security. It’s now your job to lead the effort to revitalize this defensive alliance, possibly with Finland and Sweden coming onboard. But keep in mind: NATO unity is not the goal. Rather NATO unity is the means by which NATO achieves its goals: deterrence leading to peace.
Final thought: A growing number of serious analysts, including Matt Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser and my FDD colleague, and Elliott Abrams, who served in high posts in several administrations and is now with the Council on Foreign Relations, believe that a new Cold War is already underway.
As noted above, a Sino-Russian alliance is driving the conflict. Among the junior partners are Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea (nuclear-armed today thanks to fatally flawed diplomatic deals in the past) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (which will be nuclear-armed before long if you conclude a watered-down version of former President Barack Obama’s fatally flawed deal).
Are you prepared to lead the free world against what Waller Newell, the great academic expert on tyranny, calls the “Antidemocratic League”? If so, you must adjust your priorities — not least your spending priorities.
Years from now, when historians read your NSS, will they conclude that you recognized the threats to America and its allies and responded effectively? Or will they say that while tyrants ran roughshod over Europe, Asia and the Middle East, your attention was … elsewhere.
If you want to chat about any of this, you know where to find me. Not a joke! And have a nice day!
• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.
Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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17. U.S. diplomats return to Ukraine for first time since Russia's invasion


Good news.
U.S. diplomats return to Ukraine for first time since Russia's invasion
Axios · by Shawna Chen · April 27, 2022
U.S. diplomats have returned to Ukraine for the first time since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday.
Why it matters: The resumption of American diplomatic operations in Ukraine has been a priority for the U.S. as Russian forces continue to batter key Ukrainian cities.
What he's saying: Diplomats have returned to Ukraine "on a temporary basis," Price said at a press briefing. The U.S. had moved American diplomatic personnel to Poland after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two breakaway "republics."
  • "The deputy chief of mission and members of the embassy team traveled to Lviv, Ukraine, today, where they were able to continue our close collaboration with key Ukrainian partners," he said, adding that they met with interlocutors from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
  • "Today’s travel was a first step ahead of more regular travel in the immediate future, and as we’ve said, we’re accelerating preparations to resume Embassy Kyiv operations just as soon as possible," he noted.
  • "We are constantly assessing and evaluating and re-assessing the security situation with a view towards resuming those embassy operations as soon as possible, again, to facilitate our support to the government and people of Ukraine as they bravely defend their country."
The big picture: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that Western countries will "keep moving heaven and earth" to help Ukraine defend itself.
  • Austin and Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley met with over 30 defense officials from dozens of NATO and non-NATO countries in Germany on Tuesday to coordinate military aid for Ukraine.
Axios · by Shawna Chen · April 27, 2022


18. Russian Leaders Know They’re Committing War Crimes. Their Laws of War Manual Says So.


If Russia was a rule of law country perhaps their manual would have an effect. But it is a rule by law country.


Russian Leaders Know They’re Committing War Crimes. Their Laws of War Manual Says So.
lawfareblog.com · by More Articles · April 25, 2022
The Russian armed forces and their commanders know they are committing war crimes in Ukraine. It says so in the 2001 “Manual on International Humanitarian Law for the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
In my 2017 book, “The Law of War in the 21st Century,” I thought it might be useful for readers and researchers to have examples of non-NATO views of the law of armed conflict, so in an appendix I included law of war manuals that might be difficult to find, including the 2001 Russian manual. The translation was prepared by a certified translator from an original in my possession.
The manual requires commanders to be aware that, generally, attacks are forbidden on targets including concentrations of civilians, their dwellings, infrastructure necessary to their survival, nuclear power plants and cultural icons. It also makes clear that attacks on those targets employing weapons such as indirect artillery and missile fire, indiscriminate automatic weapons fire, and landmines can constitute separate war crimes.
“Civilian” is defined in the manual as “any person present in the area of combat operations, who is not a member of armed forces and refrains from any act of hostility.” The manual warns, “Especially dangerous objects are nuclear power stations … whose destruction may release dangerous destructive factors and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. These objects shall not become the object of attack even when they are military objectives if attacking them may result in the above-mentioned consequences.” That rule wasn’t applied at Chernobyl or the Zaporizhzhia complex.
The manual tells a commander: “While organizing and conducting combat operations the commander and staff must take into account the rules of international humanitarian law.” Prohibited methods of warfare include “killing or wounding civilians … taking of hostages… terrorizing the civilian population; using starvation of civilians to achieve military objectives, the destruction, removal or reduction to uselessness of objects indispensable to their survival … destroying cultural property, historic monuments, places of worship and other objects of cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples …; destroying or capturing enemy property, unless required by military necessity; ordering to pillage a town or place.”
In addition, “the following shall be prohibited [during] combat operations: “booby-traps which are placed outside a military objective and in any way attached to, or associated … dead bodies; burial or cremation sites, graves[.]” If bodies were mined at Bucha, that was another direct violation.
The manual warns:
In accordance with … the penal legislation of the Russian Federation, perpetrators of international humanitarian law violations can be held criminally responsible. Such violations include actions against persons and objects protected under international humanitarian law: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment…willfully causing great suffering or serious injury, or harm to health; … taking of hostages; intentionally making the civilian population or individual civilians, …, an object of attack if it causes death or serious bodily injury, or harm to health; illegal arrest; … unlawful deportation … of civilian population of the occupied territory beyond its borders;
The actions of occupying forces must comply with the rules of international humanitarian law. The commander … in the occupied territory is obliged, …, to take all possible measures to ensure public order and security, prevent pillage and illegal confiscation of property. … Life, family, property, customs of the civilian population shall be respected.
Further, “search for, collection, identification, and burial of the dead members of the enemy armed forces as well as of other victims of armed conflicts shall be organized immediately, as soon as the situation permits and carried out … to establish the identity of the dead (deceased) and bury them with due dignity and respect as required by ethical principles.”
There are many other requirements, but those above were clearly violated in the shelling and bombing of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol, the murders in Bucha, the expulsions from Mariupol into Russia, and the mistreatment of civilians in numerous occupied towns and villages.
Do these rules matter?
When I last served in the U.S. Army in 1991, I drafted the war crimes investigation of Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. We had nothing like the levels of evidence present in Ukraine, yet we concluded the Iraqi leadership was guilty of numerous war crimes. I would have been anxious to have an Iraqi manual. This Russian manual is clear evidence that the Russian military leadership is aware their actions and inaction in Ukraine constitute war crimes. In any trial, the manual provides the necessary nexus to demonstrate that Russian leaders are legally responsible for illegal attacks upon and destruction of civilians and their homes, of cultural monuments and on nuclear power plants.
By their own words they are condemned.
Evan Wallach is a senior circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He is a combat veteran of Vietnam and served as an Attorney/Adviser in the International Affairs Division of the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army during the first Gulf War. He has taught law of war related subjects in various law schools since 1996.
lawfareblog.com · by More Articles · April 25, 2022


19.  Interview: Can the Russian Military Overcome Its Manpower Problems In Ukraine?

Key point:

Right now, from [their] force availability [and] from their logistical capabilities, they're simply not in a position to pursue even these types of significant military goals because of how hard the Russian military has been hit and how well the war has turned out for them [so far].
Interview: Can the Russian Military Overcome Its Manpower Problems In Ukraine?
rferl.org · by Reid Standish
A new phase of the Ukraine war is shaping up in the eastern part of the country, where Russian troops are aiming to overcome early setbacks and pummel Ukrainian forces in a long-distance ground battle.
But succeeding with its new war goals will be no simple task for a Russian military that has lost some 15,000 personnel since its February 24 invasion, according to an estimate British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace gave on April 25.
While far larger than the Ukrainians, the Russian forces are seen by Western and Ukrainian officials as demoralized and increasingly depleted following Moscow’s failed attempt at a quick victory after it invaded. In addition to mounting casualty figures, Russia has already deployed large parts of its military arsenal, including some of its most modern equipment, and has fired vast amounts of its rockets, artillery shells, and missiles.
As Western countries continue to gain momentum sending more and better equipment to Ukraine, questions about the depth of Russia’s military stockpiles as well as the preparedness and skills of its soldiers hang over the Kremlin’s war effort as the conflict enters its ninth week.
To find out more about the battles ahead, RFE/RL spoke with Margarita Konaev, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
RFE/RL: Russian officials have stated that one of the goals of the second phase of the war is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine as well as to create a land corridor that connects Crimea all the way over to Transdniester, the pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova. How do you interpret that and how realistic a goal does this seem for the Russian military at this point?
Margarita Konaev: Everyone following the war has observed that the Russian military’s goals have had to be adjusted given the realities on the ground and, to an extent, these most recent statements reflect some of those realities that we're seeing in the Donbas right now. [They] already control a lot of the territory [in the south]. So restating those goals gives them more attainable possibilities of what they can achieve in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, I think that statement about blocking Ukrainian access to the sea, controlling all of southern Ukraine, and then perpetuating that land bridge to the area in Moldova that is controlled by Russian forces [is] alarming. I would read it not as something that they're necessarily going to be trying to achieve in this round of fighting and this phase of the war, but something that they're positioning for as an option that they could pursue in the future.

Ukrainian armed forces hold artillery drills at an unknown location in eastern Ukraine in December 2021.
Right now, from [their] force availability [and] from their logistical capabilities, they're simply not in a position to pursue even these types of significant military goals because of how hard the Russian military has been hit and how well the war has turned out for them [so far].
RFE/RL: As a new phase of war is ramping up, there is a lot of focus right now on Ukraine being supplied from the West. But what kind of supplies and forces does Russia have that it hasn’t used yet and how does that measure up to the Ukrainian side?
Konaev: We've been paying a lot of attention to what Ukraine needs [and] to what Russia has been lacking or how [it] has been failing tactically, but we’ve focused less on what Russia has in reserve.
One area that they have not been using effectively -- and questions remain about whether they're able to [in the future] -- is airpower. We have not seen significant involvement of Russian airpower in this war and when they are hitting targets, they're doing it very briefly and then returning quickly back to safer Russian-controlled [areas]. More extensive involvement of Russian airpower could shift the balance a little more towards [Russia].
For Russia, a very important question is going to be manpower [and] to what extent they want to continue committing more and more of their own troops to this fight, especially at the [high] level of personnel losses that they've suffered. At a certain point, you have to start asking how you can justify those sorts of losses.

Russian tanks conducting exercises in the summer of 2021.
[Also] where they're going to be bringing those personnel from [is] a huge question. That's why we're hearing reports about mercenaries from the Vagner Group [and] even recruitment of some Syrian forces that they're allegedly bringing into [Ukraine]. [Although] I haven't really seen any real evidence to indicate that the numbers [of mercenaries] are as high as some reports suggest…it's not impossible that they will increasingly [have to] draw on some of those sources to augment their manpower [shortages].
RFE/RL: Russia recently claimed that it has captured control of Mariupol and in towns and cities across the south we are seeing Russian forces trying to set up local pro-Russian governments. In Kherson, there is even talk about holding a referendum to declare a “Kherson People’s Republic” to create another Moscow-backed entity carved from Ukraine. What do you make of these tactics being used on the ground by Russian forces as they take control of areas?
Konaev: From the early stages of the war, one of the biggest questions that's been asked is how is Russia planning to occupy Ukraine or Ukrainian areas that are clearly [not] interested in any sort of Russian rule?
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.
We know that in the east and in parts of the south there are larger pockets of Russian speaking populations, but even among them, any sort of welcome to Russian incursions has really not been to a [level that Russia] expected at the beginning [of the war]. That is why they increasingly have to rely on violence, suppression, and the destruction of those areas rather than trying to persuade or [gain] some local support. It's a tactic that they inevitably have to use if they want to retain any sort of sway or control in that region.
But I personally don't anticipate any sort of perpetuated military occupation in the south [of Ukraine] that you would see in a place like Palestine or even any sort of removal of opponent forces that we saw during the surge in Iraq. It's going to be a very different type of relationship that they're going to try to establish with the local population there. And again, they're mostly relying on the destruction of those areas so [they can] then declare victory and be able to say that they've accomplished their goals there.
RFE/RL: Given the brutal tactics we’ve seen during the war and then attacks like those in Bucha, what kind of a relationship is even possible for Russian forces with Ukrainians on the ground if there were to be a referendum?
Konaev: Any sort of referendum, I think it's important to clarify, is absolutely illegitimate and illegal because this is an illegal war. [Such] a referendum [would be] against international law to begin with and whatever [is] declared there should [be seen] with great skepticism.
Unfortunately, in any sort of conflict, you do have local actors that seek to benefit from the chaos. In this conflict, there have definitely been fewer [examples of this] because you have seen real unity among the Ukrainians, but what Russia is going to try to do is empower some of those [who are willing to collaborate] on the ground or even bring in people from the outside, [such as from Russia or the separatist-controlled parts of Ukraine].

Margarita Konaev
Another thing to watch is population displacement and an effort to remove some of the local population that is more pro-Ukrainian. [Russian forces] could maybe resettle some people from other areas of Ukraine or even parts of Russia to give the perception of legitimacy, but right now, at this point in the war, I think legitimacy is quite low on the list of what Russia is trying to portray and accomplish.
It's something that it can claim and argue to its own population that's already been fed a lot of lies, but it's unlikely that in Ukraine or the West that there's going to be a lot of buy in [or] legitimizing of their efforts in the south or in the east, let alone throughout the rest of the country.
RFE/RL: You mentioned earlier that this next stage of fighting is going to be very artillery focused, but if you had to pick one element of this next phase of the war to pay attention to, what would it be?
Konaev: I think that our expectation of the length of this war needs to be moderated. [My assessment] is that this is going to be more protracted than decisive -- just because of the balance of forces and the political [component] that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin simply cannot afford a loss.
And on the other side, Ukraine is very reluctant to settle, let alone retreat when it's in a relatively good position to continue the fight. My advice is to not expect a decisive [battle] but to expect this protracted stalemate and to keep paying close attention to the humanitarian costs of this war because the price of reconstruction is going to surpass the price of military support that [the West] is providing now -- and that [Western governments] should keep providing -- but also paying close attention to the humanitarian needs and to the postconflict needs that Ukraine is going to require.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity
rferl.org · by Reid Standish


20. Taiwan aims to learn lessons of Ukraine in annual military drills

Learn, adapt, anticipate.

Taiwan aims to learn lessons of Ukraine in annual military drills
Reuters · by Reuters
TAIPEI, April 26 (Reuters) - Taiwan will incorporate lessons learned from Russia's invasion of Ukraine into upcoming military exercises aimed at practising fighting off a Chinese attack, the island's defence ministry said on Tuesday.
Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has raised its alert level since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wary of the possibility Beijing might make a similar move on the island, though it has reported no signs this is about to happen.
What lessons to learn from the war on how the island could defend itself if China attacked have been widely debated in Taiwan, and discussed with the United States, according to Taiwan's defence minister. read more

The defence ministry said this year's Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan's largest annual war games, would be split into two parts, in May and July.
The May part would partly be a tabletop exercise based on "various possible actions of the Chinese Communist Party in recent years to invade Taiwan, taking into account the lessons of the Russian-Ukrainian war", it said in a statement.
There will also be five days of drills with soldiers, including live-fire exercises that will take place in July, the ministry added.
The Han Kuang exercise will focus on attacking the enemy at sea, preserving combat forces and "integrating the total force of the whole people to support military operations", a reference to civil defence and reservist reforms that aim to improve Taiwan's ability to fight a war with China.
While Taiwanese officials have seen many parallels in the Ukraine war and their own situation, including having their own giant neighbour with territorial ambitions, they have also pointed to major differences.
Taiwan has talked, for example, of the "natural barrier" of the Taiwan Strait, which would make China putting troops on the ground much more difficult than just crossing a land border.
China has dismissed any comparisons between Ukraine and Taiwan, saying that Taiwan is a part of China and not an independent country.
China has been stepping up its military pressure against Taiwan over the past two years or so.
Taiwan rejects China's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel
Reuters · by Reuters


21. Former Marine Trevor Reed freed in prisoner swap with U.S., Russia says

Kudos to our good friend and SF brother Roger Carstens who contributed to this outcome as the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs.  https://www.state.gov/biographies/roger-d-carstens/ Interestingly he is one of the people who transcended administrations. 


Former Marine Trevor Reed freed in prisoner swap with U.S., Russia says
The Washington Post · April 27, 2022
President Biden announced Wednesday that Russia freed former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed from detention, as Moscow said it arranged a prisoner swap to secure the return of pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been jailed on U.S. drug charges.
“Today, we welcome home Trevor Reed and celebrate his return to the family that missed him dearly,” Biden said in a statement. “Trevor, a former U.S. Marine, is free from Russian detention.”
Biden did not reference a prisoner swap in his statement but said “the negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry, in a post on Telegram from spokeswoman Maria Zakharova minutes earlier, announced that “as a result of a lengthy negotiation process,” Reed was “exchanged for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison by an American court in 2010.”
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons website listed Yaroshenko as “not in [BOP] custody.”
Reed’s family confirmed his release in a statement Wednesday, thanking Biden and saying his actions “may have saved Trevor’s life.”
“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely on his way back to the United States,” it said.
Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2020 for endangering the “life and health” of Russian police officers after a drunken night out in Moscow a year earlier. He denied any wrongdoing.
In recent weeks, Reed’s family and U.S. lawmakers have renewed calls for his release as his parents said his health was worsening. U.S. lawmakers and diplomats have denounced his sentence, and the ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, described the evidence used to convict Reed as “ridiculous.”
Yaroshenko, a former Russian pilot, was serving a 20-year prison sentence at the Danbury, Conn., federal prison for conspiracy to bring drugs into the United States. He was picked up by authorities in Liberia and turned over to DEA officials, who sent him to the United States. His attorneys argued he had been entrapped by the DEA.
In 2010, Yaroshenko had met with two men about transporting large shipments of cocaine from South America into Liberia and then on to other destinations, including the United States, according to court documents. They were confidential sources for a long-running undercover Drug Enforcement Administration operation.
American officials repeatedly accused Russia of holding Reed as well as other U.S. citizens as potential bargaining chips in a swap.
Yaroshenko is heading to Russia, his lawyer Alexei Tarasov said, according to Russian outlet Interfax. “According to my information, he is now heading home. The exchange took place in a third country,” Tarasov told Interfax.
Reed, who traveled from North Texas to Moscow to visit his girlfriend in 2019, pleaded not guilty to a charge of using violence to endanger the life or health of a government official performing his duties. He was convicted in July 2020 and sentenced to prison by a Moscow court in a case that Reed has described as “clearly political.”
Timothy Bella and Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · April 27, 2022


22. Rethinking Indonesia’s non-aligned foreign policy

Excerpts:
Jakarta must make its position known. Nonalignment may be safer for Indonesia to continue economic cooperation with China and Russia. Simultaneously, it could boost military ties with the United States and other Western powers. But in the long run, two scenarios have to be considered. First, Indonesia could take a firm stance to align with a particular great power for its economic and military links and assistance. Second, it could create a new bloc to navigate between the great powers. Although these policy options are not new, in light of recent developments Jakarta’s options are worthy of discussion.
Both options suit the principle of bebas when Indonesia chooses based on its own national interests, not decisions dictated by external parties. It is aktif when Indonesia not only watches the power games but also tries to establish its own path in the Indo-Pacific order-building. Non-bloc strategies must be devised to achieve Indonesia’s foreign policy goals, not chased as the goal itself.
Rethinking Indonesia’s non-aligned foreign policy | East Asia Forum
eastasiaforum.org · by I Gede Wahyu Wicaksana · April 27, 2022
Author: I Gede Wahyu Wicaksana, Universitas Airlangga
The crisis in Ukraine should prompt Indonesia to reconsider the direction and strategy of its foreign policy. The war is not directly expanding to Indonesia’s immediate geopolitical environment, but it is impacting its strategic situation. China and the United States’ interest and influence in the Russia–Ukraine conflict are also shaping the future of the Indo-Pacific order.

Indonesia’s current foreign policy reflects old Cold War views and objectives, especially that Indonesia should be neutral in ideological bloc contestation because taking sides could jeopardise its sovereignty. But the current great power competition in Asia is not powered by ideology, but by geopolitical and geoeconomic interests. This means it is unlikely that a middle power like Indonesia can effectively pursue outdated non-bloc pragmatism amid the evolving regional security architecture. The Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo government must see nonalignment as a means, not an end.
Concerning the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war, Jokowi’s foreign policy shows little geopolitical awareness. For example, Indonesia’s military exercise with the United States in early August 2021 was followed by China and Russia holding a similar largescale activity. Sutiyoso, a retired general and political ally of Jokowi, said it was ‘important to signal that Indonesia was not leaning toward China’, but why did non-aligned Jakarta not take a similar military approach to China and Russia? In part, because Indonesia’s military elites distrust their Chinese counterparts.
On 3 March 2022, Indonesia also supported the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it did not explicitly mention Russia — just the need to pay attention to the humanitarian conditions in Ukraine. Foreign Ministry officials defended the stance to back Ukraine by referring to nonalignment, economic interests and international reputation — especially within the G20. Yet Indonesia also insists that Russian President Vladimir Putin attend the planned G20 summit in late 2022.
It is difficult to pinpoint which national interests are being pursued within the G20 forum. If Indonesia had to keep investments and trade ties with Russia under the bilateral comprehensive economic partnership agreement, it’s unclear why Jakarta joined others in standing against Moscow at the United Nations. Indonesia has nothing at stake for not supporting Ukraine. But, Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto is currently making a huge military procurement from the United States and some NATO members. This goes some way to explaining the westward policy.
Jokowi has no strategic doctrine. During his first five-year term in 2014–2019, foreign policy grappled with the discourse of the Indo-Pacific, projecting Indonesia as a global maritime fulcrum (GMF). But during his second tenure from 2019, Jokowi is not including the GMF outlook in the state’s international priority list. Instead, he puts economic diplomacy at the top, followed by improving Indonesia’s contributions to global multilateral institutions.
Indonesia has missed the significance of geopolitical considerations in its foreign policy without the GMF. Its proposal for the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific drew upon the idea that Indonesia, with its location at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, should play a constructive role in creating a rules-based order amid competition between China and the United States.
The maritime vision is gone, replaced by Jokowi’s technocratic, economic-oriented foreign relations and image-building ambitions. Perhaps Jokowi envisions a more global role, mainly through the G20. It appears that he wants to leave a similar international leadership legacy to his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a decade ago.
Ambiguity and ambivalence will present a big problem. The multitude of consequences of the war in Ukraine on the increasingly polarised world is unpredictable. At the same time, Indonesia’s international activism is not guided by a grand strategy. Jokowi, Prabowo and foreign-policymakers must rethink the meaning and implementation of the real ‘bebas aktif’ — or independent and active foreign policy.
Jakarta must make its position known. Nonalignment may be safer for Indonesia to continue economic cooperation with China and Russia. Simultaneously, it could boost military ties with the United States and other Western powers. But in the long run, two scenarios have to be considered. First, Indonesia could take a firm stance to align with a particular great power for its economic and military links and assistance. Second, it could create a new bloc to navigate between the great powers. Although these policy options are not new, in light of recent developments Jakarta’s options are worthy of discussion.
Both options suit the principle of bebas when Indonesia chooses based on its own national interests, not decisions dictated by external parties. It is aktif when Indonesia not only watches the power games but also tries to establish its own path in the Indo-Pacific order-building. Non-bloc strategies must be devised to achieve Indonesia’s foreign policy goals, not chased as the goal itself.
I Gede Wahyu Wicaksana is Senior Lecturer of International Relations at Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia.
eastasiaforum.org · by I Gede Wahyu Wicaksana · April 27, 2022


23. Don’t Fight in Another Country’s War

I would not put Andrew Milburn in anywhere near the same category as Malcolm Nance. Doing so is a real insult to the good work Andrew is doing (he is not a foreign fighter, he is not a glory hound, - he is providing help to the Ukrainians in a positive way).


Don’t Fight in Another Country’s War
A Ukrainian victory should be as Ukrainian as possible.
The Atlantic · by Graeme Wood · April 26, 2022
Last Monday, Malcolm Nance, an MSNBC talking head and former sailor in the United States Navy, showed up on the channel by satellite from Ukraine, dressed to kill. He wielded an assault rifle and wore full-camo military dress, including a ballistic helmet, and U.S. and Ukrainian flag patches. About a month ago, he said, he decided he was “done talking.” He then talked about how he had joined Ukraine’s international legion to help the country “fight [against Russia’s] war of extermination—an existential war.” Others have traced a similar journey. Andy Milburn, a journalist and ex-Marine who stopped writing and began training Ukrainians for combat, wrote an article about how he, too, was finished writing articles about Ukraine. “It just started to seem so frivolous,” he wrote, solemnly. “I didn’t want to be an observer.”
Nance and Milburn are “foreign fighters,” people who have left home to fight in someone else’s war. (Certain scholars draw a distinction between foreign fighters, who join an insurgency against a state, and volunteers, who join a state armed force.) Some foreign fighters are motivated by idealism: Nance, for example, or most of the several thousands of men who traveled to fight for the Islamic State. Others are paid (Soldier of Fortune magazine, which ceased print publication in 2016, had a “Guns for Hire” classified section), and still others just want to fight and are not picky about the cause or the pay. I can only assume they like the smell of stale cigarettes and BO.
I pass no judgment on Nance’s decision. But as a matter of policy, the Ukrainians should be circumspect about foreign fighters, and the governments that support Ukraine should discourage their citizens from traveling there to fight.
There are good reasons to travel to fight in Ukraine: to protect innocent lives and to kill those who would take them. Against this weighty plus are numerous minuses. Some are just practical: Think about all the crannies and hiding places in your home or city block—all the potential weapons caches or spider holes in which to conceal yourself for maximum tactical advantage against an invader. In unfamiliar places, these advantages vanish, and a foreign volunteer could end up a burden to those he intends to help. The novelist William T. Vollmann wrote a despairing account of his brief stint as a foreign fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Rendered unfit for combat by his explosive diarrhea, Vollmann drank a great deal of the Afghans’ tea and Fanta but did nothing for the war effort.
The moral disadvantages of foreign volunteers are less obvious. Before the war, some predicted that Ukraine would not fight at all, and would acquiesce to its invasion and absorption into Russia. If Ukraine had not resisted, one might have wondered whether Vladimir Putin had a point, and Ukraine was a fake country whose absorption was natural. This hypothesis could be falsified only by a national resistance—which Ukraine has amply provided. The country has fought back, under Ukrainian leadership, and appears willing to keep doing so. Plenty of countries have relied on foreign fighters to ease them into existence. But the sure sign of a country’s objective reality is that it insists on being born with or without the aid of foreign midwives. Putin will say (and is already saying) that Ukraine survived the invasion only because outsiders intervened. Better that the Ukrainian victory be as Ukrainian as possible.
Kacper Rękawek, who studies foreign fighters at the University of Oslo’s Center for Research on Extremism, told me we should expect that when Russia captures foreign volunteers, it will put them “on Russian state TV, 24/7, to say, ‘Look—NATO has arrived.’ It will be too good to be true.” The experience of Aiden Aslin, a volunteer from Nottinghamshire, England, confirmed that prediction. After Russia captured him in Mariupol, he was paraded for interviews, including this one with a Putinophilic fellow Brit.
So the foreign volunteer lacks local knowledge, and his presence undercuts foundational moral claims. Perhaps these concerns are outweighed in the cases of skilled volunteers, veterans with combat experience and bowels of steel. Rękawek said the Ukrainian military appears to have sought out foreign combat veterans, who then might be “plugged into existing Ukrainian units” as supplementary forces, “like a cherry on top.” Their roles on these teams would contrast with less experienced walk-ons who are sent to join the militarized groups of Ukrainian civilians, consisting since the invasion of teachers, accountants, taxi drivers, and anyone else who can hold a rifle.
Rękawek is sympathetic to these volunteers. “I won’t claim that I’m an impartial observer,” he told me. “If someone wants to go and is ready to sacrifice blood, sweat, and tears to fight for Western democracy—if you want to do it, do it.” Numerous European governments outright criminalize their citizens’ fighting overseas, except in wars explicitly blessed by their home governments.
But governments should be worried even when their citizens travel to fight in wars that the governments themselves endorse. The decision to fight should, whenever possible, be removed from the discretion of individuals. The state should guard its monopoly on violence jealously, and discourage any individual from seizing that prerogative. The most basic function of a state is to focus, restrain, and allocate violence. It filters one person’s righteous fury—it could be Nance’s; it could be mine; it could belong to a member of ISIS—through a political process, which turns it into something legitimate, or stops it. The United States just promised another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. It has not sent troops, in the air or on the ground, and it has good reasons for that decision.
“In an ideal world, it should be states that do the fighting,” Rękawek told me. “But in the less-than-ideal world, the Ukrainian reality, there’s nothing wrong with them asking for volunteers.” I don’t blame Ukraine for seeking all available help. (The first call for foreign volunteers came on February 27, when Ukraine’s odds looked especially grim and the country was scrambling to make up for its under-preparation.) But foreign fighters and volunteers also undermine the authority of the countries whose citizens are traveling, and those countries should craft policies that reduce their flow.
Nance and Milburn are idealists, or so they tell us. In some sense they are right: Saying “I’m done talking” means that pontification on cable TV has started to feel pointless. (I know the feeling.) But it also means that they think the legitimacy of the political process, the one that has kept the United States from entering the war directly, has reached its limit. This too is a familiar feeling, and one that is worth resisting.
The Atlantic · by Graeme Wood · April 26, 2022


24. NATO’s Nordic Expansion:  Adding Finland and Sweden Will Transform European Security
Excerpts:

When Finland and Sweden join NATO, the security architecture of northern Europe will change. Each country brings considerable military capabilities to the alliance: Finland maintains an army with very substantial reserves, and Sweden has strong air and naval forces, particularly submarine forces. With Sweden’s advanced Gripen fighters added to the F35s now ordered or under delivery to Norway, Denmark, and Finland, more than 250 highly modern fighters will be available in the region as a whole. Operated together, they will be a substantial force.
...
As the NATO summit in Madrid approaches, the alliance will have to consider Finland’s and Sweden’s requests for rapid accession. This should be seen not only as a way to strengthen the stability of the Nordic and Baltic areas but also as an opportunity to strengthen the alliance as a whole at a time when Russia’s military aggression has made that imperative.

NATO’s Nordic Expansion
Adding Finland and Sweden Will Transform European Security
April 26, 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Carl Bildt · April 26, 2022
Before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the question of NATO membership was barely part of the political debate in Finland and Sweden. Both countries have a long history of military nonalignment, and although they have gradually pursued closer cooperation with the United States and NATO—and politicians in both countries have long advocated membership—NATO accession was hardly seen as a pressing issue.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine changed all that. In response to Russian aggression, both countries are reassessing their security policies, and seeking NATO membership is rapidly emerging as the most realistic option. Recent polls show that clear and increasing majorities in both countries support joining the alliance. In addition, both countries have delivered substantial amounts of weapons to Ukraine, including 10,000 man-portable antiarmor weapons from Sweden.
By invading Ukraine, Putin sought not only to bring that country back under its influence but to also change the security order of Europe. On the latter point, he has succeeded—just not in the way he likely intended. Russia’s assault has unified NATO and made its expansion much more likely. If Finland and Sweden join the alliance, as they look poised to do, they will bring substantial new military capabilities, including advanced air and submarine capabilities, that will alter the security architecture of northern Europe and help deter further Russian aggression.
ARMED NEUTRALITY
The Nordic countries are similar to one another in many respects, but they have pursued very different security policies since World War II. To a large degree, these differences reflect the neighbors’ different experiences during the war. Denmark and Norway sought neutrality, but were occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. Finland initially rebuffed a Soviet invasion in the Winter War of 1939–1940. Later, it found itself fighting on Hitler’s side until it could extricate itself from the war. Sweden alone among Nordic countries escaped the horrors of war and occupation with a policy of neutrality designed to ensure its survival. That this policy succeeded was largely because Hitler’s military calculus didn’t require the acquisition of Swedish territory; he could achieve his objectives in the area by other means.
After the war, Sweden contemplated forming a Nordic defense union with Denmark and Norway. But negotiations broke down, mainly because Norway believed that only an alliance with the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers could guarantee its security. Sweden wasn’t ready for such alliance, in part because of the situation in Finland. Coming out of the war, Finland—which had been one country with Sweden for six centuries until 1809—was in a precarious position. It had lost its second biggest city, Viborg, and been forced to accept a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union. It had restrictions on its armed forces and a Soviet military base immediately to the west of the capital, Helsinki. The Soviets also dominated the Allied Control Commission charged with overseeing the country in the immediate postwar years.


Russia’s assault has unified NATO and made its expansion much more likely.
For Sweden, ensuring that Finland didn’t fall under the yoke of the Soviets was a vital interest. Swedish leaders believed that any move toward a broader Western alliance would make Finland’s position even more precarious. And although they avoided saying so in public, this consideration was the main reason for Sweden’s policy of armed neutrality during the Cold War.
But neutrality did not mean neglect of the armed forces. Throughout the Cold War, Sweden maintained robust military forces, including an air force that for a time was seen as the fourth strongest in the world. Its official policy was one of strict military nonalignment, but it also made concealed preparations to cooperate with the United States and NATO in the event of war, and its stance was generally seen as conducive to Western security interests in the region.
A POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the security situation in northern Europe changed dramatically. Finland, which had gradually consolidated its position as an independent Nordic democracy, could now throw off the last shackles of the postwar period. The three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—had broken loose from the Soviet Union even before its formal demise. And in 1995, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union, a move that both countries had previously deemed impossible because of their policies of neutrality.
For those two countries, joining the EU meant ditching the concept of neutrality. But doing so did not immediately spark discussions about joining NATO. These were the years of the 1989 Paris Charter, which sought to build a European security order that included Russia, and of the conferences that led to the establishment of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Finland and Sweden both held out hope that they would be able to develop a constructive security relationship with a democratic and reforming Russia. Even after Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania gained membership in NATO and the EU more than a decade later, there was little debate in either Sweden or Finland about reconsidering nonaligned military status.
Starting in 2008, however, things in Moscow began to change markedly. Russia’s invasion of Georgia that year revealed that its threshold for using military force to pursue its political objectives was substantially lower than many had thought, and a distinctly revisionist tone started to creep into Moscow’s policy pronouncements. These trends accelerated dramatically in 2014, when Russia sought to prevent Ukraine from pursuing an association agreement with the European Union and to dismember the country through military aggression.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this year is drastically changing the geopolitical landscape once again. Putin’s immediate aim is to subdue Ukraine, but he is also waging a war against the West. The Russian leader and his acolytes have made it clear that they wish to replace the post-1989 security order in Europe with arrangements that impinge on the sovereignty of other countries. And just as the collapse of the Soviet Union led Sweden and Finland to reconsider their relationships to Europe, the current political earthquake has prompted them to reconsider fundamental elements of their security policies, including their relationships to NATO.


Putin’s immediate aim is to subdue Ukraine, but he is also waging a war against the West.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine is still unknown. It is impossible to predict what kind of country Russia will be in the decades ahead, but what is likely to emerge is a country that is both weaker in economic and military terms and more desperate and dangerous in political terms. The Putin regime—whether he or one of his associates is at the helm—is unlikely to give up its imperial ambitions as long as it remains in power.
This reality fundamentally changes the security considerations of both Helsinki and Stockholm. Increased defense spending is clearly one part of the answer to the new security situation. Both Sweden and Denmark have announced that they will increase their defense spending to two percent of GDP, Sweden by 2028. Norway, Finland, and the three Baltic states are more or less there already. Since 2014, Finland and Sweden have also dramatically expanded their military cooperation with NATO, the United States, and the United Kingdom, creating a foundation for further cooperative steps. For more than a decade now, the Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian air forces have been training together on close to a weekly basis.
But just strengthening defense capabilities is no longer seen as enough, which is why NATO accession is rapidly becoming a reality. Both Finland and Sweden have considered alternatives. The two governments sent a letter to all other EU members, reminding them of the solidarity provision in Paragraph 42.7 of the EU treaties, which is similar to the collective defense clause in Article 5 of the NATO Charter. Important initiatives to strengthen EU defense and security policy integration are underway, but as far as territorial defense is concerned, duplicating the institutions and command structures of NATO would make little sense and won’t happen. And of course, the EU does not include the two nations of greatest military relevance to northern Europe—the United States isn’t a member for obvious reasons, and the United Kingdom isn’t one for regrettable reasons.
Both Sweden and Finland are likely to continue to pursue measures that would make the EU into a stronger security alliance, but when it comes to territorial defense, there is simply no alternative to NATO. That has been the clear conclusion of the independent processes Helsinki and Stockholm have undertaken to evaluate alternatives.
Both Finland and Sweden will indicate their interest in joining the alliance well before the late-June NATO summit in Madrid. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that he foresees a fairly rapid accession process in light of the high degree of military integration that Finland and Sweden have already achieved, but ratification by all 30 member states will still take time. Both countries hope that ratification, particularly in the U.S. Senate, can be fairly rapid and that existing NATO members will be ready to jointly deter any possible Russian provocations between the start of the accession process and its likely completion in 2023.
A CHANGED LANDSCAPE
When Finland and Sweden join NATO, the security architecture of northern Europe will change. Each country brings considerable military capabilities to the alliance: Finland maintains an army with very substantial reserves, and Sweden has strong air and naval forces, particularly submarine forces. With Sweden’s advanced Gripen fighters added to the F35s now ordered or under delivery to Norway, Denmark, and Finland, more than 250 highly modern fighters will be available in the region as a whole. Operated together, they will be a substantial force.
Integrated control of the entire area will make defense of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania easier, since Swedish territory and airspace in particular are important for such efforts. This will strengthen deterrence and make a conflict there less likely, according to studies published by both Sweden and Finland. But perhaps the most important consequence of Finnish and Swedish accession to NATO would be to increase the alliance’s political strength as the pillar of the defense of Europe and the transatlantic area. Both countries will help facilitate deeper coordination between the EU and NATO, thus contributing to better burden sharing across the Atlantic—a goal of increasing importance in light of the greater demands placed on the United States by the security situation in East Asia.
Even as they join NATO, Finland and Sweden are likely to take care not to unduly provoke Russia by threatening its long-term security concerns. Norway, which has successfully combined strong military integration in NATO with a policy of reassurance toward Russia, could well serve as a model. The Russian forces and facilities in the Kola Peninsula—in the immediate vicinity of both Norwegian and Finnish territory—are of fundamental importance to Russia’s second-strike strategic nuclear capabilities, and Finland is, of course, close to the major population center and industrial hub of St. Petersburg. Partly for these reasons, neither Finland nor Sweden is likely to seek any permanent basing of major NATO units in their territory, and both are likely to have the same reservations about housing nuclear weapons as Denmark and Norway expressed when they joined the alliance.

As the NATO summit in Madrid approaches, the alliance will have to consider Finland’s and Sweden’s requests for rapid accession. This should be seen not only as a way to strengthen the stability of the Nordic and Baltic areas but also as an opportunity to strengthen the alliance as a whole at a time when Russia’s military aggression has made that imperative.

Foreign Affairs · by Carl Bildt · April 26, 2022


25. What War Is Still Good For

Edwin Starr said it best:

War, huh) Yeah!
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing, uhuh
(War, huh) Yeah!
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y’all!
(War, huh) Lookout!
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing
Listen to me, awwwww!
https://lyricsdb.org/war-what-is-it-good-for-lyrics/

On a more serious note:
In order to understand war—much less prevent or end it—one must pay much more attention to the state itself. States are fundamentally different from the gangs and firms that Blattman presents as belligerents in his book. They have sovereign authority and so have very different incentives than other actors in the international system. These incentives—to secure the territory claimed by a distinct political community and defend interests that extend beyond that territory—explain why states go to war with one another and why rebel groups go to war with a state in order to seize it or create a new one via secession. They also help explain why states make alliances that eventually drag them into war and why citizens willingly take up arms to defend their country.
But the incentive structure created by the international system of sovereign states does not fully account for why humans fight. War is both an institution and a culture, and as such it is a product of human decisions. As the political scientist John Mueller has argued, the most obvious way to prevent war is to change the culture of violence among states—that is, change leaders’ minds about when it is appropriate to wage war against other countries, foreign populations, or even their own citizens. Dueling was once culturally acceptable but is now obsolete. War might one day be a similar anachronism, although Blattman’s framework—in which war is the natural result of a breakdown in bargaining—doesn’t allow for this possibility. For such an enduring cultural institution to fall by the wayside, however, its perpetrators must come to see it as grotesque, immoral, and unnecessary—not just rare and improbable.


What War Is Still Good For
Why States Fight
Foreign Affairs · by Bridget L. Coggins · April 26, 2022
It is not a good time to publish a book about war that begins, as Christopher Blattman’s Why We Fight does, by belaboring just how improbable armed conflict is—even between enemies, even when they engage in brinkmanship—because of the many incentives to avoid it. That isn’t to say Blattman is wrong to argue that war is relatively rare and that most conflicts that have the potential to turn violent are resolved peacefully. War is indeed “in the error term,” as the political scientist Erik Gartzke memorably put it: the factors social scientists have identified for explaining war don’t actually predict it very well, because something random and intangible divides rivals that have reason to use force from those that actually do so. And most don’t.
Rather, it is a bad time to dwell on war’s rarity because, as Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has underscored, it only takes one to end thousands of lives and upend millions more. Those who fear war don’t do so irrationally out of erroneous judgments about its probability. They do so because war is horrible and it is only natural to fear horrible things, even if they happen infrequently. It is of little comfort to Ukrainians to know that their plight is uncommon.
In Blattman’s defense, his objective in framing peace as the rule is to explain the exception. Why We Fight seeks to answer the question of why rival powers occasionally fail to settle their differences peacefully and instead resort to war. Despite its title, however, the book offers no real theory of war. Rather, it identifies five forces, mostly culled from the literature on bargaining and social choice theory, that create a kind of taxonomy for failed bargaining between rivals: the inability to enforce or monitor compliance with an agreement, uncertainty about intentions or resolve, unchecked or unlimited interests, misperceptions or miscommunications, and motives for fighting that are intangible, such as nationalism. Blattman offers these forces, one per chapter in the first half of the book, without suggesting how they might go together or when their presence is sufficient to predict war. He simply claims that in a “fragile” society, “the five forces have eliminated most of the room for two enemies to find a compromise.”
Why We Fight is more successful as an introduction to the bargaining model of war, which seeks to explain conflict as a complex bargaining interaction. A development economist and professor of conflict studies at the University of Chicago, Blattman deftly translates knotty ideas from game theory and social choice theory for a lay audience, weaving in colorful anecdotes from his own life and travels. Parts of the book are compelling, in particular his account of postconflict development work he did together with his partner. But by focusing on abstract forces, Blattman largely neglects the main protagonists in war—sovereign states, the international system, and the leaders who make life-and-death decisions. Ultimately, it is the incentives, norms, and culture of these actors that explain why we fight.
WHAT IS WAR?
Part of the problem with Blattman’s book stems from his imprecise definition of war. Unlike most political scientists, who define war according to strict criteria, including a minimum threshold for battle-related deaths, Blattman defines it as “any kind of prolonged, violent struggle between groups.” Such wars need not kill or injure people or even be politically motivated. They can cause mostly property damage or involve violence used entirely for private ends. Gang warfare within prisons fits his definition, but the Cold War doesn’t.

In political science, definitions are not so much true or false, right or wrong, but more or less useful. They limit scope and add precision. They help make arguments transparent and falsifiable. But Blattman’s definition of war isn’t just too ambiguous to be useful; it trivializes war to such an extent that it actively muddies the waters.
Blattman describes as wars all manner of things that cannot be seriously considered such. He cites, for instance, soccer hooliganism of the kind the author Bill Buford describes in Among the Thugs, his horrifying account of riotous football fans in the United Kingdom. But as violent and destructive as these fanatics were, they were not engaged in an actual war. Some hooligans did ultimately commit war crimes in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, but that is not what Blattman argues. Instead, he seems to claim that hooliganism itself is war.
For war to fall by the wayside, its perpetrators must come to see it as grotesque, immoral, and unnecessary.
A narrower definition holds that wars are violent armed contests within or between countries over who will govern. In a world of sovereign states, control of the national government is the ultimate prize in war. Political scientists tend to be very precise about how many fatalities such struggles must produce, over what time frame, in order to qualify as wars. According to one commonly accepted definition of civil war, for instance, one or more armed actors must kill at least 1,000 people over the course of a year while attempting to take or retain control of part or all of a country, and there must be substantial losses on more than one side. For an interstate war, two or more countries must clash violently, again causing at least 1,000 deaths in a single year. Political scientists and historians disagree on the specifics, but they largely agree that war is distinct from other kinds of political violence, as are its causes. Russia didn’t invade Ukraine for the same reason that gangs terrorize communities in Colombia. Nor is a viable policy response to gang violence, or an effective approach to managing it, going to help end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Blattman’s overly inclusive definition of war leads him to conflate it with “state fragility,” a term that is more common in policy circles than in scholarly ones but in neither place means war. Fragile, less developed places, such as Colombia or Liberia, may be more prone to political violence than stable, wealthy ones. They are not, however, in a state of war already.
Blattman’s taxonomy also fails to explain why some fragile countries collapse into war and some do not (in part because it fails to distinguish between the condition of fragility and that of war). To have advanced a real theory of war, he would have had to examine a single fragile case and detail how each of the drivers in his taxonomy interacted there to prevent successful bargains and thereby lead to violence. He might have also shown how expensive, time-consuming development efforts failed to prevent conflict in a fragile place that has lapsed into war. Instead, he offers a jumble of factors that do not meld into a coherent story of how war begins or might be ended.
TEN COMMANDMENTS
In the second half of the book, after laying out his five forces that drive conflict and fragility, Blattman turns to the characteristics that make “stable and successful societies” better able to strike bargains for peace. Outside active war zones, the development economist is on firmer ground, since observational studies are more feasible in such settings, and so the experimental methods of economists are better able to determine which stabilization and development techniques work and which don’t. The secrets of successful societies are interdependence, checks and balances, the enforcement of rules, and interventions such as peacekeeping missions and sanctions. Each counteracts at least one of the forces that cause bargaining failures, generating resilience. Blattman likens them to preventive medicine.

At times, however, even this part of his analysis is flawed and ahistorical. For example, in attempting to refute the theory, most closely associated with the sociologist Charles Tilly, that war between European powers led to the creation of the modern state, he cites the irrelevant examples of Botswana and South Korea. “Warfare doesn’t play an obvious role in their success,” he writes of these “growth miracles of the twentieth century.” Setting aside the fact that Tilly’s theory pertains to state building, not economic growth, it is hard to understand why Blattman would cite a country that is still technically at war with the North as an example of a state forged by peace. Not only were South Korea’s institutions formed and transformed by military interventions, occupations, and experiences of war, but two of its early governments were military dictatorships.
Syrian rebels fighting in Bosra al-Sham, Syria, March 2015
Reuters
Having offered no theory of war, the book would have been ambitious to suggest paths to peace or even ways to achieve the characteristics of the stable, resilient societies set out as models. Why We Fight wisely avoids doing so. In lieu of solutions, it offers ten “commandments”—principles by which individuals who want to help generate more bargains short of war should operate. They are the following: differentiate simple problems from “wicked” ones, that is, ones with complex causes that are difficult to disentangle; don’t worship grand plans or best practices; don’t forget that policymaking is political; “honor thy margins,” or work incrementally; practice structured trial and error by tinkering with many potential solutions; learn from failure; be patient; expect less; be accountable; and “find your margin,” or zero in on the small piece of the world where you can tinker to good effect. These commandments might help aid and development workers do a better job. None of them, however, will help Ukrainians resist Russian aggression or help the United States and its allies resolve the crisis.
In the relatively more predictable fragile societies and postconflict settings where Blattman has done much of his work, moreover, his most useful advice is already well heeded. Nongovernmental organizations and governments are no longer using cookie-cutter development planning. The World Bank has fundamentally changed its approach to fragile states, trading strict economic principles for broader ones that take into account security and equity. Even the U.S. State Department’s Stabilization Assistance Review, which in 2018 assessed the lessons learned from previous U.S. interventions, concluded that small pilot programs are often more effective than grand schemes at first. And the Global Fragility Act, passed in the U.S. Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2019, sets out an ambitious strategy for a more humble, cooperative, and local approach to U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance. But most of this, too, is not really about war. It is about social and economic development.
A CULTURE OF CONFLICT
In order to understand war—much less prevent or end it—one must pay much more attention to the state itself. States are fundamentally different from the gangs and firms that Blattman presents as belligerents in his book. They have sovereign authority and so have very different incentives than other actors in the international system. These incentives—to secure the territory claimed by a distinct political community and defend interests that extend beyond that territory—explain why states go to war with one another and why rebel groups go to war with a state in order to seize it or create a new one via secession. They also help explain why states make alliances that eventually drag them into war and why citizens willingly take up arms to defend their country.
But the incentive structure created by the international system of sovereign states does not fully account for why humans fight. War is both an institution and a culture, and as such it is a product of human decisions. As the political scientist John Mueller has argued, the most obvious way to prevent war is to change the culture of violence among states—that is, change leaders’ minds about when it is appropriate to wage war against other countries, foreign populations, or even their own citizens. Dueling was once culturally acceptable but is now obsolete. War might one day be a similar anachronism, although Blattman’s framework—in which war is the natural result of a breakdown in bargaining—doesn’t allow for this possibility. For such an enduring cultural institution to fall by the wayside, however, its perpetrators must come to see it as grotesque, immoral, and unnecessary—not just rare and improbable.

Foreign Affairs · by Bridget L. Coggins · April 26, 2022



26. A Real Foreign Policy for the Middle Class


Will the middle class ever embrace or feel connected to foreign policy?

Excerpts:
It won’t be easy for the Biden administration to reestablish U.S. economic leadership. Many middle-class Americans continue to blame globalization in general, and trade in particular, for their economic struggles. For Democrats, it does not pay to be seen as the party of pro-globalization, coastal elites. Biden will therefore need to work hard at explaining that free and fair trade can advance the interests of the middle class, of unions, and of workers. He should follow through on his promise to bring labor and environmental interests to the negotiating table. But cutting off U.S. trade engagement or believing the country has time to defer introducing an Indo-Pacific economic agenda will further cede turf to China—ultimately restricting markets and posing more risks to American workers, not less.
It does not pay to be seen as the party of pro-globalization, coastal elites.
Biden will also need to make good on promises to renew U.S. economic leadership in multilateral financial institutions, rather than letting them lose further credibility. These institutions can amplify U.S. influence, and the White House should make engaging with them a priority. That means it cannot pass up future opportunities to nominate strong, qualified U.S. candidates for traditionally U.S.-held leadership positions at these organizations.
Working with the IMF and the World Bank will be key. Food insecurity, inflation, rising interest rates, and massive levels of debt in low-income countries threaten financial stability, especially in developing markets, and the IMF and the World Bank can help the world manage and mitigate the risks. The White House should exert pressure on the IMF and the World Bank to abide by their own rules on debt sustainability. It must also be prepared to demand that China provide transparency and appropriate debt relief to poor countries that fall into debt distress. It should prioritize initiatives, such as Build Back Better World, that challenge China’s lending and investment leadership. This will be particularly important when it comes to helping states with the transition to green energy.
Finally, the Biden administration must manage the economic and political consequences of the war in Ukraine. The invasion has upended many of the underlying assumptions of Biden’s proposed foreign policy for the middle class. At the same time, it challenges China’s rise, and in that way, it presents an opportunity for Biden to make up for lost time, including by moving past some of the political impediments—such as domestic opposition to joining the CPTPP—that have stood in the way of smart international choices. This opportunity could help Biden, and the United States, secure a win-win: an international economic policy agenda that strikes the appropriate balance between workers’ interests at home and the country’s strategic interests abroad.




A Real Foreign Policy for the Middle Class
How to Help American Workers and Project U.S. Power
Foreign Affairs · by Heidi Crebo-Rediker and Douglas Rediker · April 26, 2022
In February 2021, two weeks after taking office, U.S. President Joe Biden gave a speech outlining his foreign policy vision. Over the course of 20 minutes, the new president detailed many of Washington’s overseas interests, including promoting democracy and working with U.S. allies to compete against China. He identified a bevy of international challenges, including cyberattacks, nuclear proliferation, and refugee flows. But when it came time to talk about international economics, Biden pivoted away from looking abroad and instead focused his attention at home. “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy,” he said. “Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind.” Washington, he said, must advance “a foreign policy for the middle class.”
That final phrase—“a foreign policy for the middle class”—has become the lens through which the Biden administration has pursued its international economic agenda. On the whole, it means striking a balance between promoting the interests of U.S. working families and pursuing the more strategic and often realpolitik agenda that drives the United States’ national security interests, especially confronting the challenges posed by increasing competition with China. It entails creating a more pro-union, industrial policy approach to investing in U.S. domestic economic renewal and competitiveness so that Washington can continue to project U.S. power. It requires shoring up national security vulnerabilities in supply chains in a way that benefits workers. And it involves working with allies and like-minded countries, strengthening U.S. multilateral leadership, and addressing the failures of former President Donald Trump’s China strategy—in particular by confronting unfair and illegal Chinese economic behavior that hurts American workers, threatens U.S. technological leadership, and undermines international competitiveness.
After over a year in office, Biden’s record on striking an appropriate balance between a foreign policy that is focused on workers and one that involves realpolitik is mixed. He succeeded in striking that balance with his supply chain resilience agenda, including efforts to “reshore” and “friend-shore” production in a way that advanced middle-class priorities and brought manufacturing jobs back home. He passed a landmark $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure and investment act, a large down payment on economic renewal and competitiveness with strengthened “Buy American” policies. He also successfully breathed new life into the United States’ relationships with allies in both the Atlantic and the Pacific regions. This meant Biden was well positioned to advance collective opposition to Russian aggression in Ukraine through sanctions and other economic tools and to jointly take on economic competition with China, especially with European partners.
But on addressing other economic and strategic threats posed by China—including its massive subsidization of domestic companies, its theft of U.S. intellectual property, and its habit of forcing U.S. companies to hand over their technology—the Biden administration has fallen short. It is behind in its battle with Beijing over trade, technology, and Asia’s economic architecture. The administration’s neglect of international financial institutions has allowed China to increasingly gain influence over other countries, undermining U.S. leadership and damaging the United States strategic economic and financial interests around the world.
Biden has, in particular, struggled to craft a coherent trade agenda. Although the president managed to simultaneously help workers and reengage on trade, technology, and economic security with European allies, in the Indo-Pacific, the administration’s unbalanced and sequential approach has deferred crucial multilateral, trade, and investment initiatives at the expense of longer-term U.S. strategic security. During the campaign, Biden argued that Trump’s use of tariffs and his trade policy with China left U.S. farmers and workers no closer to getting the level playing field they deserved. Once Biden won, he promised to undertake a comprehensive review of Washington’s economic policies toward China and to then launch a comprehensive new strategy for the region. But the administration never finished the review, and it never created a fresh approach. The Trump administration’s much-maligned Phase One trade deal—its attempt to correct Chinese economic behavior in exchange for lower tariffs—remains in place, surprisingly unaltered. Major Chinese economic abuses still go unchallenged.


Biden has struggled to craft a coherent trade agenda.
The stakes are now higher, as Indo-Pacific commerce, trade, and investment grow and evolve. China advanced the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which went into effect earlier this year, and even formally applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the successor to a trade deal that the United States negotiated in 2015 before withdrawing under Trump. China is arguably well on track to set the digital standards that will dominate Asia for decades. This means U.S. workers may find that the continent’s enormous export market is incompatible with the products they are producing, cutting their employers off from billions of potential consumers and making that market captive to China’s export machine instead. Ironically, the Biden administration is reluctant to cut trade deals with the region because it is worried that doing so will undermine its ability to win support from domestic workers. But by staying on the sidelines, the United States is both limiting its own workers’ opportunities and passing up the chance to lead the Indo-Pacific’s economic future.
In recent months, it has become more complicated for the United States to properly align domestic and international economic priorities in Asia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February forced the Biden administration to rework its domestic and international priorities literally overnight. The emphasis on persuading allies to counter China’s economic ambitions and growing influence over trade rules and practices was replaced by the need for a massive collective application of hard economic coercive power against Russia, carried out through unprecedented sanctions and export controls. Before the invasion, U.S. economic policy was focused on strengthening long-term supply chain resilience to ensure the United States had reliable access to critical raw materials, manufactured products, and pharmaceuticals, which are disproportionately produced in China. After the invasion, Washington shifted to addressing immediate commodity shortfalls and energy vulnerabilities from Russia and Ukraine, including not only oil and gas but also wheat, nickel, palladium, and the other critical materials needed for semiconductors and electronics. Even the administration’s bold climate endeavors, designed to help the world move away from fossil fuels, have been given a harsh reality check. The administration has had to confront the risk of demonizing domestic natural gas producers and oil companies, forcing Washington to make a rapid diplomatic about-face in the Middle East and Venezuela to get oil pumping again.
The challenge posed by China has not diminished, and the invasion has not reduced the need to ensure that Biden’s international economic policy agenda remains focused on both immediate and longer-term strategic challenges. In fact, China’s response to Russia’s aggression presents the Biden team with an opportunity. Much of the world is wary of China’s failure to condemn, and its possible support for, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The White House can capitalize on this to try to constrain China’s global ambitions, its growing influence, and its threats to the U.S. middle class. The administration’s task now is to take advantage of the current turmoil to recraft a global economic system that will both preserve U.S. leadership and help American workers: a real foreign policy for the middle class.
AT HOME IN THE WORLD
Biden’s international economic agenda was designed to inextricably link his domestic economic plans and the country’s national economic security. Biden promised to invest in domestic supply chains, infrastructure, innovation, research and development, and manufacturing, as well as to rebuild U.S. alliances to jointly advance common economic security interests.
In an effort to insulate the U.S. economy from international threats, the president began his tenure by conducting a strategic review of U.S. supply chain resilience, designed to identify where the United States was least self-sufficient. By June 2021, the administration had cataloged the country’s main vulnerabilities, chiefly in semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, batteries, and key minerals and materials with implications for U.S. defense and commercial resilience. It expanded the review to include six industrial sectors with vulnerabilities, and it then crafted strategies to strengthen each.
The White House followed this up by creating a multiyear action plan, using both public and private investment, to bring manufacturing for certain critical products back to the United States. The federal government reworked its procurement procedures to invest in new battery production and to stockpile critical minerals and metals. It also implemented new “Buy American” provisions, which closed legal loopholes and got the federal government to use more domestic goods in its own procurement. This was all consonant with Biden’s worker-centric agenda.

The Trump administration had also tried to reshore domestic manufacturing. But Trump’s efforts mostly consisted of haphazard, counterproductive tariffs on friends and competitors alike. This alienated allies and did little to address the trade deficit that he argued was at the root of the United States’ economic woes. Biden, by contrast, has worked with allies in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific to build supply chain resilience. He recognized that countries in both regions were themselves at risk of being victims of China’s aggressive, weaponized trade policies. Beijing, for example, had issued vindictive trade restrictions on Australia after Canberra called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

Biden, unlike Trump, has worked with allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
Biden’s supply chain diplomacy was embedded in the establishment of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council in June 2021; the council is addressing the United States’ and Europe’s shared vulnerability in areas such as critical minerals, semiconductors, and battery production. That diplomacy was also on display in October 2021, when, on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Rome, the administration hosted a summit on global supply chain resilience with leaders from 14 other countries and the EU, including Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which is the world’s leading source of cobalt, a metal key to the transition to green energy), India, Japan, and South Korea.
Within his first year, Biden also realized one of his most ambitious campaign promises: investing $1 trillion in the country’s long-neglected infrastructure. His massive bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will improve the United States’ transportation systems, strengthen its digital connectivity, boost the country’s cybersecurity, and create a greener, more resilient energy grid. These changes may seem largely domestic in nature, but they have implications for foreign policy. Better cybersecurity, for example, will protect the United States from hacking by China, Russia, and nonstate actors. Improved infrastructure will strengthen the U.S. economy’s ability to compete with a rising China. And the infrastructure package will create more, better jobs for Americans, especially in underrepresented parts of the country.
Biden’s domestic economic security policy is not yet finished. To counter China and boost U.S. innovation, manufacturing, and research and development, Congress will need to soon finalize and pass a bipartisan innovation and competitiveness bill. This legislation would mean substantial federal investment in quantum computing, semiconductors, robotics, and artificial intelligence—industries China seeks to dominate. The Russian-Ukrainian war, meanwhile, will subject the world to a variety of critical shortages, including of semiconductor materials; the United States will need plans to address this.
BURYING THE HATCHET
Under Trump, the United States turned its back on its allies and partners. The former president imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from EU countries—arguing that those imports were threats to U.S. national security—and by the end of his term, the United States’ closest friends harbored deep misgivings about Washington’s intentions. That mistrust posed a significant threat to Biden’s economic agenda, including his plans for competing with China. In December 2020, after Biden had won the presidential election but before he took office, the EU announced that it had agreed to a proposed investment deal with China called the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, despite objections from Biden’s team. (Although the EU has since indefinitely postponed full approval of the agreement, it did so because of Chinese diplomatic missteps, not because of the incoming Biden administration’s request.)
To try to repair this damage, Biden quickly worked to improve the United States’ relations with its allies and partners. Within a month of Biden’s tenure, the United States was back in the Paris climate accord. Thereafter, Washington helped spearhead a new agreement on carbon emissions and other climate targets at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP26. In an effort to address COVID-19-related economic shortfalls, particularly in poor countries, the administration agreed to support an allocation of $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And to level the playing field in global taxation, the White House helped finalize an agreement on global tax reform, including a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent, spearheaded by the G-20 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
For Biden, the tax agreement—which brought together over 130 countries representing more than 90 percent of the planet’s GDP—is a particularly clear example of how his “foreign policy for the middle class” can successfully balance domestic and international objectives. The deal not only reestablished U.S. international engagement and protected U.S. companies from being unfairly taxed in other jurisdictions; it also advanced a key campaign promise to ensure that companies pay their fair share. Although the deal still requires U.S. congressional action and similar government approval in other countries, it nevertheless established the multilateral economic bona fides of the Biden administration.

Biden speaking at the G-20 summit in Rome, October 2021
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

The United States has also partnered with certain allies to coordinate their approaches to key global technology, economic, and trade issues. The U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, for example, was almost entirely designed to address the challenges posed by China’s state-led economic model and counter unfair trade practices that hurt American and European workers. The council is helping the United States and the European Union ensure that they have compatible technology standards and data protection, implement export controls on dual-use technology, and create investment screening protocols to protect against intellectual property and technology theft (which undermines competitiveness and national security).
Then, shortly after the Biden team began its second year in office, recalling the words of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, events intervened: Russia invaded Ukraine. But nothing better illustrates the success of Biden’s work with U.S. allies than what happened before and directly after Russia’s invasion. In the lead-up to the war, the Biden team worked with its G-7 and additional European partners to prepare a coordinated menu of escalating coercive economic measures, both to deter an invasion and to prepare a concerted response for if a war took place. The United States also ramped up its energy security cooperation in the months leading up to the invasion, as Russia increasingly used gas exports as a coercive weapon against Europe. As a result, immediately after the invasion began, the United States and its allies were able to pull off an unprecedented degree of international coordination, rapidly imposing historically severe economic sanctions and export controls on a major economy.
HELP WANTED
Unlike the Biden administration’s determined efforts to rebuild bilateral trust and relationships, its attempts to reestablish leadership in international financial institutions—including the IMF, the World Bank, and regional multilateral development banks—have failed to gain traction. These institutions were expected to play a crucial role in advancing the administration’s international agenda, especially given the pressing need to contain the global economic fallout of COVID-19. And at first, the White House made good, supporting the historic Special Drawing Rights issuance to help low- and middle-income countries deal with the economic challenges posed by the pandemic.
Thereafter, however, the administration’s efforts stalled. Perhaps because the White House was disproportionately focused on its domestic agenda, it showed little interest in reforming the World Trade Organization, declined to appoint an American to the number two leadership position at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development when given the opportunity last year, and replaced the top U.S.-held position at the IMF—the first deputy managing director—only after the institution’s leader was engulfed in a China-related data-rigging scandal. Crucially, Biden neglected to prioritize filling the unprecedented number of vacancies in key posts on the executive boards of international financial institutions and in the U.S. Treasury Department; the people in these posts are supposed to set vital international economic policies. As a result, Washington has struggled to advance its strategic economic interests through key multilateral institutions. It also neglected to promote a major priority of unions: advancing a global, worker-centric perspective within international institutions themselves.
Biden has also been unable to address China’s broad refusal to provide debt relief to poor countries. China is now the dominant creditor to developing states around the world, and when COVID-19 made debt repayment more difficult, the IMF and the World Bank proposed a G-20 “Common Framework” for debt relief, seeking to create a forum in which China could work constructively toward that end with the IMF and the Paris Club, a group of creditor countries that seek solutions to payment problems faced by debtor countries. But the effort largely failed, primarily because China refused to accept meaningful debt forgiveness or, in many cases, to even allow visibility into the nature and terms of its loans. China’s investment in countries around the world not only gives Beijing greater influence over the politics and economics of these debtor countries; it also gives it more control over the supply of key commodities and, increasingly, over the development of digital standards in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. With the Biden administration mainly disengaged from leadership at both the IMF and the World Bank, the United States missed the opportunity to use these institutions to push back against China’s intransigence. Meanwhile, the failure of Washington to demonstrate real interest in governance at these institutions has contributed to governance and morale issues that currently plague their broader effectiveness.
That’s not to say Biden has taken no formal, multilateral steps to try to counter Chinese economic leadership. In June 2021, his administration and the G-7 launched the Build Back Better World initiative, which will use financial support from members of the G-7 to help fund and coordinate infrastructure projects in the developing world. But although worthy of praise, Build Back Better World remains nascent and underfunded, especially compared with China’s enormous bilateral lending, estimated to have reached more than $500 billion.
DISAGREEING TO AGREE
The Biden team can count a few trade and investment wins in its first year, including temporarily resolving a 17-year dispute with the EU over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing. It also reached an agreement with the EU over steel and aluminum tariffs that creatively addressed both the United States’ and Europe’s concerns about Chinese overcapacity by linking the deal to greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Washington found a union-friendly fix for Vietnam’s currency manipulation transgressions.
But the White House has had trade troubles. Indeed, overall, the Biden administration’s most glaring international economic policy failure has been its inability to articulate or advance a coherent strategic trade and investment policy in the Indo-Pacific. The Biden administration has not yet agreed on a new economic approach to its relationship with China, effectively maintaining the Phase One trade deal inherited from Trump. It has made little serious effort to address Washington’s underlying grievances with Chinese economic policy. What is most striking is how it has not seriously coordinated with Indo-Pacific countries on an economic strategy, in part because it has avoided even mentioning free-trade or investment agreements. In particular, it has declined to enter into any discussion of reengaging with the CPTPP.
The refusal to talk trade has exposed how failing to properly balance domestic and international interests can undermine longer-term strategic goals. While running for president, Biden promised the United Steelworkers in writing that he would not “enter into any new trade agreements until we’ve made major investments here at home”—part of his broader campaign to win back swing states and working-class voters. That pledge was both tragic and self-defeating; by foreclosing even the discussion of any new trade agreements, Biden squandered the United States’ best opportunity to make the international economic order more friendly to the American middle class and to advance crucial U.S. foreign policy interests. As the most attractive market economy in the world, the United States can use trade negotiations to get countries to change their standards, rules, and norms, in part by promising increased market access. That means there are enormous strategic and economic benefits to at least reentering the debate over whether the United States should join the CPTPP, so as to present an alternative to China’s increasing dominance over Asian trade (which is bad for both U.S. workers and U.S. foreign policy). And yet the Biden administration has effectively forbidden any suggestion that joining the CPTPP might, in fact, be the single most significant step the country could take to advance its foreign policy for the middle class.

There are spillover effects. In September 2021, China applied to join the CPTPP. Many of the agreement’s existing members, including countries in Latin America, are building better relations with Beijing as a result, preparing for the possibility that China will belong to the CPTPP, with the United States on the outside looking in. The White House knows this isn’t good, and it has belatedly tried to craft a new economic engagement strategy for Asia: the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. But it focuses on largely amorphous objectives and consists of aspirational wish lists, mostly devoid of specifics. This initiative is neither a substitute for a free-trade agreement nor a serious attempt to reassert Washington’s influence over trade with, investment in, or the digital future of the Indo-Pacific.
SQUARING THE CIRCLE
After more than a year in office, Biden has advanced many critical international economic policy goals by aligning his administration’s foreign policy agenda with the interests of U.S. workers, achieving strategic national security objectives. He laid the groundwork for creating more resilient supply chains and transforming U.S. infrastructure in ways that will help underserved communities and the middle class. He rejoined the global community’s effort to transition away from fossil fuels. He repaired U.S. alliances, marshaling the democratic world to collectively respond to Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
Russia’s war against Ukraine and its subsequent isolation are likely to provide ample opportunity for the United States to cooperate even more with its allies, as well as a chance for Washington to broaden the circle of countries with which it can find common cause. Russian economic isolation represents a global economic structural shift of significant proportions, one that may lead to further economic and political decoupling, and the United States must be prepared to protect and advance its economic interests in this new paradigm.
China’s future role in this world remains uncertain. China’s neutrality, if not vaguely pro-Russian position, on the war in Ukraine has given Washington a chance to reassert its global leadership. It must now be willing to recognize these opportunities and find a way to address both more immediate domestic interests and longer-term strategic ones that can pay economic dividends for decades to come. To capitalize on this moment, the United States must be ready to embrace a more ambitious international economic policy that advances its and its allies’ standards of fair trade, commerce, and investment, especially in response to China’s increasingly aggressive international posture. That means a top priority for the administration must include a renewed focus on articulating a comprehensive economic strategy for China, including a concrete, ambitious trade and investment agenda for the Indo-Pacific.
It won’t be easy for the Biden administration to reestablish U.S. economic leadership. Many middle-class Americans continue to blame globalization in general, and trade in particular, for their economic struggles. For Democrats, it does not pay to be seen as the party of pro-globalization, coastal elites. Biden will therefore need to work hard at explaining that free and fair trade can advance the interests of the middle class, of unions, and of workers. He should follow through on his promise to bring labor and environmental interests to the negotiating table. But cutting off U.S. trade engagement or believing the country has time to defer introducing an Indo-Pacific economic agenda will further cede turf to China—ultimately restricting markets and posing more risks to American workers, not less.

It does not pay to be seen as the party of pro-globalization, coastal elites.
Biden will also need to make good on promises to renew U.S. economic leadership in multilateral financial institutions, rather than letting them lose further credibility. These institutions can amplify U.S. influence, and the White House should make engaging with them a priority. That means it cannot pass up future opportunities to nominate strong, qualified U.S. candidates for traditionally U.S.-held leadership positions at these organizations.
Working with the IMF and the World Bank will be key. Food insecurity, inflation, rising interest rates, and massive levels of debt in low-income countries threaten financial stability, especially in developing markets, and the IMF and the World Bank can help the world manage and mitigate the risks. The White House should exert pressure on the IMF and the World Bank to abide by their own rules on debt sustainability. It must also be prepared to demand that China provide transparency and appropriate debt relief to poor countries that fall into debt distress. It should prioritize initiatives, such as Build Back Better World, that challenge China’s lending and investment leadership. This will be particularly important when it comes to helping states with the transition to green energy.
Finally, the Biden administration must manage the economic and political consequences of the war in Ukraine. The invasion has upended many of the underlying assumptions of Biden’s proposed foreign policy for the middle class. At the same time, it challenges China’s rise, and in that way, it presents an opportunity for Biden to make up for lost time, including by moving past some of the political impediments—such as domestic opposition to joining the CPTPP—that have stood in the way of smart international choices. This opportunity could help Biden, and the United States, secure a win-win: an international economic policy agenda that strikes the appropriate balance between workers’ interests at home and the country’s strategic interests abroad.
Foreign Affairs · by Heidi Crebo-Rediker and Douglas Rediker · April 26, 2022


27. The Bizarre Russian Prophet Rumored to Have Putin’s Ear
This might explain quite a bit. I will leave it to the Russia hands to assess and comment.

The Bizarre Russian Prophet Rumored to Have Putin’s Ear
Aleksandr Dugin hates America and is obsessed with Nazis, the occult, and the end times.
by CATHY YOUNG  APRIL 27, 2022 5:30 AM
thebulwark.com · by Cathy Young · April 27, 2022
The madness of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has once again turned the spotlight on the creepy, enigmatic guru who has been called “Putin’s brain” or, irresistibly, “Putin’s Rasputin”: maverick “political philosopher” Aleksandr Dugin. And indeed, in many ways this is Dugin’s moment: For more than a quarter century, he has been talking about an eternal civilizational war between Russia and the West and about Russia’s destiny to build a vast Eurasian empire, beginning with a reconquista of Ukraine. Both the war in Ukraine and the new Cold War against the West can be said to represent the triumph—or the debacle—of Dugin’s vision.
The 60-year-old Dugin may or may not be Putin’s whisperer; there is no evidence that the two men have actually met. But his influence on the Putin-era ruling class in Russia is unquestionably real and scary. For one thing, much as the word “fascist” gets frivolously thrown around, Dugin is actually a onetime self-proclaimed fascist, albeit of the “real fascism has never been tried” variety. What’s more, there is every reason to think that while he dropped the label, his ideology has not changed much.
But even that understates the sheer weirdness of the man described in a 2017 book on the rise of Russia’s new nationalism as “a former dissident, pamphleteer, hipster and guitar-playing poet who emerged from the libertine era of pre-perestroika Muscovite bohemia to become a rabble-rousing intellectual, a lecturer at the military academy, and ultimately a Kremlin operative.” (The author, former Financial Times Moscow bureau chief Charles Clover, had extensive conversations with Dugin and still failed to crack the enigma.)

Podcast · April 26 2022
What’s Musk going to do to Twitter? Plus, Greg Abbott’s costly border performance, San Francisco’s…
For instance: Dugin has had a lifelong obsession with the occult, ranging from the legacy of magician and huckster Aleister Crowley (a 1995 video shows him reciting a poem at a ceremony honoring Crowley in Moscow) to much more sinister Nazi occultism. His first appearance on Russian television, in 1992, was as an “expert commentator” in a shlocky documentary that explored the esoteric secrets of the Third Reich, which he claimed to have studied in KGB archives. Hе now rails against Ukrainian “Nazis” but once penned a poem in which the apocalyptic advent of an “avatar” culminates in a “radiant Himmler” rising from the grave. (While he later tried to disown this verse, it was posted on his website under a name he has elsewhere acknowledged as his pseudonym.) Dugin’s oeuvre also includes a 1997 essay proposing that the notorious Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who gruesomely murdered more than fifty young women and children between 1978 and 1990, should be regarded as a practitioner of Dionysian “sacraments” in which the killer/torturer and the victim transcend their “metaphysical dualism” and become one. He talks casually and cheerfully about living in the “end times.” He preaches national and religious revival but can also, according to Clover, make such quips as, “There are only two real things in Russia: Oil sales and theft. The rest is all a kind of theater.”
Many details of Dugin’s life are obscure, no doubt due to some extent to deliberate mystification on his part. It has been claimed, for instance, that his father was either a colonel or a lieutenant general in the GRU, the fearsome Soviet military intelligence agency, and used this position both to protect him and perhaps to facilitate his access to the military and intelligence elites. Extremism researcher Anton Shekhovtsov, who has delved into Dugin’s background, asserts that the reality is far more prosaic and that Dugin père was an officer in the Soviet, later Russian, customs service. According to Clover, Dugin has claimed that his rebellious youthful antics—which included involvement, at 19, in an underground circle that dabbled in mysticism with a neofascist slant—caused his father to be transferred from the GRU to the customs service; but Clover also quotes Dugin as saying that his father never supported him and that they barely had a relationship. (Dugin’s parents were divorced when he was 3 years old.)
Expelled from college for his unorthodox activities (which included the translation and samizdat publication of Pagan Imperialism by Italian far-right intellectual Julius Evola, another fascist with a mystical bent), Dugin made a living for a while as a language tutor and freelance translator. But he clearly wanted more, and the changes under Mikhail Gorbachev—which included a drastic relaxation of state control over intellectual and political life—opened up new avenues. In 1988, Dugin got involved in Pamyat (“Memory”), a “patriotic” and “anti-Zionist” movement notorious for its anti-Semitism, but was eventually expelled for murky reasons (Satanism, according to some). He also traveled to Europe and cultivated ties with far-right figures such as French counter-Enlightenment author Alain de Benoist. Interestingly, despite benefitting from the reforms, Dugin sympathized with the hardline coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 and reportedly even tried to get weapons so that he could volunteer to fight for the coup plotters’ “State Emergency Committee.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Dugin became involved in various marginal groups that lived the horseshoe theory by trying to synthesize far-left and far-right ideology, including the red-brown “National Bolshevik Party” which he co-founded with the eccentric poet Eduard Limonov. (A 1992 Dugin essay tried to reclaim the term “red-brown” as a positive thing, “the natural colors of our blood and our soil”; another piece, from 1997, hailed the dawn of a new Russian fascism, “boundless as our land and red as our blood.”)
At first, Dugin’s efforts to enter public life did not get him very far; when he ran for the Duma in 1995 on a National Bolshevik platform in a St. Petersburg district, he got less than 1 percent of the vote, despite a tantalizing campaign poster promising that “the secrets will be unveiled.” Yet he was helped by mysterious connections to the Russian military: At some point during the 1990s, he became a lecturer at the senior staff college of the Russian military, the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia. Considering that we’re talking about a neofascist crank with a fixation on the occult, this raises eyebrows.
Dugin’s true breakthrough was the 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, a 600-page treatise that not only sold well but made its author a respectable pundit. It also quickly became part of the curriculum at the General Staff Academy, other military and police academies, and some elite institutions of higher learning. Writing in the journal Harvard Ukrainian Studies in early 2004 (the issue is dated spring 2001 but was obviously published later, since the article refers to events from late 2003), Hoover Institution scholar John B. Dunlop concluded: “There has perhaps not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period that has exerted an influence on Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites comparable to that of . . . Foundations of Geopolitics.”
A prolific scribbler, Dugin had published seven other books between 1990 and 1997, but Foundations of Geopolitics was his first effort to go mainstream. The earlier books had been heavy on occult lore about numerology and other mystical sciences, the lost and magical Hyperborean race, and esoteric orders such as the Freemasons, the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians. Dugin’s 1992 book Conspirology, for example, had framed the historical conflicts between reason and faith as a literal struggle between two secret organizations, the rationalist Order of the Dead Head and the faith-and-love-based Order of the Living Heart—and that’s the condensed and coherent version.
Foundations of Geopolitics, on which Clover believes Dugin may have had help from faculty members at the General Staff Academy, offered a much more sober analysis and steered clear of mysticism and occult metaphysics. Yet the theme of a cosmic battle between good and evil was still very much a part of Dugin’s thesis. Foundations of Geopolitics posits a fundamental antagonism between “land-based” and “seafaring” civilizations, or “Eurasianism” and “Atlanticism”—the latter represented primarily by the United States and England, the former by Russia. While the idea of conflict between “land-based” and “seafaring” powers was borrowed from the fairly obscure Edwardian British geographer Halford Mackinder, Dugin reconceptualized this rivalry as a spiritual struggle, in terms drawn largely from twentieth-century German anti-liberal philosopher and prominent Nazi Carl Schmitt (with additional borrowings from earlier “Eurasianist” intellectual Lev Gumilev, son of two celebrated poets, who thought that ethnicity derived from space radiation).
In Dugin’s scheme, the values of land-based civilizations are those of traditionalism (“The hardness of the land is culturally embodied in the hardness and stability of social traditions”), community, faith, service, and the subordination of the individual to the group and to authority, while the values of seafaring civilization are mobility, trade, innovation, rationality, political freedom, and individualism. Also: Eurasian good, Atlanticist bad.
The other central message of the book is that, for Russia, it’s empire or bust. Dugin asserted that Russian nationalism has a “global scope,” associated more with “space” than with blood ties: “Outside of empire, Russians lose their identity and disappear as a nation.” In his vision, Russia’s destiny is to lead a Eurasian empire that stretches “from Dublin to Vladivostok.”
Dugin in a 2016 BBC interview.
In a country reeling from a botched transition to a market-based democracy and coping with the abrupt loss of superpower status, this call to imperial greatness fell on fertile soil—especially after the devastating economic crisis of 1998 seemed to be the death knell of liberal hopes. It was particularly welcome to the military and political elites.
In short order, Dugin, only yesterday a marginal crank, became a pundit with close proximity to power. By 2001, wrote Dunlop, he had “formed close ties with individuals in the presidential administration, the secret services, the Russian military, and the leadership of the Duma”; among other things, he had become a consultant to Russian State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev and to top Putin adviser Sergei Glazyev. The Russian media, then still relatively free, began to talk of “Dugin’s Eurasianism” as a new state-favored ideology. The “Eurasia movement,” which Dugin launched the same year to promote the Eurasianist agenda and resist “Atlanticist” influences, attracted government officials, members of the establishment media, and retired and current members of intelligence and state security agencies. In 2003, the movement went international, claiming to have a presence in 29 countries in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, including 36 chapters in the former Soviet republics. Its most active wing was the Eurasian Youth Union, heavily focused on pro-Kremlin activism in Ukraine; among the group’s more notable exploits was a 2007 attack vandalizing a Moscow exhibition on the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Stalin-era terror-famine.
Toward the end of the 2000s, Dugin—armed with a hastily acquired doctorate—also completed his ascent to academic respectability. In 2009, he was appointed chair of the international relations section of the sociology department at Moscow State University (despite being a guest lecturer rather than a full-time faculty member). He also founded and oversaw a Center for Conservative Studies within the sociology department, intended to train an “academic and government elite” of “conservative ideologues.”
Should Dugin be treated as a “real” philosopher? In a recent long essay in Haaretz, Dr. Armit Vazhirsky, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that, despite his (to put it mildly) eccentric history, his critique of liberalism in such works as his book The Fourth Political Theory (2009), needs to be seriously engaged.
I’m not convinced.
Dugin is a gifted man and a very erudite autodidact—unquestionably smart enough to offer a convincing simulacrum of intellectual discourse. Yet detractors such as Russian political scientist Victor Shnirelman point out that he has repeatedly and opportunistically adjusted and overhauled his arguments—for instance, transferring much of his analysis of the “Eurasian” vs. “Atlanticist” clash of civilizations from earlier writings in which the opposing forces were “Aryan” (good) vs. “Semitic” (bad). The only constant is hatred of liberalism and modernity.
As befits a practitioner of the horseshoe theory, Dugin can capably mimic and channel anti-liberal broadsides from both the left and the right. Some passages in his writings could have come straight from Jacobin magazine, arguing that liberal capitalism is responsible for the slave trade, Native American genocide, and environmental catastrophe, or that liberalism seeks to assimilate everyone to the standards of the “rich, rational white male”; other passages could have been penned by Sohrab Ahmari, such as the warning in Fourth Political Theory that liberalism’s rejection of tradition and constraints on individual freedom logically leads to “not only loss of national and cultural identity, but even of sexual identity and, eventually, human identity as well” (my translation). Then, just when you expect Dugin to defend sexual traditionalism, he invokes a gender-norm-smashing paradigm that has one left-wing commentator wondering if he is an “undercover queer theorist.”
But keep reading, and you will find text that sounds more like the musings of a genocidal maniac. For instance, the comments about the evils of unchecked liberalism in Fourth Political Theory are followed, a few paragraphs down, by this discussion of the coming battle that will happen when “the metaphysical significance of liberalism and its fatal victory” is fully understood: “This evil can be vanquished only by tearing it out root and branch, and I do not rule out the possibility that such a victory will require wiping off the face of the earth those spiritual and physical territories where the global heresy which insists that ‘man is the measure of all things’ first emerged.” In case the location of those “physical territories” is unclear, the next line urges a “world crusade against the USA and the West.”
There is little reason to think that Dugin has discarded his flirtations with Nazism (it is perhaps revealing that, in Foundations of Geopolitics, he urges Russia to form an “axis” with Germany and Japan as the core of its strategy). Nor has he moved on from his occult obsessions, despite a nominal conversion to Russian Orthodoxy—which he has tried to syncretize with various neopagan and esoteric teachings (including the work of Aleister Crowley, a reputed Satanist). A lengthy two-part essay he wrote in 2019 for the Izborsk Club, a “socially conservative” website he cofounded, returns to his old favorite Julius Evola and then segues into an abstruse discussion of Hindu and Zoroastrian eschatology.
Which brings us to another startling aspect of the Dugin persona: his fascination with the apocalyptic. The Fourth Political Theory at one point flatly states that the new theory and practice the book seeks to formulate is “invalid” if it doesn’t “bring about the End of Time.” A video of a 2012 Dugin lecture at Moscow’s New University shows him offering an eclectic stew of ideas—the Christian apocalypse, the dark Kali Yuga cycle from Hindu mysticism, the French metaphysician René Guénon, global warming—to make the case we are “obviously” living in the end times and that the end of the world is something we should actively desire. For one thing, isn’t it great to know how the story ends? For another, isn’t it terrible to be alive and know that you will never be God? And isn’t this world an illusion anyway?
The deeper one goes down the Dugin rabbit hole, the more one starts to wonder whether he believes anything he says and whether his entire career is a long, elaborate mystification. As Clover puts it, he is, “in equal parts, a monomaniacal nineteenth-century Slavophile conservative and a smug twenty-first-century postmodernist who expertly deconstructs his arguments as rapidly as he makes them.” Or perhaps, in even bigger part, he’s a charlatan. The only relevant question is whether his proximity to the Kremlin’s inner sanctum is such that his talk about the end times could be something more serious than a crazy prophet’s rantings or a postmodernist’s word games.
Whether Dugin ever actually was Putin’s éminence grise is also far from settled. Some scholars such as Finnish political scientist Jussi Backman have strongly disputed these claims, pointing out that there is no evidence of closeness between the two men. Putin, at any rate, has never mentioned Dugin in public; his acknowledged quasi-fascist guru is twentieth-century Russian nationalist Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), whom he has quoted in several speeches and whose collection of essays, Our Tasks, he sent to Russian regional governors and senior officials for as a Christmas gift in 2013.
Dugin, on his part, has had a love/hate relationship with Putin over the years, admiring him as the leader who reclaimed Russia’s sovereignty and routed the Western-style liberals but deploring his pro-capitalist tendencies and his alliances with the West, particularly his participation in George W. Bush’s War on Terror. (The rabidly anti-American Dugin was an early 9/11 “truther,” asserting in an interview in October 2001 that the United States itself was probably behind the attacks and was using them to shore up American hegemony.) Still displaying his penchant for mystical terminology, he has spoken of the conflict between the “solar Putin,” the heroic fighter against Western evil and for Russia’s messianic destiny, and the “lunar Putin,” the pragmatic rationalist who wants a thriving economy and a partnership with the West.
He has been coy on whether or not he knows Putin personally, claiming to be “in contact” with him in a 2012 interview on the American white-nationalist website Countercurrents but flatly denying it in conversations with Clover. Most recently, when asked whether he communicates with Putin in an interview in the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, he replied, “That’s a question I never answer.”
In November 2007, several months after Putin’s famous “Munich speech“ signaling a sharp anti-Western turn and challenging the U.S.-led international world order, Dugin made a curious comment in an interview with the Eurazia TV web channel:
In my opinion, Putin is becoming more and more like Dugin, or at least implementing the program I have been building my entire life.. . . The closer he comes to us, the more he becomes himself. When he becomes 100 percent Dugin, he will become 100 percent Putin.
And indeed, many aspects of Kremlin strategy in the Putin years reflect, to a startling extent, Dugin’s proposals going back to the late 1990s. That includes the “hybrid warfare” of subverting democracies from within and exploiting their internal divisions, something Dugin advocated in Foundations of Geopolitics. It includes cultivating both far-right and far-left movements and groups as antiliberal allies. It includes the focus on homosexuality as the ultimate symbol of Western decadence: In a 2003 interview with the Ukrainian website Glavred.info, Dugin warned that embracing a pro-Western “Atlanticist model” would expose Ukraine to the menace of “gays, and homosexual and lesbian marriage.” (Dugin’s homophobic crusade has some ironic personal twists: His former National Bolshevik associate Eduard Limonov was the openly bisexual author of an autobiographical novel that often borders on gay porn, while Dugin’s first wife and the mother of his son, Evgeniya Debryanskaya, is an out lesbian who started Russia’s first gay-rights group in 1990.)
Even the Putin regime’s preoccupation with Ukraine is anticipated by Foundations of Geopolitics, where Ukraine occupies a central place in the clash-of-civilizations scheme as laid out by Dugin. The book stresses, again and again, that Ukrainian sovereignty is an intolerable threat to the Eurasian project. “The existence of Ukraine within its present borders and with its present status of a ‘sovereign state,’” Dugin warns, “is equivalent to the delivering of a monstrous blow to the geopolitical security of Russia; it represents the same thing as the invasion of Russia’s territory.” Remarkably, this passage is from twenty-five years ago—eight years before Ukraine turned westward during the Orange Revolution and ten years before there was any talk of Ukraine joining NATO.
Clover reports that it was Dugin who revived the term “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia,” as the preferred designation for Eastern Ukraine, using it three years before Putin did. Did he inspire Putin, or merely (as he has often claimed) intuit which way things were going? Or was he floating a trial balloon at his Kremlin patrons’ behest? Nobody knows. However, it’s a fact that in 2014, Dugin was not merely cheering for the Kremlin’s “Novorossiya Project” of building pro-Russian enclaves in Eastern Ukraine but actively helping: There is a video in which he strategizes with a separatist activist on Skype. The foreign “observers” who were invited to monitor Crimea’s referendum on joining Russia were mainly drawn from Dugin’s network of “Eurasianist” political figures, running the gamut from Stalinist to fascist. Moskovsky Komsomolets reports that two of the main founders of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” businessman and politician Aleksandr Borodai and retired military officer and possible KGB/FSB veteran Igor Girkin-Strelkov, were both Dugin acolytes.
Yet, oddly enough, the events of 2014 also led Novorossiya’s prophet to something of a fall from favor. After some overly bloodthirsty comments that urged the wholesale killing of Ukrainians who supported the “Nazi junta” and of Russians who had joined the “fifth column,” Dugin became the target of a petition urging his removal as section chair at Moscow State University. (It didn’t help that Dugin’s exhortation to “Kill, kill, kill!” on Donetsk television was followed by the claim that he was “speaking as a professor.”) Surprisingly, the university did in fact boot him, having suddenly discovered that his appointment in 2009 had been a “technical error” due to his guest-lecturer status. Dugin, on his part, took his dismissal as a sign that liberals and Satanists were winning and that the “lunar Putin” had prevailed. In subsequent months, he was harshly critical of Putin for scaling down the war in Ukraine and “abandoning” the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Now, after nearly eight years of lying low, Dugin should be the man of the hour. There seems to be very little daylight left between Putinism and Duginism, and one might say that Putin has indeed become “100 percent Dugin.” In his interview in Moskovsky Komsomolets on March 30, Dugin declared, “The solar Putin has won.”
And yet Dugin himself does not sound like a winner. Moskovsky Komsomolets may toe the government line on the “special operation” in Ukraine, but he still had to fend off uncomfortable questions about what to tell mothers who have lost their children in war zones. (His reply: “We’ll explain it all once we have liberated Ukraine.”) In the same interview, Dugin describes the “special operation” as an apocalyptic battle of good against evil, but also ruefully admits that “the Russian people are not yet fully involved” in this battle. While he suggests that a call from Putin would be enough to mobilize the entire nation, popular enthusiasm for the war is distinctly lacking so far.
In his latest piece for the Izborsk Club website, Dugin sounds a little dispirited. He worries that Russia’s leadership thinks it can declare victory after keeping Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson, or maybe after taking all of “Novorossiya” while leaving the rest of Ukraine “in the power of Nazis and globalists.” Dugin insists that, at this point, Russia can no longer settle for anything other than total control of all Ukraine, because “Christ needs it” and because to leave would mean the “death, torture, and genocide” of millions of Orthodox believers. Invoking his familiar eschatological themes, he asserts that “we have become not merely spectators but participants in the Apocalypse.”
Somehow, it sounds less like a passionate call to action than the words of a man who is watching his fantasies play out and go terribly wrong—and is desperately trying to stay relevant.
thebulwark.com · by Cathy Young · April 27, 2022


28. China grapples with political challenges as Covid death toll mounts


China grapples with political challenges as Covid death toll mounts
CNN · by Analysis by Simone McCarthy
Hong Kong (CNN)For two years, China's Communist Party has enforced a costly regime of strict border quarantines, snap lockdowns, and mass digital tracking in the service of a single goal: Zero Covid cases.
And Beijing points to the past successes of this strategy -- including only two reported Covid-related deaths for all of 2021 -- to burnish its claims of superiority over Western governments.
"No effort should be spared to attend every case, save every patient, and truly respect the value and dignity of every human life," Chinese leader Xi Jinping -- who has explicitly reiterated his support for the "zero-Covid" policy in recent weeks -- said at a global health summit last year.

Now, that picture is changing, as for the first time in nearly two years China's Covid death toll is rising on a daily basis, amid an outbreak in Shanghai that has seen the city of 25 million placed under a seemingly unending, stringent lockdown.
Since April 17, city officials have reported 238 Covid-related deaths -- largely elderly people, all of whom, authorities say, died of underlying conditions in an outbreak that has spread to more than 500,000 people since March 1.
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The deaths mark a new phase of loss for China as well as a high-risk political challenge.
Reporting death figures is "something of a two-edged sword for the authorities," according to health security expert Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor at City University of Hong Kong.
"If the numbers are too low, not only is there a problem of trust, but also it will make the quarantine restrictions seem excessive. If the numbers are too high, then the lockdowns are justified but the authorities have failed to contain the virus."
To date, government officials have prioritized the suppression of the virus over all else, even as public resentment and economic risks grow under blunt lockdown restrictions.
So far, there's no sign of a change in policy, with Beijing instead "doubling down on its messaging of stopping the virus," even as outbreaks spread, according to Thomas.
And as the zero-Covid policy continues to be explicitly linked to Chinese leader Xi, it's clear "this line is going to be held for the foreseeable future," he said.
By the numbers
As the number of deaths and severe Covid cases has risen in Shanghai in recent days, city health officials have spoken with increasing urgency about further strengthening critical care response and upping vaccination in the elderly -- though lockdowns and mass testing appear to have taken priority over vaccination so far.
"We need to coordinate the city's medical resources, increase critical medical teams ... reduce the proportion of severe patients ... and try our best to reduce the fatality rate," Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, said Sunday.
"Eligible elderly people should be vaccinated as soon as possible," he said.

China 'causing doubt' over Shanghai's reporting of Covid death count 02:47
Shanghai officials earlier this month said 62% of those over 60 are vaccinated in Shanghai, with 38% boosted, but that number fell to just 15% fully vaccinated for the most vulnerable over-80 age group, according to state media. Of the 238 deaths in recent days, only 13 have been vaccinated, authorities said on Wednesday, without specifying details regarding full vaccination or booster shots.
The lagging vaccination rates in this group are a fatal flaw in China's Covid-19 planning: while it focused massive resources on developing and manufacturing home-grown vaccines, it fell short on ensuring those got into the arms of the elderly population, who are the most likely to die from Covid-19.
Now, as authorities have upheld expectations that death rates in the country will remain low, they have no choice but to rely on lockdowns to protect the vulnerable.
But already, an unknown number of fatalities appear to be linked to stringent controls in the city, as restrictions have thrown up challenges in access to medical care -- a disruption city officials have repeatedly vowed to address.
One fear has been that Shanghai could see a similar crisis to that of Hong Kong, where an outbreak that began at the start of the year pushed the city's fatality rate to among the highest worldwide since the pandemic began.
Hong Kong, too, faced low vaccination rates within a large elderly population, with just 48% of people aged 70 or older fully vaccinated as of early March, and only 25% of residents aged 80 or over vaccinated at the start of this year.
Counting cases
But the Hong Kong comparison also raises questions of how Shanghai has managed to keep its death rates so low.
Hong Kong reported more than 9,000 Covid-19 deaths out of 1.19 million total cases since January this year.
By that rate, Shanghai should have seen as many as 700 deaths for every 100,000 cases, according to infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon, also a professor at the Australian National University Medical School.
Workers disinfect a residential community during the Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai.
Experts have also pointed to a lack of transparency around the criteria used by Chinese officials to classify a Covid-19 death.
"If there is no black-and-white definition for Covid deaths or Covid-related deaths or how these deaths should be reported then everything is just up to that expert panel to decide," said Jin Dongyan, a professor at University of Hong Kong's School of Biomedical Sciences. "That's the reality."
Some of these mirror concerns over whether there was a full accounting of infections and deaths during China's initial 2020 outbreak in Wuhan, which overwhelmed hospitals -- though China has defended its transparency throughout the pandemic.
China's Foreign Ministry said in a 2020 statement: "China calculated and reported its confirmed cases and fatalities based on facts ... the relatively low number of confirmed cases and deaths can be attributed to the comprehensive and strict measures taken by the Chinese government."
But experts also warn that it's difficult to draw comparisons between places with different testing and disease control strategies, social factors and demographics.
For example, Shanghai's intensive testing has picked up hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic cases, some of which may have been missed in case counts in other places, potentially skewing comparisons.
Bureaucratic processes and the time it takes for positive cases to succumb to the disease can also cause reported deaths to lag, with some experts suggesting the worst in Shanghai may be yet to come.
Meanwhile, understanding the overall toll -- not only of the virus -- but of the lockdowns rolled out across Shanghai and other cities is critical to evaluating the true cost of China's control measures, experts say.
Xi Chen, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, said the long-term fallout from the Shanghai lockdown, including missed cancer screenings or mental health strain, will take time -- and data -- to become clear, and even then may be hard to measure.
"We will often look at two kinds of negative shock," he said of the fallout past the initial burden of death. "One, for those people who died eventually, and, the other, those who survived but live with trauma attached to them."
CNN's Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
CNN · by Analysis by Simone McCarthy




29. China condemns latest U.S. sailing through Taiwan Strait


China condemns latest U.S. sailing through Taiwan Strait
Reuters · by Reuters
BEIJING, April 27 (Reuters) - China's military on Wednesday condemned the United States after a U.S. warship sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, saying such missions "deliberately" harm peace and stability.
The U.S. Navy said the guided-missile destroyer USS Sampson conducted a "routine Taiwan Strait transit" on Tuesday, in accordance with international law.
The United States has been carrying out such sailings about once a month, angering China, which views them as a sign of support for Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing views as Chinese territory.

The People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theatre Command said its forces monitored and warned the ship.
"The United States frequently carries out such provocative actions, sending wrong signals to 'Taiwan independence' forces, and deliberately undermining the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait. We firmly oppose it," it said in a statement.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said the U.S. ship sailed north through the strait, and that the situation in the waterway was "as normal".
U.S. 7th Fleet spokesperson Nicholas Lingo said in a statement that U.S. military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows.
"The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States' commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific," Lingo said.
The United State, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is its most important international supporter and arms supplier, making it a constant source of tension between Beijing and Washington.

Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Writing and additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Tom Hogue and Gerry Doyle
Reuters · by Reuters
30. Vicious Blame Game Erupts Among Putin’s Security Forces

What will this lead to and are we ready for what potentially comes next?

Vicious Blame Game Erupts Among Putin’s Security Forces | CEPA


cepa.org · April 25, 2022
The security institutions, the ‘siloviki', that are key to propping up the regime are exchanging recriminations for a growing list of failures in the war on Ukraine.
Russia’s army is deeply unhappy at the new and curtailed strategy Putin has ordered them to adopt in Ukraine, abandoning the big goal of capturing Kyiv for a much more modest objective of invading Donbas, in the country’s east.
And they are pointing the finger at other agencies, the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch primarily, for misinforming the president about the true conditions inside Ukraine that have led to failure. Other FSB departments appear to share the military’s analysis.
The war in Ukraine sharply divided Russian society. As journalists, we expected to lose many of our contacts in the Russian military and secret services after the invasion began on February 24. After all, it’s one thing to complain to a journalist about corruption in one’s agency, and it’s quite another to speak about the war with those who have taken a public antiwar stand. And indeed, in the first month of the war, some sources refused to answer our calls and messages.
But the situation has now changed dramatically. Last week we began to receive more and more calls and messages from our contacts in the military and in the FSB commenting on our reporting about Sergei Beseda, one of the heads of the Fifth Service of the FSB, who gathers political intelligence on Ukraine and cultivates the pro-Kremlin opposition in Kyiv. The general was sent to the infamous Lefortovo prison in Moscow, which has had a horrible reputation since the Stalin purges — innumerable victims have been murdered in the building’s basement.
The Kremlin has made frantic efforts to hide the details of Beseda’s arrest, going as far as to change the general’s name in prison records. (The Investigative Committee, Russia’s main investigative authority, went so far as to deny the fact of Beseda’s criminal prosecution.)
“Well done!” was a message from our old contacts in Russian Spetsnaz (special forces in the Russian military intelligence.) “All true!” we were told by our contact in the Service of Economic Security of the FSB. Videos about Beseda’s plight have recorded millions of views on Russian YouTube, and were widely debated on pro-Kremlin telegram channels. The rumor mill went wild suggesting that compromising material on Beseda was provided by its rival agency, the foreign intelligence service, the SVR.
Does this mean that the military or the FSB has concluded that the war, with its enormous casualties and incompetent direction, was a mistake? The short answer is no, quite the opposite.
Russia’s military believes that limiting the war’s initial goals is a serious error. They now argue that Russia is not fighting Ukraine, but NATO. Senior officers have therefore concluded that the Western alliance is fighting all out (though the supply of increasingly sophisticated weaponry) while its own forces operate under peacetime constraints like a bar on airstrikes against some key areas of Ukraine’s infrastructure. In short, the military now demands all-out war, including mobilization.
The frustration is becoming so intense that it has spilled over into the public space. Alexander Arutyunov (aka, the blogger RAZVEDOS), a well-known veteran of Spetsnaz of the National Guard, made a video plea to Putin: "Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, please decide, are we fighting a war or are we masturbating?"
He demanded a massive escalation, with a choice of airstrikes on  Ukrainian infrastructure or an end to the war. The video went viral, especially with pro-military groups on VK and those Telegram channels affiliated with the Russian army.
The telegram channel “FighterBomber” associated with the Russian air force, posted on April 12 a comment about NATO’s weapon supplies to Ukraine: “Naturally, we’ll further increase air defense units on the border with Ukraine in order to cover our territory from ballistic missile strikes, but it is also clear that NATO countries have far more weapons than Russia.”
The author expressed optimism that the Russian air force will be able to staunch the flow of Western supplies, but warned that further Ukrainian victories “will almost certainly prompt the use of nuclear weapons” against targets in Ukraine.
And then on April 22, Russian army General Rustam Minnekaev announced a second phase of the “special operation” which would aim to “establish full control over the Donbas and Southern Ukraine.
“This will provide a land corridor to the Crimea, as well as influence the vital objects of the Ukrainian economy,” Minnekaev said, according to Russian wire agencies. “Control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria [the Russian-garrisoned breakaway region of Moldova], where there are also facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population.”
This was odd. Minnekaev is Deputy Commander of the Central Military District, and he made his remarks at the annual meeting of the Union of Defense Industries, of all places. The most plausible explanation was that having recently attended General Staff meetings, he became over-excited at what he had heard, and then revealed the news at the first public meeting thereafter. Regardless, it is a sign that the Russian army wants more war rather than less.
What is absent in all these discussions within the military, public or private, is any criticism towards Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Defense, and the public face of the war. Somehow Shoigu has succeeded in keeping the respect of the military, and redirecting all the anger away from the military.
Privately, the army, and even the secret services, have been heard to blame not only the Fifth Service of the FSB for misinforming the president, but also the president himself for making a bad call on changing the military strategy.
In 2014, when the Russian army swiftly occupied Crimea, the military and the security services were on the same page with Putin – they fully supported his decision to annex Crimea and were enthusiastic about the way it was done. It is very significantly different in 2022.
Does it matter? It matters a lot. This is the very first time the siloviki are putting distance between themselves and the president. Which opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov are nonresident senior fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.) They are Russian investigative journalists, and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities.
cepa.org · April 25, 2022

31. Fuel And Ammo Depots Keep Blowing Up In Russia. Ukraine’s Ballistic Missiles Might Be Why.

Or sabotage. Or drones.

I have heard these activities have been taking place for some time.
Fuel And Ammo Depots Keep Blowing Up In Russia. Ukraine’s Ballistic Missiles Might Be Why.
Forbes · by David Axe · April 26, 2022
A Ukrainian Tochka on parade in 2018.
Wikimedia Commons photo
By now it’s pretty clear that Ukraine has been bombarding Russia as part of Kyiv’s defensive campaign. As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine enters its third month, the Ukrainians at least four times appear to have lobbed Tochka ballistic missiles at military targets on the Russian side of their shared border.
The latest possible strike took place in the early morning hours Sunday. A pair of oil depots in Bryansk, in western Russia 70 miles from Ukraine, exploded and burned through the following day.
While it’s always possible the blazes were the result of industrial accidents, it’s telling that the two explosions occurred nearly simultaneously, miles apart.
The Tochka attacks are just one of Kyiv’s methods of disrupting Russian operations on the far side of the border. It also seems Ukrainian attack helicopters have slipped across the border to attack Russian oil infrastructure. And there are unconfirmed reports of saboteurs targeting rail lines leading toward Ukraine.
The Tochka attacks are the safest for Ukrainian forces and potentially the most sustainable. Kyiv began the current war with a sizeable arsenal of around 90 Tochka launchers and as many as 500 missiles with 250-pound warheads. There’s no evidence the Russians have destroyed any of the launchers.
For all its eyebrow-raising effect on the conflict, the Tochka is an old, unsophisticated weapon. The Soviet Union developed the surface-to-surface missile system starting in the late 1960s. Successive generations of the rocket were the Soviet army’s main, long-range battlefield deep-strike weapon.
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Soviet army groups put their roughly 1,200 Tochka launchers in position to bombard NATO command posts, railheads, oil depots and troop-staging areas in order to disrupt enemy forces before they reached the front line.
There’s another method of doing so, of course: air power. Bombers and fighter-bombers are more accurate and flexible than a ballistic missile, but also easier to shoot down—and more expensive, to boot.
“Tactical and theater ballistic missiles are far more important for Russia than for the U.S./NATO,” Lester Grau and Charles Bartles explained in their definitive study, The Russian Way of War. “In general, Russia believes that the U.S./NATO will maintain air superiority, and so has heavily invested missile technologies to fill a niche that air power fills for the U.S./NATO.”
That, of course, helps explain why Ukraine favors the Tochka. While the Russian air force has struggled to maintain air superiority across Ukraine, it still deploys more—and better—fighters than the Ukrainian air force and can prevent large-scale raids across the border by Kyiv’s struggling air arm.
But the Russians, lacking significant anti-ballistic-missile defenses, can’t count on shooting down a Tochka. Nor can they jam it, as the rocket relies on inertial guidance requiring no external data. The Tochka knows where it launches from and where it needs to go. Internal gyros help it to adjust its course.
Ukraine inherited a significant number of Tockha launchers when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. After Russian forces attacked on Feb. 23, the Ukrainian rocket-launchers quickly went into action. On Feb. 25, a Ukrainian Tochka battery twice struck Russia’s Millerovo air base, around 60 miles east of the line of control between Ukrainian and separatists forces in separatist-controlled Donbas.
That attack destroyed at least one Russian Su-30 fighter on the ground.
The next major apparent Tochka strike occurred on March 24, when an Alligator-class landing ship belonging to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet burst into flames while pier-side in Russian-occupied Berdyansk in southern Ukraine. Saratov quickly sank. A pair of landing ships moored nearby also suffered damage and casualties.
Six days later on March 30, an ammunition depot exploded in Belgorod, just 20 miles from the border with Ukraine near Kharkiv. In the days prior to the blast, videos circulated on-line depicting Russian S-300 air-defense batteries apparently engaging incoming Tochkas.
Despite also possessing more modern surface-to-surface missiles such as the Iskander, Russia still has its own Tochkas and apparently has used them in Ukraine, in particular along the Donbas. Remains of a Russian Tochka were found at the railway station in Kramatorsk after an explosion killed 59 civilians trying to flee the fighting in Donbas.
But the Tochka is more valuable to Ukraine, which aside from saboteurs and daring helicopter raids, lacks a reliable means of hitting Russian targets inside Russia. The bad news for Kyiv is that its Tochka batteries can strike targets only around 75 miles away. The good news is that a lot of Russia’s military logistics—air bases, ammo and oil depots and railheads—are within range.
Forbes · by David Axe · April 26, 2022



32. Ramstein meeting gives birth to global 'contact group' to support Ukraine


As a colleague wrote when he flagged this for me: Better than the QUAD? And China will surely take notice of this.

Note Korea and Japan.

Excerpt:

Organizers said over 40 countries were attending and a scan of the meeting room showed countries mainly from Europe but also beyond, including Israel, Australia, Kenya and Tunisia, with representatives from South Korea and Japan attending virtually. All EU and NATO members were among the participants.
Ramstein meeting gives birth to global 'contact group' to support Ukraine
euractiv.com · by Alexandra Brzozowski | EURACTIV.com · April 27, 2022
Languages: Deutsch
Washington on Tuesday (26 April) said it would hold talks on a roughly monthly basis in Germany with allies inside and outside NATO to coordinate bolstering Ukraine’s defence capabilities as it battles Russia’s invasion.
The talks, hosted at Germany’s Ramstein Air Base, were aimed to assess the current Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine and how to ensure a continuous flow of security assistance for Ukraine, including how to secure Ukraine’s long-term security and how it will defend itself after the war.
Organizers said over 40 countries were attending and a scan of the meeting room showed countries mainly from Europe but also beyond, including Israel, Australia, Kenya and Tunisia, with representatives from South Korea and Japan attending virtually. All EU and NATO members were among the participants.
The meeting marks a turning point in the consultation between Western allies which has taken the turn into an indirect military coalition.
Ukraine also reportedly gave information about its defence needs, calling for everything from artillery, drones and tanks to anti-ship missiles and combat aircraft.
“We need weapons. Modern weapons. A large number of modern heavy weapons,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted after the talks.
Speaking after the meeting, Austin told reporters that the forum would continue as a monthly “contact group” that would discuss Ukraine’s defence needs, which was rated as a sign that Kyiv is expected to face a lengthy military engagement with Russia.
“We do want to make it harder for Russia to threaten its neighbours and make it less able to do that,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
The talks secured pledges from allies to sustain aid to Ukraine’s military throughout this next phase of the war and for the long term, including from Germany, who for the first time, announced the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine.
“We decided yesterday that Germany will facilitate the delivery of Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine,” German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said at Ramstein.
Germany has also reached out to Eastern Europeans with the pledge to ensure that military stock gaps of Eastern European countries, who supply their Soviet equipment to Ukraine, will be replaced with NATO-standard equipment.
(Edited by Georgi Gotev)
euractiv.com · by Alexandra Brzozowski | EURACTIV.com · April 27, 2022


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David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
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FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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

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