Quotes of the Day:
"History can be misused to "prove" anything, but it is all that we have as a guide to the future."
- Colin Gray
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."
- Albert Einstein
"Corruption is the enemy of development, and of good governance. It must be got rid of. Both the government and the people at large must come together to achieve this national objective."
- Pratibha Patil
1. Colin Powell, Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dies at 84
2. Colin Powell had been treated for a cancer that severely impairs the immune system, lowering coronavirus vaccine effectiveness
3. Reflections on Colin Powell’s Legacy
4. What Colin Powell learned about leadership after losing his sidearm
5. What Have We Learned From 20 Years In Afghanistan
6. Time for America to privatize its hybrid wars
7. Senate Committee Aims To Boosts Pentagon's Budget By $24B With Eyes On China
8. China denies testing nuclear-capable hypersonic missile
9. ‘Breathtaking expansion’: US Strategic Command leader expects further revelations of China’s nuclear weapons advancement
10. China touts film about defeat of US Army as highest grossing ever, data suggests it will fall short
11. FDD | Turkey Threatens New Military Offensive in Northern Syria
12. FDD | U.S. Trade Representative Outlines Roadmap for China Trade Policy, But Provides Few Details
13. A Remote Corner of Afghanistan Offers a Peek Into the Future of the Country
14. Top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan stepping down
15. China's orbiting missile exploits weakness in US defences
16. Behind NATO’s ‘cognitive warfare’: ‘Battle for your brain’ waged by Western militaries
17. #Reviewing The Afghanistan Papers (book review)
18. Communicating to Win: How Terrorists Gain Advantage in the Information Environment
19. The Limits of Logic: Why Narrative Thinking is Better Suited to the Demands of Modern Combat
1. Colin Powell, Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dies at 84
It is fascinating to read all the different obituaries and news articles and the issues they focus on (or choose not to focus on).
Colin Powell, Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dies at 84
Family cites Covid-19 complications and says the retired four-star general had been fully vaccinated
Mr. Powell advocated against precipitous war but urged the use of overwhelming force when conflict was unavoidable, views popularized in the media as the Powell Doctrine. It was born of his combat experience in Vietnam and held that war should be a last resort, with clear objectives, strong public support and decisive action.
A heralded military career was followed by posts in U.S. presidential administrations, eventually earning broad public support that led to Mr. Powell’s consideration of a 1996 presidential run, a prospect he later set aside. As secretary of state in 2002, he became a reluctant advocate for the Iraq war and came to regret his role leading the nation into years of conflict.
President Biden said Mr. Powell “embodied the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat” and issued a proclamation ordering flags be flown at half-staff.
Photos: Colin Powell, a Four-Star General and Former Secretary of State
Powell served two tours in Vietnam, rose through military ranks to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs and served as secretary of state to former President George W. Bush
Former President George W. Bush, who appointed Mr. Powell to the State Department post, praised him in a statement that cited his lengthy record of public service beginning as a soldier during the war in Vietnam.
“Many Presidents relied on General Powell’s counsel and experience,” Mr. Bush said. “He was such a favorite of Presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom—twice.”
The Powell Doctrine served him well during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the George H.W. Bush administration. Then Gen. Powell had a central role overseeing Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and the use of heavy military force led quickly to victory over Iraqi forces, with few American casualties. The Powell Doctrine was written into the U.S. National Security Strategy the following year.
In Bosnia, then Gen. Powell opposed a U.S. intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbs. “As soon as they tell me it is limited, it means they do not care whether you achieve a result or not. As soon as they tell me ‘surgical,’ I head for the bunker,” he told the New York Times in 1992.
Mr. Powell served two tours in Vietnam that shaped his 35 years of service in the U.S. military. He was wounded twice, falling into a bamboo trap during the first tour, causing a poisoned spike to go through his foot.
Colin Powell, as secretary of state, attended a National Security Council meeting in September 2001 with President George W. Bush.
Photo: Doug Mills/Associated Press
During his second tour, he survived a helicopter crash. He was awarded the Soldier’s Medal for repeatedly returning to the burning helicopter to rescue others, including Maj. Gen. Charles Gettys, in 1968.
But the tour wasn’t without controversy. Mr. Powell arrived in Vietnam a little over three months after one of the units in his battalion massacred hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet of My Lai.
While Mr. Powell staunchly believed in U.S. aims, critics accused him of helping to whitewash U.S. conduct during an initial investigation into the killings, a probe in which he took part.
In the first of his two memoirs, Mr. Powell reflected on the failings of the Vietnam War years, looking back critically at himself and writing: “A corrosive careerism had infected the Army; and I was part of it.”
Mr. Powell rapidly rose through the military ranks in the years following his Vietnam experience, and he served as senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger from 1983 to 1986.
During that time, he arranged for a shipment of TOW missiles to be transferred from the Army to the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA sold the missiles to Iran and used the proceeds to fund rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Mr. Powell later was cleared of a role in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, going on to serve as White House national security adviser during President Reagan’s final year in office.
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney administering the oath of office to Gen. Colin Powell as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989.
Photo: Bettmann Archive
In 1989, he was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs by President George H.W. Bush. At 52 years old, he was the youngest officer to hold the position before or since, as well as the first Black officer to serve in the post.
As chairman, Mr. Powell oversaw more than two dozen U.S. military operational deployments and won support for a reorientation of U.S. strategy after the fall of the Soviet Union, including a 25% reduction in the size of the armed forces. He retired from the military in 1993.
He helped launch and chaired the children’s advocacy group America’s Promise, then returned to his last stretch of government service as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005 during Mr. Bush’s administration.
As secretary, he was known for traveling less than any predecessor in 30 years. He argued that his role was to manage the department and advise the president, and he believed that ambassadors and locally based staff should take more responsibility.
Secretary of State Colin Powell visiting the tsunami struck region of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in 2005.
Photo: UDO WEITZ/Bloomberg News
Mr. Powell made prolific use of the phone, making some 1,500 calls to foreign officials in the first two years after the Sept. 11 attacks. He advocated for a strong and rapid response against al Qaeda and demanded cooperation from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He initially opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and came to deeply regret his role building a case for it at the United Nations Security Council.
“There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more,” he told the Security Council. The intelligence he cited turned out to be wrong.
According to the biography “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell,” by Karen DeYoung, his wife Alma felt a sense of foreboding about the presentation and worried that defending the White House would cost him his reputation with the public.
Later, Mr. Powell said the White House had given him a 48-page document ahead of the event, and barely a week to go through the intelligence. He called the speech a “blot” on his record.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice with Secretary of State Colin Powell in the Oval Office in 2002.
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Press Pool
Mr. Powell left the administration after Mr. Bush’s re-election and became an early critic of the U.S. handling of the war on terror, backing senators who opposed a proposal to set up trials for alleged foreign terrorists.
“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” Mr. Powell wrote to Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) in 2006, in a letter that warned the new legislation would endanger U.S. troops overseas.
After retiring, Mr. Powell toured the country, held speaking engagements and kept a low profile when social media and rising populism upended the U.S. political order.
Mr. Powell was seen as a moderate Republican, but backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Colin Powell, seen with President Barack Obama at the White House, backed Mr. Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
In his 1995 memoir, Mr. Powell described himself as a Black kid with no promise who beat the odds to become a four-star general and presidential adviser.
Mr. Powell was born on April 5, 1937, to immigrant Jamaican parents, and spent his early years in Harlem.
The family moved to the Bronx when he was 6. Mr. Powell’s childhood revolved around feasts of plantain and roast goat, rice and peas, and calypso melodies.
Decades later, as the highest ranking U.S. uniformed military officer, he played calypso music in his office, secretly delighting in the knowledge that aides didn’t understand the words and missed the innuendo in “The Big Bamboo” and “Water De Garden.”
Mr. Powell enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps while at City College of New York, inspired by the stories he had heard of World War II and the Korean War.
Mr. Powell joined the Army before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial discrimination. Even as an Army officer, there were restaurants he couldn’t go into and motels he couldn’t stay at because he was Black. The Army had integrated, but racial tensions remained in the ranks.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the first black official to serve in that role, remembered Mr. Powell Monday as “a man who was respected around the globe.”
“Quite frankly, it is not possible to replace a Colin Powell,” said Mr. Austin while traveling in Tbilisi, Georgia. “We will miss him.”
Colin Powell, seen in 2016, described himself in a memoir as a Black kid with no promise who beat the odds to become a four-star general and presidential adviser.
Photo: yuri gripas/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mr. Powell met his wife, Alma, on a blind date as a young lieutenant in 1961, and they married nine months later, before his first deployment to Vietnam. Mr. Powell is survived by his wife and three children, Michael, Linda and Anne Marie.
The statement by Mr. Powell’s family thanked physicians and staff members at Walter Reed National Medical Center for the treatment he received there.
Family members didn’t say how long he had battled the effects of Covid. Covid-19 vaccines greenlighted by the Food and Drug Administration have been shown to protect well against the virus and especially severe disease. A small percentage of people who were vaccinated have been infected, however. Doctors say the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are most at risk of a so-called breakthrough case.
2. Colin Powell had been treated for a cancer that severely impairs the immune system, lowering coronavirus vaccine effectiveness
Colin Powell had been treated for a cancer that severely impairs the immune system, lowering coronavirus vaccine effectiveness
Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who died Monday of what his family described as complications from covid-19, had been treated for the blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and was due to get a coronavirus booster shot when he suddenly became ill and was hospitalized, his longtime assistant, Peggy Cifrino, said Monday.
Powell, who was 84, received his second Pfizer shot in February but was immunocompromised as a result of his cancer and suffered from Parkinson’s disease, Cifrino said in an interview. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that severely impairs the immune system, lowering the effectiveness of vaccines.
“He was actually scheduled to receive his booster when he fell ill last week,” Cifrino said. “He couldn’t go to his appointment. … He thought he was just not feeling quite right, and he went to the hospital.”
Cifrino said Powell had been successfully treated for cancer for two or three years.
“Obviously it was a factor with his compromised immune system when he got the covid,” Cifrino said.
The family and Cifrino, who has worked for Powell for 28 years, did not release details about precisely which treatments doctors employed on Powell in recent days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
As a blood cancer patient, even one successfully treated, Powell would have become eligible for another dose of mRNA vaccine under an August recommendation from federal regulators that covered people who are immunocompromised and may not have mounted a normal immune response from the initial shots. Officials have said the extra shots should be seen as a way for these patients to complete the initial immunization.
Citing the waning of antibodies over time, federal officials have also authorized a third shot six months after the initial course of a Pfizer vaccine for people over 65 or at higher risk of complications because of underlying health conditions or occupational exposure. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has recommended the same for recipients of the Moderna vaccine, though the agency must authorize the extra shot. The panel also recommended a second shot for all recipients of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which the agency must also authorize.
At 84, Powell was at an age already at high risk of severe outcomes from covid-19. People in that age cohort are also at higher risk of a severe outcome if they have a post-vaccination breakthrough infection.
The evidence is overwhelming that vaccines are effective at lowering the risk of hospitalization and death from covid-19. They do not, however, create an impermeable barrier to infection.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked 7,178 deaths among people who were fully vaccinated. Of those, 85 percent were over 65. The agency also has tracked nearly 25,000 nonfatal breakthrough infections requiring hospitalization. Men are also at higher risk, comprising 57 percent of the fatal breakthrough cases.
Albert Ko, an infectious-disease physician at the Yale Schools of Public Health and Medicine, said Monday that multiple myeloma takes over the bone marrow and impairs the ability to block infections generally.
“Bottom line, he had an unfortunate, specific type of malignancy,” said Ko, who was not part of Powell’s medical team. “He was at high risk not only for covid but a lot of different infections.”
A study published in July showed that about one in four patients with blood cancers produced no detectable antibodies after vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, though the results varied depending on which type of cancer the patient had.
Conducted by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and published in the journal Cancer Cell, the study and others demonstrate why immunocompromised patients are so vulnerable to the coronavirus. Antibodies provide the body’s natural defense against invaders such as the virus that causes covid-19; without them, it is difficult to ward off the disease.
Another study that focused specifically on 103 multiple myeloma patients showed that 45 percent developed an adequate antibody response to vaccination, and 22 percent had a partial response to the two companies’ mRNA vaccines. That research, led by Samuel Stampfer of the Emory University School of Medicine, was published in the journal Leukemia.
A small study released last week showed that booster shots of those vaccines produced some antibodies in about half of the patients who previously hadn’t developed any after their initial vaccination. But that research, also conducted by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, looked at just 49 people who had blood cancers such as multiple myeloma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Samir Parekh, a hematologist and oncologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said both multiple myeloma and the most common treatments for the disease kill the body’s antibody producing B cells.
“The factory of antibodies is not working the way it should” in patients under treatment for the disease, Parekh said.
Before the pandemic, doctors were aware that patients with this type of cancer were vulnerable to a wide range of infections, including bacterial infections and the flu, he said. It is critical for them to keep up with flu and pneumonia vaccines, and many are given monthly infusions of antibodies.
In an early look at some of his patients, booster shots of vaccine appeared to be effective at producing antibodies for those who hadn’t developed them during initial vaccination, Parekh said.
Gwen Nichols, chief medical officer for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, estimated that 1.3 million people are living with blood cancers or are survivors of the disease.
“We are advising them to get vaccinated but act unvaccinated,” Nichols said. “Avoid really crowded places. Avoid situations where you can’t be in control. Wear a mask. Wash your hands.”
The risks for such people highlight the need for everyone to be vaccinated and reduce the chances of passing on the infection, as someone did to Powell, she said.
“We hear it every day,” Nichols said. “They’re angry at people who won’t help them by getting vaccinated. They remain at risk despite doing everything right.”
3. Reflections on Colin Powell’s Legacy
Reflections on Colin Powell’s Legacy
To mark Colin Powell’s passing, Carnegie senior fellow Aaron David Miller reflects on the former secretary of state’s legacy, as both a foreign policy magnate and a personal figure.
When I resigned from the U.S. Department of State after nearly twenty-five years, I met with then secretary of state Colin Powell for a final farewell. Powell put his arm around me and delivered two pieces of advice, like Polonius to Hamlet: First, don’t try to come back; instead, treasure those unique years of service. Second—somewhat surprising from a man of such insight and intelligence—don’t spend a whole lot of time looking back. I wholeheartedly accepted the first and enthusiastically rejected the second, instead spending the last decade and a half in the public conversation trying honestly to come to terms with what we got right and wrong.
Looking back now over the two years I worked for Powell, I feel a tremendous sense of loss and sadness over his untimely passing. He was a truly unique figure in so many ways—the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, national security adviser, and secretary of state and almost certainly the most popular and well-liked top diplomat in the nation’s history.
But I’ll remember him in other ways. On a personal level, Powell connected with you, and it lasted. Once entering his orbit, you felt special in his presence. I remember joking with former secretary of state James Baker that Baker had called me Andy for at least six months until he got my name straight. Whether it was his military training or his own special human resource skills, Powell got it straight from the get-go. Once you were on Powell’s radar screen, you never left.
That familiarity led to an easy interaction. While I was working on Middle East issues, Powell would frequently remind me of his knowledge of Yiddish learned from his Jewish neighbors growing up in the Bronx. Once in Jerusalem, after the White House had again undercut him, this time cutting out portions of a speech he wanted to give, he grabbed my stomach exclaiming “Aaron, they hit me right in the kishkies (intestines)!” Years later, when I saw him, he’d smile and say, “How are those kishkies?”
We didn’t make much progress on Middle East diplomacy during those years. Between leaders who were at odds, the second intifada, and a White House focused on other priorities after the attacks on September 11, 2001, there wasn’t much hope. Powell might have wanted to try something different. But he knew better, once telling me that he’d throw himself in front of a train before he’d let his young president spend two weeks at a Middle East summit as former president Bill Clinton had done. And yet, having served in Vietnam, Powell knew the cost of war and the price of one that wasn’t tethered to achievable goals. It is indeed a cruel irony that a strategic thinker like Powell—who saw the advantages of using military force successfully in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm—ended up in an administration that ignored both the lessons of the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War.
In his own way too, Powell set aside the advice he gave me and did his own fair share of looking back. He regretted, probably more than we’ll ever know, the speech he gave at the United Nations in 2003 validating the politicized intelligence that helped former president George W. Bush’s administration go to war in Iraq. Powell knew what a stain it would be on his reputation and for the interests of the nation. Some won’t forgive and will argue he should have resigned. Only two secretaries of state in the modern history of the United States have resigned on principle—William Jennings Bryan and Cyrus Vance. That just wasn’t like Powell, whose entire career was tethered to a cause and a set of institutions larger than himself.
Yes, Powell was ambitious, calculating, and focused on personal advancement. But those traits were tethered to a broader goal—the well-being, security, preservation of democracy, and pursuit of racial justice of the republic he served. Whether in uniform or out, Powell had the one characteristic all great Americans possess: the capacity to turn the “M” in “me” upside down, so it becomes the “W” in “we.”
I wish there were, and hope there might be, many more like him. We should all deeply mourn his passing.
4. What Colin Powell learned about leadership after losing his sidearm
What Colin Powell learned about leadership after losing his sidearm
"When they fall down, pick 'em up, dust 'em off, pat 'em on the back, and move 'em on."
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In 1958 the Cold War was in full swing. The Soviet Union had just launched Sputnik I in 1957, and NATO troops and Russian soldiers were squaring off along the German border. Nuclear weapons were stockpiled and pointed at major cities all across Europe, and both sides braced for the prospect of an all-out war. The late Colin Powell, who died of complications from COVID-19 on Monday, had also just arrived at his first unit.
After completing the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program at the City College of New York and the Basic Officer Training Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, Powell reported to Gelnhausen, Germany, and was assigned to the 3d Armored Division in December 1958, as he recounts in his 1995 book “My American Journey.” Just 43 miles from the Soviet lines, the 21-year-old “butter bar” took command of a platoon of 40 soldiers in Company B, 2nd Armored Rifle Battalion, 48th Infantry Regiment on the “front lines” of the Cold War.
US Army tanks face off against Soviet armor at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, October 1961 (Photo via U.S. Army Center of Military History)
The mission of these units was pretty straightforward: If the Soviets invaded, they were to hold off as long as possible before the nukes started flying. To help them slow down a potential invasion, the Army had an M65 Atomic Cannon, popularly known as “Atomic Annie.” The relatively new weapon, just introduced in 1956, fired a 280mm 20 kiloton atomic shell up to 20 miles away and was hauled around by two trucks, one on each end.
The M65 performing its first and only atomic test on 25 May 1953. (Photo via the U.S. Army)
The guns never stayed in one place for very long and were kept moving in the woods around Germany to keep the Soviets guessing their location. They were so vital, each was guarded by an infantry platoon, which is where 2nd Lt. Powell found himself when his career was almost derailed as soon as it began.
In “My American Journey,” he recounts how his company commander, Capt. Tom Miller, assigned Powell’s platoon the mission of guarding one of the Atomic Annie M65s, which they referred to as a “280” because of the caliber of the shell fired. Powell was eager to begin his first mission, so he strapped his 1911 .45 caliber sidearm into his holster, got in a Jeep, and started toward the battalion headquarters for his briefing in the forests around the Vogelsberg mountains.
Somewhere along the way the future Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State reached down to feel his sidearm in the holster and his heart sank to his stomach. It had somehow fallen out, an error which could stain his career and make his stay in the Army a short and lackluster one.
Colin Powell in 1959 as a young second lieutenant. (Photo via U.S. Army 3d Armored Division)
Misplacing a weapon is a major offense in the military and in many cases an absolute career-killer. That sudden fear of not knowing where your weapon is grips nearly every service member at least once in their career, though usually it’s just a few feet away and only out of sight for a fraction of a second, rather than completely lost. Though sometimes weapons do go missing, and the consequences can be severe. Both the battalion commander and the sergeant major of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment were relieved in 2020 after a pair of rifles went missing from their unit, even though they weren’t even the ones directly responsible for the misplaced firearms.
On that day back in December 1958, when fresh-2nd Lt. Powell realized his sidearm was missing in action, his mind likely raced before crashing to a halt. Powell stopped the Jeep, pondering whether to search for it or to let his commander know what had happened. He radioed his commanding officer, Capt. Miller and let him know he lost his sidearm and then proceeded on to his mission briefing without it.
Following the briefing, Powell began his trip back to his platoon, but as he passed a small village he saw Miller who stopped him and said “I’ve got something for you,” before handing over the missing sidearm. According to “My American Journey,” Miller told Powell that “Some kids in the village found it where it fell out of your holster. Luckily they only got off one round before we heard the shot and came and took the gun away from them.”
After returning the weapon, Miller turned to Powell and though he could have easily laid into the young officer, he simply said “For God’s sake, son, don’t let that happen again.” Having made his point, Capt. Miller drove off, leaving the young lieutenant with his thoughts and his reclaimed pistol.
Powell checked the magazine, and finding it full, he realized that the story Miller told had been concocted. The purpose? To strike just enough fear in the young officer to leave him with an indelible lesson in leadership which he outlines in this excerpt from his book:
“Miller’s example of humane leadership that does not always go by the book was not lost on me. When they fall down, pick ’em up, dust ’em off, pat ’em on the back, and move ’em on. I gave Miller and my other superior officers plenty of opportunities to pick me up-for example, when I lost the train tickets for my platoon en route to Munich and found myself and my men stranded in the Frankfurt Bahnhof. I have never spoken of these embarrassments until now. Maybe they will help young officers learn a lesson: nobody ever made it to the top by never getting into trouble.”
Miller could have easily assigned the mission to another platoon, sending another young lieutenant, one that would not lose his sidearm, to be briefed at headquarters. He could have even taken Powell’s platoon away from him — other lieutenants had certainly lost command for less severe slip-ups. Instead, he picked him up, dusted him off, patted him on his back and moved him forward.
Colin Powell would go on to have one of the most successful careers in recent U.S. military history, reaching the rank of general. He would become the first Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the first Black secretary of the State Department. However, it’s possible that his story might have been much different were it not for a simple display of “human leadership” from his first company commander, and the lesson it imparted on the young second lieutenant.
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5. What Have We Learned From 20 Years In Afghanistan
A think piece that should stimulate reflection, discussion (and hopefully some action).
What Have We Learned
From 20 Years In Afghanistan
A ‘Think-Piece’
By
Mike Shaler
“No Valor Citation ever began: ‘As things went according to plan….’ “
Attributed to Mike Nelson (Tweet), August 25, 2021
The War In Afghanistan had a beginning --- In Central Command Headquarters, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida --- Army General Tommy Franks was the Commander of United States Central Command --- In his book ‘American Soldier’, he wrote:
“October 7, 2001. It was 0900 on Sunday, October 7, 2001,
less than one month since 9/11. The war would begin
in three and a half hours.” [Footnote 1]
And today, President Biden, in a speech delivered from the White House,
announced the end:
“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years
of war in Afghanistan – the longest war in American history….
As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided
our nation the last two decades, we’ve got to learn from our mistakes….
My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over.” [Footnote 2]
The United States Army has long regarded itself as a LEARNING ORGANIZATION,
so, as the President noted, we should ask ourselves: “What have we learned --- both positive and negative --- from our 20 years involvement in the Afghanistan War?”
In an article in Joint Forces Quarterly, Dr. Anthony J. DiBella, a Faculty Member at the Naval War College, offered a definition of the Learning Organization:
“As the definitions of the learning organization grew, several
clear themes emerged. Among them was the distinction and
interdependence of individual level learning and
organizational learning, and that one could not exist without the other.
Another theme was that learning is linked to adaptation,
whether to external events or knowledge gained internally through experience.
One point of commonality was the necessity for organizations to learn.” [Footnote 3]
This ‘Think-Piece’ is offered as a beginning effort to build upon the Army’s solid history of learning from our experiences --- including the introduction of
After-Action Reviews in our training system, and the establishment of the Center for Army Lessons Learned.
OBJECTIVE. Assemble the Army and Marine Corps General Officers who have served as the Senior Commander on the ground in Afghanistan. In a private setting, have them discuss and analyze the challenges facing them during their tour and discuss with their fellow commanders what they enacted in response to the challenges --- and what they learned in the process of implementation --- and what, if anything, they wish they would have done differently.
OUTCOMES. Using the ‘Astarita Report’ which was directed in 1974 by then-Chief of Staff, Army General Creighton Abrams as an excellent model of concise writing, compose a written document summarizing the learning from our involvement in Afghanistan and proposing recommendations for the future of our military forces. [Footnote 4]
ADMINISTRATION.
Sponsor. Seek a well-regarded, nonpartisan organization in the National Capital Region (NCR) to fund the conference and writing of the report.
Location. Private setting, self-contained with dining facilities, closed to the public, with overnight accommodations. Located within the NCR to ease the travel requirement.
Moderators and Reporters. Enlist the assistance of proven professionals such as Lieutenant General (Retired) Jim Dubik, Major General (Retired) Bill Hix, and Major General (Retired) John Ferrari to act as moderators for the discussions with the former commanders. For reporters, it may be helpful to have some serving officers, who have a career in the Army ahead of them to serve as ‘Keepers of the Concept’ (to respond to a possible query from Senior Leaders who might ask, in the future: “What do we know about our 20 year involvement in Afghanistan?”). My suggestion here would focus on those serving officers who have demonstrated abilities in research and writing, such as Colonel Todd Schmidt and Lieutenant Colonel Nate Finney – both of whom were selected by the Army to pursue their PhD and have a healthy reputation as great writers.
[NOTE: I have not contacted any of these officers, but offer them as ‘exemplars’ in selecting those who would be excellent choices to assist in this process.]
Rules for the Conference and the Report. The Chatham House Rule should apply throughout: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
POSSIBLE TOPIC AREAS FOR DISCUSSION. These are initial suggestions for Topic Areas to be discussed by the participants. Prior to the conference, the principals attending the gathering should be queried for their input on topics.
RELATIONSHIPS –
CHAIN OF COMMAND/UNITY OF COMMAND/UNITY OF EFFORT –
CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING –
COMMUNICATIONS –
MEDIA –
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT --
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES –
TRAINING OBJECTIVES FOR INDIGENOUS FORCES –
CONTRACTOR RELATIONSHIPS –
This ‘Think-Piece’ is designed to start a process for furthering the cause of enhancing the US Army’s Learning. There will be a number of actions over the coming years to understand better what has happened in the past 20 years, but I think it is critically important for the Army to start now to LEARN from our involvement in Afghanistan. As a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, I lived through the years following our departure and saw our Army switch our focus from a Counterinsurgency environment in Vietnam to a preparation for the defense of Western Europe. The development of new doctrine, equipment, training, and leader development programs was central to our readiness in Western Europe – and resulted in the successes we all saw in Desert Storm.
Gathering the General Officers who provided the command in Afghanistan is the first step we should take – and take it soon in order to take advantage of their combined wisdom in facing the future.
Footnotes:
-
‘American Soldier’, General Tommy Franks, 2004, HarperCollins.
-
Remarks by President Biden, August 31, 2021, Transcript from White House.Gov.
-
‘Can the Army Become A Learning Organization?’, Dr. Anthony J. DiBella, Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue 56, 2010.
- ‘The Astarita Report: A Military Strategy For The Multipolar World’, 30 April 1981, US Army War College
About the Author(s)
Mike Shaler is the President of the Steamboat Leadership Institute, a leadership consulting organization he established in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in October 1992. He has been at the forefront in the design and implementation of leader development programs for leaders and managers at all levels in organizations. He has been involved in the design & development of executive development programs for the world's largest financial services organization, and served for 6 years on their executive development faculty. He additionally serves as an executive coach for senior executives in corporate, governmental, and non-profit organizations; has facilitated several groups of senior executives in strategic planning sessions and corporate-level solutions efforts; and has developed and implemented a series of 360 Degree assessment programs. Mike directed the US Army’s Strategic Leadership Development Program for eight years, and was a Strategic Advisor to the Army Chief of Staff for eight years.
The Steamboat Leadership Institute originated a comprehensive program for enhancing leader performance through the delivery of focused and structured feedback to leaders while they performed their assigned jobs, resulting in rapid growth and development of leadership skills. Mike has also pioneered in the development of focused programs to help organizations develop their skills as learning organizations. Through the use of After-Action Reviews, Mike has guided organizations through the process of reaping the benefits of individual learning combined with the power of organizational learning. These efforts also include a ‘train the trainer’ component which helps individual leaders develop their skills in conducting After-Action Reviews.
Prior to establishing the Steamboat Leadership Institute in 1992, Mike served for 30 years in the US Army where he was a leader at every level from Second Lieutenant through Colonel. When not in direct leadership positions, he was engaged in leadership research, teaching leadership, and in the design of leader development programs. These assignments included teaching leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York; leading the Army’s personnel, leadership, and training research laboratory where he was in charge of the Army’s people research program and was the leader of 240 PhD research scientists around the globe; and an assignment as Senior Army Research Fellow, conducting in-depth research of innovative training and development programs for senior defense executives.
Mike earned his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and his BA in Psychology from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He is a graduate of the National Defense University and the Army War College, and served as a member member of the Army Science Board for 8 years. He and his wife, Sheila have lived in Steamboat Springs, Colorado for 29 years and have 4 adult children.
Michael D. Shaler
Post Office Box 775490
Steamboat Springs, Colorado 80477
6. Time for America to privatize its hybrid wars
I look forward to reading Sean McFate's response to this.
Would the private sector have achieved a "better" outcome in Afghanistan? Really?
Excerpts:
In the last six years, these unknown assailants caused permanent injuries to hundreds of US personnel operating in Havana, Vienna, New Delhi, Bogota and even Washington DC. Our opponents Russia, China and Iran have embraced hybrid warfare, seamlessly blending their national force with non-attributable civilian efforts.
America should unleash its latent private capabilities for partnership with countries wishing to end the scourge of Islamic terrorism, narco-terrorism, state-sponsored drug trades and to deter the resource hegemony pursued by China.
America’s private sector can also build real host nation security capacity across the Pacific Rim including Taiwan to deter aggression without the politics of sending US troops.
The reflection on what went wrong in Afghanistan will go on for some time, but a reminder from Winston Churchill is appropriate: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”
Once in a while, we have to get it right or all credibility and deterrence are lost. We are at that point now.
Time for America to privatize its hybrid wars
Afghan debacle underscored the need to unleash America's latent private sector capabilities to restore lost credibility and deterrence
Four and a half years ago I offered the Trump administration an offramp for the continuous loop of failure America faced in Afghanistan. A similar package was previously suggested to Team Obama and finally to Team Biden in January this year.
Sadly, the administrations’ set of “credentialed” experts rejected a common-sense rationalization letting US troops depart. This summer’s graphic self-immolation of American credibility was the result. It didn’t have to be this way.
A few days after the 9-11 attack, President George W Bush met with his National Security cabinet to plan retribution against al Qaeda. While the Pentagon smoldered, the Department of Defense (DoD) offered airstrikes and a delay of six months for a plodding mechanized invasion of Afghanistan via Pakistan.
The Central Intelligence Agency countered with an immediate unconventional warfare approach using a handful of CIA and Special Forces personnel backed by airpower. Clearly that worked and within days al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts were literally running for their lives.
Within eight months, conventional US forces took over and replicated the Soviet occupation plan of the 1980s while fused to a futile cosplay diplomatic exercise focused on nation-building where none had ever existed before.
This voyage took America on a wasteful fool’s errand thrice costlier than the Marshall plan that actually rebuilt postwar Europe. America and all our technological prowess were defeated by illiterate tribesmen armed with weapons designed in the 1940s.
The US military built the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to mirror itself, reinforcing a nonexistent central government. The DoD rotated its personnel in-country at least 33 times during the 20-year failure while rotating commanders 18 times.
Afghan army soldiers take part in a military training at a training center in Herat province, western Afghanistan, Sept. 21, 2016. Photo: AFP / Nasim Seyamak / NurPhoto
They never once changed personnel or deployment policies to address the dual conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan. From the high-water mark of mid-2002, the reach and control of Kabul steadily waned as the Taliban rolled up more and more terrain.
For years, the Taliban would lay siege to a government outpost and apply steady pressure. The inept government forces failed to deliver the basics of resupply, medevac or close air support.
The Afghan personnel would resort to phoning live TV news broadcasts pleading for help to no avail. The unit, usually unpaid for months, short on food, medicine, ammunition and fuel because senior officers had sold it off, surrendered hoping to spare their lives.
The “smart” people in Washington wonder why the Afghan military collapsed while ignoring the rampant corruption rotting the ANSF throughout. The SIGAR (Special Inspector General) well reported the systemic corruption, but no one in ANSF under DoD tutelage had actually been punished for decades.
An alternative to this continuous loop of failure was offered to the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations that cost less than 5% of previous annual expenditures. A small stay-behind force of privately contracted Special Operations veterans would have attached long term to each Afghan battalion. They would live, train and when necessary fight alongside their Afghan brothers.
Building an Afghan air force from a 90% illiterate population was always going to outlast America’s patience. The right private contractors supporting in the field would have kept the airpower fighting and combat logistics flowing for the Afghans.
This total absence of financial or operational accountability marks a new low in American foreign policy efforts. Of course, any actual real private sector investment must stay within budget and execute upon deliverables.
America’s 20-year deluge of cash enhanced the worst aspects of Afghan culture. The real symbol of successful investment is permanence and America’s 20 years of “investment” shriveled within days.
This failure in Afghanistan was avoidable and empowers America’s rivals and enemies. Our allies witness the abandonment of our citizens and friends and question our reliability. Just because we choose to stop fighting doesn’t mean the war is over.
US Soldiers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division prepare to board a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the final noncombatant evacuation operation missions at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, August 30, 2021. Photo : AFP via EyePress / DOD
America needs to regain its bedrock position of deterrence across the full spectrum of conflict or our way of life is in jeopardy. We deficit spend like a drunkard, subsidizing our generous welfare state.
Our deficits are enabled by the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, underpinned by the veneer of American military supremacy. American credibility literally subsidizes our way of life.
The multi-decade failure of our national security “elites”, both uniformed and civilian, must be held to account. We cannot afford another decade of these failures. More serious people must be empowered to deter those foreign elements who threaten our way of life. Our enemies must realize there are real consequences to their actions.
Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution includes clear guidance on issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal, which were well utilized in our early history. Congress and the executive branch should use this tool again to unleash our latent private sector.
The routine foreign-hosted cyber-piracy attacks recently endured by America can be countered by our own “cyber privateers.”
Like the Pinkerton Detective Agency that pacified the American West, America’s private sector can hunt, disrupt and even destroy these foreign-hosted predators. We should place a large financial bounty for the disruption or destruction of enemy-sponsored microwave-type directed energy weapons.
In the last six years, these unknown assailants caused permanent injuries to hundreds of US personnel operating in Havana, Vienna, New Delhi, Bogota and even Washington DC. Our opponents Russia, China and Iran have embraced hybrid warfare, seamlessly blending their national force with non-attributable civilian efforts.
America should unleash its latent private capabilities for partnership with countries wishing to end the scourge of Islamic terrorism, narco-terrorism, state-sponsored drug trades and to deter the resource hegemony pursued by China.
A private US military contractor on guard. Photo: Twitter
America’s private sector can also build real host nation security capacity across the Pacific Rim including Taiwan to deter aggression without the politics of sending US troops.
The reflection on what went wrong in Afghanistan will go on for some time, but a reminder from Winston Churchill is appropriate: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”
Once in a while, we have to get it right or all credibility and deterrence are lost. We are at that point now.
Erik Prince is an American entrepreneur and security expert. He is a philanthropist and the founder of the Frontier Group of companies.
7. Senate Committee Aims To Boosts Pentagon's Budget By $24B With Eyes On China
Excerpts:
Other big budget items in the Senate committee’s bill include $1.7 billion for an additional DDG-51 destroyer, $1.8 billion for 16 C-130J aircraft destined for the Air National Guard and $1 billion for “urgent requirements” for Israel’s Iron Dome system.
The House and Senate authorizing committees are both moving forward with bills that add approximately $25 billion to the Pentagon’s request.
It should not be a surprise to military observers, but consistent with the Pentagon’s latest request, the committee also noted this is the first military budget request lacking an overseas contingency operations account since 2010.
Senate Committee Aims To Boosts Pentagon's Budget By $24B With Eyes On China - Breaking Defense
The Senate Appropriations Committee's new defense spending bill adds $2.5 billion focused on capabilities in the INDO-PACOM region.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: Streaks in the sky form at sunset behind the U.S. Capitol Building on November 13, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON: The Senate Appropriations Committee is proposing to boost the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2022 budget by $24 billion with a focus on countering China, improving facilities and infrastructure across the services and advancing technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The bill’s big plus ups come with $2.5 billion of additional investments with an eye toward America’s rival in Asia, such as funding specific to Marine Corps Force Design 2030 efforts, accelerating INDO-PACOM missile tracking capabilities, funding for the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii and Guam Defense System as well as $100 million to establish the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve to “accelerate real-world demonstrations of innovative technologies,” according to a summary published by the committee.
The bill also provides various increases for artificial intelligence, cyber and microelectronics capabilities which includes a $500 million program in increase adoption of AI at combatant commands.
It would provide the still nascent Space Force with $17.9 billion for military personnel, operations and acquisition accounts, a 16% increase over last year’s enacted budget.
The fourth big focus area in the SAC’s bill is $1.6 billion of additional funding for infrastructure and facilities sustainment across the services. The Navy’s shipyard revitalization program, for example, would see its $280 million request increased by $480 million total, $180 million for facility renovations and $300 million for additional equipment.
The majority of the Pentagon’s topline is included in the SAC’s new bill, which provides the military with $725 billion. However, Senate appropriators funded military construction and veterans affairs in a separate bill that includes roughly $10 billion. That brings the SAC’s total Pentagon topline to around $735 billion, including $24 billion in additional funding. The three other congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon’s budgets have made similar proposals coming in at around a $740 billion topline.
Some of the major cuts include eliminating $3.3 billion that would have gone to the Afghan Security Forces Fund, an obvious result of the US withdrawal from the country and subsequent collapse of the Afghan government’s army.
There is a $433 million cut from the Space Force for “overhead persistent infrared satellites, which are being developed on fixed-price contracts, yet funding is requested in excess of the contracted value.”
The bill also contains a “rescission of $436 million in unobligated prior-year funds from production of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), due to lengthy manufacturing delays,” according to a statement from the committee.
By comparison, the House Appropriations Committee in July moved forward with a bill cutting the Pentagon’s total budget request by $258 million, Breaking Defense reported at the time. In contrast to the Senate’s bill which touts adds for INDO-PACOM, the House bill moves to cut funding for a Guam-based missile defense program, a major blow to the combatant command.
Other big budget items in the Senate committee’s bill include $1.7 billion for an additional DDG-51 destroyer, $1.8 billion for 16 C-130J aircraft destined for the Air National Guard and $1 billion for “urgent requirements” for Israel’s Iron Dome system.
The House and Senate authorizing committees are both moving forward with bills that add approximately $25 billion to the Pentagon’s request.
It should not be a surprise to military observers, but consistent with the Pentagon’s latest request, the committee also noted this is the first military budget request lacking an overseas contingency operations account since 2010.
8. China denies testing nuclear-capable hypersonic missile
Admit nothing, deny everything...
China denies testing nuclear-capable hypersonic missile
Published
19 hours ago
China has denied reports that it tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile earlier this year, insisting instead that it was a routine spacecraft check.
The initial report in the Financial Times newspaper prompted concern in Washington, where US intelligence was reportedly caught by surprise.
Hypersonic missiles are much faster and more agile than normal ones, meaning they are more difficult to intercept.
It comes as concern grows around China's nuclear capabilities.
On Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing that a routine test had been carried out in July to verify different types of reusable spacecraft technology.
"This was not a missile, this was a spacecraft," he said. "This is of great significance for reducing the cost of spacecraft use."
Mr Zhao added that many countries had carried out similar tests in the past. When asked if the Financial Times report was inaccurate, he replied "yes".
"The test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than US officials realised," the report read.
On Monday, US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said the US was "very concerned", adding that Washington "had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology".
However, he said both China and Russia had been "very actively" pursuing military uses, which meant the US "having to respond in kind".
"We just don't know how we can defend against that technology, neither does China, neither does Russia," he told reporters in Geneva.
Earlier, Mike Gallagher, a Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee, had warned that if Washington stuck to its current approach it would lose a new Cold War with China within a decade.
Relations between the US and China are tense, with Beijing accusing President Joe Biden's administration of being hostile.
A number of Western countries have also expressed concern at China's recent displays of military might.
Media caption, How powerful is China's military?
Michael Shoebridge, the director of defence, strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said if a hypersonic missile had been tested it would fit a "pattern of escalation in nuclear and other strike weapons".
"I don't think it's more significant than China's growing missile silos or air launch nuclear weapons or new submarine nuclear weapons," he said. "But it fits a pattern of increasing capability [without] transparency."
"Transparency is an alien concept for Beijing's strategic thinkers," he added.
China displayed what appeared to be a hypersonic missile platform at a recent military display.
Along with China, the US, Russia and at least five other countries are working on hypersonic missile technology.
They can fly at more than five times the speed of sound and, much like ballistic missiles, can deliver a nuclear warhead.
Last month, North Korea said it had successfully tested a new hypersonic missile. And in July, Russia made a similar announcement and said its missile had been launched from a frigate in the White Sea.
9. ‘Breathtaking expansion’: US Strategic Command leader expects further revelations of China’s nuclear weapons advancement
Quite a statement from the STRATCOM chief.
Excerpt:
“It almost seems like we can’t go through a month without some new revelation coming about China,” said Adm. Charles Richard, who heads the U.S. nuclear weapons mission. “I am not surprised at reports like this. I won’t be surprised when another report comes next month.”
‘Breathtaking expansion’: US Strategic Command leader expects further revelations of China’s nuclear weapons advancement
Adm. Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said that China’s advances allow them to “execute any possible nuclear employment strategy,” in an interview with Stars and Stripes during a visit to Stuttgart, Germany on Oct. 18, 2021. (U.S. Strategic Command)
STUTTGART, Germany — China’s nuclear capability is advancing at a breathtaking pace, U.S. Strategic Command’s top officer said Monday following a report that Beijing tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that orbited the Earth before closing on its target.
“It almost seems like we can’t go through a month without some new revelation coming about China,” said Adm. Charles Richard, who heads the U.S. nuclear weapons mission. “I am not surprised at reports like this. I won’t be surprised when another report comes next month.”
Richard is in Europe this week for talks with U.S. Africa Command’s Gen. Stephen Townsend and U.S. European Command’s Gen. Tod Wolters, who also serves as NATO’s supreme allied commander.
His visit comes amid a report showcasing the kind of military advances that Richard refers to as China’s “strategic breakout,” which, when combined with Russia’s nuclear capabilities, has the U.S. in “uncharted waters.”
Never before has the U.S. had to simultaneously deter two potential adversaries with such capable nuclear arsenals, Richard said in an interview with Stars and Stripes.
On Saturday, Financial Times reported that China recently carried out a hypersonic missile test that U.S. intelligence officials said took them by surprise.
The report, citing five unidentified U.S. government sources, said the Chinese launched a rocket carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle that flew through low orbit.
Although the weapon missed its target by about 25 miles, the test revealed Beijing’s dramatic progress in hypersonic weaponry.
Richard declined to confirm the details in the Financial Times report. But the “breathtaking expansion of strategic and nuclear capabilities” means that “China can now execute any possible nuclear employment strategy,” he said.
During the Cold War, China had a nuclear posture of minimum deterrence, which allowed the U.S. to focus almost exclusively on the nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union. But China’s economic rise has given the country the capabilities to meet its global ambitions.
Some of China’s conventional capabilities have been on display in recent weeks, including in the periphery of Taiwan, where Chinese fighter planes have ramped up incursion flights into Taiwanese air defense zones. Such moves have heightened concerns about a possible conflict there.
“In my mind, (the Chinese) are building a military that is capable of coercion, which requires us to have a strategy to be able to stand up to that coercion or defend the Indo-Pacific and the broader world order that the U.S. and our allies value,” Richard said.
Russia presents problems as well, he said. Like China, the Kremlin has made advances in hypersonic weaponry.
But in Europe, security analysts have also worried about the potential role for low-yield nuclear weapons, which could be deployed by Moscow in the event of conflict with the West.
The idea of “escalate to deescalate,” which entails a small nuclear strike by Russia on a non-nuclear NATO member in an attempt to get allies to back down or risk wider nuclear war, must be taken seriously, Richard said.
“It’s their doctrine,” Richard said. “Russia is very clear in terms of what their policies are. I take it at face value … that is a vexing deterrent challenge.”
Against this backdrop, the United States is undertaking its own nuclear assessment. President Joe Biden launched a posture review due early next year that will lay out priorities for modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The strategy outlined by the Defense Department also will examine how the U.S. can reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy while maintaining its strategic deterrent.
Richard said he is confident the review will be “clear-eyed” about the threats. But he also said he gets apprehensive when he hears arguments in think tank circles against upgrading the nuclear arsenal based on an assertion that mutual assured destruction makes the prospect of such conflict a virtual impossibility.
“Russia and China are developing capabilities,” Richard said. “And you have to ask yourself why are they doing that if they are equally dismissive of their utility.”
John Vandiver
10. China touts film about defeat of US Army as highest grossing ever, data suggests it will fall short
This is a heroic battle when the US Marines' fight at Chosin Reservoir is described. When it is described as a loss it is the US Army's loss.
China touts film about defeat of US Army as highest grossing ever, data suggests it will fall short
'The Next Revolution' host says 'we may not be at war with China but they are, most surely, at war with us.'
A Chinese film about the defeat of the U.S. Army is tracking to become one of the highest-grossing in the country's history, but reports show how keen the government is to see it take the top spot.
"The Battle at Lake Changjin" is a state-funded film about a group of outgunned Chinese troops who defeated U.S. foes during a battle in the Korean War. The film debuted on Sept. 30 and has already hit around $770 million after its third weekend.
The film already has the fourth-highest box office in Chinese history, Variety reported. Forecasts from Chinese ticket agency Maoyan predict that the film will hit at least $843 million (RMB5.43 Billion), which would make it second-most ever behind "Wolf Warriors II," which took around $882 million.
A still from the trailer for the 2021 movie "The Battle at Lake Changjin." (Courtesy YouTube)
However, the film – along with a film called "My Country, My Parents" – is taking up to 80% of screening sessions in China, leaving little room for anything else to scrape out a box office of its own, according to Screen Daily. However, the disparity between first and second is staggering: "Ghangjin" earned around $108.5 million in its third weekend, while "My Country" took only $19.6 million.
Chinese daily tabloid Global Times, published under the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship paper, proudly touted the movie will become the highest grossing film in the country’s history.
FILE - In this June 4, 2021, file photo, a television shows a broadcast of a Chinese talk show program as it sits beneath a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping in a home converted into a tourist homestay in Zhaxigang village near Nyingchi in western China's Tibet Autonomous Region. China's government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021 to promote "revolutionary culture," broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
The Global Times also ridiculed American cinema, saying that "unlike the illusory superhero stories in the West, China’s ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’ is from real history." The paper goes on to proudly claim that its "predecessors and martyrs are more remarkable and true legends compared with those heroes that only exist in movies."
China’s government recently banned effeminate men from TV and told broadcasters to promote "revolutionary culture" to help a "national rejuvenation" in the country. Companies and the public are under increasing pressure to align with its vision for a more powerful China and healthier society.
Therefore, China appears to be lining up "Changjin" as an opponent to the various American blockbusters from Marvel and DC Comics that play across Chinese screens every year.
China may end up getting its wish as the film is very likely to end up the highest grossing film of 2021 – not just in China but anywhere in the world: That title will depend on how the new James Bond film "No Time To Die" and sci-fi epic "Dune" will perform when they debut later this month.
The highest-grossing Western movie is "Avengers: Endgame," which raked in RMB4.25 billion (around $660 million), followed by "The Fate of the Furious" with RMB2.67 billion (around $415 million).
"My Country, My Parents," the third entry in the historical anthology film series celebrating the founding of the People's Republic of China, currently sits just above "The Fate of the Furious" with RMB2.82 billion (around $439 million).
11. FDD | Turkey Threatens New Military Offensive in Northern Syria
Excerpts:
Finally, the White House should end its tacit support for Arab states’ diplomatic rehabilitation of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. If Washington lacks the resolve to isolate Assad, Erdogan will know that lesser offenders have nothing to fear.
FDD | Turkey Threatens New Military Offensive in Northern Syria
fdd.org · by Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director and David Adesnik Research Director and Senior Fellow.· October 18, 2021
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on October 11 that he has “no patience left” for attacks by Syrian Kurdish fighters targeting Turkey’s border towns and Turkish forces in northern Syria, while senior Turkish officials warned more explicitly of military action if the United States does not take steps to address Ankara’s concerns. These threats serve to put pressure on Washington ahead of Erdogan’s planned meeting with President Joe Biden later this month.
Erdogan said his patience had run out after a guided missile attack killed two Turkish police officers in the Azaz region of northern Syria on October 10. Separately, five mortar shells fired from Syria landed inside Turkey, although there were no casualties. Ankara blamed the attacks on the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a key component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s partners in the fight against the Islamic State in northeastern Syria.
The YPG grew out of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which both Washington and Ankara consider a terrorist organization. One source claims that the Afrin Liberation Forces, a Syrian Kurdish insurgent group that does not acknowledge any affiliation with the YPG or SDF, carried out the guided missile attack.
Erdogan has already launched three military interventions against the Kurdish-led SDF in Syria, resulting in a growing zone of Turkish control inside the war-torn country. The third intervention, in late 2019, followed a phone call between Erdogan and President Donald Trump in which Trump left the impression that he did not oppose the attack. However, following a bipartisan backlash in Washington, Trump employed sanctions to force Ankara to accept a cease-fire.
The former president issued Executive Order 13894 in October 2019, authorizing sanctions on Turkish officials and entities responsible for destabilizing Syria. Earlier this month, Biden extended that authorization for another year, condemning, as Trump had, “the actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria, [which] undermines the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, endangers civilians, and further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region.”
The application of such language to a NATO ally is unprecedented, reflecting the bilateral antagonism that has grown during Erdogan’s lengthy tenure. In August, the Biden administration also sanctioned Ahrar al-Sharqiya, one of Turkey’s Islamist proxies in northern Syria, marking the first U.S. designation against such groups. According to the Treasury Department, “Ahrar al-Sharqiya has committed numerous crimes against civilians, particularly Syrian Kurds, including unlawful killings, abductions, torture, and seizures of private property.”
These actions by the Biden administration stand in contrast to the administration’s marked silence regarding Erdogan’s provocations both at home and abroad since the White House’s ill-advised decision to outsource security at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to Ankara following the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
If the administration wants to deter Erdogan from further adventurism in Syria and from endangering the country’s vulnerable minorities, the White House should make clear that it is prepared to use the authorities in Executive Order 13894. During the brief interval in 2019 during which Trump imposed sanctions, the Turkish president quickly became amenable to a cease-fire in Syria.
Finally, the White House should end its tacit support for Arab states’ diplomatic rehabilitation of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. If Washington lacks the resolve to isolate Assad, Erdogan will know that lesser offenders have nothing to fear.
Aykan Erdemir is senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where David Adesnik is research director and a senior fellow. They both contribute to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from the authors, the Turkey Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Aykan and David on Twitter @aykan_erdemir and @adesnik. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director · October 18, 2021
12. FDD | U.S. Trade Representative Outlines Roadmap for China Trade Policy, But Provides Few Details
Excerpts:
In an attempt to distinguish Biden’s trade strategy from his predecessor’s, Tai also stressed the importance of U.S. allies, promising that the administration “will work closely with our allies and likeminded partners towards building truly fair international trade.” She added that Washington seeks to “strengthen our alliances through bilateral, regional, and multilateral engagement.” But she said nothing about what this engagement would look like in practice.
In fact, after nearly 10 months in office, Biden has yet to hold bilateral engagements with any Southeast Asian leaders — a fact that has certainly not gone unnoticed in the region. As White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell has said, “For an effective Asia strategy, for an effective Indo-Pacific approach, you must do more in Southeast Asia.”
Addressing this issue, along with China’s abusive trade policies, will be key to the administration’s ultimate success or failure in stifling Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions.
FDD | U.S. Trade Representative Outlines Roadmap for China Trade Policy, But Provides Few Details
fdd.org · by Zane Zovak Research Analyst and Craig Singleton Adjunct Fellow· October 18, 2021
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai announced during a speech last week an initial roadmap for managing trade disputes with China. However, Tai’s address, which followed a lengthy internal policy review, disclosed little about how the Biden administration intends to hold China accountable for its failure to live up to its existing trade obligations.
“For too long,” Tai remarked, “China’s lack of adherence to global trading norms has undercut the prosperity of Americans and others around the world.” Yet Tai did not elaborate on any plans to counter structural imbalances in the U.S.-China relationship. While Tai noted that the United States has fallen behind in steel, solar panel, agricultural, and semiconductor production, she largely refrained from specifying where China has fallen short in its bilateral obligations.
Tai did note that China has not upheld its commitments outlined in a phase-one trade agreement from 2020. Tai said the United States will “work to enforce the terms of phase one,” which preserves tariffs on China, and will “use the full range of tools we have, and develop new tools as needed.” In this sense, although President Joe Biden decried his predecessor’s use of tariffs against China, he appears intent on pursuing a similar approach in his own dealings with Beijing.
Yet besides mentioning the need for “unilateral U.S. pressure” and deferring to lawyers when asked about initiating a new Section 301 investigation, which would determine whether China’s policies discriminate against U.S. commerce, Tai said little about what specific “new tools” the administration is considering. When pressed for additional details during a Q&A session, Tai could not say more other than, “We are working on plans. I can tell you that.”
Tai also presented contradictory messaging regarding the efficacy of trying to alter China’s trade behavior. For instance, Tai said she would engage in “frank conversations with [her] counterpart in China.” But she also expressed pessimism that doing so would affect Beijing’s strategic calculus, noting, “It is increasingly clear that China’s plans do not include meaningful reforms.” These and other inconsistencies raise questions about what Tai intends to achieve through bilateral exchanges with Beijing.
Also notably absent from Tai’s speech was a discussion about reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO), including whether or how the administration intends to resolve longstanding problems with the WTO’s dispute settlement system. Moreover, Tai avoided commenting on the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), including whether the United States should consider joining it as part of a campaign to strengthen America’s economic leverage in the region. In light of China’s recent efforts to accede to the CPTPP, Congress should hold hearings about the merits of CPTPP membership and provide its own input on the USTR’s nascent trade strategy.
In an attempt to distinguish Biden’s trade strategy from his predecessor’s, Tai also stressed the importance of U.S. allies, promising that the administration “will work closely with our allies and likeminded partners towards building truly fair international trade.” She added that Washington seeks to “strengthen our alliances through bilateral, regional, and multilateral engagement.” But she said nothing about what this engagement would look like in practice.
In fact, after nearly 10 months in office, Biden has yet to hold bilateral engagements with any Southeast Asian leaders — a fact that has certainly not gone unnoticed in the region. As White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell has said, “For an effective Asia strategy, for an effective Indo-Pacific approach, you must do more in Southeast Asia.”
Addressing this issue, along with China’s abusive trade policies, will be key to the administration’s ultimate success or failure in stifling Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions.
Zane Zovak is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Craig Singleton, a national security expert and former U.S. diplomat, is an adjunct fellow. They both contribute to FDD’s China Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from the authors, the China Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Zane Zovak Research Analyst · October 18, 2021
13. A Remote Corner of Afghanistan Offers a Peek Into the Future of the Country
Excerpts:
While the final departure of U.S. forces literally happened overnight, and without any fanfare or even a clear announcement, the full U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan was a long goodbye. Some provinces and outposts were already abandoned years ago, like Combat Outpost Keating in Kamdesh, a district in the eastern Afghan province of Nuristan, which was vacated by U.S. forces over a decade ago, in 2009.
In several aspects, Kamdesh epitomizes the whole U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Going to Afghanistan meant going to one of the most remote parts of the world and going to Kamdesh meant going to one of the most remote spots in Afghanistan. U.S. soldiers called Kamdesh, “the dark side of the moon,” and Keating was arguably the most remote outpost in the whole U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. And while the mission in Kamdesh and the larger Nuristan-Kunar region was initially to hunt down al-Qaida and their allies, it turned, over time, into something that no one could exactly describe. Indeed, a U.S. military investigation into the final days of Combat Outpost Keating concluded that “the mission devolved into one of base defense and by mid-2009 there was no tactical or strategic value to holding the ground occupied by COP Keating.” Although focusing on other valleys in Kunar and Nuristan, this devolving of the mission is excellently dissected in Wesley Morgan’s book “The Hardest Place.”
...
In view of all this, it is likely that, as in Kamdesh, little of the U.S. investment from the past two decades will remain across Afghanistan – and what does remain won’t be remembered as having been provided by U.S. aid. Instead, if Kamdesh offers any preview, Afghans across the country will probably continue to blame the United States for not having fulfilled its promises and – among Afghans who were amenable to the U.S. intention to develop Afghanistan into a modern state – for having abandoned them.
That said, while some are already appreciating or will appreciate the level of security provided by the Taliban, others affected by continuing acts of violence will not. And while Afghans are already worrying about the tumbling economy, this will likely further increase in the months and years to come, with the Taliban continuing to rely on international aid to fund basic services rather than try, at least partly, to tackle such problems themselves.
“We had a chance to develop our homeland, but we missed it and now more difficult days lie ahead,” one resident from Kamdesh said, by way of summing up the situation. Many other Afghans no doubt feel the same way.
A Remote Corner of Afghanistan Offers a Peek Into the Future of the Country
In Kamdesh, Nuristan, where U.S. forces withdrew more than a decade ago, the American presence is a distant – and negative – memory for many locals.
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KAMDESH, NURISTAN — In the dead of night on the August 30, 2021, the last U.S. forces stepped off the tarmac of Kabul Airport onto a plane and left Afghanistan. It was almost 20 years after the first U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, to go after al-Qaida and topple the Emirate of the Taliban that sheltered them. In a twist that would have been unimaginable back in late 2001, the Taliban again held sway in the capital Kabul and practically in the whole of Afghanistan – a feat that they did not even achieve at the prior height of their power in September 2001.
What the future holds for Afghanistan is difficult to predict and depends on what exactly the Taliban and the international community will do in the next weeks and months. However, the situation in one remote corner of Afghanistan offers a peek into the future of the whole country.
Where the U.S. Left Long Ago
While the final departure of U.S. forces literally happened overnight, and without any fanfare or even a clear announcement, the full U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan was a long goodbye. Some provinces and outposts were already abandoned years ago, like Combat Outpost Keating in Kamdesh, a district in the eastern Afghan province of Nuristan, which was vacated by U.S. forces over a decade ago, in 2009.
In several aspects, Kamdesh epitomizes the whole U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Going to Afghanistan meant going to one of the most remote parts of the world and going to Kamdesh meant going to one of the most remote spots in Afghanistan. U.S. soldiers called Kamdesh, “the dark side of the moon,” and Keating was arguably the most remote outpost in the whole U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. And while the mission in Kamdesh and the larger Nuristan-Kunar region was initially to hunt down al-Qaida and their allies, it turned, over time, into something that no one could exactly describe. Indeed, a U.S. military investigation into the final days of Combat Outpost Keating concluded that “the mission devolved into one of base defense and by mid-2009 there was no tactical or strategic value to holding the ground occupied by COP Keating.” Although focusing on other valleys in Kunar and Nuristan, this devolving of the mission is excellently dissected in Wesley Morgan’s book “The Hardest Place.”
In any event, as the United States had no clear objective in Kamdesh anymore, Combat Outpost Keating had already been earmarked to be abandoned by the summer of 2009. However, logistical reasons delayed giving up Keating – and provided the Taliban with an opportunity. On October 3, 2009, an estimated 300 Taliban fighters launched a full-blown attack against Keating and, temporarily, even breached its perimeter. U.S. soldiers manning Keating, with heavy air support, eventually managed to repel the Taliban. However, with eight U.S. soldiers killed and 22 more wounded as well as over 150 Taliban casualties, it was one of the bloodiest U.S.-Taliban battles of the whole U.S. war in Afghanistan and became the subject of books (see e.g. here and here) as well as the movie “The Outpost.”
In spite of the heavy casualties the Taliban suffered, when U.S. forces abandoned Keating soon after the Battle of Kamdesh, the Taliban were again in control of almost all of Kamdesh and felt victorious – a feeling now echoing through the whole of the country, and still persistent in Kamdesh.
The view from the village of Ormor toward the place where U.S. Combat Outpost Keating used to be. Residents here have no good memories of the Americans (August 11, 2021). Photo by Franz J. Marty.
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The U.S. Legacy
Although the United States deployed troops at least once more for a very short stint to Kamdesh in 2012, U.S. involvement in the district practically ceased to exist there more than a decade ago, meaning that what is playing out in the whole country now already happened years ago in Kamdesh.
By now, barely anything of the prior U.S. involvement remains in Kamdesh. Indeed, when The Diplomat visited the site of Combat Outpost Keating in early August 2021, the few shells of Soviet armored personnel carriers left rusting there for over three decades were more prominent than anything the Americans left behind. The former Combat Outpost Keating was practically invisible. What the U.S. bombardment that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Keating did not destroy back in 2009 is now overgrown by ferns and bushes whose leaves quietly rustle in the wind. The small peninsula protruding into the white water of the Landay Sin River, where once U.S. resupply helicopters landed, is now covered in small trees.
And while one might assume that the sturdy beton bridge spanning a tributary to the Landay Sin River, connecting the place of the former combat outpost with the former helicopter landing zone, was constructed by the Americans, this is not the case. “The bridge was built during the [first] Taliban era [before September 2001] by a non-governmental organization,” explained Mawlawi Abdul Reza, a teacher at a madrassa, a religious school, who hails from Ormor, the village only a stone’s throw away from what was once Keating. Another resident of Kamdesh confirmed this.
“The Americans built nothing here; only their base which they later destroyed,” Reza added with scorn in his voice.
The latter is not entirely true, as several other solid cement bridges – one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in valleys cut through by fast flowing mountain rivers – were built in the early 2000s with U.S. aid. “Since these bridges in the early 2000s, there have been no development projects at all here,” Obaid Rahmon, a resident of Kamdesh, told The Diplomat. This is not hard to believe. Roads in the district remain unpaved and bumpy, winding through difficult terrain. Basic clinics are far and few between and the ones that exist and are open are regularly short of doctors and medicine.
In 2020, the then-government of Afghanistan, which was largely funded by the U.S., started to build several schools in Kamdesh and Barg-e Matal, the district located upstream from Kamdesh, as Rahmon acknowledged. However, the school building that The Diplomat visited in early August 2021 remained an empty, unfinished shell and with the current uncertainties it is questionable when, if ever, it will be completed.
According to residents of Kamdesh, other promised development projects never materialized. “The Americans said they would construct a pipe system for drinking water for our village, but they never did,” Abdul Jalil an old school teacher from Ormor, told The Diplomat. “Back when the Americans where here, there were jobs here and a lot of money, but no security,” Jalil and other men from Ormor said, sitting on a wooden bench surrounded by the steep slopes peppered with small trees from which the Taliban used to regularly attack the Americans in Keating.
The Diplomat has heard similar feelings – disappointment over lack of basic developments and complaints about insecurity – in many other places across Afghanistan during the past months and years. Based on that trend, it seems likely that little of the existing U.S. investments in Afghanistan will be remembered in a few years from now.
Chassis of Soviet armored personnel carriers, rusting at the roadside next to the place where U.S. Combat Outpost Keating used to be. Despite being over three decades old, they are more prominent reminders of past wars in Kamdesh than anything U.S. forces have left behind more recently. (August 9, 2021) Photo by Franz J. Marty.
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An Elusive Peace?
“With the Americans gone, the money stopped and nothing was left behind; but the security problems continued,” Jalil added, which was seconded by the others. Given that the forces of the now toppled Afghan Republic did not vacate Kamdesh along with U.S. forces, clashes between the Republican forces and the Taliban continued in Kamdesh until the complete fall of the district in early August 2021. However, when the men from Ormor mentioned their concern regarding insecurity, they were not only referring to clashes between Republican and Taliban forces in the past.
“In the past 11 years, a total of 40 houses were burnt down in Ormor. The last incident only took place 15 days ago [in late July 2021],” Jalil stated. “No one knows who is behind these incidents and why they burn down the houses,” the residents of Ormor claimed.
“The U.S. presence here has split the local people,” one man from Ormor said, “and this split exists still now, long after the U.S. left.” While his comment implied that such a split is the reason for the numerous acts of arson in Ormor, in a country like Afghanistan where longstanding violent personal, clan, or tribal enmities are frequent, there are many alternative potential explanations. Either way, there are no indications that these arson attacks will stop now after the full Taliban takeover.
That said, not everyone is concerned about the security situation in Kamdesh. To the contrary, other people who live in parts of Kamdesh that have been de facto controlled by the Taliban for a decade stated that their villages are safe and that they don’t face any security issues. In view of this, the victory of the Taliban across the country will mean security in certain, maybe even many, parts of the country, but a complete end of violent acts will likely remain elusive.
A group of Taliban in an outpost above the district center of Kamdesh, Nuristan Province. While the district center was, until early August, controlled by the now toppled Republican government, the Taliban have practically been in control of the rest of Kamdesh for over a decade. (August 12, 2021). Photo by Franz J. Marty.
Locals’ Problems with the Taliban
Furthermore, there are people in Kamdesh that are not too happy with the Taliban. Some people in Kamdesh contrasted the existence of job opportunities and money when Americans were around with the economic hardship they face under the Taliban.
“The extreme inflation of prices for common goods is all the Taliban’s fault,” one man with a short-cropped black beard and a pakool, the region’s traditional round felt hat, exclaimed. Given that the price hike in Kamdesh in August 2021 was mainly caused by the fact that a historic flash flood cut the only road into the district from lower Kamdesh, which disrupted supplies for the rest of Kamdesh and Barg-e Matal, this criticism was to some extent unfair. However, as examples from other areas that have been long under Taliban control show, a contracting economy and the lack of job opportunities are indeed frequently heard problems of life under Taliban rule and are now also reported countrywide.
The fact that the Taliban apparently only have limited financial resources was corroborated during the response to the flood in Kamdesh. “Some aid arrived from non-governmental organizations, but nothing from the Taliban,” a victim of the flood in the village of Mirdesh in lower Kamdesh told The Diplomat.
Other residents of Mirdesh mentioned that the Taliban had promised to help the flood victims with “5 million,” but this money had, at least as of mid-August, never arrived and it was not even clear whether the Taliban meant 5 million Afghanis or Pakistani rupees. (The use of Pakistani currency is, despite an official ban, still common in a few border areas of Afghanistan.) A Taliban official was even inviting NGOs to help, while remaining silent on what the Taliban themselves would do to respond to the emergency.
Some residents of Kamdesh also complained about intrusive Taliban laws. Apart from the little island of the district center that was, until early August 2021, controlled by the former Republic, the Taliban have prohibited TVs, smoking, and music for over a decade in Kamdesh.
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“While smoking and music are in theory outlawed, some Taliban smoke themselves and I and others listen openly to music without the Taliban interfering,” a resident from Kamdesh qualified this.
“However, with TVs and satellite dishes they are strict. I have asked several times to be allowed to have a satellite dish to get satellite-based WiFi, but they don’t let me,” the man added. “And this is despite the fact that the Taliban themselves regularly use the satellite-based WiFi of a shopkeeper in the center of Barg-e Matal,” which was until early August under the control of the former Republic.
This shows that Afghans are – contrary to Taliban claims – not living blissfully under Taliban rule. Given that residents of Kamdesh have been living under the Taliban for over 10 years, their voices show that complains and worries about the economy are not mere transitional issues.
The district center of Kamdesh, Nuristan province, perched high above the main valley on a mountain slope (August 12, 2021). Photo by Franz J. Marty.
Outlook
In view of all this, it is likely that, as in Kamdesh, little of the U.S. investment from the past two decades will remain across Afghanistan – and what does remain won’t be remembered as having been provided by U.S. aid. Instead, if Kamdesh offers any preview, Afghans across the country will probably continue to blame the United States for not having fulfilled its promises and – among Afghans who were amenable to the U.S. intention to develop Afghanistan into a modern state – for having abandoned them.
That said, while some are already appreciating or will appreciate the level of security provided by the Taliban, others affected by continuing acts of violence will not. And while Afghans are already worrying about the tumbling economy, this will likely further increase in the months and years to come, with the Taliban continuing to rely on international aid to fund basic services rather than try, at least partly, to tackle such problems themselves.
“We had a chance to develop our homeland, but we missed it and now more difficult days lie ahead,” one resident from Kamdesh said, by way of summing up the situation. Many other Afghans no doubt feel the same way.
14. Top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan stepping down
Top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan stepping down
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad listens to a video question from U.S. Representative Susan Wild (D-PA) as he testifies about the potential withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan at a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. May 18, 2021. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad is stepping down, the State Department said on Monday, less than two months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of the country.
Khalilzad will be replaced by his deputy, Tom West, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement, noting that West will work closely with the U.S. embassy, which is now based in Doha, on U.S. interests in Afghanistan.
A person familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that Khalilzad submitted his resignation on Friday.
His departure follows his exclusion from the Biden administration's first formal talks with the Taliban after the U.S. pullout, held in Doha earlier in October.
Khalilzad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Khalilzad, born in Afghanistan, held the post since 2018 and spearheaded the negotiations with the Taliban that led to the February 2020 agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. forces this year.
He then pressed the hardline Islamist movement and the Western-backed government of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to negotiate a political settlement to decades of strife.
In mid-August, the government collapsed as the Taliban swept through the country and marched into the capital, Kabul, unopposed. Khalilzad was left seeking the militants' assistance in the U.S. evacuation of U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghans who worked for the U.S. government.
Current and former U.S. officials told Reuters earlier that in the three years Khalilzad had been in the role, he became the face of one of the largest U.S. diplomatic failures in recent memory.
U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the veteran American diplomat relinquished leverage to the militant group, continuously undermined the Afghan government, and had little interest in hearing different viewpoints within the U.S. government.
CNN first reported Khalilzad's plan to resign.
Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Mary Milliken and Matthew Lewis
15. China's orbiting missile exploits weakness in US defences
China's orbiting missile exploits weakness in US defences
By The Straits Times5 min
SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - China's reported launch of a hypersonic missile into orbit has raised concerns that United States rivals are quickly neutralising the Pentagon's missile defences even as it invests tens of billions of dollars in upgrades.
In a test two months ago, the Chinese military sent a nuclear-capable missile into low-orbit space and around the globe before cruising down to its target, the Financial Times reported on Saturday (Oct 16), citing sources familiar with the matter.
Although the weapon missed its mark by about two dozen miles, the paper said, the technology, once perfected, could be used to send nuclear warheads over the South Pole and around American anti-missile systems in the northern hemisphere.
China disputed the paper's account, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian describing it as a "routine test of a space vehicle to verify technology for spacecraft reusability" and comparing it with systems being developed by private companies.
"China will work with other countries in the world for the peaceful use of space for the benefit of mankind," Mr Zhao told a regular news briefing on Monday.
If the missile test is confirmed, it would suggest that Chinese President Xi Jinping may be exploring orbital strikes as a way to counter American advancements in shooting down ballistic missiles before they can threaten the US homeland.
The Russians considered such "fractional orbital bombardment systems" during the Soviet era before abandoning them. But in 2018, Russia rolled out a series of new weapons that President Vladimir Putin said would render US missile defences "ineffective".
The moves illustrate how the Pentagon's push to develop and deploy more advanced anti-missile systems, ostensibly to protect against weapons from North Korea and Iran, may be accelerating a new nuclear arms race.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over the past few years has unveiled a wide range of missiles - testing what his regime described as a hypersonic glide vehicle last month - designed to thwart American and allied defences.
Under Mr Kim, North Korea has developed a series of solid-fuel ballistic missiles designed to fly too low to be intercepted by a US-operated antimissile system known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or Thaad. The missiles may also be too fast to be stopped by Patriot surface-to-air missiles that defend against low-altitude rockets, weapons experts said.
Dr Li Nan, a visiting senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute specialising in Chinese security and military policies at the National University of Singapore, described China sending a missile into orbit as "a game-changer".
"If China was able to deploy one, that would basically neutralise US missile defence," Dr Li said. "It makes it very hard for the US to deal with this new type of missile and will make it very costly to combat and build up new capabilities to counteract this technology."
After years of development, a US Navy destroyer last year successfully intercepted a mock intercontinental ballistic missile designed to simulate one developed by North Korea.
The test, which the head of the US Missile Defence Agency described as an "incredible accomplishment and critical milestone", would potentially allow ships in the US' Seventh Fleet to shoot down missiles in addition to 44 interceptors based in silos in California and Alaska.
The MDA plans to spend US$45 billion (S$60 billion) between fiscal year 2020 and FY24, the Government Accountability Office said in April, after spending about US$163 billion over the previous two decades. The Biden administration has pressed ahead with plans to develop a new anti-missile warhead and expand defence systems in Alaska and Europe, despite cost overruns and delays.
The threat of a US strike that wipes out Chinese missiles before they can hit an American target, has long been seen as a deterrent against more assertive military action by Beijing.
The US, like Russia, holds more than 4,000 warheads, according to a June report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force, by comparison, added about 30 warheads to its stockpile of about 320 bombs over the past year.
Developing hypersonic glide vehicles are one way for countries such as China and North Korea to make the most of their smaller number of warheads, said non-proliferation expert Melissa Hanham, who is an affiliate with the Stanford Centre for International Security and Cooperation.
She said there was not yet any public evidence that either country was considering an orbital bombardment strategy.
"However, weaponising space in this way is extremely risky and destabilising should any country pursue it," Ms Hanham said. "It raises that stakes of an unintended escalation which could lead to nuclear war."
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby declined to comment on the Financial Times report on Monday, saying only that Beijing's efforts to advance its military showed why the US regarded China as its "No. 1 pacing challenge".
"We have made clear our concerns about the military capabilities China continues to pursue, capabilities that only increase tensions in the region and beyond," Mr Kirby said.
The August test was one of several recent moves by Beijing that appeared intended to overcome US advantages in both warhead stockpiles and missile shields and establish a more favourable balance of power.
China is building at least 250 missile silos in at least three sites, according to independent analysis of satellite imagery, causing non-proliferation experts to speculate that the PLA might leave many empty to confuse and distract US military planners.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party's Global Times newspaper, tweeted the Financial Times story on Sunday, saying that Beijing would improve its nuclear deterrence to "ensure that the US abandons the idea of nuclear blackmail against China".
Ankit Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said China's description of the test as a "space vehicle" likely can't be taken at face value, since putting a hypersonic glide vehicle into orbit wouldn't be routine.
Although US ship-based systems might be able to intercept such an attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile, Panda said, ground-based systems in the north would not.
"Existing US counter-ICBM defences all rely on intercepting the incoming warhead outside the atmosphere, which is partly why China has looked to gliders in the first place," Panda said.
16. Behind NATO’s ‘cognitive warfare’: ‘Battle for your brain’ waged by Western militaries
Excerpt:
‘Cognitive warfare is the most advanced form of manipulation seen to date’
Behind NATO’s ‘cognitive warfare’: ‘Battle for your brain’ waged by Western militaries | MR Online
NATO is developing new forms of warfare to wage a “battle for the brain,” as the military alliance put it.
The US-led NATO military cartel has tested novel modes of hybrid warfare against its self-declared adversaries, including economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare.
Now, NATO is spinning out an entirely new kind of combat it has branded cognitive warfare. Described as the “weaponization of brain sciences,” the new method involves “hacking the individual” by exploiting “the vulnerabilities of the human brain” in order to implement more sophisticated “social engineering.”
Until recently, NATO had divided war into five different operational domains: air, land, sea, space, and cyber. But with its development of cognitive warfare strategies, the military alliance is discussing a new, sixth level: the “human domain.”
While actions taken in the five domains are executed in order to have an effect on the human domain, cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.
“The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” the report stressed. “Humans are the contested domain,” and “future conflicts will likely occur amongst the people digitally first and physically thereafter in proximity to hubs of political and economic power.”
The 2020 NATO-sponsored study on cognitive warfare
While the NATO-backed study insisted that much of its research on cognitive warfare is designed for defensive purposes, it also conceded that the military alliance is developing offensive tactics, stating,
The human is very often the main vulnerability and it should be acknowledged in order to protect NATO’s human capital but also to be able to benefit from our adversaries’s vulnerabilities.
In a chilling disclosure, the report said explicitly that “the objective of Cognitive Warfare is to harm societies and not only the military.”
With entire civilian populations in NATO’s crosshairs, the report emphasized that Western militaries must work more closely with academia to weaponize social sciences and human sciences and help the alliance develop its cognitive warfare capacities.
The study described this phenomenon as “the militarization of brain science.” But it appears clear that NATO’s development of cognitive warfare will lead to a militarization of all aspects of human society and psychology, from the most intimate of social relationships to the mind itself.
Such all-encompassing militarization of society is reflected in the paranoid tone of the NATO-sponsored report, which warned of “an embedded fifth column, where everyone, unbeknownst to him or her, is behaving according to the plans of one of our competitors.” The study makes it clear that those “competitors” purportedly exploiting the consciousness of Western dissidents are China and Russia.
In other words, this document shows that figures in the NATO military cartel increasingly see their own domestic population as a threat, fearing civilians to be potential Chinese or Russian sleeper cells, dastardly “fifth columns” that challenge the stability of “Western liberal democracies.”
NATO’s development of novel forms of hybrid warfare come at a time when member states’ military campaigns are targeting domestic populations on an unprecedented level.
The Ottawa Citizen reported this September that the Canadian military’s Joint Operations Command took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to wage an information war against its own domestic population, testing out propaganda tactics on Canadian civilians.
Internal NATO-sponsored reports suggest that this disclosure is just scratching the surface of a wave of new unconventional warfare techniques that Western militaries are employing around the world.
Canada hosts ‘NATO Innovation Challenge’ on cognitive warfare
Twice each year, NATO holds a “pitch-style event” that it brand as an “Innovation Challenge.” These campaigns–one hosted in the Spring and the other in the Fall, by alternating member states–call on private companies, organizations, and researchers to help develop new tactics and technologies for the military alliance.
The shark tank-like challenges reflect the predominant influence of neoliberal ideology within NATO, as participants mobilize the free market, public-private partnerships, and the promise of cash prizes to advance the agenda of the military-industrial complex.
“Cognitive warfare seeks to change not only what people think, but also how they act,” the Canadian government wrote in its official statement on the challenge.
Attacks against the cognitive domain involve the integration of cyber, disinformation/misinformation, psychological, and social-engineering capabilities.
Ottawa’s press release continued:
Cognitive warfare positions the mind as a battle space and contested domain. Its objective is to sow dissonance, instigate conflicting narratives, polarize opinion, and radicalize groups. Cognitive warfare can motivate people to act in ways that can disrupt or fragment an otherwise cohesive society.
NATO-backed Canadian military officials discuss cognitive warfare in panel event
An advocacy group called the NATO Association of Canada has mobilized to support this Innovation Challenge, working closely with military contractors to attract the private sector to invest in further research on behalf of NATO–and its own bottom line.
While the NATO Association of Canada (NAOC) is technically an independent NGO, its mission is to promote NATO, and the organization boasts on its website,
The researcher who wrote the definitive 2020 NATO-sponsored study on cognitive warfare, François du Cluzel, participated in the event, alongside NATO-backed Canadian military officers.
The October 5 panel on cognitive warfare, hosted by the NATO Association of Canada
The panel was overseen by Robert Baines, president of the NATO Association of Canada. It was moderated by Garrick Ngai, a marketing executive in the weapons industry who serves as an adviser to the Canadian Department of National Defense and vice president and director of the NAOC.
Baines opened the event noting that participants would discuss “cognitive warfare and new domain of competition, where state and non-state actors aim to influence what people think and how they act.”
The NAOC president also happily noted the lucrative “opportunities for Canadian companies” that this NATO Innovation Challenge promised.
NATO researcher describes cognitive warfare as ‘ways of harming the brain’
The October 5 panel kicked off with François du Cluzel, a former French military officer who in 2013 helped to create the NATO Innovation Hub (iHub), which he has since then managed from its base in Norfolk, Virginia.
Although the iHub insists on its website, for legal reasons, that the “opinions expressed on this platform don’t constitute NATO or any other organization points of view,” the organization is sponsored by the Allied Command Transformation (ACT), described as “one of two Strategic Commands at the head of NATO’s military command structure.”
The Innovation Hub, therefore, acts as a kind of in-house NATO research center or think tank. Its research is not necessarily official NATO policy, but it is directly supported and overseen by NATO.
In 2020, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) tasked du Cluzel, as manager of the iHub, to conduct a six-month study on cognitive warfare.
Du Cluzel summarized his research in the panel this October. He initiated his remarks noting that cognitive warfare “right now is one of the hottest topics for NATO,” and “has become a recurring term in military terminology in recent years.”
Although French, Du Cluzel emphasized that cognitive warfare strategy “is being currently developed by my command here in Norfolk, USA.”
The NATO Innovation Hub manager spoke with a PowerPoint presentation, and opened with a provocative slide that described cognitive warfare as “A Battle for the Brain.”
“Cognitive warfare is a new concept that starts in the information sphere, that is a kind of hybrid warfare,” du Cluzel said.
“It starts with hyper-connectivity. Everyone has a cell phone,” he continued.
It starts with information because information is, if I may say, the fuel of cognitive warfare. But it goes way beyond solely information, which is a standalone operation–information warfare is a standalone operation.
Cognitive warfare overlaps with Big Tech corporations and mass surveillance, because “it’s all about leveraging the big data,” du Cluzel explained.
We produce data everywhere we go. Every minute, every second we go, we go online. And this is extremely easy to leverage those data in order to better know you and use that knowledge to change the way you think.
Naturally, the NATO researcher claimed foreign “adversaries” are the supposed aggressors employing cognitive warfare. But at the same time, he made it clear that the Western military alliance is developing its own tactics.
Du Cluzel defined cognitive warfare as the “art of using technologies to alter the cognition of human targets.”
Those technologies, he noted, incorporate the fields of NBIC–nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. All together, “it makes a kind of very dangerous cocktail that can further manipulate the brain,” he said.
Du Cluzel went on to explain that the exotic new method of attack “goes well beyond” information warfare or psychological operations (psyops).
“Cognitive warfare is not only a fight against what we think, but it’s rather a fight against the way we think, if we can change the way people think,” he said.
It’s much more powerful and it goes way beyond the information [warfare] and psyops.
De Cluzel continued:
It’s crucial to understand that it’s a game on our cognition, on the way our brain processes information and turns it into knowledge, rather than solely a game on information or on psychological aspects of our brains. It’s not only an action against what we think, but also an action against the way we think, the way we process information and turn it into knowledge.
In other words, cognitive warfare is not just another word, another name for information warfare. It is a war on our individual processor, our brain.
The NATO researcher stressed that “this is extremely important for us in the military,” because “it has the potential, by developing new weapons and ways of harming the brain, it has the potential to engage neuroscience and technology in many, many different approaches to influence human ecology… because you all know that it’s very easy to turn a civilian technology into a military one.”
As for who the targets of cognitive warfare could be, du Cluzel revealed that anyone and everyone is on the table.
“Cognitive warfare has universal reach, from starting with the individual to states and multinational organizations,” he said.
Its field of action is global and aim to seize control of the human being, civilian as well as military.
And the private sector has a financial interest in advancing cognitive warfare research, he noted:
The massive worldwide investments made in neurosciences suggests that the cognitive domain will probably one of the battlefields of the future.
The development of cognitive warfare totally transforms military conflict as we know it, du Cluzel said, adding “a third major combat dimension to the modern battlefield: to the physical and informational dimension is now added a cognitive dimension.”
This “creates a new space of competition beyond what is called the five domains of operations–or land, sea, air, cyber, and space domains. Warfare in the cognitive arena mobilizes a wider range of battle spaces than solely the physical and information dimensions can do.”
In short, humans themselves are the new contested domain in this novel mode of hybrid warfare, alongside land, sea, air, cyber, and outer space.
NATO’s cognitive warfare study warns of “embedded fifth column”
The study that NATO Innovation Hub manager François du Cluzel conducted, from June to November 2020, was sponsored by the military cartel’s Allied Command Transformation, and published as a 45-page report in January 2021 (PDF).
The chilling document shows how contemporary warfare has reached a kind of dystopian stage, once imaginable only in science fiction.
“The nature of warfare has changed,” the report emphasized.
The majority of current conflicts remain below the threshold of the traditionally accepted definition of warfare, but new forms of warfare have emerged such as Cognitive Warfare (CW), while the human mind is now being considered as a new domain of war.
For NATO, research on cognitive warfare is not just defensive; it is very much offensive as well.
“Developing capabilities to harm the cognitive abilities of opponents will be a necessity,” du Cluzel’s report stated clearly.
In other words, NATO will need to get the ability to safeguard her decision making process and disrupt the adversary’s one.
And anyone could be a target of these cognitive warfare operations: “Any user of modern information technologies is a potential target. It targets the whole of a nation’s human capital,” the report ominously added.
“As well as the potential execution of a cognitive war to complement to a military conflict, it can also be conducted alone, without any link to an engagement of the armed forces,” the study went on.
Moreover, cognitive warfare is potentially endless since there can be no peace treaty or surrender for this type of conflict.
Just as this new mode of battle has no geographic borders, it also has no time limit:
This battlefield is global via the internet. With no beginning and no end, this conquest knows no respite, punctuated by notifications from our smartphones, anywhere, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The NATO-sponsored study noted that “some NATO Nations have already acknowledged that neuroscientific techniques and technologies have high potential for operational use in a variety of security, defense and intelligence enterprises.”
It spoke of breakthroughs in “neuroscientific methods and technologies” (neuroS/T), and said “uses of research findings and products to directly facilitate the performance of combatants, the integration of human machine interfaces to optimise combat capabilities of semi autonomous vehicles (e.g., drones), and development of biological and chemical weapons (i.e., neuroweapons).”
The Pentagon is among the primary institutions advancing this novel research, as the report highlighted:
Although a number of nations have pursued, and are currently pursuing neuroscientific research and development for military purposes, perhaps the most proactive efforts in this regard have been conducted by the United States Department of Defense; with most notable and rapidly maturing research and development conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).
Military uses of neuroS/T research, the study indicated, include intelligence gathering, training, “optimising performance and resilience in combat and military support personnel,” and of course “direct weaponisation of neuroscience and neurotechnology.”
This weaponization of neuroS/T can and will be fatal, the NATO-sponsored study was clear to point out. The research can “be utilised to mitigate aggression and foster cognitions and emotions of affiliation or passivity; induce morbidity, disability or suffering; and ‘neutralise’ potential opponents or incur mortality”–in other words, to maim and kill people.
The 2020 NATO-sponsored study on cognitive warfare
The report quoted U.S. Major General Robert H. Scales, who summarized NATO’s new combat philosophy:
Victory will be defined more in terms of capturing the psycho-cultural rather than the geographical high ground.
And as NATO develops tactics of cognitive warfare to “capture the psycho-cultural,” it is also increasingly weaponizing various scientific fields.
The study spoke of “the crucible of data sciences and human sciences,” and stressed that “the combination of Social Sciences and System Engineering will be key in helping military analysts to improve the production of intelligence.”
“If kinetic power cannot defeat the enemy,” it said,
psychology and related behavioural and social sciences stand to fill the void.
“Leveraging social sciences will be central to the development of the Human Domain Plan of Operations,” the report went on.
It will support the combat operations by providing potential courses of action for the whole surrounding Human Environment including enemy forces, but also determining key human elements such as the Cognitive center of gravity, the desired behaviour as the end state.
All academic disciplines will be implicated in cognitive warfare, not just the hard sciences. “Within the military, expertise on anthropology, ethnography, history, psychology among other areas will be more than ever required to cooperate with the military,” the NATO-sponsored study stated.
The report nears its conclusion with an eerie quote:
Today’s progresses in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC), boosted by the seemingly unstoppable march of a triumphant troika made of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and civilisational ‘digital addiction’ have created a much more ominous prospect: an embedded fifth column, where everyone, unbeknownst to him or her, is behaving according to the plans of one of our competitors.
“The modern concept of war is not about weapons but about influence,” it posited.
Victory in the long run will remain solely dependent on the ability to influence, affect, change or impact the cognitive domain.
The NATO-sponsored study then closed with a final paragraph that makes it clear beyond doubt that the Western military alliance’s ultimate goal is not only physical control of the planet, but also control over people’s minds:
Cognitive warfare may well be the missing element that allows the transition from military victory on the battlefield to lasting political success. The human domain might well be the decisive domain, wherein multi-domain operations achieve the commander’s effect. The five first domains can give tactical and operational victories; only the human domain can achieve the final and full victory.
Canadian Special Operations officer emphasizes importance of cognitive warfare
When François du Cluzel, the NATO researcher who conducted the study on cognitive warfare, concluded his remarks in the October 5 NATO Association of Canada panel, he was followed by Andy Bonvie, a commanding officer at the Canadian Special Operations Training Centre.
With more than 30 years of experience with the Canadian Armed Forces, Bonvie spoke of how Western militaries are making use of research by du Cluzel and others, and incorporating novel cognitive warfare techniques into their combat activities.
“Cognitive warfare is a new type of hybrid warfare for us,” Bonvie said.
And it means that we need to look at the traditional thresholds of conflict and how the things that are being done are really below those thresholds of conflict, cognitive attacks, and non-kinetic forms and non-combative threats to us. We need to understand these attacks better and adjust their actions and our training accordingly to be able to operate in these different environments.
Although he portrayed NATO’s actions as “defensive,” claiming “adversaries” were using cognitive warfare against them, Bonvie was unambiguous about the fact that Western militaries are developing these tecniques themselves, to maintain a “tactical advantage.”
“We cannot lose the tactical advantage for our troops that we’re placing forward as it spans not only tactically, but strategically,” he said.
Some of those different capabilities that we have that we enjoy all of a sudden could be pivoted to be used against us. So we have to better understand how quickly our adversaries adapt to things, and then be able to predict where they’re going in the future, to help us be and maintain the tactical advantage for our troops moving forward.
‘Cognitive warfare is the most advanced form of manipulation seen to date’
Marie-Pierre Raymond, a retired Canadian lieutenant colonel who currently serves as a “defence scientist and innovation portfolio manager” for the Canadian Armed Forces’ Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security Program, also joined the October 5 panel.
“Long gone are the days when war was fought to acquire more land,” Raymond said.
Now the new objective is to change the adversaries’ ideologies, which makes the brain the center of gravity of the human. And it makes the human the contested domain, and the mind becomes the battlefield.
“When we speak about hybrid threats, cognitive warfare is the most advanced form of manipulation seen to date,” she added, noting that it aims to influence individuals’ decision-making and “to influence a group of a group of individuals on their behavior, with the aim of gaining a tactical or strategic advantage.”
Raymond noted that cognitive warfare also heavily overlaps with artificial intelligence, big data, and social media, and reflects “the rapid evolution of neurosciences as a tool of war.”
Raymond is helping to oversee the NATO Fall 2021 Innovation Challenge on behalf of Canada’s Department of National Defence, which delegated management responsibilities to the military’s Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) Program, where she works.
In highly technical jargon, Raymond indicated that the cognitive warfare program is not solely defensive, but also offensive:
This challenge is calling for a solution that will support NATO’s nascent human domain and jump-start the development of a cognition ecosystem within the alliance, and that will support the development of new applications, new systems, new tools and concepts leading to concrete action in the cognitive domain.”
She emphasized that this “will require sustained cooperation between allies, innovators, and researchers to enable our troops to fight and win in the cognitive domain. This is what we are hoping to emerge from this call to innovators and researchers.”
To inspire corporate interest in the NATO Innovation Challenge, Raymond enticed, “Applicants will receive national and international exposure and cash prizes for the best solution.” She then added tantalizingly,
This could also benefit the applicants by potentially providing them access to a market of 30 nations.
Canadian military officer calls on corporations to invest in NATO’s cognitive warfare research
The other institution that is managing the Fall 2021 NATO Innovation Challenge on behalf of Canada’s Department of National Defense is the Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM).
A Canadian military officer who works with CANSOFCOM, Shekhar Gothi, was the final panelist in the October 5 NATO Association of Canada event. Gothi serves as CANSOFCOM’s “innovation officer” for Southern Ontario.
He concluded the event appealing for corporate investment in NATO’s cognitive warfare research.
The bi-annual Innovation Challenge is “part of the NATO battle rhythm,” Gothi declared enthusiastically.
Gothi reassured corporate investors that NATO will bend over backward to defend their bottom lines:
I can assure everyone that the NATO innovation challenge indicates that all innovators will maintain complete control of their intellectual property. So NATO won’t take control of that. Neither will Canada. Innovators will maintain their control over their IP.
The comment was a fitting conclusion to the panel, affirming that NATO and its allies in the military-industrial complex not only seek to dominate the world and the humans that inhabit it with unsettling cognitive warfare techniques, but to also ensure that corporations and their shareholders continue to profit from these imperial endeavors.
17. #Reviewing The Afghanistan Papers (book review)
Excerpts:
As Whitlock notes in his acknowledgement section, The Afghanistan Papers is a work of journalism. As such it is often light on analysis and can leave the reader speculating as to the cause of such rampant deceit. Some causal relationships are apparent, often due to competing priorities when one initiative superseded another, thereby requiring deception to hide an unsavory political choice. However, other causal links are harder to determine. Are all of Whitlock’s actors knowingly deceiving the public or do they believe their own distorted narratives? Whitlock makes most of his judgments, with some notable exceptions like using Rumsfeld’s memos, via contrasting the claims of policymakers with the oral histories of actors in the field. Was there a disconnect between the ground truth and the upper echelons of the government? If so, what were the contours of that failure? Were the efforts to deceive deliberate and systematic or merely a parade of cognitive dissonance? Absent from Whitlock’s source base is documentary evidence needed to illuminate the connections between the varying levels of the U.S. government’s war-making behemoth.
Officials with SIGAR have publicly taken issue with the way The Washington Post characterized their operation in the newspaper's 2019 article series. SIGAR officials have refuted claims that they redacted individual names for the purposes of obfuscation, avoided controversy, or suppressed certain interviews. The Washington Post published SIGAR’s official op-ed on 17 December 2019.[10]
These issues aside, Whitlock’s The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War is essential reading for national security scholars, and anyone interested in a bureaucratic history of America’s longest war. His research illustrates some truly dispiriting failures of American foreign policy formulation, military planning, and program execution. The book also serves as a bitter reminder that the state will lie to the public and often for less than noble purposes. Whether this is a story of human failing or bureaucratic breakdown is an issue for further scholars and historians. In the meantime, The Afghanistan Papers should be read by anyone asking, “What the hell happened?”
#Reviewing The Afghanistan Papers
Deception is a necessary component for any wartime belligerent. In The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, investigative journalist Craig Whitlock explores the range of deceptions integral to America’s two-decade war in Afghanistan. However, his work is not the tale of a triumphant disinformation campaign like Winston Churchill’s famous “bodyguard of lies,” a narrative with which he begins his preface.[1] Rather, Whitlock’s work is an exploration of how a range of deceptions twisted American planning, hamstrung the coalition war effort, concealed rampant corruption, deceived the public, and prolonged the war. His work chronicles a Gordian knot of deceits within the U.S. national security establishment, between it and U.S. politicians, between the U.S. government and its allies, and between the U.S. government and the American people. It is a tragic and frequently gut-wrenching tale of failure, incompetence, absurdity, and hubris informed largely by individuals’ unwillingness or inability to recognize or tell the truth.
Whitlock’s work is built largely on oral histories collected by the U.S. government. The primary corpus are interviews compiled by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an oversight authority charged with investigating waste, fraud, and abuse within the American effort to rebuild Afghanistan. The Washington Post successfully sued the U.S. government to release SIGAR’s findings and obtained over 2,000 pages of interviews with 428 individuals. Whitlock also used a series of interviews from the U.S. Army’s Leadership Experience project, the Miller Center’s George W. Bush oral history project, and a collection of Donald Rumsfeld’s post-it notes memos (referred to by insiders as “snowflakes”) held by the National Security Archive.
Whitlock uses his sources to weave a terse, efficient narrative through three presidential administrations and nearly twenty years of the war. The book is divided into twenty-one chapters over six parts that cover the war efforts of the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump administrations. He expertly sums up each administration’s endeavors, as all attempted in their own way to grope and slog through an increasingly unpopular war. The Bush administration’s effort began as a limited and efficient campaign which morphed into a confused and cheaply funded nation-building endeavor. Obama’s war attempted to take the lessons learned from Iraq and apply them to the “good war” in Afghanistan. This new phase flooded the country with planes of troops and suitcases of cash, neither of which turned the tide and may have very well doomed the war to failure. Trump began his war with promises of withdrawal, then proceeded with escalation, and finally negotiated a ceasefire with the Taliban.
The reader is presented with inflection points and contingencies that may have turned the tide of the war or presented a different direction for U.S. war planners. This landscape of paths not taken offer agonizing what ifs for an engaged reader and a roadmap for historians. Why didn’t the U.S. limit its war efforts to just al Qaeda? Why did U.S. planners decide to embark on a nation-building campaign? Furthermore, why did the U.S. government decide to do so by constructing a strong central Afghan government? Conversely, why did the U.S. continue to rely heavily on local powerbrokers for its war and nation-building efforts? Was the war in Afghanistan ultimately undone by the war in Iraq? Was the U.S. effort at poppy eradication the deciding factor in its eventual defeat? Finally, did the Obama administration’s influx of development money incentivize corruption and undermine the very government that it tried to save?
The book is full of examples of how the U.S. government undermined its own war effort or launched initiatives that were inherently at odds with other American objectives. In perhaps the most shocking instance, he cites that the U.S. government indirectly funded the very insurgents that it was fighting.[2] One such example was uncovered by American forensic accountants tasked with rooting out corruption between 2010 to 2012. During that period, it was determined that the U.S. inadvertently put over $18 billion dollars into the hands of the Taliban through shipping contracts which hauled American war materiel from Pakistani ports.[3] The Taliban funded their insurgency, in part, via taxes levied upon shipping contractors who hauled the weapons of their enemies. A more absurd arrangement could not be found even in the pages of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.
The U.S. government often could not determine friend from foe. Whitlock cites the case of alleged drug lord Haji Juma Khan. Khan was arrested by Indonesian officials and extradited to New York to face narcotics smuggling charges. During his initial hearing Khan’s lawyers noted that he was also a high-level paid informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and—ironically—the Drug Enforcement Administration. The judge warned the defense team about releasing classified information, sealed the proceedings, and closed them to the public. Khan was released after ten years in prison. No official explanation for his arrest or release has ever been offered by the U.S. government.[4]
Whitlock weaves the impact of deception throughout his narrative, and this is where his book makes its greatest contribution to the bevy of literature on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. While a comparable work such as Steve Coll’s Directorate S is an exhaustive examination of the war, and nearly two and a half times as long, The Afghanistan Papers presents a trim, cohesive narrative with a more limited goal. Whitlock’s scope is more constrained than that of other scholars and journalists who have covered Afghanistan’s recent history. While Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban tells the story of the title’s eponymous militant organization, and Thomas Barfield’s Afghanistan is a deep socio-political history of the country, Whitlock’s work focuses on the machinations of the U.S. government. He does, however, make regular forays into the war’s ground-level prosecution in service of his larger thesis that deceit was endemic in the U.S. government’s prosecution of the war.
From start to finish Whitlock offers examples of how U.S. and allied policymakers deceived themselves, deceived each other, and deceived the American public. From the beginning U.S. policymakers were not honest with themselves as to what was needed to prevail in Afghanistan. He illustrates that it took months for the United States government to determine that it would embark on a nation-building effort, a phrase rarely uttered by U.S. officials, a deception in of itself, and they decided to do so on the cheap. The Bush administration sought to rebuild Afghanistan with minimal troops, minimal funding, and when possible, by pawning responsibilities off on NATO allies. He cites a Donald Rumsfeld memo describing an Afghan government request for a $466 million annual training budget for the new Afghan army as “crazy” and added that “[t]he U.S. position should be zero” and “[w]e are already doing more than anyone.”[5]
In addition to self-deceptions, Whitlock offers ample evidence of how U.S. officials and organizations shaved the truth or outright lied to one another, to their western allies, and to the fledgling Afghan government. Whitlock asserts that when allegations of fraud and corruption reached the top of the Afghan government, the U.S. chose to bury the issue and thereby save their client state from embarrassment. He cites the testimony of an anonymous Treasury official who claimed the U.S. government ended a fraud investigation into the Bank of Afghanistan when it got too close to then President Hamid Karzai.[6] U.S. officials publicly decried such governing conditions while tolerating its offenders because they were essential allies who could be alienated.
The-President Hamid Karzai at an Afghanistan Independence Day celebration in Kabul, 19 Aug 2011. (MSgt Michael O'Connor/U.S. Air Force Photo)
Lastly, Whitlock illustrates that U.S. officials routinely deceived the public as to the status of the war using semantics, data manipulation, and often outright falsehoods. To support his claims, he juxtaposes the public statements of American officials with his source base of oral histories and government documents. Examples include then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld publicly touting progress in the summer 2004 despite privately agonizing over the war’s execution, going so far as to admit in private, “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.”[7] Other examples include U.S. government officials praising Pakistani counterterrorism efforts despite on-the-ground knowledge of their double-dealing with the Taliban.[8] Whitlock also notes that the U.S. government made concerted efforts to minimize the threat of insider attacks from the Afghan National Security Forces in contradiction of the government’s own internal assessments.[9]
Whitlock’s protagonists are the junior officers, noncommissioned officers, enlisted soldiers, and junior civilian staff in the field who had an unvarnished view of a war in disarray.
Whitlock goes to great lengths to illustrate officials constantly spinning their public statements on the war using semantic games around definitions of “victory,” “winning,” “progress,” and “success,” all while either knowing or ignoring the truth on the ground. Whitlock’s protagonists are the junior officers, noncommissioned officers, enlisted soldiers, and junior civilian staff in the field who had an unvarnished view of a war in disarray. Despite being preserved here for the reader, those narratives were often lost in a sea of bureaucracy or suppressed by a leadership class determined to put a positive spin on the war for public consumption.
As Whitlock notes in his acknowledgement section, The Afghanistan Papers is a work of journalism. As such it is often light on analysis and can leave the reader speculating as to the cause of such rampant deceit. Some causal relationships are apparent, often due to competing priorities when one initiative superseded another, thereby requiring deception to hide an unsavory political choice. However, other causal links are harder to determine. Are all of Whitlock’s actors knowingly deceiving the public or do they believe their own distorted narratives? Whitlock makes most of his judgments, with some notable exceptions like using Rumsfeld’s memos, via contrasting the claims of policymakers with the oral histories of actors in the field. Was there a disconnect between the ground truth and the upper echelons of the government? If so, what were the contours of that failure? Were the efforts to deceive deliberate and systematic or merely a parade of cognitive dissonance? Absent from Whitlock’s source base is documentary evidence needed to illuminate the connections between the varying levels of the U.S. government’s war-making behemoth.
Officials with SIGAR have publicly taken issue with the way The Washington Post characterized their operation in the newspaper's 2019 article series. SIGAR officials have refuted claims that they redacted individual names for the purposes of obfuscation, avoided controversy, or suppressed certain interviews. The Washington Post published SIGAR’s official op-ed on 17 December 2019.[10]
These issues aside, Whitlock’s The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War is essential reading for national security scholars, and anyone interested in a bureaucratic history of America’s longest war. His research illustrates some truly dispiriting failures of American foreign policy formulation, military planning, and program execution. The book also serves as a bitter reminder that the state will lie to the public and often for less than noble purposes. Whether this is a story of human failing or bureaucratic breakdown is an issue for further scholars and historians. In the meantime, The Afghanistan Papers should be read by anyone asking, “What the hell happened?”
Brandan P. Buck is a PhD student in history at George Mason University. He is a former intelligence professional and veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.
Thank you for being a part of the The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.
Header Image: A Black Hawk over the Bamyan River valley, June 24, 2012. (SGT Ken Scar/U.S. Army Photo)
Notes:
[1] Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021), 187
[2] Whitlock, 165, 187.
[3] Whitlock, 187.
[4] Whitlock, 261.
[5] Whitlock, 58.
[6] Whitlock, 194.
[7] Whitlock, 23, 54.
[8] Whitlock, 85.
[9] Whitlock, 216.
18. Communicating to Win: How Terrorists Gain Advantage in the Information Environment
Conclusion:
Today, the United States faces competitors with more robust, sophisticated, and synchronized capabilities than any terrorist organization. It would do well not to dismiss some of the hard-earned lessons of the past two decades.
Communicating to Win: How Terrorists Gain Advantage in the Information Environment - Modern War Institute
The appeal of terrorist groups remains strong. For at least the past two decades, the United States and its allies have pursued terrorist organizations across the globe, disrupting their networks, killing or capturing their leaders, and removing their safe havens. Yet with the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan, jihadist organizations expanding across Africa, and the threat of an Islamic State resurgence in Iraq, tactical military successes have not defeated them entirely.
Terrorist organizations remain resilient in part because they possess advantages over the US government in the information environment. The nature of the information environment—in which a statement, photo, or video is disseminated worldwide in an instant—often forces the United States into a reactive posture, allowing terrorist groups to maneuver freely toward their messaging objectives.
Terrorist groups manipulate information for a variety of goals, including to recruit new members, distance themselves from attacks that are politically costly, and issue threats that can change the behavior of their targets. In response, the United States struggles to keep pace, consistently identifying the problem while falling short of making the changes necessary to compete. Today, faced with adversaries that are far more sophisticated than any terrorist group, the United States would do well to learn from its mistakes in the information environment over the past two decades of counterterrorism operations if it hopes to compete more successfully with Russia and China.
How Terrorists Manage Their Images
Terrorism has long been understood as theater. Terrorist groups advertise their grievances with violence. The head of the United Red Army, an offshoot of the terrorist Japanese Red Army, explained: “Violent actions . . . are shocking. We want to shock people, everywhere. . . . It is our only way of communicating with the people.” Al-Qaeda characterizes its violence with similar language. Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, described violence like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack as “messages with no words,” which is “the [only] language understood by the West.” Beyond amplifying a political message, political scientists understand terrorism as a means to demonstrate resolve, coerce concessions, and attract recruits and other resources. Indeed, the informational dimension of a terrorist attack aims to cause political or religious changes, distinguishing terrorism from other types of criminal violence.
Effective militant leaders recognize that indiscriminate violence against civilian targets can cost them, especially compared to more selective violence against military and other government targets. Numerous empirical studies find that terrorist attacks on civilians risk lowering the odds of government concessions while increasing political support for hardline politicians and the likelihood of punishing counterterrorism measures. Based on this insight, smart militant leaders adjust their use of the information environment to distance themselves from counterproductive civilian attacks.
Our previous analysis of terrorist propaganda videos discovered that there are incongruities between the actual targeting practices of terrorist groups and the attacks they choose to publicize in their official propaganda videos; terrorist groups are sensitive to their public images and highlight the attacks that are most politically advantageous. Militant leaders engage in a reputation-enhancing strategy in two ways: denying involvement and denying intent.
Terrorist groups deny organizational involvement in an attack to improve public perception of the group. The Taliban leadership, for example, eagerly assumed organizational responsibility for selective attacks against military targets, while distancing themselves when operatives committed indiscriminate bloodshed. For instance, the Taliban claimed responsibility when operatives ambushed Mohammad Qasim Fahim, leader of the alliance that toppled the Taliban in 2001, on a road in northern Kunduz. By contrast, the leadership denied organizational involvement when Taliban operatives were widely believed to be the ones behind a 2013 attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jalalabad.
Denying involvement in politically costly civilian attacks is hardly limited to the Taliban. In June 2021, for example, jihadists slaughtered over 130 civilians in Solhan village in the Burkina Faso’s Yagha province, shooting people and burning down homes and a market. Analysts fingered the al-Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin as the perpetrators, but the group’s leadership released a statement denying involvement and saying that such indiscriminate acts are “not a part of the methodology of Muslims in jihad and fighting for the sake of Allah.” Beyond such anecdotal evidence, large comparative studies find that militant groups around the world are significantly more likely to claim credit for attacks against military targets rather than civilian ones.
When militant leaders cannot plausibly deny organizational responsibility, they often deny intent. Whereas denying involvement attempts to conceal that the attack was committed by the organization, denying intent attempts to demonstrate that it did not reflect the intentions of the group’s leadership. Apologies are a common method of doing so. Such apologies are not necessarily insincere: operatives often engage targets in defiance of leadership preferences.
Al-Shabaab did just this in December 2019, denying senior leader intent following a massive vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, that killed more than eighty people. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack but a spokesman for the group said they were “very sorry” that Somalis were killed, noting that the intended targets of the attack were Turkish mercenaries. Such apologies for harming civilians are found across militant groups, from Colombia’s National Liberation Army to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). As recently as July 2021, following the death of a Danish Reuters journalist embedded with Afghan special operations forces during a clash with Taliban fighters, a Taliban spokesman apologized for his death.
In these ways, militant leaders practice denial of organizational involvement and denial of intent to distance themselves from politically risky civilian attacks and thereby improve their odds of success. Terrorist propaganda videos are also carefully crafted to maximize sympathy: we find that most militant groups feature a smaller proportion of civilian attacks in their propaganda videos than the actual attack patterns of their operatives. But denials are not the only way militant groups further their efforts with information operations.
Issuing Threats and Attracting Recruits
Terrorist groups also use the information environment to threaten target populations and generate a supply of recruits in order to sustain operations.
In contrast to a group’s efforts to deny involvement in a politically costly attack, sometimes militant leaders maximize fear by threatening and broadcasting attacks that their groups do not actually carry out. For instance, in February 2015, the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab released a video online calling for attacks against the Mall of America in Minnesota, along with other malls in the United States, Canada, and Britain. This prompted increased security measures and a scramble by retailers to assure customers of their safety. One economist noted that there was “no question” that the threat was a “disruption to economic activity.” Despite the fact that al-Shabaab had no known operational capability in the United States at the time, it still provoked a response from the US public. And in October 2019, the Islamic State falsely claimed that the sniper behind the Las Vegas shooting was a “soldier of the Caliphate.” Significantly, this faulty credit claim was issued while the Islamic State was suffering a string of battlefield losses in Syria, and the claim was presumably intended to signal the group’s continued viability.
Terrorists also use the information environment to attract recruits. Much has been written about how terrorist groups recruit using modern communication technologies, such as social media. Though it is difficult to measure what percentage of terrorist group members were recruited online, ample anecdotal evidence suggests that terrorist groups effectively attract recruits on these platforms, both locally and internationally. For example, al–Shabaab tailors recruiting messages on social media to target recruits from within Somalia as well as from the Somali diaspora community in the United States and Europe. Similarly, the Islamic State attracted over forty thousand foreign fighters from over one hundred countries. When mainstream social media platforms are shut down, terrorist communications have gravitated to encrypted apps such as Telegram. In some cases, terrorist groups communicate with new mechanisms before they have reached peak popularity in society: the Islamic State was an early adopter of TikTok. The modern social media ecosystem offers militants countless platforms to disseminate material around the world and strengthen their brands.
Challenges in Countering the Narratives
The United States has stumbled to keep pace with terrorists in the information environment, even with the widespread acknowledgement in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that much of the new war against terrorism would be fought in this environment. This is largely due to the inherently distributed nature of the information environment in which messages can be disseminated around the world, even from a remote terrorist camp. This puts governments at a disadvantage due to difficulties such as whole-of-government synchronization, a lack of ownership of the issue, and other bureaucratic obstacles that inhibit rapid and agile maneuver. Terrorist groups make plenty of public relations mistakes, but they have demonstrated greater adaptability and innovation in the information environment than the governments tasked with countering them.
Despite various efforts by the US government in the years after 9/11 to reform its bureaucracy to counter terrorists in the information environment, the problem remains unresolved. The 2017 National Security Strategy admitted that US “efforts to counter the exploitation of information by rivals have been tepid and fragmented” while lacking a “sustained focus.” The subsequent 2018 National Strategy for Counterterrorism acknowledged that the United States has still “not developed a prevention architecture to thwart terrorist radicalization and recruitment.” Developing and coordinating a whole-of-government response to a rapidly changing information environment has proven stubbornly difficult.
Since the private sector owns many of the nodes through which terrorists transmit their messages, the government must work with these companies to limit the spread of extremist content and dampen its effects. Social media companies have acknowledged that terrorist groups use their platforms to spread extremist content. To address this issue, technology companies such as YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter started the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism in 2017 with the mission of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. More recently, Facebook announced it would begin warning some users that they had been exposed to extremist content on its platform. Continued engagement with these technology companies is vital to limiting extremist content and its spread. But this impulse must be balanced against the knowledge that terrorists often hope to elicit overreactions from governments and that illiberal government responses are actually advantageous for terrorists. Striking the right balance between counterterrorism and free speech is among the trickiest aspects of combating terrorists.
Moving Forward
The last twenty years have shown that competing in the information environment, even against militarily inferior adversaries, is difficult. But while terrorist groups have certain advantages in the information environment, they also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited. For example, a concerted effort to highlight the carnage of terrorist attacks can chip away at a group’s appeal. Attributing attacks against civilians to a group before it has a chance to deny involvement could hurt the group’s image and ultimately reduce its appeal among potential recruits. And since many of these groups rely on digital platforms to disseminate their message, policymakers should continue to work with the private sector to rapidly identify and remove dangerous content and users.
As the US national security apparatus pivots away from counterterrorism, both Russia and China continue engaging in the information environment to pursue their interests. But the United States has so far struggled to adopt lessons from two decades of counterterrorism operations. “The United States is being strategically defeated in the information environment,” retired US lieutenant general Michael Nagata noted in October 2020. “We’re not even holding our own. We’re being defeated. We’re being outmaneuvered, we’re being outflanked, we’re being out persuaded.” This sentiment appears widespread; it is not uncommon today to read opinion pieces arguing that the United States is already losing the information war with both China and Russia.
There are growing appeals for the United States to revamp its information operations efforts. For example, an April 2021 Government Accountability Office report recommended enhanced leadership and integration of information operations at the Department of Defense, noting that the Pentagon has “made little progress in implementing its information operations strategy” and confronts “challenges conducting information operations.” DoD has made strides to reorganize for information warfare, but much more work still needs to be done.
So what lessons from twenty years of counterterrorism can we apply in this new era of competition in the information domain?
First, use the information domain to increase the reputational costs of adversary actions. This is particularly relevant with respect to Russian and Chinese action in the gray zone. A 2019 Rand report on how to gain competitive advantage in the gray zone argued that, since Russia and China both value their current status as legitimate and respected members of the international system, they remain vulnerable to information campaigns orchestrated to heighten the reputational costs associated with their aggressive or hostile actions. In much the same way that terrorist organizations are vulnerable to the reputational costs associated with civilian targeting, Russia and China may face similar reputational costs on the international stage if the United States is able to strategically expose their actions and draw negative attention.
Second, the United States must increase the velocity with which it operates in this domain. According to psychologists’ studies of misinformation and disinformation, people are prone to accept information they are exposed to first, regardless of its veracity. False information can persist in people’s minds even after they learn valid information. In fact, attempts at correcting false information may even lead to a “backfire effect” in which belief in the false information actually strengthens. Terrorist organizations have understood that speed of dissemination is key, as demonstrated by their rapid release of propaganda videos designed to frame an event or an attack to their advantage. The United States must recognize that in the global competition against Russia and China, the velocity with which it can disseminate information could provide advantages.
Third, US policymakers must become more tolerant of risk when operating in the information environment. Effects in this domain are not governed by the laws of physics, and US commanders and leaders need to recognize that some operations will not always achieve the intended effects. The Joint Concept for Operating in the Information Environment admits that, in contrast to US forces, adversaries “are bolder and accept more risk operating in this changing [information environment]. As a result, they create political, social, and military advantages that exceed their traditional combat power.” Low risk tolerance prevents the United States from engaging in the types of rapid and distributed responses needed to shape the environment to its advantage.
Today, the United States faces competitors with more robust, sophisticated, and synchronized capabilities than any terrorist organization. It would do well not to dismiss some of the hard-earned lessons of the past two decades.
Dr. Joseph Mroszczyk is a defense contractor at the US Naval War College and also serves as an officer in the US Navy Reserve, where he has mobilized in support of Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa. He has previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security, with the US Army’s Human Terrain System program in Iraq, and in various private sector intelligence-related roles.
Dr. Max Abrahms is an associate professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University and senior fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. He has published extensively on terrorism with articles in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times. Abrahms has been a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, the Dickey Center at Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Political Science, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, among other places.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, the US Naval War College, Department of the Navy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
19. The Limits of Logic: Why Narrative Thinking is Better Suited to the Demands of Modern Combat
Excerpts:
These three examples of narrative training aren’t procedurally difficult to implement. But they’re challenging, culturally and emotionally, because they jar with the logical habits instilled by modern military education. To break through the discomfort of the new, it can therefore help to keep in mind two overarching points. First, although narrative cognition is nonlogical, it can have inductively quantifiable outcomes: Dr. Kenneth Long, associate professor of logistics at the Command and General Staff College, has estimated that an emphasis on exceptional information and other narrative processes has the potential to save the US military $30 billion annually in measurable efficiencies. Second, a commitment to narrative does not equate to a rejection of logic. In fact, quite the opposite. Narrative thinking is high gain but also high risk, so it’s best reserved for situations when the existing rules are not working or when data is too sparse for rational computation. The rest of the time, the default of intelligent organizations should be logic.
For modern militaries, the smartest overall strategy is thus to treat logic and narrative as complementary forms of intelligence. Logic is extremely useful in the predictable, information-thick environments outside of combat. But when harmony breaks down, escalating volatility and uncertainty, the most effective route to a new armistice is to engage our brain’s narrative hardware. Which is why, even during peacetime, it’s a good plan to pause our logical standard operating procedures to train creative thinking, practice battlefield communication, and promote innovation.
So that when life’s primordial chaos returns, the hard can go a little more easy.
The Limits of Logic: Why Narrative Thinking is Better Suited to the Demands of Modern Combat - Modern War Institute
It’s an easy morning outside Washington, DC. But we’re making things hard on an Army student.
“Good plan,” we say. “Now give us another.”
The student’s brow furrows. What he’s wondering is: Why would I come up with another plan when my first plan is good? But he’s a dutiful soldier, so he tries to comply. And it’s there that he hits his real mental block: How do I come up with another plan when my first plan is good? After all, if nothing is wrong with my first plan, then what could be productively changed?
That the student would think this way is pure logic. Logic’s core teaching is that there’s one optimal decision, one error-free plan. If that plan has been identified already, it’s thus not only pointless but impossible to come up with a smart alternative. Yet is logic right about this? Is there always one ideal course of action?
To tease out the answer, let’s start by being precise about logic. Logic has many colloquial meanings, but strictly speaking, it’s the formal system of syllogistic induction and deduction defined by Aristotle in his fourth-century BC masterwork Organon; practiced by philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to Immanuel Kant to George Boole to William Stanley Jevons to Gottlob Frege to Bertrand Russell; taught across the globe as data-driven decision-making, evidence-based reasoning, and critical thinking; hardwired into the computer brain (the arithmetic logic unit, or ALU) to generate mathematical spreadsheets, machine-learning protocols, and fact-crunching algorithms; and drilled into the twenty-first-century US military through PowerPoint slides and standard operating procedures.
Logic has achieved this ubiquity in smart human systems because, as Aristotle proved and modern computer science has confirmed, it’s a potent intellectual aid. Given enough data, logic is always correct. Given a timeless rule, logic can execute perfectly. Given total environmental supremacy, logic can maximize efficiency.
Yet these powers don’t make logic omnipotent. In fact, quite the opposite. They make logic very fragile. Why? Well, in life, there is never enough data, the rules are always evolving, and logic can never completely impose its will. That’s because life is biology, and biology is evolution by natural selection. It’s a contest that oozes fog and friction. It’s a clash in which each competitor is constantly striving to out-innovate the others. It’s a volatile, uncertain domain that runs on chaos, emotion, and creativity. It is, in other words, war.
Which is why, as Carl von Clausewitz observed two centuries ago, life is continually breaking logic. And why, as Napoleon noted, “Faire son thème en deux façons”—you always need a second option. Your first plan can be optimal. Hell, your first plan can be mathematically ideal. But life doesn’t care. Life will shatter it. And then you will need another plan. Or you will die.
That’s the hard news. Here’s the easy: Your brain can invent another plan. And it can do so without difficulty. All you need to do is hit pause (temporarily) on logic.
Pausing Logic
The animal brain was born, hundreds of millions of years ago, into a hazy world of emergent threats and opportunities. To survive those threats and leverage those opportunities, the animal brain evolved a special mental mechanism: narrative.
Narrative is a nonlogical mode of intelligence that operates by connecting causes to effects, or, more technically, by positing causal relationships between physical actors and actions. Narrative speculates on the origins of events and predicts the outcomes of maneuvers. It strings together doings and doers (animate or otherwise) into long, branching stories. And it does so not via ironclad laws of deduction but via flexible possibilities for motion.
This flexible method means that narrative is often wrong. Unlike logic, which computes what must be, narrative surmises what could happen. And what could happen isn’t what will happen. It’s just one possibility among many, leading overconfident narrative thinkers into the potentially fatal error of conflating a plausible hypothesis with a certain truth.
But even though narrative is frequently incorrect, it’s still an extraordinarily useful mental tool. That’s because narrative can operate in low-data (and even no-data) environments. In such environments, narrative allows our brain to guess what could work, or in other words, to make a tentative plan. And then narrative goes further. It allows our brain to predict what will happen if our tentative plan starts to work. If the prediction bears out, our brain leans into the plan. If not, our brain switches to another tentative plan and ventures again.
Narrative, in other words, equips our brain to run the scientific method of practical prediction and experiment, making educated guesses that we refine by trying them through action.
This method enabled our brain to survive—indeed, thrive—in the unstable, unknowable ecosystems in which early humans existed. And it remains human intelligence’s root source. That source is not logic, because the human brain, unlike computer AI, is not especially logical (if it were, math and critical thinking wouldn’t be so hard; we’d all be born statisticians who always acted free of bias). The human brain is, however, innately adept at narrative. Children don’t have to be taught how to imagine new stories; their brains do it naturally from birth, with a speed and flexibility beyond any other species. So it is that we humans can imagine pioneering technologies, plot unprecedented futures, and invent original strategies. So it is that we have concocted plans that have conquered everything on earth (except each other). And so it is that when a good plan fails, we can always craft another.
Why then is our Army student having such a hard time? Why is his brain not doing what nature has equipped it to do? Because the student has been trained out of his instincts. He has been drilled so hard in logic that his narrative powers have atrophied—and even when he begins to flex them back to life, he no longer trusts them. He sees them, from the perspective of critical thinking and statistical data, as naive guesswork. Which makes him embarrassed to voice his narrative speculations in public.
Our first step in the classroom is therefore to restore the student’s confidence in his biology. It’s to encourage him to reactivate the narrative machinery that makes up most of his intelligent neuroanatomy. And it’s to get him to exercise that machinery, growing its potency through use, like an arm muscle strengthened by pull-ups.
At which point, we reach the second step: going beyond biology into artificially enhancing the student’s cognitive performance. Because as recent work in neuroscience and narrative theory is demonstrating, we can do more than activate the human brain’s latent powers of narrative intelligence. We can improve them.
Improving Narrative Intelligence
Because narrative is nonlogical, and because logic has traditionally been viewed by the US military (and the American educational system) as the only trainable form of intelligence, there is currently no broadly implemented curriculum for improving narrative intelligence. That curriculum, however, exists. It has been successfully piloted in award-winning undergraduate and graduate coursework developed at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, the world’s leading academic institute for narrative theory. And although the curriculum is intrinsically nonlogical, it is based upon a scientific method, rooted in neuroscience and evolutionary biology, that augments the brain’s cognitive performance in empirically measurable ways.
This curriculum, we believe, can have significant applications for the US military. To illustrate its potential range and utility, we’ll outline three examples from our current research, conducted with Army teams from the Command and General Staff College (led by Dr. Richard McConnell) and the special operations community.
The first example is a suite of new techniques for boosting creative thinking. Creative thinking is the neural tool that our brain uses to invent original tactics, strategies, and plans of action. And at present, almost all the training in creative thinking provided by the US military (and also by US universities and corporations) is rooted in logic. It emphasizes processes such as divergent thinking and design (both of which computers can do far better than humans). And it neglects narrative (which computers cannot perform at all).
To add that narrative component, empowering our neurons to devise more original strategies and action plans, we need to feed our brain the opposite of spreadsheet data. We need to feed it exceptional information. Exceptional information is the exception to the rule, the statistical anomaly, the rogue datapoint that AI regresses to the mean. In life, that n = 1 is the first indication of an emergent threat or opportunity. It’s a sign that the environment is changing or that a novel actor has appeared. It’s a prompt to start evolving our behavior.
For all these reasons, our brain evolved to notice exceptional information as critical for our adaptive performance. But logic—and modern education—has trained our brain to filter it out. After all, in the mostly stable and knowledge-rich environments of advanced human civilizations, exceptional information is a usually just random noise. It’s not a signal of potential change because the system isn’t changing. Better, then, to just ignore it, which is what the dutiful military brain does. Most of us register fewer than one percent of the exceptional information in our environment—and high achievers at standardized tests and regular operations typically notice even less.
To act creatively, formulating the unconventional actions necessary to thrive in the volatile uncertainty of contested spaces, we have to reverse this civilized habit. We have to train ourselves to focus on what is different about similar objects, rather than abstracting them into general types. We have to practice identifying changes rather than enforcing routines. We have to, in short, un-logic our thinking. Which is what we’re working with the Army student to do. And while the work is not easy, it is productive. The more that the student is able to detect exceptional information, the more he’s able to make another plan—and keep making more plans, adapting fluidly as the situation evolves. As one of the student’s regular instructors observes in response to our training: “Creative thinking training is absolutely critical in enabling organizations to evolve in an increasingly complex world that requires precise solutions.”
The second example is communication. Communication in the military is currently a paradox: it has been made precisely regimented yet remains gallingly inefficient. Perfectly lucid orders are dispatched and then unpredictably misunderstood, leading to confusion and disorganization. This paradox reflects the fact that the human brain has evolved to think primarily in narrative (see above). When a human brain is given a logical instruction, the instruction therefore does not seamlessly compute. Instead, it collides with the brain’s nonlogical nuts and bolts, triggering sputters and misfires.
To solve this communication glitch, the US military has tried to make human brains more logical, and in stable domains, with consistent psychological reinforcement, that approach can work. But in fast-changing environments, it invites error and muddle. In such environments, the most effective way to improve communication is instead to work with the brain’s inbuilt narrative cogs, which we can do via two simple reforms:
- Replace logical definitions with narrative actions. That is, rather than abstractly saying what something is, military orders should supply a concrete example of what to do. For example, when we’re asking a student to come up with a different plan, we shouldn’t say: “The fourth component of developing a course of action during the military decision-making process is distinguishability.” Instead, we should say: “Imagine that your opponent has blown up every shred of your original strategy. Explain what you do now.”
- Limit information. Current military communications, whether in email or PowerPoint, are awash in data. Data is great for logic, which is why computers get smarter the more information they have. But human brains, because they’re primarily narrative, struggle to handle more than three datapoints concurrently. If a fourth datapoint is added, the brain’s grip on the other three will generally erode. An effective way to improve communication is therefore to accept that less is more. Chop down PowerPoints to three slides; distill instructions to a trio of commands that generate all essential action. Be incisive instead of comprehensive. Otherwise, your efforts at clarity will prove counterproductive.
The third example from our research is the innovation of human-AI partnerships. Human-AI partnerships are currently optimized to perform logical decision-making but not narrative cognition, which means that they maximize AI performance without also seeking to maximize human mental performance, making the partnership less than the sum of its parts.
To address this shortcoming, we’re working to pilot a new approach to human-AI partnerships with noted tech entrepreneur Erik Larson and teams across the US military. That approach employs a two-part narrative protocol to:
- Train up the narrative skills of AI’s human operators.
- Program AI to (a) identify when the data necessary for computation does not exist and (b) respond by shifting authority to its human operators.
This protocol optimizes the intelligent performance of human-AI systems by maxing out the distinct capabilities of both the human brain and the computer ALU. When AI recognizes that a situation is too low-data for logic to operate, it transfers power to an operator who is trained to deploy narrative to innovate and maintain initiative, leveraging the human brain’s core cognitive strength (adaptability in volatile and uncertain environments) to counter AI’s core cognitive weaknesses (fragility under those same conditions).
These three examples of narrative training aren’t procedurally difficult to implement. But they’re challenging, culturally and emotionally, because they jar with the logical habits instilled by modern military education. To break through the discomfort of the new, it can therefore help to keep in mind two overarching points. First, although narrative cognition is nonlogical, it can have inductively quantifiable outcomes: Dr. Kenneth Long, associate professor of logistics at the Command and General Staff College, has estimated that an emphasis on exceptional information and other narrative processes has the potential to save the US military $30 billion annually in measurable efficiencies. Second, a commitment to narrative does not equate to a rejection of logic. In fact, quite the opposite. Narrative thinking is high gain but also high risk, so it’s best reserved for situations when the existing rules are not working or when data is too sparse for rational computation. The rest of the time, the default of intelligent organizations should be logic.
For modern militaries, the smartest overall strategy is thus to treat logic and narrative as complementary forms of intelligence. Logic is extremely useful in the predictable, information-thick environments outside of combat. But when harmony breaks down, escalating volatility and uncertainty, the most effective route to a new armistice is to engage our brain’s narrative hardware. Which is why, even during peacetime, it’s a good plan to pause our logical standard operating procedures to train creative thinking, practice battlefield communication, and promote innovation.
So that when life’s primordial chaos returns, the hard can go a little more easy.
Major Tom Gaines is an officer currently assigned to Army Special Operations Command.
Dr. Angus Fletcher (PhD, Yale) is professor of story science at Ohio State’s Project Narrative.
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: Maj. Robert Fellingham, US Army
