Quotes of the Day:
“If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them."
- Stephen King [Bangor Daily News, Guest Column of March 20, 1992]
“Orwell's vision of our terrible future was that world - the world in which books are banned or burned. Yet it is not the most terrifying world I can think of. I think instead of Huxley [...] I think of his Brave New World. His vision was the more terrible, especially now because it appears to be rapidly coming true, whereas the world of 1984 did not. What is Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read one.”
- Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve
“Whenever a soldier needed an escape, the antidote to anxiety, relief from boredom, a bit of laughter, inspiration, or hope, he cracked open a book and drank in the words that would transport him elsewhere.”
- Molly Guptill Manning
1. Kissinger doesn’t see China as an immediate military threat to Taiwan
2. 2021 Lowy Lecture | Jake Sullivan (And possible implications for the NSS)
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6. The ramifications of Russia’s reckless anti-satellite test
7. Senior Pentagon official warns the US military is 'not ready' for climate change
8. Waiting for Attribution in Cyberspace: A Tragicomedy
9. How Peng Shuai Went From ‘Chinese Princess’ to Silenced #MeToo Accuser
10. An American hellscape: Afghan evacuations take toll on veterans, volunteers
11. Marine Corps compliance with vaccine mandate on course to be military’s worst
12. The Taliban is No ‘Partner,’ Says Top US Special Ops Commander
13. IntelBrief: Fallout from the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict - The Soufan Center
14. Opinion | Just Because You Don’t Believe in Conspiracy Theories Doesn’t Mean You’re Always Right
15. Russia Won’t Let Ukraine Go Without a Fight
16. Decoding the CCP: BRI means Bribery and Repression Initiative
17. How Biden Should Navigate Palestine’s Succession Crisis
18. Lebanon Loses a Pillar of Independent Journalism
19. Cyberwarfare era calls for security rethink: Estonian ex-president
20. U.S. Intel Shows Russia Plans for Potential Ukraine Invasion
21. Inside The 1,000-Year-Old Samurai Code That Still Influences Japanese Culture Today
22. Assessing Contemporary Deterrence Parallel to Netflix’s Squid Game
23. Scholar calls on Taiwan to learn from Israel in field of defense
1. Kissinger doesn’t see China as an immediate military threat to Taiwan
Been playing too much ping pong with the Chinese perhaps?
Excerpts:
A half-century later, Kissinger said the relationship remains complicated, particularly given China’s military strength.
“When I first went to China, it was a poor and weak and very assertive country,” he said. “Now it is a fairly rich, quite strong and still fairly assertive country. But our challenge then and our challenge now is to find the relationship in which we can compete without driving the situation into a holocaust. And that is a big challenge for both leaders.”
Kissinger added: “The challenge in any conflict is not how you begin it but whether you know how to end it.“
Kissinger doesn’t see China as an immediate military threat to Taiwan
He also lauded President Joe Biden for trying to lower the temperature of the U.S.-China relationship.
Henry Kissinger, center, chats with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd before a Nov. 22, 2019, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. | Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP
11/21/2021 10:58 AM EST
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Sunday that even though China continues to covet Taiwan, he doesn’t expect China to launch an invasion of the island.
“I don't expect an all-out attack on Taiwan in, say, a 10-year period, which is as far as I can see,” Kissinger said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
Discussing President Joe Biden’s virtual summit last week with President Xi Jinping, Kissinger noted that the situation surrounding Taiwan is one that hadn’t changed much since he and President Richard Nixon established a connection with China in the early 1970s.
“I believe that the ultimate joining of Taiwan and China, the ultimate creation of one China, is the objective of Chinese policy,” Kissinger told Zakaria, “as it has been since the creation of the current regime and that it probably would be in any Chinese government since Taiwan has been considered a historic part of China that was taken away by Japan, by force. That was exactly the situation Nixon and I faced when we first began contact with China.“
Kissinger said Biden was hamstrung entering the virtual summit by domestic political constraints — “Everyone wants to be a China hawk” — but said he saw evidence that Biden was attempting to steer the U.S.-China relationship in a more productive direction.
“I think Biden began to move in a direction of a different tone. That does not mean it is yielding to China; it is to try to find a level in which we can talk about those things that are known to be common,” said Kissinger, who, at age 98, is the co-author of a new book, “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.”
Nixon surprised the world by visiting China in early 1972, the first American president to do so since Mao Zedong had established a Communist government there in 1949. Nixon’s visit was preceded by secret visits by Kissinger, then-Nixon’s national security adviser, in 1971. "We have come to the People's Republic of China with an open mind and an open heart," Kissinger told Zhou Enlai, China's prime minister, in their meeting July 9, 1971.
A half-century later, Kissinger said the relationship remains complicated, particularly given China’s military strength.
“When I first went to China, it was a poor and weak and very assertive country,” he said. “Now it is a fairly rich, quite strong and still fairly assertive country. But our challenge then and our challenge now is to find the relationship in which we can compete without driving the situation into a holocaust. And that is a big challenge for both leaders.”
Kissinger added: “The challenge in any conflict is not how you begin it but whether you know how to end it.“
2. 2021 Lowy Lecture | Jake Sullivan (And possible implications for the NSS)
I missed this earlier this month. An esteemed strategist pointed this out to me yesterday and noted this might provide insight into the forthcoming National Security Strategy. One thing he noted is that the new term of art may be "geopolitical competition" which is used four times in this talk.
Note it is followed by a Q&A.
But I think this excerpt of the subsequent "five steps" might be an indicator for how the new NSS will be framed.
You know, it's interesting. Here in the United States, there's been a frequent debate in strategic circles about the balance of effort, the United States should apply against geopolitical challenges and geopolitical competition on the one hand, and transnational challenges and threats ranging from COVID, to climate to cyber, on the other hand. And President Biden came to office with a very simple proposition, which is that we have entered a phase in foreign policy, where the United States must effectively apply itself against both sets of challenges with force and vigor. And that is no small task. On the other hand, the fundamental recipe for dealing with both geopolitical competition and with the major transnational challenges of our time, is fundamentally common. It is a similar recipe. And it basically boils down to something Dean Acheson said in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the post-war order was getting constructed. Dean Acheson looked at the basic purpose and project of American foreign policy and said what we had to think about and focus on was building what he called 'situations of strength'. How to establish a solid foundation, and a position of strength from which to be able to deal with - in our case here today, in 2021 - both the significant factors of geopolitical competition that we're up against, and this wide range of transnational challenges from the spectrum of emerging technology, all the way to issues associated with nuclear proliferation. And so President Biden's basic insight, and his charge to those of us who steward the foreign policy and national security of the United States, was to set about building those 'situations of strength'. To put the United States in a position over time, where we would be actively positioned alongside friends and partners, and as part of significant institutions to deal both with the hard challenge of the rise of China and the enduring threat that Russia poses, as well as to deal with the significant number of problems that we collectively have to confront as an international community and that no one country can solve on its own.
Now, our basic approach to building those 'situations of strength' basically comes down to five steps. And they sound fairly straightforward. They are hard to execute. But they are the touchstone for everything that we are trying to accomplish in our foreign policy. Even as we have to grapple with a coup one day, and a crisis the next day, on different continents around the world.
...
The first of these - and the most profoundly central to year one of the Biden administration - has been working to replenish the reservoirs of strength here at home in the United States.
...
The second major element along the way towards building these situations of strength is to build a latticework of alliances and partnerships globally that are fit for purpose for the 21st century.
...
The third major piece of it was for the United States to rejoin and then help reshape critical institutions in the world.
...
The fourth element of this has been to turn the page on an overemphasis on military engagement and war and an under-emphasis on diplomacy in key parts of the world.
...
And then finally is set the terms for an effective and healthy competition with China.
2021 Lowy Lecture | Jake Sullivan
The 2021 Lowy Lecture was given on 11 November 2021 by Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to US President Joe Biden. After the lecture, he spoke in conversation with Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove.
Introduction by Dr Michael Fullilove AM, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute
It's now my great personal pleasure to introduce the 2021 Lowy Lecturer. We wanted a lecturer who could address the biggest issues of this memorable year including COVID China and climate change. As the National Security Adviser to US President Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, is instrumental in shaping the President's foreign policy agenda. Jake was previously a senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, and her Deputy Chief of Staff when she was Secretary of State. He was centrally involved in the Iran nuclear negotiations. And he also served as National Security Adviser to Joe Biden, when he was VP. Barack Obama describes Jake as wicked smart. Hillary Clinton is said to have told friends, he could one day be president. So you might say his references are strong. Jake has been a friend of mine since university. He's also a long standing friend of the Lowy Institute. In 2017, he spent an extended period with us as our Distinguished International Fellow. He joins us today from the offices of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. I'm delighted to invite Jake Sullivan to deliver the 2021 Lowy Lecture - Jake.
2021 Lowy Lecture - Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to US President Joe Biden
Thank you so much, Michael, for those incredibly kind words. And it's good to see you virtually. I look forward to the day when we can meet up again in person. And I want to pay special tribute to Frank Lowy for his incredible contributions to civic life in Australia, but really, to the entire world. And the contribution the Lowy Institute has made to discourse around foreign policy and national security issues that ripple far beyond the land Down Under and very much impact the debates and discussions we're having here in the United States. I had the pleasure of meeting Frank some years ago and I have to tell you, it is a great honour to have the opportunity here to deliver this lecture in his name today.
Four years ago, I actually was there in person - as Michael referenced in his introduction, at the Lowy Institute - and gave a set of remarks and I hope none of you had to be subject to that. But in the course of those remarks, I posed a few key questions to the audience. I was basking in the joy of being out of government and therefore merely in the position of being able to ask questions rather than having to answer them as a decision maker. And now that I'm back in government, those questions are still just as hard as ever. But it's my job to help President Biden come up with effective answers to them. And in the remarks that I gave at the Lowy Institute at the time, I really tried to focus on what kind of impact we would see in a world after Donald Trump and the years that followed the Trump presidency, to our alliances; to our economic influence in the world; to our values. When I re-read those remarks earlier today, I reflect on them not so much for what they imagined, but for what they did not imagine. They did not imagine the twin health and economic crises of COVID-19 that the entire world has had to grapple with over the course of the past couple of years and the way in which those twin crises would reshape events, trends, and ultimately structures in the world. So the world that Joe Biden faced when he took office in January of this year - January 20th of 2021 - was not the same world that my 2017 remarks in Sydney sufficiently envisioned. COVID-19 was rampant worldwide, with cases and hospitalizations and deaths on the rise, the economy was still reeling, supply chains had cracked. There were attendant disruptions wherever you looked: from a migration crisis in my hemisphere, in Latin America, driven by our region's health and economic challenges; to the preoccupation and strain felt by leaders everywhere to deliver vaccines for their citizens. And for the White House, and those of us who arrived on that first day, it was a period of relentless firefighting. But we could not just concern ourselves with the overflowing and quite daunting inbox. We had to think about - to use a phrase some of you may have heard before from my boss - how we would build back better. Not just here at home in the United States, but in our foreign policy and national security strategy to put the United States in a position to deal with the world we confronted and the world that was to come. And so from day one, President Biden has been focused on building a solid foundation from which to actively position the United States. Not just to face down the immediate crisis. But to confidently and effectively prevail against the full range of challenges we will face in the years and decades ahead.
You know, it's interesting. Here in the United States, there's been a frequent debate in strategic circles about the balance of effort, the United States should apply against geopolitical challenges and geopolitical competition on the one hand, and transnational challenges and threats ranging from COVID, to climate to cyber, on the other hand. And President Biden came to office with a very simple proposition, which is that we have entered a phase in foreign policy, where the United States must effectively apply itself against both sets of challenges with force and vigor. And that is no small task. On the other hand, the fundamental recipe for dealing with both geopolitical competition and with the major transnational challenges of our time, is fundamentally common. It is a similar recipe. And it basically boils down to something Dean Acheson said in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the post-war order was getting constructed. Dean Acheson looked at the basic purpose and project of American foreign policy and said what we had to think about and focus on was building what he called 'situations of strength'. How to establish a solid foundation, and a position of strength from which to be able to deal with - in our case here today, in 2021 - both the significant factors of geopolitical competition that we're up against, and this wide range of transnational challenges from the spectrum of emerging technology, all the way to issues associated with nuclear proliferation. And so President Biden's basic insight, and his charge to those of us who steward the foreign policy and national security of the United States, was to set about building those 'situations of strength'. To put the United States in a position over time, where we would be actively positioned alongside friends and partners, and as part of significant institutions to deal both with the hard challenge of the rise of China and the enduring threat that Russia poses, as well as to deal with the significant number of problems that we collectively have to confront as an international community and that no one country can solve on its own.
Now, our basic approach to building those 'situations of strength' basically comes down to five steps. And they sound fairly straightforward. They are hard to execute. But they are the touchstone for everything that we are trying to accomplish in our foreign policy. Even as we have to grapple with a coup one day, and a crisis the next day, on different continents around the world.
And in particular, to invest in those areas where we have seen dramatic underinvestment or disinvestment over the course of the past years and decades. In our infrastructure, in our innovation, in our human capital. To make the United States once again, an engine of inclusive growth in the world. To modernize and overhaul and make resilient the basic building blocks of our economy and our society. And just over the course of the past few days, the President has made good on a significant step in that direction with the passage of a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, that won't just modernize our ports and airports, and roads and bridges, but will invest substantially in a cleaner, more resilient, more dynamic economic foundation upon which to build the industries, and jobs of the future. And we are now shifting to a 'Build Back Better' framework, which looks at fundamental human capital from universal pre-K, to cutting child poverty, to the largest investment in climate in the history of the world. And that bill is making its way now through the House of Representatives, ultimately to the Senate and then to the President's desk.
Now, you might ask - why does a national security adviser start his remarks, so focused and animated about domestic legislation. And that is, because at the end of the day, the biggest capacity that we have to shape events in the world is the power and engine of American dynamism - American capacity in all of its forms. And that is why these investments are so profoundly important not just to our economic prosperity, but to our national security. And what I tried to build at the National Security Council was an integrated structure that pulled foreign and domestic together to think about issues like tax policy, and to press forward to deliver as we just did at the G20, a commitment to the global minimum tax as a way to help fill the coffers of our collective countries; to stop a corporate race to the bottom; and to produce greater investment in the kinds of productive pursuits that will create jobs and provide a basic social safety net to our citizens. But whether it's tax policy or supply chains or ransomware, whether it's international economic cyber technology or climate, we have looked to build a National Security Council that fundamentally drives towards the intersection of foreign policy and domestic policy. And we believe this is a blueprint not just for the United States, but for countries everywhere.
The second major element along the way towards building these situations of strength is to build a latticework of alliances and partnerships globally that are fit for purpose for the 21st century. That are not just about refurbishing the old bilateral alliances, or refurbishing NATO and the trans-Atlantic partnership, but modernizing those elements of the latticework and adding new components as we go. Taking the Quad, from where it stood before, to leader-level where President Biden hosted the first Quad summit in person here in Washington in September. Establishing AUKUS, which is an exciting undertaking, not just for the delivery of this critical technology of nuclear powered submarines, but also for the promise it holds on so many other emerging technologies among the critical allies of the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. The Trade and Technology Council with the European Union, where we're working with like-minded partners to help shape the rules of the road on emerging technologies, and emerging market economic practices as a means of establishing a positive vision and also to push back against the non-market economic practices of countries like China. Of course, taking NATO fully and firmly into the 21st century. To think about a broader perspective on what security means whether it's the climate dimension, or the cyber dimension or others. And here in our own hemisphere, the President has been focused on deepening our partnerships and lifting up efforts like the Pacific Alliance - a set of market economies in our hemisphere that is focused on trying to drive towards a similar vision of inclusive economic growth as the United States. So this has been an extraordinary effort and investment in, and construction of, this integrated, maneuverable, interoperable set of alliances and partnerships, designed around the 21st century security, economic and technology environment that we find ourselves in.
The third major piece of it was for the United States to rejoin and then help reshape critical institutions in the world. In the early weeks of the administration, we rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, we rejoined the World Health Organization, but we didn't just stop there. Under Secretary Kerry's leadership, we played a leading role in driving the world forward towards COP26. Whether it's the global methane pledge, or the deforestation pledge that the leaders came together around last week. President Biden himself has hosted a COVID-19 summit to galvanize and mobilize collective action to hit an ambitious target by next fall of 70 percent of the world being vaccinated. And in other institutions. Thinking about how, as we head into the next ministerial of the World Trade Organization, we can take the World Trade Organization from a focus on the challenges, the economic challenges of the past, to those of the present and the future. To look at questions related to industrial policy, questions related to supply chains, to intellectual property, to corruption, to state-owned enterprises, and we are eager for a seat at that table to play a critical role as we move forward.
The fourth element of this has been to turn the page on an overemphasis on military engagement and war and an under-emphasis on diplomacy in key parts of the world. Ending the war in Afghanistan. Despite the difficulty, the trauma and the human costs that came with ending America's longest war - 20 years of conflict - we believe firmly in the conviction that it was right strategically, it was right from the point of view of the American national interest, to bring America's participation in that conflict to a close. And to be able to focus on the threat of terrorism and the other major challenges we face in the world as we find them in 2021, not as we found them in 2001. But really, more broadly across the Middle East, where too frequently we have made the military the tool of first resort and diplomacy the tool of last resort, we are back, trying to bring Iran's nuclear program into a box through diplomacy. And we are looking to support efforts - through a combination of deterrence, diplomacy and de-escalation - to bring greater stability, and less chaos and crisis across the broader Middle East region.
And then finally is set the terms for an effective and healthy competition with China. President Biden stood before the UN General Assembly in September and said, we are not seeking a new Cold War, we're not looking for conflict, what we're looking for is effective competition with guardrails and risk-reduction measures in place to ensure that things don't veer off into conflict. And also with the capacity to work together with China, where it's in the common interests of our countries and in the interests of the world to do so. Whether it's on climate change, or on nuclear proliferation, or macroeconomic stability, or on other issues.
Now, a lot has been made of the increasing elevation of the Indo-Pacific in the Biden administration's foreign policy. And a lot has been made of that correctly. Because we are placing a substantial emphasis on what is the most dynamic, and the most consequential region for economic growth, for dealing with the climate crisis, and for the potential for conflict that must be minimized, managed and ultimately deterred. But one thing that I want to really underscore is that we think that this zero-sum notion that a focus on the Indo-Pacific necessarily means turning away from, or turning one's back on other regions of the world - that's completely lost currency. Because at the end of the day, the entire world's focus is looking more and more to the Indo-Pacific. And, a robust, strong, dynamic, vibrant trans-Atlantic relationship, which we feel passionately invested in, will also translate into greater common purpose with our friends in Europe, in dealing with the whole range of challenges that present themselves in the Indo-Pacific region. And all of you have seen the European Union, for example, put out its Indo-Pacific strategy just a couple of months ago, demonstrating their increased engagement in the region as well. Of course, we can't lose sight of the very real security threats and challenges on the European continent. We have been striving for a more stable, more predictable relationship with Russia, where we are clear about standing up for our interests, for our values and for our friends. But where we also seek to work with Russia to manage differences, as constructively as we can, on an ongoing basis.
Now, the last thing that I want to put out at the outset - because my goal in these remarks is really just to paint the broad picture and then to have the opportunity for a conversation with Michael, and to get some questions and some back and forth where I really think we can dive in a more chewy way into some of the things that I put on the table and other things on all of your collective minds - is I want to say a word about the US-Australia Alliance. Because seventy years on, this alliance is absolutely fundamental to our vision. Not just of a free and open Indo-Pacific, but to every element of the strategy that I just described. To think about how we're going to solve common integrated economic challenges like supply chains. To think about how we're going to deal with the threat and assault on democracy the world over - as strong, vibrant democracies working together to prove that democracy can deliver for our citizens. To think about the destabilizing impact of changes in the military-strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific, and how we can work together through AUKUS and otherwise, to ensure we're standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the Indo-Pacific for the years ahead, as we've stood shoulder-to-shoulder over the decades behind us. President Biden has many sayings, and it's frequently hard to decide which of them is the most salient or most relevant. But I would say for today's purposes, one of the ones I'm constantly reminded of is that he says, he quotes Tip O'Neill, a famous American politician as saying all politics is local. And he says, all foreign policy ultimately is personal. It's about human relations. Not just relations between leaders - though, those relationships are critical. But relations between peoples. Understanding what makes the other guy or gal tick, as a individual, or as a collective, a body politic. Thinking about the impacts of our policy decisions on human beings everywhere. This is the kind of deeply feeling and empathetic approach that Joe Biden brings to foreign policy. And that feeling and empathy should not be misunderstood as anything other than genuine, ramrod-straight strength about his view that ultimately American foreign policy is at its best, when it has a deep dose of values and a vision, baked into the hard calculation of national interest as we tried to create the 'situations of strength' in the world, that put us in a position to both deal with the significant geopolitical competition we're facing today, and allow us to deal with the transnational challenges that are afflicting all of our countries. And that require the kind of collective action and collective purpose that we are all working together so hard to galvanize as we go forward.
So I'm going to leave it at that. I recognize that skims across the wave tops. But I think setting a frame so that people can understand what we're operating within as we try to deal with the immensely complex set of overlapping challenges and threats across the planet. And with that, I will just say thank you again, I look forward to actually making it to Sydney soon in person. And I now look forward to being able to answer some questions. Thank you.
In Conversation: Jake Sullivan speaks with Michael Fullilove
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Jake Sullivan, thank you for those wide ranging and thoughtful remarks and for agreeing to take some questions. Thank you also for what you said about our alliance in its 70th year. I want to draw you out further on some of the issues you mentioned, including AUKUS, and China, and climate change. You talked about the President's global strategy, I'm going to focus - as you can understand - on the Indo-Pacific, but before I come there a general question if I can. You were in government during the Obama years, you were then out of government during the Trump interregnum. You've returned to the White House. Now that you're back in harness, and you're reading all the classified information again, how much has the world changed since you were last in government? And has it changed for good or ill?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, the world has definitely changed a lot. I noticed when I showed up at work, people were wearing masks, which they weren't before. So that's one thing that's definitely changed. Being in the middle of a pandemic, actually, for that reason, just the very way of folks working together. At the end of the day, these are human jobs, human beings doing these jobs. I think COVID has had a big impact on the capacity for people to travel and engage - with friend and foe. To gather in significant summits. We've had a few but a lot of stuff has been done virtually. And I think things get lost between the cup and the lip when you're doing so much virtually. I'd be much better if I were there today, for example. But that's not really the heart of your question, although I think it's an important thing just to put on the table at the outset. I would say - the thing that has changed the most in ways for both good and ill has been the levelling power of technology. It has expanded the reach of individuals to be able to navigate their way through a pandemic, more effectively than they otherwise would have been a decade ago. It has also expanded the capacity of non-state actors to inflict significant, lethal harm. The proliferation of drone technology is a good example of that. Cyber and the ability of a hacker sitting in their apartment, being able to take down a pipeline in another country and having a massive impact on the energy supply of a significant economy. It's not like a completely nonlinear change. But I would just say that fact - the fact of that in the cyber domain, with respect to terrorism, with respect to the power of internet platforms generally, is very real. It makes the kind of Westphalian system of state-to-state diplomacy and engagement feel an increasingly distant thing as we deal with a much more challenging geopolitical environment. And then I guess the last thing that I would say, that's changed a lot since I was last in government, is something I've referred to in my remarks, which is, I think the growing recognition globally about this intersection between foreign and domestic. That you have much more emphasis being placed on questions around supply chain resilience, around infrastructure resilience, around how to think about energy supply, in ways that have always been present, but are present differently to me today, in light of COVID 19 and what it exposed. But really the COVID-19 was exposing something much more fundamentally fragile about the international economy in particular, that has forced a reckoning in the policies of national governments the world over, that are not merely the province of finance ministries, but are very much the province of national security professionals as well. And so I think that has been a significant change, it has very much affected the agenda of the Quad, the agenda of the G7, and the G7 Plus that gathered in Cornwall this year, including Prime Minister Morrison, and the G20. And I think that's not going away even if COVID-19 ends up receding to a substantial extent in the course of the years ahead. That was a longer answer than you probably wanted. But those are some reflections on the difference of what I find sitting here today from what I found a decade ago - or seven years ago.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: You mentioned in your remarks Dean Acheson - you cited Acheson. Given how much the world has changed, do you still take inspiration from previous US foreign policy makers? When you're setting up your NSC as you're doing your job as National Security Adviser? Is there a former National Security Adviser for example that you like to emulate? People often refer to Brent Scowcroft. But who are the figures in American history that you go to when you think about how you'd like to do your job in serving the President?
JAKE SULLIVAN: You know, it's interesting. I guess I'm boring in this regard. Because I would also say Brent Scowcroft. Largely because I think - that what you have to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night thinking about as National Security Adviser first and foremost, is to create a fair and humane process that honours the work of the Cabinet Secretaries and the professionals on the frontlines, whether they be military or diplomatic or development workers. And to fundamentally create a circumstance in which information is flowing to the President as the ultimate decision maker, recommendations and choices are being framed up effectively. And I think Brent Scowcroft had the humility and the capacity to both recognize that that was the job and then to do it really, really well. And you know, those are incredibly big shoes to try to fill. But he's one. Another - you know, I was just at the funeral of Colin Powell, who served in senior roles at the National Security Council, in addition to being chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of State. And Secretary Powell, General Powell, Chairman Powell - it was such a powerful reminder, listening to the eulogies about how he was able to combine a conviction - a personal conviction of what was right, what was the right answer - with a fair-mindedness about being inclusive and bringing diffuse and dissenting voices effectively to the table. And then the last thing I would say is on Acheson himself, I've made this observation before, but I think it's important to make it again: I use this phrase latticework in my remarks and I don't know if that's a phrase that works well in a social media age, or on cable news. But I think it does capture something different about the architecture we're trying to build today. From the architecture that Dean Acheson was trying to build. In his time, it was sort of like the Parthenon with the big firm columns of the UN and NATO and the IMF and the World Bank, global organizations - formal, legal, universal. Today, it's much more flexible, ad hoc, more political than legal, sometimes more temporary than permanent. And in that sense, it's got more of a Frank Gehry character than the formal Greek architecture of the post-war era. It also means it's less satisfying, you don't just build it and it sits there kind of unmoved for decades or centuries. It's constantly shifting, and it's a mix of different structures and substances. And in a way, it will have less of a permanence to it because of the world that we live in now. So, looking to the past for helpful guidance, conceptually, while recognizing that the task we have before us today is profoundly different. That's something I try to bring to work with me as well.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Alright. Well, thinking about the latticework of flexible new structures - let me ask you about AUKUS. We've had a lot of audience interest, obviously, in Australia, in AUKUS. This is a big bet by the President and by the United States. It's a big choice that the President has made. It's the first time in over 60 years that the United States has agreed to share nuclear propulsion technology with another country. Why did the Biden administration sign up to AUKUS?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Because it is a big bet. And the President wanted to say not just to Australia, but to the world, that if you are a strong friend and ally and partner, and you bet with us, we will bet with you. And we will bet with you with the most advanced, most sensitive technology we have. Because we trust you, we believe in you. And we believe even more importantly, in our collective, combined capacity to produce greater stability, security and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region. And from the President's perspective, this is about the submarine deal itself. It's about the broader partnership, but it's about something bigger too. It's about a statement of putting your money where your mouth is, when it comes to the rhetoric around alliances. Good allies to the United States deserve a good ally in the United States back to them. And that's what led to the United States in 1958 providing this nuclear propulsion technology by Eisenhower to McMillan. And it's what led Joe Biden to step forward to say that he wants to travel this road with Australia. And it's a road we will travel together, literally for decades to come. And I think that significance is something that we take very seriously. And we are deeply committed now to doing the actual work to make this happen in a way that delivers on the vision that our leaders laid out when they did the virtual event together back in September.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Jake, as you say, AUKUS is very ambitious. It's not just an arms deal. It's not just about nuclear subs. It's about technology sharing. It's about cyber capabilities. It's about AI. It's fundamentally about trust. And it reminds me of something that Winston Churchill said in 1940, when the United States provided Britain with destroyers in exchange for access to naval bases, and Churchill said the two countries, the US and the UK, 'will have to be somewhat mixed-up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage'. Let me ask you, Jake, in the face of new challenges, do you think we will see more of this - allies and like-minded countries getting more 'mixed-up' with each other for mutual and general advantage?
JAKE SULLIVAN: You know, it's interesting - you can always one up me with quotes. Because 'mixed-up together' in my view is an even better encapsulation of a vision for the future in this kind of latticework notion, than 'situations of strength'. And so I will now borrow that myself. You're very far away in Australia. So I'm going to use it here in the United States and give you no credit going forward.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: You're welcome - my gift to you!
JAKE SULLIVAN: Thank you. Thank you. I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head. And I think the 'mixed-up together' dimension of this crosses the bilateral alliance, US-Australia; trilateral - AUKUS; the Quad; relationships among Quad countries with others; how ultimately other significant European countries play into common efforts, whether it's on technology, or economic resilience, or climate solutions, or military interoperability. I do think we are going to see a substantially greater degree of this as countries recognize that there is both a need to invest in the sources of our own strength, and to build a certain degree of self-sufficiency and capacity, but that at the end of the day, genuine resilience requires that kind of 'mixed-up togetherness'. And I think it's a great way of capturing a profound difference between Joe Biden's approach to foreign policy and national security and Donald Trump's approach to foreign policy and national security. Which is, President Biden very much takes that core Churchill observation to heart.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Jake, not everybody's happy about AUKUS. Paris was angry. It's been reported that the administration was under the impression that Canberra had all-but informed Paris of its intention to scrap the existing submarine contract. And we watched here in Australia when President Biden recently said, ‘what we did was clumsy, it was not done with a lot of grace.’ There was a lot of speculation here about who he was referring to in 'we', and whether he might have been referring to Australia. Is the administration comfortable with the way that Canberra handled the AUKUS announcement?
JAKE SULLIVAN: So, Michael, one of the great things about sitting here in November, having done this first announcement back in the middle of September, is that we have had to go through some challenges in dealing with the rollout and in how we've tried to engage intensively diplomatically with the French. But now – in November - we get to look forward, we get to look at actually putting this thing into place. And my view, and I mean, this sincerely, I know it comes off as a sincere dodge - but a dodge nonetheless - is that I just think there's no profit in revisiting how we got to where we are. Where we are now - we've put out, in our view, a very strong and meaningful and substantive plan of action with the French on a range of issues, including relating to the Indo-Pacific. And, we're digging in on the real work of AUKUS. And so, where I sit today, the good news lies ahead. And we are going to redeem the vision our leaders laid out and it's going to be an incredibly positive thing for our countries. And kind of, going back through all the ins and outs of this will be interesting for the historians to do at some point. But as National Security Adviser, I've got to keep sort of my eyes firmly fixed on the present and future.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: All right, let me put a question to you from my chairman, Frank Lowy. Some in Australia argue the United States is not a resident power in Asia and so it won't have the staying power to compete with China. How do you respond to that sort of criticism from Australians and others who are pessimistic about what AUKUS means for Australian security?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, first of all, we are a resident power in the Indo-Pacific. You know, we're resident as far west as Guam, in terms of actual American territory. We're resident with substantial long-term troop presence in Japan, in Korea, in Australia. We have just this year renewed the visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines. We do rotational deployments in Singapore. And at any given moment, American surface and undersea assets are at work, enforcing freedom of navigation, engaging in exercises, engaging in work on humanitarian assistance and disaster response. And so we have been a resident power in the Indo-Pacific for decades. It is core to our being as a geopolitical actor. It is fundamental to our identity. And President Biden has been very clear with our allies - as with our competitors - that the United States is a Pacific nation, has been a Pacific nation, and will always be a Pacific nation. And, you know, the fact that we are only doubling down on that, with what AUKUS represents and offers, shows that the, the direction arrow is pointing in terms of more intensive engagement, not less. And also, as we've closed the chapter on the wars of the last 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of our thinking has been about the ability of the United States then to put more attention, effort and resources into the Indo-Pacific. We began that work with the pivot back in 2011. We continue that work today under the Biden administration.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Let me ask you briefly about the Quadrilateral security dialogue involving the United States, India, Japan, and Australia. The President hosted the first in-person Quad leaders meeting at the White House in September, as you mentioned. Why is the President a Quad believer?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, first, and perhaps most centrally, this is about the opportunity for four robust, powerful nations - that are also democracies - being able to come together and represent geographically and culturally distinct elements of the Indo-Pacific. But a deeply common enterprise: which is to prove that democracies can deliver, to advance shared security, to deepen our technological and economic and climate cooperation. I mean, in a way, the Quad represents exactly the kind of new form of partnership that is going to most fundamentally deliver for each of our countries across the range of issues that we're confronting. And it's fundamentally positive as well. And there may be no better kind of concrete example, to go along with all the flowery language I just offered, then the Quad vaccine partnership. So the Quad vaccine partnership basically takes a combination of financing from some Quad members, vaccine manufacturing capability from other Quad members, and vaccine distribution and last mile capacity from other Quad members, puts that all together. And in dealing with one of the most acute challenges we're facing today, you've got the pooled efforts of four countries that together can really deliver something that no one country could easily deliver by itself. And that no other necessarily other combination of countries could deliver quite as well as the four that have come together in the Quad. So from the President's perspective, that is one in what he hopes will be a series of concrete efforts to show that this is not just about us coming together and getting strategic alignment at a broad level. But it’s actually making real material progress on hard issues that affect the lives of the citizens in our countries and across the Indo-Pacific.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Let me ask you, Jake, about the US-China relationship, which is in the background to the new latticework that we've been discussing. You said at the weekend, you want the terms of US-China coexistence, to be favourable to American interests and values. Can you just talk a little bit more about that?
JAKE SULLIVAN: So basically, from my perspective, all of this talk of the United States and China going into a new Cold War, or that we're on our way to conflict, or the Thucydides Trap. We have the choice not to do that. We have the choice, instead, to move forward with what President Biden has called stiff competition. Where we are going to compete vigorously across multiple dimensions, including economics and technology. Where we're going to stand up for our values. But where we also recognize that China is going to be a factor in the international system for the foreseeable future - it's not going anywhere. And the United States is not going anywhere, and we're not going anywhere in the Indo-Pacific either. And so we're going to have to learn how to deal with that reality. But, in a competition, you want to deal with that reality in a way that works maximally to the advantage of the vision that you see as being the right vision for the people of your country, and countries everywhere. And that, boiled down to a few words, is a free and open Indo-Pacific. That is what we want to produce. And we believe there's nothing inconsistent with that. And with recognizing we're going to have to manage a relationship with China, and work with China on certain issues. But unapologetically to say, we would like the rules of the road on all of the issues that affect our citizens to fundamentally advance our interests, and to the maximum extent possible to reflect our values. China has a different value system. It has different interests. And that's part of what the ongoing competition will be about. But there's no reason that that competition has to turn into conflict or confrontation. And that is what responsibly and collectively we need to manage as we work in the years to come.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Can I ask you about how America will compete with China on economics and trade? As you know, when President Trump withdrew from the TPP, he did a lot to undermine US credibility in this part of the world. For many countries in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific more generally, they like the US presence in security terms, but they find that China is the more important economic partner. What can you do to compete with the magnetic effect of the Chinese economy? You've spoken about an Indo-Pacific framework? What would that look like, Jake?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, what I can say is that we have been working hard in the past few months and will continue to through the end of this year and into early next year. To put together what we see as being a vision for America's economic engagement in the region, with a framework that addresses the kinds of modern challenges that COVID-19 exposed, and that we are all dealing with. Whether it's in the realm of supply chains, or the intersection of climate and trade, or digital, or investment screening and export controls. Across a number of areas that have not traditionally been part of trade agreements. We believe that there is the possibility of putting together a comprehensive vision and getting a whole bunch of countries aligned around that. And so in the months ahead, we will be coming forward with that effort. But we're not going to do that, kind of baking it by ourselves in, you know, our little policy kitchen. We're going to have intense consultations and both Ambassador Tai, and Secretary Raimondo will be in the region in the weeks ahead to talk with our partners - including Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Southeast Asia, as well as in Northeast Asia, about what the elements and components of this could look like, and how we can have a full, robust, attractive economic agenda to go along with our security and geopolitical agenda in the Indo-Pacific.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Jake, the COP26 meeting in Glasgow is wrapping up, was it a success from your point of view, and what's the next step in the fight to in the fight to stop dangerous global warming?
JAKE SULLIVAN: COP26 represented material progress. Has represented, continues to represent material progress. There's you know, still some time left. You know, I'd highlight two significant agreements, in particular - a deforestation pledge to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 that included 12 countries stepping up to contribute $12 billion towards that end. And the private sector, committing to mobilize another $7 billion. And a global methane pledge to reduce methane emissions, which are 25 times more potent than, than greenhouse gas emissions, than CO2 emissions, reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. With the United States stepping forward with its own methane action plan. Those are real, meaningful material achievements of COP26. To go along with 65 percent of the world's economy, stepping up and setting targets that would keep us within the 1.5 degree goal. Now, that still means 35 percent of the world has not done that. And that means that there's still a lot more work to do. Now, in addition, the United States stepped forward and said, we're going to double our international climate financing, so that we're pulling our weight to get to that 100 billion dollar a year goal that Paris set out. So we feel like, from the perspective of the United States, in terms of what we put on the table, what we were able to galvanize around a set of specific issues, and what some of the other major economies came forward with - real progress. But not enough. And, you know, President Biden remarked on the fact that neither China nor Russia were present at the leader level at COP, and their absence meant that we did not make as much progress as we need to. And we need to see the world continuing to push to for more progress from those two countries as well.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Jake, just a couple more questions about you if I may. You've operated at the highest levels of politics for a long time. But since the 20th of January, you've been the closest international adviser to the most powerful leader on Earth. You've always had a reputation for being hard working and conscientious, but this is frankly next level. Ten months in, what has surprised you about the job itself? I mean, I'm always struck with, with top American policymakers, the breadth of the issues, you have to deal with, the number of files on your desk. What has surprised you about this job, as opposed to other things you've done in government?
JAKE SULLIVAN: You know, it's a great question, I guess the thing that has surprised me the most is that, at the end of the day, the United States on any given file, the number of steps that are required to get from a Presidential decision to execution on the ground ... the way resources have to move, the way instructions have to be communicated, the way allies need to be engaged and consulted. The sheer magnitude of the machinery is something you can recognize from the outside and you can recognize from different vantage points within the US government. But sitting in the seat that I sit in now, the magnitude of that machinery, and frankly, the kind of incredible human effort that is required to move even as simple a decision as the allocation of some funding for development purposes in a single country. Let alone a highly complex decision - like how to put together AUKUS. Until you stare at it square in the face from the seat I sit in, you don't fully understand what, you're kind of dealing with as this massive machine. And it's quite potent. It's quite impressive. It's also quite human. And so it's imperfect. And that's something that we all have to accept and manage for and correct for along the way.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: And finally, you sit in a lot of interesting rooms. Now you encounter a lot of interesting individuals, whether they're perfect or imperfect. Is there someone you've met this year whose personal qualities have really impressed you? And for example, I saw you at the Vatican recently, when the President had an audience with Pope Francis, what was that like?
JAKE SULLIVAN: That was really, really something. My father actually trained as a Jesuit novice before deciding not to become a fully ordained priest and has been a Jesuit his whole life. Being able to go to the Vatican, with my background and upbringing and meet the Pope, being able to do so - standing next to the President of the United States, who himself is an Irish Catholic. And be surrounded by colleagues, you know, who I love - Catholic colleagues. And to hear the Pope and the President engage in the conversation they engaged in - it really, you know, it's easy to have a certain degree of remove or cynicism or even just sheer fatigue in this job. That was a pretty damn energizing moment. But I also got the chance to talk to Bono about COVID-19 and that was very cool too. So he'd ranked high on my list of people who I have very much enjoyed dealing with this year. Irish guy too!
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Jake Sullivan, thank you for taking the time to deliver the 2021 Lowy Lecture and to answer my questions. I think that friends of America will be heartened by the fact that someone like you sits at the President's elbow. I know you're Irish Catholic but to borrow a Yiddish term, Jake, I've always thought of you as a mensch. So thank you very much. I'm sorry that we had to speak at long distance. I hope you'll encourage the President to visit Australia and of course, come to speak to the Lowy Institute. I also know you're a Sydney Swans fan, so we'll have to get you along to another game.
JAKE SULLIVAN: Thank you. Yes, I turned into an Aussie rules football fan when I came down for my Lowy fellowship stint and I still follow from afar. So I very much look forward to going to a game. And thank you very much for giving me this opportunity.
MICHAEL FULLILOVE: Thanks again, Jake. You have a hard job and we wish you luck. Thank you.
JAKE SULLIVAN: Thank you.
3. ‘No ground for cockiness’: Tough love for U.S. at pro-democracy conference
Our political leaders need some tough love. (with emphasis on tough).
‘No ground for cockiness’: Tough love for U.S. at pro-democracy conference
From Afghanistan to domestic extremism, the Halifax forum became a therapy session for allies concerned with America’s actions.
“Sometimes a little bit of humility actually enables you to make better connections with other nations because we’re not really in a position to lecture,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). | Alex Brandon/AP Photo
11/21/2021 03:32 PM EST
Updated: 11/21/2021 03:59 PM EST
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — If "America is back,” someone forgot to tell America’s allies.
At a major national security conference this weekend designed to rally the world’s democracies against autocratic forces, critics fired away at China, Russia and other backsliding nations. Yet some of the harshest words were reserved for the U.S., in what turned into a therapy session of sorts for high-ranking diplomats and officials, both current and former.
From Afghanistan to the Jan. 6 insurrection to congressional paralysis, attendees expressed their fears and doubts about the health of American democracy and questioned Washington’s commitments to countering Beijing or Moscow. It turned the 2021 Halifax International Security Forum into less of a celebration of President Joe Biden’s agenda and more of a global intervention for a nation in crisis.
Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister from 2015 to 2018, replied, "We are," when asked in an interview if allies are worried about the U.S.
“The U.S. is by far the most important of the Western democracies. … We all have a vested interest in the health of American democracy. So, yeah, I think it is a real concern,” he said.
A bipartisan group of six senators in attendance — three Republicans and three Democrats — will now carry the message they heard loud and clear back to Washington, where hyperpartisanship is already putting key national security priorities at risk as the threats emanating from great powers have crystallized.
“I do feel like there’s no ground for cockiness. Sometimes a little bit of humility actually enables you to make better connections with other nations because we’re not really in a position to lecture,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, said in an interview. “We are in a position to dialogue, share experiences, share best practices, acknowledge areas where we have to work together.”
“We can’t really go and lecture” other countries about political unrest and corruption, Kaine added. “But that actually sometimes means the conversations are more candid and a little more authentic and a little more productive.”
This year was the conference’s first gathering since Donald Trump left office and Biden took over with a renewed pledge to build the strategic alliances that his predecessor often shunned. It was supposed to be a coming-out party for the U.S. after four years of anti-democratic moves by Trump that shook allies. But in the 10 months since Biden took office, the U.S. has confronted cascading crises at home and abroad that have caused Western allies to question America’s promises.
A major focus of the three-day conference was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which many foreign officials here saw as a betrayal of Washington’s commitment to the country’s struggling democracy. Sabrina Saqeb, a former member of the Afghan parliament, told an audience, “We have been sold out to terrorists.”
“There is an acknowledgment by the members of our delegation that the United States has let partners down in a number of aspects,” including in Afghanistan, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), an Armed Services Committee member and a combat veteran, said in an interview. She added that the U.S. has to work on “upholding our commitments.”
Some of those crises were brought up organically by the lawmakers themselves. During panel events, Kaine and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) talked about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and its impact on American democracy. Specifically, Kaine said the U.S. has a problem with its “immune system,” which he characterized as America’s ability — or lack thereof — to respond to strains on its democracy.
Coons, meanwhile, said the best way for the U.S. to counter China’s worsening predatory behavior — a major focus of the conference — is to “take decisive actions to heal our own democracy.” He said the Jan. 6 attack “emboldened Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, autocrats around the world, those who wish us ill.”
“Other nations’ heads of states or ministers of foreign relations often bring up their concerns about the state of our democracy and the impact for them of Jan. 6,” Coons said in an interview. “So I think it’s completely appropriate to bring it up, and I frankly think there’s a lot more specific work that we need to be doing to strengthen our civic culture.”
Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister, is in full agreement. Misinformation and extremism on the American right “led to the attack on the Capitol. That led to an attempted coup,” he said. “The rest of the world looked at January the sixth and was shattered.”
“When you see the absolute essential foundations of the democracy being challenged from within, and where you see a political party, the Republican Party — not all of them, but many of them — actually challenging the constitutional institutions on which this great democracy of well over two centuries depends, that’s what really undermines public international faith in American democracy,” Turnbull continued.
Some also expressed doubt that the U.S. would act to stop aggressive actions by autocrats, namely the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border.
Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president from 2014 to 2019, said in an interview that the West — led by the U.S. — needs to send more “lethal defensive weapons” to his country, push for Ukraine to become a member of NATO, reverse its stance on the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany pipeline, and target Moscow with tougher sanctions. If the U.S. and its allies fail to make these moves, it would “increase the probability” of Putin launching a second major incursion of Russia's neighbor.
Europeans are also increasingly concerned that the American turn toward the Indo-Pacific, and competing with China in the region, will pull Washington’s gaze away from Europe.
The idea of an emerging “strategic autonomy,” even if still ill-defined, has taken hold in NATO deliberations about how to deter and contain Russia.
“I think strategic autonomy is about the fact that in Europe, there needs to be more military capabilities available that are now only available in the U.S.,” Adm. Rob Bauer of the Netherlands, head of NATO’s Military Committee and the alliance’s highest-ranking military officer, told a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the event.
“If the European nations and Canada are able to take on some of the roles that now only the U.S. can take on because of its capabilities, then the U.S. would be able to prioritize and do more in the Indo-Pacific,” Bauer said.
The senators will now return to Washington after the Thanksgiving recess staring down several time-sensitive agenda items.
Congress is already at risk of failing to pass a defense authorization bill for the first time in six decades — a concern that foreign counterparts expressed directly to the lawmakers here. And Senate leaders are hoping to confirm Biden’s diplomatic nominees who have been the subject of a GOP-led blockade that is preventing swift confirmation of more than 50 nominations.
Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, was asked about the blockade here and said he was working to break it, adding: “I was a governor. I understand you have to have a team in place in order to govern.”
Lawmakers were especially concerned about the impression that they are unable to work together to help solve pressing challenges. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who co-led the Senate delegation alongside Risch, said there are “legitimate questions based on what people are reading” about tensions between Republicans and Democrats back in Washington.
“We haven’t seen folks in almost two years,” Shaheen said in a brief interview. “And so I think it’s not unexpected.”
4. Afghanistan fiasco shows US military encourages lapdog generals, retired colonel says: The Last 96 | Fox News
Ouch. A brutal critique.
Afghanistan fiasco shows US military encourages lapdog generals, retired colonel says: The Last 96 | Fox News
This is the fourth part of a Fox News Digital Originals series about the fall of Kabul and the hectic and heroic 96-hour effort to evacuate Afghans fearing retribution from the Taliban. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
President Biden’s top military advisers should have predicted Afghanistan’s imminent collapse – and then offered their resignations if the commander in chief refused to modify his withdrawal plans, a former deputy commander told Fox News.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Central Command head Gen. Kenneth McKenzie had a responsibility to stand firm if they believed the fast-paced troop withdrawal would end in catastrophe, retired Marine Col. Andrew Milburn told Fox News.
"Can you imagine if those three or even two out of three had offered their resignation?" Milburn, a former Special Operations Central deputy commander, said. "You don't think that might have caused the president to think twice?"
He argued that all three are products of a culture the military has fostered that favors leaders who are obedient, rather than principled freethinkers.
"I think they’re products of a culture that has arisen within the U.S. military that simply does not encourage innovative thinking or creative thinking," Milburn, who spent 31 years in the military, told Fox News. "That rewards perhaps obedience above all else."
"I think within our organizations, the Joint Force, we sadly have a culture that does not always see the most strong-willed creative thinkers rise to the top," he continued. "It's a culture that I think is amiss."
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, center, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, left, and Commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testify during a hearing before Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 28, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
‘The ultimate sanction’
To date, no one has been held accountable for failing to predict the Taliban’s swift seizure of Kabul while U.S. citizens still inhabited the city. Milburn said the Afghan government’s collapse should have been obvious.
"How are these three holding themselves responsible? I've seen all three of them during the 90-day period use that term," Milburn said of Austin, Milley and McKenzie.
"It's very difficult to explain exactly what that means if you continue in office," he added. "Holding yourself responsible often is a prelude to resignation. Not always, but … that's really the ultimate sanction. So, it is hard to take them seriously."
Milburn said the trio has "rendered their own words hollow."
He pointed to a Sept. 28 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing where Milley testified that he wouldn’t resign because the service members in Kabul couldn’t refuse their orders. The general said it would be unfair to abandon his duties while enlisted men couldn’t.
Milburn told Fox News that Milley’s testimony "showed that he didn’t have a good understanding of his professional ethics" and called his reasoning "illogical."
While explaining why he didn’t resign, Milley also testified that the nation "does not want generals figuring out what orders we are going to accept." He emphasized the importance of civilian control of the military.
WATCH "SNAFU – The Last 96, Part 4":
But Milburn said the American public’s wishes aren’t "really the only arbiter of making that moral decision because … his oath was to the Constitution."
"It's not necessarily, what the American public would like," Milburn continued. "It is what does he feel his duty to the Constitution is. Not to any particular person."
Milley also testified that he only serves as an adviser to the president and that the commander in chief can choose to ignore his counsel.
While Milburn agreed, he also said that if Austin and McKenzie gave the same advice, that a particular order could cause a catastrophe as bad as the Afghanistan withdrawal, "wouldn't you make a firmer stand?"
"That is the time to stand your ground and simply say, 'no boss. I'll give you my resignation,'" Milburn told Fox News. "That should be our collective expectation of these people."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley testifies during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Afghanistan on Capitol Hill on Sept. 29, 2021. (Photo by Rod Lamkey-Pool/Getty Images)
Such a move wouldn’t be unprecedented. James Mattis, former President Trump’s first defense secretary, vacated his post after repeated disagreements with the commander in chief.
"You have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours," he wrote in his resignation letter.
Milburn also argued that Biden’s military leaders should have planned for the Taliban’s immediate takeover, even if it was considered unlikely.
"No one really without any sense of foresight could say [Biden] will yank [the troops] out and the Afghan government will not collapse," he told Fox News.
"Certainly as military planners, you always have some contingency plan, no matter how unlikely you think an event is to occur," Milburn added. "If the events are going to be catastrophic, you plan for that."
"Ignoring the ramifications of any decision that you make or order that you pass, I suppose would come within that category of SNAFU," he said.
Ultimately, uniformed leaders need to know when to stand against superiors to best serve the nation, Milburn argued.
"As a military professional, our duty isn't simply to follow orders," he told Fox News. "There is a point where if we see something that is happening catastrophic to the institution, then doesn't our oath to the Constitution obligate us to take action?
Yet McKenzie didn't act on a top Taliban leader's suggestion the U.S. take responsibility for security over all of Kabul during the evacuation, the four-star general testified during a Sept. 29 House Armed Services Committee hearing. He said he was unsure if that offer was presented to Biden.
"That was not why I was there, that was not my instruction," McKenzie told the panel. "I did not consider that to be a formal offer and it was not the reason why I was there, so I did not pursue it," McKenzie told the panel.
The Taliban ultimately took point on securing the Kabul airport. An ISIS-K suicide bomber bypassed the Taliban's checkpoints and killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.
Austin’s ‘chronic decision-phobia’
Milburn said poor leadership is standard and that bad decisions from the top – even minor ones – amplify down the ladder.
He repeated a joke Marines often told: "What is the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts of America? The Boy Scouts have adult leadership."
It was the kind of joke used "to mitigate your sense of powerlessness" from "the bottom of the pyramid," Milburn told Fox News. In the military, "the results of ineffective leadership or inefficiency or just minor mistakes are felt greatly at kind of the tail end of the whip."
Austin, for his part, built a reputation for "chronic decision-phobia" – fearing decision-making – when he headed Central Command, Milburn wrote in a Task and Purpose op-ed where he called on the secretary to resign.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley talk before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)
Failure to make decisions "causes a great deal of frustration beneath you," Milburn told Fox News. "A lot of us would rather have a tyrannical commander than one who simply avoided decisions because at the tail end of the whip, that causes all kinds of confusion."
In the military, "the most important thing you have is your reputation," the retired colonel told Fox News. "It's not even rank, it's not necessarily authority at any given time. It's the ability for you to inspire people, especially those beneath you."
Milburn flagged a program that failed horribly under Austin when he served as the top commander in the Middle East.
The Defense Department launched a $500 million program in December 2014 to train 5,400 Syrian fighters a year to help the U.S. combat ISIS. The following September, Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that only "four or five" trainees were fighting In Syria.
The program was shuttered weeks later.
"It just seemed incomprehensible to me that there were no ramifications for him aside from, I assume, just being embarrassed," he told Fox News. "Can you imagine anyone not getting fired for that kind of mismanagement? But somehow he survived."
Milburn said it probably caused "irreparable damage" to Central Command and to the military.
"What we saw during the closing days of the fall of Kabul, who can deny that those images were disastrous to just our credibility as a nation?" Milburn added.
The Pentagon declined to comment.
Matt Leach contributed to this report.
5. Palau faces the dragon
Excerpts:
The swarms of Chinese tourists that had overwhelmed Palau’s power, water and sewerage systems are gone and the nation has pivoted towards fewer tourists who are higher-spending and environmentally conscious. The nation now employs stronger language towards its decision-making and has moved closer with the United States. In 2020, the US military used the islands for training, and in 2021 the President of Palau visited Taiwan alongside the US ambassador, and the Pentagon was invited to build ports, bases and airfields on its islands. For the United States, Palau represents a securing of the “North Pacific pathway” that connects Hawaii and Guam, and a block on China’s Belt and Road Initiative across the Pacific.
However, the contest is not yet over. Covid-19 has led to catastrophic effects in the Pacific and a potential lost decade for economic growth, making the region vulnerable to economic influence, and funding arrangements may not continue if the United States does not review existing compacts. Opportunities still await China in swaying island nations to their way of thinking with much needed aid and employment of vaccine diplomacy on Taiwan’s last allies.
Palau faces the dragon
SHAUN CAMERON
Beijing can make or break nations by rubber stamping them
as approved destinations for Chinese tourism and investment.
In 2015, tourism officials from the tiny Micronesian island nation of Palau likely scratched their heads in bewilderment at incoming figures on visitor arrivals. A record number of tourists had touched down that year in the archipelago, but more perplexing was the figure of 91,174 visitors from China. In 2008, only 634 Chinese visitors had travelled to Palau. The 14,000 per cent increase in visitors had lead to the highest growth in GDP since at least 2000 and a frenzy of Sino investment on the island. The oceans and beaches were no more pristine in 2015 than they had been in 2008, so the influx of Chinese tourists may have puzzled the Palauans. However, the reason for the surge soon became clear: the nation’s ongoing diplomatic ties with Taiwan. This knowledge gave Palau a portent of what was to come.
Those who retain ties with Taiwan view Beijing’s interference and investment in the Pacific with suspicion and are concerned over aid with strings attached.
Beijing has the ability to direct the flow of Chinese tourists through the issuing of Approved Destination Status (ADS), which allows state-run agents to operate group package tours to approved nations. Countries enjoying ADS status can see an increase of up to 50 per cent in Chinese visitors through the scheme, leading to significant benefits for partners such as Palau, which relies on tourism for more than 40 per cent of its GDP.
What Palau may not have realised was that they were participating in a strategy employed by Beijing sometimes described as “dollar diplomacy”, the “carrot and the stick”, or an “anaconda squeeze”. The strategy is one aimed at reducing Taiwan’s international standing and capability through military, economic and diplomatic efforts in preparation for future reunification with the mainland.
When President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2008, Taiwan counted 23 diplomatic allies. In 2021, that number has dwindled to 14, representing a ragtag group of holdouts such as Haiti and the Holy See, and states that would challenge even diehard trivia nerds, such the African nation of Eswatini or St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. In the Pacific, China has lured countries such as Solomon Islands away from Taiwan with generous financial aid and Kiribati went for a relative song, according to Taiwanese officials, after Beijing funding airplanes and ferries. For Gambia, El Salvador and Burkina Faso it evidently came down to infrastructure project funding. Those who retain ties with Taiwan view Beijing’s interference and investment in the Pacific with suspicion and are concerned over aid with strings attached.
Palau is an important strategic island in the Western Pacific for both China and the United States. A wreck from the Second World War lies on the seabed off Palau’s mainland (Milos Prelevic/Unsplash)
For Palau, the Chinese “carrot” did not lead to the end of its 1999 diplomatic recognition of Taiwan; it was time for the “stick”. The Chinese tourist boom ended in November 2017 with a Beijing order for tour operators to stop sending groups to the islands. By the end of 2017, there was a 22.7 per cent drop in Chinese visitors to Palau, as well as a 16 per cent drop in visitors generally due to the reduction in charter planes flying to the nation. For the Taiwanese-owned Palau Pacific Airways, bookings from China to Palau fell by 50 per cent, leading to the airline’s closure in 2018. Beijing had used similar tactics before, banning tour groups to South Korea in 2017 in response to the United States moving part of its anti-missile defence system to a deployment site in the country, with a significant impact on tourism during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Taiwan itself has been targeted, too.
No doubt Beijing, applying the same strategy to a tiny state of only 18,000 people living on an archipelago of more than 300 mostly uninhabited islands, expected the same result. The outcome: rejection.
For the United States, Palau represents a securing of the “North Pacific pathway” that connects Hawaii and Guam, and a block on China’s Belt and Road Initiative across the Pacific.
What was it about this dot on the map that would allow it to rebuff the pressures of a superpower? Palau has a long relationship with Taiwan and believes it has more in common with the nation over China, but such factors have not stopped others from switching sides. One likely reason for Palau’s resilience could be the United States. In 1982, Palau signed a Compact of Free Association with the United States, whereby the superpower is responsible for the island state’s defence until 2044 and is allowed exclusive and unlimited use of Palau’s land and waterways for strategic purposes. Financial assistance is included in return for strategic access at a rate of US$17.7 million per year until 2024. Taiwan provides Palau a further $10 million in yearly aid.
The swarms of Chinese tourists that had overwhelmed Palau’s power, water and sewerage systems are gone and the nation has pivoted towards fewer tourists who are higher-spending and environmentally conscious. The nation now employs stronger language towards its decision-making and has moved closer with the United States. In 2020, the US military used the islands for training, and in 2021 the President of Palau visited Taiwan alongside the US ambassador, and the Pentagon was invited to build ports, bases and airfields on its islands. For the United States, Palau represents a securing of the “North Pacific pathway” that connects Hawaii and Guam, and a block on China’s Belt and Road Initiative across the Pacific.
However, the contest is not yet over. Covid-19 has led to catastrophic effects in the Pacific and a potential lost decade for economic growth, making the region vulnerable to economic influence, and funding arrangements may not continue if the United States does not review existing compacts. Opportunities still await China in swaying island nations to their way of thinking with much needed aid and employment of vaccine diplomacy on Taiwan’s last allies.
6. The ramifications of Russia’s reckless anti-satellite test
Excerpts:
It doesn’t seem credible that Roscosmos would have agreed to a test of a kinetic-kill ASAT that could then place the ISS, its own cosmonauts and US astronauts at risk. It must not have known that this test was going to take place, and almost certainly would have taken protective measures if it had been warned. The Washington Post quoted NASA administrator Bill Nelson as saying he believed the Russian space agency was not informed of the test by its own government.
There’s still the question of who should be held responsible if there’s to be a verifiable and meaningful ban on ASATs.
The Russian ASAT test is a huge setback to efforts to build international trust upon which any future ban on ASATs, let alone norms of responsible behaviour, could be based. In addition to blowing up a satellite and endangering the space environment, Russia has seriously damaged the prospects for meaningful progress in arms control in space. The fallout leaves serious questions as to whether the Russian government, which would have authorised this test, is genuine in promoting efforts towards arms control in space.
The ramifications of Russia’s reckless anti-satellite test | The Strategist
The Russian military’s test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon against a defunct satellite has created a huge cloud of more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris, which may pose a threat to spacecraft for decades.
The destruction of Cosmos 1408 on 15 November was confirmed by the US State Department and the US Department of Defense. Space debris-tracking company LeoLabs said that the blast likely generated hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces that can’t be tracked. Travelling at orbital velocity, even a small piece of debris can seriously damage a spacecraft.
The debris from the explosion posed an immediate threat to the International Space Station, and the danger of collisions will repeat every 90 minutes as the ISS, China’s Tiangong space station and many satellites pass through the expanding debris cloud. Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden declared that it was ‘beyond irresponsible for Russia to do this’.
Russia is the latest in a group of nations to demonstrate kinetic-kill anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) in a ‘live test’ that destroyed a target in orbit. China tested a kinetic-kill ASAT in January 2007 against a defunct weather satellite, producing a large cloud of debris, much of which remains in orbit.
In Operation Burnt Frost in October 2008, the US used a modified SM-3 interceptor missile to bring down a malfunctioning satellite and prevent an uncontrolled re-entry that could have dispersed toxic fuel over populated areas.
In 2019, India tested an ASAT against one of its own satellites, creating more long-lasting debris.
The Secure World Foundation’s unclassified report on global developments in counterspace weaponry states that Russia’s Nudol direct-ascent ASAT, the system most likely to have been used in this test, is a ground-based ballistic missile designed to intercept targets in low-earth orbit (LEO). The system has been tested at least 10 times, with numerous failures, and this is the first time it’s destroyed a target satellite. Like its US counterpart, the SM-3, which is normally based on naval vessels, the land-based Nudol is adapted from ballistic missile defence. Unlike the SM-3, the Nudol ASAT could be nuclear-armed under some circumstances.
In addition to the immediate dangers from space debris generated by the Russian test, it’s a huge setback to international efforts to prohibit kinetic-kill ASATs that physically destroy their targets. Those efforts are supported by Russia’s Roscosmos space agency and its head, Dmitry Rogozin. The test shows contempt for efforts through the United Nations to create new norms of responsible behaviour following the UK’s tabling of General Assembly resolution 75/36 in December 2020 and the planned establishment of an open-ended working group in 2022 to pursue responsible behaviour in space.
There should be added urgency in the space policy and arms control communities to increase efforts to agree on a ban on kinetic-kill ASAT testing and development. The Secure World Foundation has called on the US, Russia, China and India to declare unilateral moratoriums on further testing of ASATs that could create additional debris and to work with other countries towards solidifying an international ban on destructive ASAT testing.
But there’s a risk that an intensified security dilemma emerging from this test could torpedo efforts to achieve such a ban and weaken trust within the working group on space threats and responsible behaviour despite the need to make rapid progress.
The challenges are clear.
A ban on testing and deployment of kinetic-kill ASATs must be verifiable and enforceable. The fact that systems such as the Nudol and SM-3 are based on ballistic missile defence technologies complicates verification and monitoring of compliance. Would states such as Russia and China agree to intrusive inspections as an essential component of a verification and monitoring regime? How can dual-role systems, which can carry out both ballistic missile defence and ASAT tasks in low-earth orbit, be differentiated? A suspicion that states will maintain such capabilities will intensify pressure to develop counter-responses.
The proponents of a ban need to confront the reality that while their diplomatic efforts occur through international bodies such as the UN working group, the activities of states’ military forces may be disconnected from the objectives and statements of civil authorities or the good intentions of representatives at such negotiations.
It doesn’t seem credible that Roscosmos would have agreed to a test of a kinetic-kill ASAT that could then place the ISS, its own cosmonauts and US astronauts at risk. It must not have known that this test was going to take place, and almost certainly would have taken protective measures if it had been warned. The Washington Post quoted NASA administrator Bill Nelson as saying he believed the Russian space agency was not informed of the test by its own government.
There’s still the question of who should be held responsible if there’s to be a verifiable and meaningful ban on ASATs.
The Russian ASAT test is a huge setback to efforts to build international trust upon which any future ban on ASATs, let alone norms of responsible behaviour, could be based. In addition to blowing up a satellite and endangering the space environment, Russia has seriously damaged the prospects for meaningful progress in arms control in space. The fallout leaves serious questions as to whether the Russian government, which would have authorised this test, is genuine in promoting efforts towards arms control in space.
7. Senior Pentagon official warns the US military is 'not ready' for climate change
Senior Pentagon official warns the US military is 'not ready' for climate change
CNN · by Oren Liebermann and Ellie Kaufman, CNN
(CNN)A senior Pentagon official warned the US military is "not ready" to handle climate change, a national security issue that touches nearly every aspect of Defense Department planning.
"We are not where we should be, and now is beyond the time when we need to get in front of that challenge," Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told CNN.
Beyond rising sea levels and extreme weather, climate change has opened up new areas of strategic competition like the Arctic and intensified the competition for scarce resources, such as the raw materials required to make the lithium-ion batteries crucial to electric vehicles.
"It's something like $750 billion of investment worldwide going on in lithium-ion batteries," Hicks said. "The challenge is most of that is happening in China. They dominate that supply chain. It's a significant national security challenge for us."
Hicks, the first woman to hold the Pentagon's number two position, leads the military's different efforts on climate change. On a recent two-day trip to Michigan, Connecticut and Rhode Island, Hicks saw work on the first generation of electric military vehicles, including an electric light reconnaissance vehicle at GM Defense.
Read More
As the civilian automotive industry goes green, the Pentagon will follow.
"If we don't follow and be part of the solution, we will be left behind," Hicks said, "and our vehicle fleets won't be able to be supported."
But electric military vehicles pose their own set of challenges. Although an electric vehicle can be much quieter and emit less of a heat signature -- critical advantages on a battlefield -- it also needs to be recharged somehow. Refueling a gas vehicle requires supply lines to bring in the fuel, but it is still faster and more efficient than recharging an electric vehicle on a battlefield.
The temporary solution, Hicks says, is hybrid tactical vehicles. It's an interim solution to bridge the current gas vehicle fleet and the future electric fleet.
"I do see that future. It's not right around the corner, but we are definitely moving in that direction," said Hicks. "We have to."
The fight against climate change has been a cornerstone of the Biden administration's agenda. In his first week in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that put the climate crisis at the center of foreign policy and national security. "There is little time left to avoid setting the world on a dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate trajectory," Biden wrote in the order.
Huge challenge
The number of personnel days for National Guard members fighting wildfires in the Western United States has increased more than tenfold, from about 14,000 five years ago to 176,000 this year.
Climate change will be folded into the updated National Defense Strategy, due next year. In last year's budget, the Defense Department devoted $617 million to preparing for climate change and mitigating its effects. But this pales in comparison with the damage from extreme weather events.
Two hurricanes -- Michael in 2018 and Sally in 2020 -- caused $4 billion in damage at Tyndall Air Force Base and Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, according to a Department of Defense report. Hurricane Florence in 2018 caused about $3.5 billion in damages and repairs at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and flooding at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska caused about $500 million in damages in 2019, the report said.
But the Defense Department still lacks a thorough understanding of the threat to its roughly 5,000 military facilities around the world. Last year, the department released its DoD Climate Assessment Tool to better comprehend the hazards of climate change based on historical data and future assessments. The department will use the tool to look at 1,400 facilities worldwide.
"Once we start to understand that we can't opt out of climate change in anything that we do - it's just a fact, a reality of how we think about the future -- then we can start to really get in front of and be productive" on climate change, said Hicks.
For all of the Defense Department's efforts related to climate change, Hicks knows it can play only a small part in addressing the huge challenge.
The Defense Department did not send a top representative to the recent COP26 conference on climate in Glasgow, Scotland. But Hicks welcomed the conference as an opportunity for key players to work together on an issue bigger than any one nation.
"The United States can do a lot to help this world problem,"she said, "but it can't do it alone."
CNN's Jeremy Moorhead contributed to this report.
CNN · by Oren Liebermann and Ellie Kaufman, CNN
8. Waiting for Attribution in Cyberspace: A Tragicomedy
And now for something completely different. And entertaining but with a message.
Waiting for Attribution in Cyberspace: A Tragicomedy
“We were so hopeful last March when the UN Open-Ended Working Group agreed to endorse all 11 of us voluntary, non-binding norms of responsible state behavior.”
ACT I.
An office conference room. New York City. November afternoon.
Melian, sitting alone at a well-polished conference table, is drifting in and out of sleep. His office chair seesaws dangerously backwards. Enter Norm.
Norm: I’m looking for purpose.
Melian: [snaps awake] Huh? Yes, aren’t we all.
Norm: To exist.
Melian: I don’t follow you, Norm.
Norm: Sure, I help guide appropriate State behavior, but I feel downright invisible when States don’t observe me.
Melian: Nothing to be done, I suppose.
Melian: My parents just told me to get a job.
Norm: Don’t joke. [Pause.] I’m rather sensitive.
Melian: Perhaps that’s why some States ignore you.
Norm: I don’t follow your logic, Melian.
Norm: [panicking]I can’t breathe, quick! [Pause.] Open that window!
Melian: [effortlessly opens window] Not surprised. There’s little oxygen for norms in poorly governed environments.
Norm: [gasps for air] Maybe…I…need…
Melian: [chuckling] Easy now. Take deep breaths.
Norm: [panting] …need to re-invent myself, eh?
Melian: Being ignored doesn’t mean States don’t understand responsible state behavior in cyberspace. I ignore stop signs, but never said I was a good driver.
Norm: [starting to sweat] I swear it’s getting warmer in this room. I need to lay down.
Melian: [pours glass of water] Drink this.
Norm: [drinks greedily] I thought 2021 would be a better year.
Melian: Thankfully, time passes.
Melian: [waves newspaper headline in Norm’s face] And yet, here we are.
Norm: Something should be done.
Melian: Grow a beard?
Norm: Be serious.
Melian: [winces] I’m trying. But it hurts.
Norm: Something must be done when some States deliberately choose to ignore us.
Norm: How irresponsible.
Melian: Rational self-interest.
Norm: Then I don’t need to re-invent my public image.
Melian: But you could use a bath.
Norm: [wipes sweat from brow] Getting down to the real issue: it’s determining what to do when States consciously ignore me and my siblings.
Melian: So I’m told.
Melian: [looks at clock on wall] Strange. He should have been here by now...
Norm: Who?
Melian: Mr. Attribution. He’s in the business of attributing hostile cyber acts to actors.
Melian: Perhaps.
Norm: All this talk of imposing consequences has me worried about escalating an “arms race” in cyberspace.
Melian: [groans] Not this again.
Norm: Hear me out this time!
Norm: But every action carries a degree of risk. Also, I was raised very strictly to believe in cyber deterrence.
Melian: [holds head] I’m getting a migraine.
Melian: [exasperated] I thought you wanted to be observed!
Norm: [indignantly] I do! Peacefully.
Melian: Communicating the range of consequences to States is just as important as accompany it with action when violated.
Norm: Life is too hard.
Melian: If States don’t observe you, Norm, or take you credibly, that’s just as harmful and destabilizing on international relations.
Norm: [sighs heavily] Perhaps Mr. Attribution will know what to do.
Melian: Perhaps. Let’s wait.
Norm: Perhaps. Let’s see.
Curtain.
Zhanna L. Malekos Smith, JD, is a senior associate with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., and an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
All views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the author and not that of CSIS, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
9. How Peng Shuai Went From ‘Chinese Princess’ to Silenced #MeToo Accuser
Excerpts:
Her post was censored within 34 minutes, but three weeks later, it continues to reverberate. Those who knew her from her professional tennis career continue to wonder if she is safe. Some human rights activists contend that she is being forced to take part in staged situations intended to deflect questions about what happened.
In the flurry of coverage over the weekend, most of which did not appear in Chinese state media, Ms. Peng was shown posing with stuffed animals, dining in a Beijing restaurant, appearing at a youth tournament and dialing in to a video call with the head of the International Olympic Committee.
“Can any girl fake such a sunny smile under pressure?” Hu Xijin, the editor of The Global Times, a state media tabloid, wrote on Twitter, which is banned in China.
Ms. Peng no longer appears in control of her own messaging.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more interviews with Peng Shuai,” Maria Repnikova, an assistant professor of political communication at Georgia State University and author of a new book, “Chinese Soft Power, “but I doubt that she will raise any sensitive matters.”
How Peng Shuai Went From ‘Chinese Princess’ to Silenced #MeToo Accuser
Nov. 22, 2021, 5:35 a.m. ET
The tennis star won independence while remaining in Beijing’s good graces. But she has been unable to break through China’s resistance to sexual assault allegations.
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Peng Shuai during her qualifying match against Nicole Gibbs at U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York in 2019.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times
Nov. 22, 2021, 5:35 a.m. ET
When Peng Shuai was a young tennis player in China’s national sports system, she battled officials for control over her own professional career — and she won.
When she took on one of China’s most powerful men three weeks ago, accusing him of sexual assault, she found her voice silenced, erased from China’s heavily controlled cyberspace and smiling in awkward public appearances most likely intended to defuse what has become an international scandal.
At 35, Ms. Peng is one of her country’s most recognized athletes, a doubles champion at Wimbledon and the French Open whom state media once hailed as “our Chinese princess.” If anyone were able to break through the country’s icy resistance to #MeToo allegations, it would seem to be someone like her.
Instead, she has become another example of China’s iron grip over politics, society and sports, and an object lesson in the struggle facing women who dare to challenge Beijing — even those who have had a history of winning praise from the state.
Her allegation was the first to penetrate the highest pinnacles of power in China, the Politburo Standing Committee. It was an act of courage and perhaps desperation that has resulted in an aggressive response, smothering her inside China.
“Peng has always been a strong-minded person,” said Terry Rhoads, the managing director of Zou Sports, the talent management agency in Shanghai that represented her for a decade until 2014. “I witnessed up close her struggles and battles with people bossing her or having authority over her tennis.”
A screen grab obtained from social media showing Ms. Peng at the opening ceremony of the Fila Kids Junior Tennis Challenger Final in Beijing on Sunday.Credit...Via Twitter @Qingqingparis/via Reuters
Over the weekend, the state’s propaganda apparatus produced a series of photographs and videos purporting to show Ms. Peng carrying on as if nothing had happened.
The only thing missing from the recent flurry of coverage was her own voice, one once strong enough to force the authorities to bend to her steely determination to control her own destiny.
The images were in striking contrast to her own description three weeks ago of being like “a moth darting into the flames” in order to “tell the truth” about her relationship with — and mistreatment by — Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, who she said assaulted her around three years ago.
“The authorities have never liked feminists or #MeToo,” said Lijia Zhang, the author of “Lotus,” a novel depicting prostitution in China. Those who “dared to speak out,” she added, “have been silenced.”
A #WhereisPengShuai campaign has taken root less than three months before Beijing is to host the Winter Olympics, an event that the country’s leadership has indicated would validate Communist Party rule. The handling of Ms. Peng’s accusation has only inflamed criticism, giving ammunition to those who have called for a boycott.
“These photos and videos can only prove that Peng Shuai is alive, but nothing else. They cannot prove that Peng Shuai is free,” Teng Biao, one of China’s most prominent civil rights lawyers, said in a telephone call from his home in New Jersey.
Women in China have long struggled to have agency in the country, a situation that many activists say has worsened since Mr. Xi came to power nearly a decade ago.
Ms. Peng returning a shot against Carla Suárez Navarro of Spain during their first-round tennis match at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.Credit...Toby Melville/Reuters
Ms. Peng carved out a professional tennis career that meant taking on officials who tried to dictate whom she could train with, what tournaments she could play in and how much money she could keep for herself.
When it comes to an accusation of sexual misconduct, however, the state has proved to be more resistant to change. The moment Ms. Peng posted her #MeToo allegations, Mr. Teng said, “she was barely protected by the law, and it was all politics that determined her fate.”
Born in the city of Xiangtan, where her father was a police officer, Ms. Peng was introduced to tennis by an uncle when she was 8. At 12, she required surgery to correct a congenital heart defect that left people doubting she could continue to play.
“They thought I would leave tennis,” she said in an Adidas ad campaign in 2008, “but surprisingly, I didn’t give up. Maybe because I love tennis so much I decided to have this operation.”
After the surgery, she was sent to Tianjin, where she was drafted into China’s Soviet-style sports machine, designed to churn out international competitors, especially in the Olympics. She ultimately competed in the Olympics three times, beginning with Beijing in 2008.
By the mid-2000s, Ms. Peng decided she was no longer willing to give more than half of her earnings away to the state. She and three other Chinese players decided to break out of the state’s control, effectively by threatening to stop playing.
When she made the decision in 2005 to “fly solo,” as it was called in Chinese, a sports official criticized her for being too selfish, abandoning her “mother country.”
Ms. Peng in a match against Alicia Molik of Australia, at the Medibank Private International in January 2005 at Sydney Olympic Park.
“She thought she was Sharapova?” the official said, referring to the Russian player who was for a time the No. 1 player in women’s tennis.
Even as she took on decades of sports tradition, Ms. Peng knew how to play to China’s desire to showcase its top athletes. The head coach of the Tianjin Tennis Team, where she had trained, took credit for having “created the foundation and conditions for Peng Shuai to fly solo.”
Ms. Peng later won the doubles championship at Wimbledon in 2013 and again at the French Open in 2014. That year, playing singles, she reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open, peaking as the No. 14 player in the world. With her successes mounting, officials lauded her and other tennis champions, like Li Na, the “golden flowers” of Chinese sports.
“She was very engaging, always smiling and giggling, but also a great competitor,” Patrick McEnroe, the former player and commentator, said in an interview.
She could also be calculating. In 2018, she was suspended from the Women’s Tennis Association for offering a financial incentive to Alison Van Uytvanck to withdraw as her doubles partner after the deadline for signing up for Wimbledon in 2017. Ms. Van Uytvanck criticized her publicly then, but she has joined other tennis stars in calling for an investigation into the recent allegations.
According to the message Ms. Peng posted on Nov. 2 on her verified account on Weibo, the ubiquitous social media platform in China, she first met Mr. Zhang when she was a rising star and he was a party secretary in Tianjin, the provincial-level port city near Beijing. That would have been some time before 2012. She moved to Tianjin to start professional training in 1999 when she was 13.
Ms. Peng’s post described a conflicted relationship that alternated between playing chess and tennis with Mr. Zhang, or feeling ignored by him and ridiculed by his wife. She did not explicitly acknowledge the disparity in age and power between the two. “Romantic attraction is such a complicated thing,” she wrote.
Mr. Zhang was elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012, becoming a vice premier under Mr. Xi. He stepped down after one five-year term on the committee. Ms. Peng said it was around that time that Mr. Zhang coerced her into having sex. “I was crying the entire time,” she wrote.
Zhang Gaoli speaking during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in 2017.
Her post was censored within 34 minutes, but three weeks later, it continues to reverberate. Those who knew her from her professional tennis career continue to wonder if she is safe. Some human rights activists contend that she is being forced to take part in staged situations intended to deflect questions about what happened.
In the flurry of coverage over the weekend, most of which did not appear in Chinese state media, Ms. Peng was shown posing with stuffed animals, dining in a Beijing restaurant, appearing at a youth tournament and dialing in to a video call with the head of the International Olympic Committee.
“Can any girl fake such a sunny smile under pressure?” Hu Xijin, the editor of The Global Times, a state media tabloid, wrote on Twitter, which is banned in China.
Ms. Peng no longer appears in control of her own messaging.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more interviews with Peng Shuai,” Maria Repnikova, an assistant professor of political communication at Georgia State University and author of a new book, “Chinese Soft Power, “but I doubt that she will raise any sensitive matters.”
Reporting and research were contributed by Amy Chang Chien, Claire Fu and Matt Futterman.
10. An American hellscape: Afghan evacuations take toll on veterans, volunteers
There are many people working on these issues. I do worry about them.
Excerpts:
While this hybrid is a testament to all the beautiful parts of human behavior (compassion, creativity), it is a damning condemnation of a system gone wrong — mediocre men made messes because they were unconcerned with adherence to international legal norms and more troublingly the human rights concerns behind them. There is no acceptable loss of human life, and especially not because we simply were unmotivated to ensure the safety of people we directly endangered. Ethically, we are on the hook and we know better than to engineer hellscapes and recklessly risk lives — whether those lives are Afghan allies or those of American veterans.
An American hellscape: Afghan evacuations take toll on veterans, volunteers
Monday marks 100 days of hell for my Afghan National Army colleagues. I trained them in Afghanistan as an academic advisor in 2010 and 2011, though some were in my classroom in the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas before and after that period. Some were civilian contract interpreters or faculty at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan, some military professors, and others were pilots, commandos, and military academy students.
I am working the cases of more than 700 Afghans in hiding. The unpaid required 60-100 hours of work is a liquid that fills every crevice of my time. If I do not do this work, there is truly no one else who will because there is no alternative available and these innocent lives are at stake. I am only working on the cases of people connected to the U.S. Air Force who are in my slice of the universe, but I am inundated daily with calls for help from dozens of other families desperate for rescue. I cannot help them, but they deserve evacuation to safety just as much as every person on my list.
RELATED
Troops with family members still in the country can notify the Pentagon to help coordinate their escape.
Afghan evacuations are not something I was trained to do, prepared for, or expecting to be involved with — the crisis was thrust upon me as the American military advisor of Special Immigrant Visa applicants. I am no longer a U.S. government employee, but a full-time student on scholarship (my foci are international law and diplomacy in Islamic societies) working 4 work-study jobs for my university. I should not be the government’s plan, and yet somehow I am.
The crisis created by the abrupt American withdrawal sans a robust, detailed evacuation plan for all SIV applicants and their dependents doesn’t consider the impact on American veterans at all. The costs are serious: we are frayed, we are out of money, and we are running low on hope. I am a graduate student. I should be focused on commitments that I made (school and my jobs), not trying to gap-fill for the government of the most powerful and capable country on Earth. The veterans coalition is an ad hoc crew of nonprofit organizations staffed by volunteers at the edges of human limits. We are suffering because we are doing the heavy lifting — compiling required documents, entering them on endless spreadsheets — none of which are formatted the same, fielding Afghans’ questions, panic, and legitimate emergencies. We are resilient in our problem-solving — this is a hybrid of the American way (assuming responsibility) of doing things and the Afghan way of doing things (finding workarounds when the system fails).
While this hybrid is a testament to all the beautiful parts of human behavior (compassion, creativity), it is a damning condemnation of a system gone wrong — mediocre men made messes because they were unconcerned with adherence to international legal norms and more troublingly the human rights concerns behind them. There is no acceptable loss of human life, and especially not because we simply were unmotivated to ensure the safety of people we directly endangered. Ethically, we are on the hook and we know better than to engineer hellscapes and recklessly risk lives — whether those lives are Afghan allies or those of American veterans.
RELATED
Members of the AfghanEvac Coalition met in a video call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to press the case for additional resources to help tens of thousands of people get out of Afghanistan.
The prevailing approach of the U.S. government, both the Trump administration and the Biden administration, has not been brave, responsible, or honorable. It has just chewed up innocent people and spat them out, mangling American lives and Afghan lives in the process. It’s as if we voluntarily opted to create fodder for terrorists like the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Haqqani Network, Al-Qaeda, and Lashkar-e-Tayba. Even ISIS benefits from this narrative we’ve created — one of interference, one of damage, one of exploitation for the purposes of private corporation enrichment or male military officer’s promotion potential. We have much to answer for — but it should not be a debt of blood of American veterans and its certainly not appropriate or acceptable to abandon our Afghan allies. We promised to get them out and we risk a low-intensity genocide if we fail to keep that promise.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) enshrines the rights of all persons, by virtue of being born, to security, migration, asylum from perspective, and freedom of movement. These standards were established by the world in the wake of the Holocaust of World War II. The purpose was to protect human life to ensure that genocide would not threaten the survival of populations and that another world war could be averted. There are plenty of laws that support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the U.S. has made no effort to comply with these standards nor acknowledge the motives and commitments embedded within them.
The evacuation burden should not be on American veterans’ shoulders, and America must muster the political will to clean up the mess we made — it will not get better by ignoring it and we cannot afford more blood on our hands.
Lark S. Escobar is both an international educator and student scholar, interested in genocide prevention, cultural memory, religious heritage, human rights, international law, terrorism studies, and human security in MENA, Central Asia, and South Asia. She has taught in seven countries in higher education contexts, including creating and implementing an American English & Culture degree at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan where she was an academic, gender, and culture advisor, heading the English department for NATO headquarters and designing and conducting university faculty professional developing and secondary educator training throughout the Middle East.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times senior managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
11. Marine Corps compliance with vaccine mandate on course to be military’s worst
Excerpts:
For Marine Corps leadership, much of the concern now will turn to whether unvaccinated Marines are congregated in certain units, Lapan said. That would affect how drastically commanders may need to rebalance their personnel to ensure deployment standards.
Some highly deployable units appear to have overcome those issues. The crisis-response unit that supported the emergency evacuation from Kabul in August was 98 percent vaccinated months before then, officials said.
But overall, the disparity in Marines’ vaccination rate compared to those of other services “seems to indicate a failure of leadership to get ahead of the vaccine hesitation within their own ranks,” said Rachel E. VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Berger, speaking at a national security conference earlier this month, appeared to acknowledge the behavioral pattern is worrisome.
“We’re challenged by disinformation. … I’m concerned about it because we have to be ready to go every day,” he said. “We are taught that your unit is more important than you are.”
Marine Corps compliance with vaccine mandate on course to be military’s worst
Up to 10,000 active-duty Marines will not be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus when their deadline arrives in coming days, a trajectory expected to yield the U.S. military’s worst immunization rate.
While 94 percent of Marine Corps personnel have met the vaccination requirement or are on a path to do so, according to the latest official data, for the remainder it is too late to begin a regimen and complete it by the service’s Nov. 28 deadline. Within an institution built upon the belief that orders are to be obeyed, and one that brands itself the nation’s premier crisis-response force, it is a vexing outcome.
The holdouts will join approximately 9,600 Air Force personnel who have outright refused the vaccine, did not report their status, or sought an exemption on medical or religious grounds, causing a dilemma for commanders tasked with maintaining combat-ready forces — and marking the latest showdown over President Biden’s authority to impose vaccination as a condition of continued government service.
“Marines know they’re an expeditionary force, and pride themselves on discipline and being first to fight,” said David Lapan, a retired Marine Corps officer and former communications chief for the service. Leadership, he said, should be alarmed that the Marine Corps ethos of always being ready for the next mission appears to be tarnished in this case. “Why,” Lapan asked, “did they decide not to follow a direct order?”
Answering that question will be essential, he added, “if this is somehow indicative of a problem” that could arise again in the future.
Then, as the cutoff to be in compliance drew near, the Marines’ top general, Commandant David H. Berger, and his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Troy E. Black, distributed a video message to the force imploring those who had not been vaccinated to get it done. They appealed to Marines’ sense of fidelity and calmly explained that the Marine Corps would be less capable unless everyone met the requirement.
“When something bad happens around the world and the president says, ‘I need to know how long it’s going to take to get Marines there,’ it’s too late then to get vaccinated,” Berger said in the video.
“It’s challenging for us to be able to continue the mission,” Black added, “if we’re not ready to go.”
Berger spoke last: “We need every single Marine in the unit to be vaccinated. We don’t have extra Marines. We’re a pretty small force, and we have to make sure that everybody on the team is ready to go all the time. That’s our job.”
The Marine Corps is the U.S. military’s least-populous branch of service. Numbering about 183,000, it’s roughly one-third the size of the active-duty Army but fills a significant role within the Defense Department’s portfolio. Whenever there’s a high-stakes emergency overseas — such as the hasty evacuation from Afghanistan this past summer — Marines are often among the first U.S. personnel to set foot in harm’s way.
Importantly, the service’s coexistence within the Navy Department means Marines routinely operate from ships at sea, living in close, enclosed spaces where the virus can spread readily. Navy data shows that 99.7 percent of sailors have received at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine ahead of the same Nov. 28 deadline — the top figure among all military services.
The general’s message, circulated Nov. 8, appears to have made little impact. At that time, the Marine Corps’ partial vaccination rate — an indicator of newly obtained shots — was 94 percent and remained unchanged as of Wednesday, according to official data. The rate slowed in recent weeks overall, indicating the pool of Marines who intended to comply has all but dried up.
A spokesperson for Berger declined to comment, pending a final tally.
Capt. Andrew Wood, a Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon, would not address questions about the service’s vaccination rate. He issued a written statement instead. “The Marine Corps has always recognized the threats posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic as a readiness issue, which is why we have consistently emphasized the importance of receiving the vaccine,” it said. “We are still ready to fight and win our nation’s battles should we be called.”
It’s unclear how many unvaccinated Marines have requested medical or religious exemptions, or how many of those requests have been granted, but such cases are expected to be exceptionally rare. The Navy has granted six permanent medical exemptions and no religious exemptions — for any vaccine — in the last seven years, officials said. The Army has granted just one permanent medical exemption and, like the Navy, zero religious exemptions, the service said. The Army’s compliance deadline is Dec. 15 — the last for active-duty personnel — and 95 percent of soldiers have received at least one dose of the vaccine, service data show.
Air Force officials are processing about 4,800 religious exemption requests but so far have not approved any. Nearly 1,400 airmen have received medical exemptions, but most are temporary, said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman. Temporary medical exemptions can be issued when someone has a current coronavirus infection and is awaiting a doctor’s authorization to be vaccinated. Its vaccination deadline was Nov. 2.
Wood said Marine Corps data on refusals and exemptions would be made available after the deadline passes.
Guidance from the military services outlines escalating punishment for vaccine refusers, starting with counseling from commanders and moving onto letters of reprimand and ultimately dismissal from the service. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told reporters Thursday that each Marine refusing a vaccine will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
“We’re just not going to all kick them out on the day of the deadline itself,” he said, predicting “minimal impact on our overall readiness.”
The military’s vaccine mandate has energized conservative politicians eager to challenge Biden’s directives covering private businesses as well as government workers. Some predicted an exodus from the ranks and warned of crippling strains on the defense industrial base.
Earlier this month, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) took the extraordinary step of firing the state’s National Guard commander and ordering his replacement to make vaccination optional while personnel are under state control. Other states have expressed interest in enacting similar policies.
Vaccination rates throughout much of the National Guard and reserves remain well below those of the active-duty force. These units tend to be less connected to the rigid top-down environment that governs daily life on active duty. Military analysts also associate vaccine hesitancy among service members with the circulation of false information online, broader political and societal attitudes, and cultural traits unique to each service.
Marines, on average, are younger, predominantly male and — like many enlisted personnel throughout the armed forces — generally don’t have four-year college degrees, according to 2018 Pentagon data. All of those factors contribute to lower vaccination rates in the broader U.S. population by some degree, according to government data and surveys. And compared to civilians in the same age range, Marines generally are more physically fit and thus may simply doubt the need to be vaccinated.
For Marine Corps leadership, much of the concern now will turn to whether unvaccinated Marines are congregated in certain units, Lapan said. That would affect how drastically commanders may need to rebalance their personnel to ensure deployment standards.
Some highly deployable units appear to have overcome those issues. The crisis-response unit that supported the emergency evacuation from Kabul in August was 98 percent vaccinated months before then, officials said.
But overall, the disparity in Marines’ vaccination rate compared to those of other services “seems to indicate a failure of leadership to get ahead of the vaccine hesitation within their own ranks,” said Rachel E. VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Berger, speaking at a national security conference earlier this month, appeared to acknowledge the behavioral pattern is worrisome.
“We’re challenged by disinformation. … I’m concerned about it because we have to be ready to go every day,” he said. “We are taught that your unit is more important than you are.”
12. The Taliban is No ‘Partner,’ Says Top US Special Ops Commander
The Taliban is No ‘Partner,’ Says Top US Special Ops Commander
After withdrawing, the US must rely on other Afghans and foreign governments for intelligence to track and target ISIS-K.
A member of the Taliban movement (banned in Russia) stands guard at Kabul airport where an Ilyushin Il-76 airlifter of the Russian Aerospace Forces has delivered humanitarian aid Photo by Valery Sharifulin\TASS via Getty Image
After withdrawing, the US must rely on other Afghans and foreign governments for intelligence to track and target ISIS-K.
Technology Editor
November 20, 2021 02:26 PM ET
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Three months after the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan, the top commander of U.S. special operations forces said he does not see the new Taliban government as a partner against the terrorist threat from ISIS, but rather he urged the United States to continue working with other Afghans and foreign governments there.
Since President Joe Biden announced in May that he would end the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, he and Defense Department leaders have claimed that U.S. forces could continue to hit key targets there via “over the horizon” operations without ground troops like forward observers or joint terminal attack controllers. On Friday, U.S. Special Operations Command’s Gen. Richard Clarke said that in that time it has become more difficult to hunt and find terrorists from afar. And while natural enmity between the Taliban and ISIS suggested to some that the United States may be able to work with the new Afghan government on counterterrorism operations, Clarke disagreed.
“I don’t see them as a partner,” Clarke said of the Taliban. In fact, the threat of terrorism across the region “still exists,” and is growing, he said.
“In some ways it’s metastasized. It’s actually harder to track,” Clarke said, in an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, in Canada.
Since August, ISIS-K, the Afghanistan-specific incarnation of the terrorist group that emanated from Jordan, Syria and Iraq, has grown more bold, striking Hamid Karzai International Airport in August, killing U.S. personnel, Afghan civilians, and Taliban fighters.
Clarke suggested that the United States may still be able to collect intelligence from on-the-ground sources within Afghanistan in order to strike ISIS-K targets or disrupt the group’s activities.
“We’ve built amazing counterterrorism capabilities over the last 20 years. Some of those capabilities can still be used in Afghanistan today. We have to work with Afghans that remain in Afghanistan to see and sense and we have to work with regional allies. There are still other embassies that remain in Afghanistan. There are still other intel threads. But the most important thing for us in Afghanistan is to understand the intel picture of where ISIS-K exists there today.”
Without U.S. boots on the ground, however, the job won’t come as easy, Clarke said. “It’s going to be harder. Anytime you have a physical presence on the ground it stimulates the enemy forces. You see and sense with partner forces. So it is going to be harder.”
13. IntelBrief: Fallout from the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict - The Soufan Center
IntelBrief: Fallout from the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict - The Soufan Center
November 22, 2021
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IntelBrief: Fallout from the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict
Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool
Bottom Line Up Front
- On November 19, Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges.
- On sites like Gab and Telegram, far-right extremists, including militia members, white supremacists, and accelerationists, all celebrated the verdict and used it to spread propaganda and recruit new members.
- There are obvious socio-legal questions raised in the Rittenhouse trial that will be raised again in future shootings at protests, rallies, and even riots.
- There is no foreign threat remotely as dangerous as the seemingly deliberate self-destruction and willful ignorance of our modern-day polity.
One of the most damaging issues impacting U.S. national security is not only the worsening social and political divide, but also the vitriol and polarization that now defines U.S. politics and imperils our capacity for logical debate on security imperatives. The war of words is accompanied by real threats, spanning violent rhetoric from elected officials to an unending civil war fetish promoted by hyper-partisan media networks and commentators, particularly amplified since the Capitol Insurrection. This divisive rhetoric makes it extremely challenging for the U.S. to effectively address a bevy of threats. Moreover, social media channels stoke and magnify social divisions, as well as provide a dangerous microcosm for radicalizing and mobilizing violent extremism. The recently concluded trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is the latest symptom of our American sickness, with legal claims of self-defense amidst the larger issues of guns and violence in the face of public calls for racial justice and police reform.
On November 19, a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on all five charges he faced: one count of first-degree intentional homicide, and use of a weapon; one count of first-degree reckless homicide, and use of a weapon; one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and use of a weapon; and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, and use of a dangerous weapon. Rittenhouse’s legal team claimed self-defense, and the jury agreed with this defense. From a strictly legal standpoint and stripped of all social and historical context for these laws, the verdict was unsurprising; state laws broadly favor self-defense claims and gun rights. But from a societal standpoint, the trial again demonstrated how the flood of guns, and more specifically the now common-place open carry of semi-automatic rifles and handguns at public gatherings, has created a permanent and worsening state of menace. On social media and sites like Gab and Telegram, far-right extremists, including militia members, white supremacists, and accelerationists, all celebrated the verdict and used it to spread propaganda and recruit new members.
With such rhetoric increasing the likelihood of a recurrence of such an event, broader social-legal questions raised in the Rittenhouse trial must be addressed. Is it reasonable to claim self-defense if you largely created the threat in the first place? Rittenhouse crossed state lines to bring a gun to a riot, so should he legitimately be able to claim fear of someone taking his semi-automatic rifle, when potentially perceived as the threat himself, to justify shooting them? This trial has furthermore laid bare once again the disparate treatment in the legal system of Americans based on race. Tragically, the verdict has also reinforced the momentum behind extremists and vigilantes attending protests for racial justice and having their violence legally justified. While second amendment protections remain critical, the potential for this verdict to exacerbate such violence and intimidation rips at the fabric of American society and endangers individuals’ rights to free speech and assembly.
The open carry of guns as a political and social statement is, among western democracies, a uniquely American phenomenon. So too is the permanent political campaigns that run on endless anger, manufactured outrage, and massive sums of money. The combination of these two, guns and violent sociopolitical rhetoric, is anathema to a stable and healthy democracy. There are few foreign threats remotely as dangerous as the seemingly deliberate self-destruction and willful ignorance of our modern-day polity. Furthermore, social fissures have been seized upon by U.S. adversaries, providing endless fodder for the amplification of conspiracies theories and disinformation, but tailored for a partisan audience. Overriding all this anger is the innumerable number of guns that turn disagreement into disaster. Currently, all the momentum in American social and political rhetoric and reality is for further political anger and violence. Because every single issue and event in American discourse must now be cast as a battle, viewed through a hyper-partisan lens, there is no plausible outcome in which there are not more incidents of violence on American streets during protests and rallies. By design and drift, America is now in a constant state of armed self-defense from itself and the consequences of this madness, both immediate and long-term, which constitute one of the greatest threats to its security in generations. Given the ubiquitous presence of guns in America, this trial sets a dangerous precedent, excusing armed attendance of protests or riots and use of violence without consequence, and could embolden such use of weapons by the violent far-right in public spaces.
14. Opinion | Just Because You Don’t Believe in Conspiracy Theories Doesn’t Mean You’re Always Right
Some useful food for thought.
I do not believe in these wild conspiracy theories that are so popular today.
But I do try to keep in mind Socrates and the Socratic paradox:
"I know that I know nothing."
"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."
Opinion | Just Because You Don’t Believe in Conspiracy Theories Doesn’t Mean You’re Always Right
Guest Essay
Just Because You Don’t Believe in Conspiracy Theories Doesn’t Mean You’re Always Right
Nov. 21, 2021
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Mr. Rivera is an editing fellow in Opinion.
Every so often, something so awful and senseless happens that it’s hard to fully absorb it. An apartment building collapses as residents sleep within. A movie star’s prop gun fires a real bullet on a film set, killing a young mother. A concert crowd morphs into a melee that leaves people dead and injured.
After each such catastrophe, there looms a question: What’s the real story of what happened here? Amid a stream of facts and rumors via breaking news alerts, the loudest answers often come from two camps: Let’s call them the conspiracists and the reformists.
One rants about shadowy schemes, nefarious figures, unseen hands and global cabals. The other preaches the gospel of rationality, a doctrine holding that even if all is not yet known, all is eventually knowable, and that if sensible rules are followed, chaos can be prevented.
Take as an example Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, where a crowd surge earlier this month left at least 10 people dead and injured hundreds. “It was like hell,” one attendee said. Some conspiracists were quick to assert another view: The concert wasn’t just “like” hell. It was, rather, an elaborate satanic ritual, perhaps designed to summon a portal to hell.
The signs were all there, they tweeted. There was the stage that looked like an inverted cross. There was the fact that the Church of Satan was founded on April 30, 1966 — 666 months and six days before the night of the concert, Nov. 5, 2021. And that date was also the 66th birthday of Kris Jenner, the mother of Kylie Jenner, Mr. Scott’s girlfriend. These outlandish ideas are not relegated to the fringes of the internet; some videos making such claims have millions of views. A single comment on one of these posts (“The music industry is demonic and collects souls”) garnered tens of thousands of likes on its own.
A conspiracist’s natural habitats are TikTok, Reddit, Facebook and YouTube, fertile ground for planting seeds of paranoia and fear through seconds-long clips and doctored photos. After the Astroworld tragedy, a prominent QAnon figure reportedly articulated the mantra of a conspiracist: “There is NO such thing as ‘coincidence.’ Ever.”
Enter the reformist, for whom a catastrophe comes down to predictable human error. According to the reformist, the cause of the crowd surge at Astroworld was a series of egregious mistakes: inadequate planning, a set of safety measures not properly put in place or a performer who should have stopped the show sooner.
Crisis could have been averted if only the proper procedures had been followed, the reformist argues on CNN or MSNBC, in an op-ed or Twitter thread. With sober policy prescriptions and technocratic resolve, the reformist suggests, we can bring to heel the chaos that is human existence. We need only follow the rules — and their smart advice.
The dichotomy between figures embodying either chaos or order goes back millenniums, and exists in cultures around the world. It is exemplified by the pairing of the ancient Greek gods Dionysus, the god of wine, revelry and mayhem, and Apollo, the god of the sun, temperance and rational thinking. Philosophers, Nietzsche most notably, have long commented on the relationship between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
We humans need narratives to process what happens around us or in the world at large. As the popular historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari has said: “The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities.”
Both the conspiracists and the reformists are engaged in this utterly human process. By connecting events and facts, and tying red strings between them on their metaphorical pin boards, the conspiracist and the reformist each develop a thesis about what happened. Stories help us live with each other and with ourselves, and in the wake of great and sudden suffering, we need something to keep us going.
It might be difficult to see how a story about a satanic blood sacrifice helps people live with themselves. But the conspiracist’s story offers a kind of clemency for the people involved, and perhaps for humankind at large. The image of concertgoers booing a woman who climbed a platform to try to stop the show at Astroworld is difficult to stomach. It can be easier to believe that the events that transpired were a satanic plot than to see them as a result of mundane human indifference.
The soothing quality of the reformist’s story is even easier to identify. Their program of measured improvement offers hope for progress and the promise of control. For that, the reformist attitude is to be admired. If it’s true that “the story in which you believe shapes the society that you create,” as Mr. Harari recently said in an interview, then reformists, with their efforts to eliminate systemic malfunctions, are working toward a better world, or at the very least, a more safe and just one.
The conspiracist and the reformist tend to double down on the narratives valued by their respective communities. The reformist lives in a world where expertise and problem-solving have cultural cachet. The conspiracist lives in world where spirituality and belief in higher powers can answer a lot of the big questions.
Of course the distinctions between the reformist and the conspiracist, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, are not absolute. Within any one person, the lines blur: Many of us can be reformists and conspiracists, prone to mysticism in some areas and beholden to reason in others. A tree may fall and nearly kill you, leading you to believe that this was a sign from the universe that you must live life to the fullest and appreciate each day — even as you email the city council about hiring more arborists.
There are problems with the stories that both conspiracists and reformists peddle. The conspiracist’s story, taken to its extreme, would have us believe that there is nothing we can do about accidents or problems because they are spawned by devils and cabals, malevolent forces beyond our control. The extreme version of the reformist’s story, by contrast, would have us believe that there’s nothing we can’t do about accidents or problems, that reason can secure us total control over our environment, and even over ourselves.
The truth is that catastrophes occupy the gray space between the darkness of the conspiracist’s narrative and the light of the reformist’s narrative. We are more in control than the conspiracists think; we are less in control than the reformists think.
American history offers many examples of conspiracists and reformists differing in their interpretation of events, from the Salem witch trials to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Or, take two other horrors of recent months: the fatal shooting on the set of the film “Rust,” and the Surfside condo building collapse. Both inspired conspiracy theories, and both inspired lectures and expert analyses of societal failures. Surely, more could have been done to prevent these tragedies — there were procedural and administrative failures in both instances — but we can only ever reduce the possibility of disaster, not eliminate it completely.
There’s a risk here, of course, of false equivalence. Though the conspiracist and the reformist have much in common, the consequences of their stories are obviously quite different. Conspiracy theories such as those advanced by QAnon adherents can breed apathy or extremism or undermine civil society, and they have led to violence and threats of violence.
Reformist narratives might be sanctimonious, but they tend to come from a desire to protect people and improve the world. Still, they can lead to excess caution, such as an unwillingness to discuss an eventual end to masking mandates at schools in some blue states, even when it’s not yet clear what effects two years of masking will have on children.
The true problem with the conspiracist and the reformist, however, is that by telling stories about a catastrophe’s meaning, they assent to the premise of the question, to the hubristic notion that the world should bend itself to human reasoning, that its nature and events and accidents will align with our storytelling. Each camp acts as if its stories are natural discoveries, rather than constructed narratives.
And what’s often lacking in both these camps is humility and empathy. Living in the gray area requires a healthy dose of both.
Empathy is what’s required, for example, to narrow the gulf on Covid: the conspiracist deniers and anti-vaxxers on one side, and the double-masked-and-triple-vaxxed reformists on the other, each railing against anyone whose choices they disagree with.
What would Covid messaging have looked like if humility had been built into the stories we told about masks and vaccines? If we had understood them to be highly effective preventive measures, rather than either silver bullets or ruses, would they have mutated into symbols, into sharp ideological lines dividing the nation?
Humility is a useful quality, too, when regarding the disaster of human-wrought climate change: It’s required to accept that a great deal of damage has already been done, and that our ability to mitigate future damage is already limited. Admitting so doesn’t mean abandoning the fight altogether.
What’s the harm, you might ask, of stories that make some sense of the senseless? Perhaps none. But they can rob us of the opportunity to sit with our feelings, to grieve our losses, to rage at the chaos of the universe, at our animal helplessness, at the random unfairness of life. Both conspiracists and reformists tell stories that explain the “why” before we’ve even processed the “what.”
Adrian J. Rivera (@lwaysadrian) is the 2021-2022 New York Times Opinion editing fellow.
15. Russia Won’t Let Ukraine Go Without a Fight
Excerpts:
Although on November 18 Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland characterized the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as “ironclad,” the language of treaty allies, the United States extends no formal security commitments to Ukraine. Such statements are eerily reminiscent of political support signaled to Georgia in the run-up to the Russia-Georgia war in 2008. Not only is Russia unlikely to be deterred by diplomatic terms of art that lack credibility, it will try to injure the United States’ reputation when Washington appears so overextended. The United States must act, but it should take care not to mislead Ukrainian leadership into expecting support that will not materialize. If the White House does not see a military role for itself in Ukraine, as was the case in 2014, it should tell this privately and candidly to Kyiv so that Ukraine’s leaders can operate with a full awareness of the geopolitical reality.
Secondly, whether or not a war breaks out in Ukraine in the coming months, the United States and its European allies need to be more honest about the current diplomatic cul-de-sac in which they find themselves. Russia is not in a geopolitical retreat, and Ukraine is unlikely to yield. A continued contest for influence in Ukraine is unavoidable and will get worse before it gets better. However, that does not preclude the search for a diplomatic solution that reduces the risk of the rivalry spiraling out of control.
Ukraine is at the center of that solution, and these conversations must reflect Ukrainian agency. But paradoxically, it is not Ukraine but Washington that has been visibly absent from the diplomatic process. The ongoing conflict is the single most important source of instability between Russia and the United States—Washington needs to tackle it head on. The search for strategic stability will struggle to coexist with conflict. But as competition between the world’s two major nuclear powers intensifies, it is not a luxury or a mirage. It is a necessity.
Russia Won’t Let Ukraine Go Without a Fight
Moscow Threatens War to Reverse Kyiv’s Pro-Western Drift
November 22, 2021
Foreign Affairs · by Michael Kimmage and Michael Kofman · November 22, 2021
Ominous signs indicate that Russia may conduct a military offensive in Ukraine as early as the coming winter. Moscow has quietly built up its forces along the Ukrainian border over the past several months, which could be a prelude to a military operation that aims to resolve the political deadlock in Ukraine in its favor. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin may once again be engaging in coercive diplomacy, this time around Moscow may not be bluffing. If no agreement is reached, the conflict may renew on a much larger scale.
Why would Putin risk geopolitical and economic upheaval by reigniting the military confrontation with Ukraine? After all, he has good reason to be invested in the regional status quo. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, walking away with one of the largest land grabs in Europe since World War II. Western sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion have not bitten particularly hard, and Russia’s macroeconomic situation is stable. Russia also retains a firm hold on the European energy market: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will cement German dependence on Russian natural gas, marches toward activation despite legal snags. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia are in the midst of strategic stability talks. Putin met with U.S. President Joe Biden in June as part of the effort to build a more predictable relationship between the countries.
Below the surface, however, Russia and Ukraine are on the trajectory toward renewal of this unresolved conflict, which may redraw the map of Europe once more and upend Washington’s efforts at stabilizing its relationship with Russia. Year by year, Moscow has been losing political influence in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv took a strong stance on Russian demands last year, indicating it would not compromise for the sake of working with Putin. European nations appear to have backed Ukraine’s position, and Kyiv has simultaneously expanded its security cooperation with Russia’s American and European rivals.
As Moscow has been growing more confident politically and economically, Washington’s shift of attention and resources to its competition with China may have convinced Putin that Ukraine is now a peripheral interest for the United States. Russian leaders have signaled that they have grown tired of diplomacy and find Ukraine’s growing integration with the United States and NATO intolerable. The stage is set for Moscow to reset this equation through force—unless Moscow, Washington, and Kyiv are able to find a peaceful resolution.
PREPARING FOR WAR
Russia’s force posture does not suggest that invasion is imminent. Quite possibly, no political decision to launch a military operation has been made. That said, Russian military activity in recent months is well outside the normal training cycle. Units from thousands of miles have deployed to the Western Military District, which borders Ukraine. Armies from the Caucasus have sent units into Crimea. These are not routine training activities but rather an effort to preposition units and equipment for potential military action. Furthermore, many of the units appear to be moving at night to avoid closer scrutiny, unlike the previous buildup in March and April.
The scenario of a wider war is entirely plausible. Should it come to pass, Putin’s choice to expand a simmering conflict will not be impulsive. The legacy of the 2014 Ukraine crisis remains more conducive to escalation than to the freezing of this conflict into an uneasy peace.
What has changed over the past year? First, Russian strategy in Ukraine has not yielded a political solution that Moscow can accept. After a 2018 campaign that suggested some openness to dialogue, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hard turn away from seeking a compromise with Russia a year ago eliminated any hope that Moscow can achieve its objectives through diplomatic engagement. Moscow sees no path out from Western sanctions, and talks between Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine are going nowhere. As these political and diplomatic efforts flounder, Moscow knows that previous efforts to use force have paid dividends.
At the same time, Ukraine is expanding its partnerships with the United States, the United Kingdom, and other NATO states. The United States has provided lethal military assistance, and NATO is helping to train the Ukrainian military. These ties are a thorn in Moscow’s side, and Russia has slowly shifted from considering Ukraine’s membership in NATO as a redline to opposing the growing structural Ukrainian defense cooperation with its Western adversaries. From the Kremlin’s point of view, if Ukrainian territory is to become an instrument against Russia in the service of the United States, and the Russian military retains the ability to do something about it, then the use of force is a more than viable option.
Russia may have leverage over Europe, owing to surging gas prices.
Zelensky’s administration also appears weak and increasingly desperate to find domestic support. He has not done much to reduce corruption or to separate Ukraine from its long tradition of oligarchic rule. His October 2021 approval rating, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, stands at 24.7 percent. Russian officials have made clear that they see no point in negotiating with Zelensky and have spent the year actively delegitimizing his administration. If Moscow has dispensed with even the pretense of diplomatic engagement, this suggests that the use of force is growing ever more likely.
Russia’s domestic position and broader geopolitical developments are no less important. Putin’s regime appears secure and the opposition is heavily repressed. Moscow has rebuilt its financial position since the onset of Western sanctions in 2014 and currently has some $620 billion in foreign currency reserves. Russia also may have considerable leverage over Europe this year, owing to surging gas prices and energy supply shortages. Meanwhile, Europe has been mired in handwringing after the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and is still struggling to define its goal of “strategic autonomy.” The Biden administration is focused on China, signaling that Russia is lower on the agenda and Europe is not a top policy priority. Ukraine thus represents a secondary interest within a secondary theater.
Over the course of the past year, the Russian leadership has used stark rhetoric, drawing attention to its redlines in Ukraine. Moscow does not believe that the United States has been taking it seriously. In October 2021, Putin noted that although Ukraine may not formally be granted membership into NATO, “military development of the territory is already underway. And this really poses a threat to Russia.”
It is doubtful that these are empty words. Russian leadership sees no prospect for a diplomatic resolution and thinks Ukraine is slipping into the U.S. security orbit. It may for this reason see war as inevitable. Russian leaders do not believe using force would be easy or cost free—but they perceive that Ukraine is on an unacceptable trajectory and that they have few options to salvage their preexisting policy. They may also have concluded that resorting to military options will be less costly now than it will be in the future.
DEADLOCKED DIPLOMACY
Russia won a peculiar victory during its 2014–15 military offensive in Ukraine. It forced unfavorable cease-fire agreements on Kyiv. Ukraine’s military has improved considerably since then, but so has Russia’s. The margin of Russian quantitative and qualitative superiority remains substantial. Russia’s success on the battlefield, however, did not translate into diplomatic success in 2014 or thereafter. The agreement that emerged from the war was called the Minsk Protocol, after the city in which it was negotiated. It proved to be a lose-lose settlement: Ukraine never regained its territorial sovereignty. The United States and its European allies, which avoided a potentially escalating conflict with a nuclear power, failed to compel Russia to withdraw through sanctions. And Russian influence over Ukraine—apart from the territories it either annexed or invaded—has since 2015 been steadily diminishing.
Ukraine signed an association agreement with the European Union in 2014, which brought it into the fold of European regulation. This was the very outcome Russia had been trying to prevent. Kyiv has continued to press for NATO membership, and even though it has no immediate prospect of entering the alliance, its defense cooperation with NATO members has only deepened. Although Zelensky ran on a platform of negotiations with Moscow and attempted some diplomatic engagement after taking office, he reversed course in 2020, shutting down pro-Russian TV stations and taking a hard line on Russian demands. The Zelensky administration has placed Ukraine on a path to “Euro-Atlantic integration,” the phrase that American diplomats consistently use to describe Ukraine’s strategic orientation—the road that leads away from Russia.
Although the fighting in eastern Ukraine subsided after 2016, the simmering conflict has obscured an unstable state of affairs in Europe. Russia and the United States, whose influence overlaps in eastern Europe, are set to be adversaries in what Washington now terms a “strategic competition.” But since 2014, the gap between U.S. rhetoric and action in Ukraine and elsewhere remains open to exploitation.
Putin could realistically try to divide Ukraine in two.
The Syrian conflict exposed a lack of American resolve with regard to its stated goal: “Assad must go.” Washington did not push back against a Russian military presence, allowing Moscow to expand its influence across the Middle East. The messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the dustup over the AUKUS (Australia–United Kingdom–United States) submarine deal with Australia, which left out and angered France, have revealed serious problems of coordination within the transatlantic alliance. Washington appears war weary, and Russia likely questions whether its declarations of political support for Ukraine are backed by credible resolve.
If Putin assesses U.S. officials’ support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity to be insincere—and there is not much to suggest otherwise—he will not be deterred from changing the regional balance of power through force. It would be foolish for him to attempt to conquer all of Ukraine, an enormous country of more than 40 million people, but it would not be unrealistic for him to try to divide the country in two or impose a new settlement that seeks to reverse Ukraine’s slide into “Euro-Atlantic integration” and security cooperation with the United States.
Moscow has long sought to revise the post–Cold War settlement. Russian leaders might imagine that rather than yielding further efforts at containment, a war on this scale would over time compel a conversation on Russia’s role in European security. Russia’s goal has long been to restore a regional order in which Russia and the West have equal say on security outcomes in Europe. It is doubtful that Putin believes he can achieve such a settlement through persuasion or conventional diplomacy. Russian military action could scare leading European states—some of whom see themselves relegated to a secondary place in U.S. strategy and wish to position themselves between China and the United States—into accepting a new arrangement with Moscow. This is not to say that such an outcome is likely, but it may be the possibility on which Russian leaders are focusing.
FINDING STABILITY IN CONFLICT
The United States should draw two conclusions from Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine. The first is that this is not likely to be merely another coercive display, despite mixed messaging from Moscow. “Our recent warnings have been noticed and are having an effect,” Putin declared on November 18. One day earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry published private letters from France and Germany on diplomacy related to Ukraine, an insult to Russia’s Minsk partners. The key to Washington’s response will be to prepare for the possibility that a war could unfold in 2022, to conduct anticipatory coordination with European allies, and to make clear the consequences of such action to Moscow. By acting now, the United States can work with its European partners to raise the economic and political costs for Russia of military action, possibly decreasing the likelihood of war.
The failure to develop a coordinated response to Russian aggression has previously cost Ukraine dearly. In 2014, it was not until Russian-backed separatists shot down a civilian passenger jet in July—long after the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas region—that Europe got onboard with sanctions. The United States must avoid that ruinous precedent of piecemeal and reactive policymaking this time around. While Washington may wish to preserve certain covert options, it should publicly describe the basic outlines of its support for Ukrainian sovereignty in tandem with its European allies, and well before the outbreak of major military conflict. That would require a detailed articulation of Western resolve and Western redlines in the next few weeks. The humanitarian and strategic magnitude of a large-scale Russian invasion calls for nothing less.
Although on November 18 Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland characterized the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as “ironclad,” the language of treaty allies, the United States extends no formal security commitments to Ukraine. Such statements are eerily reminiscent of political support signaled to Georgia in the run-up to the Russia-Georgia war in 2008. Not only is Russia unlikely to be deterred by diplomatic terms of art that lack credibility, it will try to injure the United States’ reputation when Washington appears so overextended. The United States must act, but it should take care not to mislead Ukrainian leadership into expecting support that will not materialize. If the White House does not see a military role for itself in Ukraine, as was the case in 2014, it should tell this privately and candidly to Kyiv so that Ukraine’s leaders can operate with a full awareness of the geopolitical reality.
Secondly, whether or not a war breaks out in Ukraine in the coming months, the United States and its European allies need to be more honest about the current diplomatic cul-de-sac in which they find themselves. Russia is not in a geopolitical retreat, and Ukraine is unlikely to yield. A continued contest for influence in Ukraine is unavoidable and will get worse before it gets better. However, that does not preclude the search for a diplomatic solution that reduces the risk of the rivalry spiraling out of control.
Ukraine is at the center of that solution, and these conversations must reflect Ukrainian agency. But paradoxically, it is not Ukraine but Washington that has been visibly absent from the diplomatic process. The ongoing conflict is the single most important source of instability between Russia and the United States—Washington needs to tackle it head on. The search for strategic stability will struggle to coexist with conflict. But as competition between the world’s two major nuclear powers intensifies, it is not a luxury or a mirage. It is a necessity.
Foreign Affairs · by Michael Kimmage and Michael Kofman · November 22, 2021
16. Decoding the CCP: BRI means Bribery and Repression Initiative
I like the description as China's annexation wish list.
Excerpt:
The One China Policy is really just Beijing’s annexation wish list.
Indian commentators have been particularly good at making the language more accurate, including making it clear that what China calls the “South China Sea” could more correctly be called the ASEAN Sea. And that the location where the PLA is causing all that trouble is not the India-China border, it is the India-Tibet border.
YOUR turn. Give it a go. What CCP-terms are you blithely accepting that don’t mean anything like what Beijing wants you to think they mean? “Win-win”? “Offending the Chinese nation?” “One country two-systems?” What do you think they mean?
If we let the CCP get into our heads and shape our language, we are letting it shape our thoughts, which shape our actions. Time for us all to give our heads a good shake, dislodging some of those linguistic blockades so that we can see, and say, more accurately what the real problems are. And then do something about them.
Decoding the CCP: BRI means Bribery and Repression Initiative - The Sunday Guardian Live
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Published : November 20, 2021, 9:13 pm | Updated : November 20, 2021, 9:13 PM
If we let the CCP get into our heads and shape our language, we are letting it shape our thoughts, which shape our actions.
Alexandria, US: In true Orwellian newspeak fashion, the Chinese Communist Party has created a whole new vocabulary arsenal with which to wage war on the mental battlefield. Let’s take a look at some of the terms it uses, what they really mean, and what more accurate terms might be.
BRI (BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE)
This one never made sense. The “belt” is supposed to be land-based routes and the “road” means maritime routes. Wouldn’t it have been better to have the road on, well, land, and have the “belt” encircling the world through the waterways?
Anyway, the bigger issue is what is actually being conveyed along these routes. Beijing says infrastructure, development and trade. What is really expanding along these networks is the CCP way of doing business. So a more accurate definition for the BRI would be the Bribery and Repression Initiative.
PRESIDENT XI JINPING
The two titles that give Xi his real power are General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. In China, the President is largely a ceremonial title with limited powers.
The world should show Xi appropriate respect and stop calling him President. It should be either General Secretary Xi or Chairman Xi from now on—if “Chairman” was good enough for Mao, surely it is good enough for Xi. Then we can better understand his true sources of power, and the true nature of the People’s Republic of China.
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Speaking of which, as tens of millions of Chinese could tell you (if they weren’t in prisons or cemeteries for trying to tell you), there isn’t much emphasis on people—or a republic—in China. Just ask tennis star Peng Shuai. If you can find her.
Prof Kerry Gershaneck makes a strong case in his book Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to ‘Win without Fighting’ that the PRC is actually “a coercive, expansionist, hyper-nationalistic, militarily powerful, brutally repressive, fascist, and totalitarian state”.
He backs it up with Merriam-Webster dictionary quotes. Fascism: “a political philosophy, movement, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition; a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.”
And Totalitarianism: “centralized control by an autocratic authority; the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority.”
So maybe it would be more accurate to call it the Fascist Totalitarian Autocracy of China.
GRAY ZONE
This term tends to get thrown around when, for example, China uses “fishing boats” manned by people not in actual naval uniforms (at that very moment) to push maritime claims. The idea is that it is a “gray zone” between what is legal and what is illegal.
The goal is to confuse the law to get the other side to back down because it’s too “complicated”. Gray zone activities are political warfare that increase the likelihood of kinetic warfare. They are wrong. It is doing something duplicitous to cover over something illegal. It should be called what it is, state-sponsored lying.
DECOUPLING
Regular readers know that I find this term inaccurate. As former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe put it, a key component of Beijing’s economic model is “rob, replicate and replace”. The goal is to leech everything of value out of other companies and countries (intellectual property, resources, skills, etc.) in order to grow and expand the realm of the CCP.
David Stilwell, the former US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs described the problem with the term in an interview on China Unscripted:
“Decoupling is a Chinese term that they floated and it implies two gears in your transmission—that the relationship is nice and discreet, so we can pull back but leave this intact.”
“A better analogy would be a forest with kudzu [a type of vine that can grow so quickly it smothers and kills other plants] in it—and you know those vines have totally entangled into our economy and are choking it out in a sort of a parasitic sense.”
“But nonetheless we still got to rip and disentangle all those vines out of our system so we know exactly what is our own and what is theirs. And then, when we do engage again, we can engage in discrete ways that allow us to—if the deal isn’t going quite well—we can always disengage. [We] can’t do that right now.”
So, economically moving away from China is more accurately described as de-parasiting than decoupling.
ORGAN HARVESTING
This doesn’t quite capture the organized, near-industrial scale of the killing of (often) political and religious prisoners to sell their body parts on demand for paying clients. I’m not sure any words can capture that depravity and horror. But at least “government-sponsored murder for profit” is more accurate.
There is more.
China allowing fentanyl to flow out of its borders and kill tens of thousands each year is chemical warfare.
Blocking internal flights from Wuhan but allowing international ones during a viral outbreak in the city is biological warfare.
The One China Policy is really just Beijing’s annexation wish list.
Indian commentators have been particularly good at making the language more accurate, including making it clear that what China calls the “South China Sea” could more correctly be called the ASEAN Sea. And that the location where the PLA is causing all that trouble is not the India-China border, it is the India-Tibet border.
YOUR turn. Give it a go. What CCP-terms are you blithely accepting that don’t mean anything like what Beijing wants you to think they mean? “Win-win”? “Offending the Chinese nation?” “One country two-systems?” What do you think they mean?
If we let the CCP get into our heads and shape our language, we are letting it shape our thoughts, which shape our actions. Time for us all to give our heads a good shake, dislodging some of those linguistic blockades so that we can see, and say, more accurately what the real problems are. And then do something about them.
Cleo Paskal is The Sunday Guardian Special Correspondent as well as Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
17. How Biden Should Navigate Palestine’s Succession Crisis
Excerpts:
As prime minister, Abbas was ultimately unsuccessful in asserting independence from Arafat, who undercut him at every turn, and Abbas resigned several months after his appointment. However, the Bush administration’s support for Abbas was unmistakable, bolstering him despite Arafat’s attempts to undermine him. Abbas did successfully leverage the platform to raise his own profile, gaining recognition and support of Palestinian voters, ultimately leading to his landslide election after Arafat’s death.
So far, the Biden administration has been missing in action on the question of Abbas’s succession. In light of Abbas’s consolidation of power and the lack of an heir apparent, U.S. engagement should be used as a lever to encourage Abbas to empower a successor.
When faced with the conundrum of Palestinian succession, Biden can learn from Bush. Washington’s message for Abbas—from Nides, from other key officials, and from Biden himself must be clear: Abbas should prepare for a stable transition.
How Biden Should Navigate Palestine’s Succession Crisis
In light of Abbas’s consolidation of power and the lack of an heir apparent, U.S. engagement should be used as a lever to encourage Abbas to empower a successor.
After a five-month delay, the U.S. Senate confirmed Thomas Nides as the Biden administration’s ambassador to Israel. An uncontroversial nomination, Nides served as one of Hillary Clinton’s top deputies at the State Department and is a seasoned Democratic Party operator. Once in Jerusalem, Nides will face myriad challenges, including the potential for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to implode if its aged, ailing, and deeply unpopular president, Mahmoud Abbas, departs the scene without a successor in place. To forestall a potential succession crisis, and fend off the worst-case scenario of a Hamas coup, Nides and the rest of Biden’s national security team should learn from the George W. Bush administration’s successes and demand that Abbas lay the groundwork for a predictable succession.
Abbas is a heavy smoker who will turn eighty-six this month. Elected by a landslide in 2005 on promises of reform and transparency, Abbas is now in the sixteenth year of a four-year term. Polling shows that about three-quarters of Palestinians believe Abbas should step down. A prostate cancer survivor, Abbas is reported to have a heart condition and is rumored to suffer from stomach cancer. In 2018, he visited a Baltimore hospital and was hospitalized for tests.
Shortly before his hospitalization in 2018, Abbas revised the PA succession process to keep power out of Hamas’ hands. The changes amounted to an end-run around the Palestinian Basic Law—the closest thing the PA has to a constitution. The Basic Law in its original form directed that if Abbas resigned or died in office, the leadership of the government would go to the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)—a position now held by a Hamas activist—for up to sixty days until new elections can be held.
Instead, Abbas declared that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)—of which Hamas is not a constituent group—would pick his successor, ruling out Hamas as a beneficiary. Abbas then dissolved the Palestinian Legislature in 2018 and stacked the judiciary with loyalists in 2019, further consolidating power in the executive.
By concentrating autocratic power in his own hands, Abbas heightened the risk of a crisis if he is suddenly incapacitated. Furthermore, Abbas has not groomed a successor within the ranks of the PLO or his own Fatah faction. There are a handful of possible candidates; However, Abbas has not elevated any one of them, laying the table for an ugly power struggle upon his departure.
In the absence of such a leader, it is possible once Abbas is gone that Hamas would launch a violent campaign to take over the West Bank, as it did in Gaza in 2007. Yet even if there were snap elections, the pervasive corruption and abuse of the Abbas era have created a situation in which Hamas would likely come to power through elections. According to September elections polling, Hamas would make a clean sweep in Palestinian elections.
This situation may seem almost hopeless, but George W. Bush confronted a similar predicament in the twilight of the Yasser Arafat years. Known for his charisma, his ability to inspire and to incite, and for his total monopoly on the levers of power, Arafat held all the myriad titles and offices of Palestinian leadership.
In his signature peace plan, Bush made U.S. engagement in the peace process contingent on Arafat making concessions upfront. This was the plan’s major strength. Bush was committed to incremental reforms, and he pressured Arafat to make changes that would enable a transition of power.
Bush’s performance-based strategy had some success. In 2002, the PA established the Palestinian Basic Law, created a High Judicial Court, and appointed Mahmoud Abbas—at the time a reformer who rejected terrorism—to the newly-created position of prime minister.
As prime minister, Abbas was ultimately unsuccessful in asserting independence from Arafat, who undercut him at every turn, and Abbas resigned several months after his appointment. However, the Bush administration’s support for Abbas was unmistakable, bolstering him despite Arafat’s attempts to undermine him. Abbas did successfully leverage the platform to raise his own profile, gaining recognition and support of Palestinian voters, ultimately leading to his landslide election after Arafat’s death.
So far, the Biden administration has been missing in action on the question of Abbas’s succession. In light of Abbas’s consolidation of power and the lack of an heir apparent, U.S. engagement should be used as a lever to encourage Abbas to empower a successor.
When faced with the conundrum of Palestinian succession, Biden can learn from Bush. Washington’s message for Abbas—from Nides, from other key officials, and from Biden himself must be clear: Abbas should prepare for a stable transition.
Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Enia on Twitter at @EKrivine.
Image: Reuters.
18. Lebanon Loses a Pillar of Independent Journalism
Lebanon Loses a Pillar of Independent Journalism
An expert's point of view on a current event.
The Daily Star’s demise is the story of Lebanon, reduced from promising country to failed state.
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former managing editor at the Daily Star.
The front pages of the Lebanese English-language newspaper the Daily Star are seen at a newsstand in Beirut on Aug. 8, 2019. JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images
The Daily Star, Lebanon’s oldest English-language newspaper, has become the latest casualty of the country’s economic meltdown, bringing its nearly 70-year run to a close. Blackouts and gas shortages are now routine. As the ranks of independent journalists in Lebanon grow ever thinner, it will only become harder to hold the corrupt political class who left the country destitute accountable.
During my four years at the Daily Star, both the paper and the country rode a wave of prosperity and optimism. Lebanon saw itself as the next Dubai. Now, it depends on humanitarian aid.
The paper recruited me in 2000, shortly after I received my bachelor’s degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and began a graduate program. I was also editing Outlook, AUB’s student publication. The Daily Star made a point of scouting for talent and launched the careers of a generation of journalists. Kim Ghattas, author of a bestselling book on former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, published her earliest articles in the Daily Star. So did Michael Karam, a prominent wine writer who now lives in London.
The Daily Star, Lebanon’s oldest English-language newspaper, has become the latest casualty of the country’s economic meltdown, bringing its nearly 70-year run to a close. Blackouts and gas shortages are now routine. As the ranks of independent journalists in Lebanon grow ever thinner, it will only become harder to hold the corrupt political class who left the country destitute accountable.
During my four years at the Daily Star, both the paper and the country rode a wave of prosperity and optimism. Lebanon saw itself as the next Dubai. Now, it depends on humanitarian aid.
The paper recruited me in 2000, shortly after I received my bachelor’s degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and began a graduate program. I was also editing Outlook, AUB’s student publication. The Daily Star made a point of scouting for talent and launched the careers of a generation of journalists. Kim Ghattas, author of a bestselling book on former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, published her earliest articles in the Daily Star. So did Michael Karam, a prominent wine writer who now lives in London.
I wrote my first story about young physicians, friends from AUB who opened a free clinic in the impoverished Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. In Beirut, I interviewed Fidel “Fidelito” Ángel Castro Díaz-Balart, son of the Cuban strongman. I reported on the Arab League summit held in Beirut in 2002 and on border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel. Reporting took me to every corner of Lebanon, a country home to 18 recognized religious sects despite being smaller than Connecticut.
Of the band of brothers and sisters with whom I worked at Beirut’s Daily Star, only a handful remain in the country.
At the dawn of this century, the Daily Star was dreaming big. Israel had just withdrawn its troops from southern Lebanon. There was unprecedented political stability, and with stability came investor confidence.
The Daily Star formed a partnership with the International Herald Tribune. Publisher Jamil Mroue managed to kick-start local editions in Arab countries, such as Syria, Kuwait, and Egypt, which were sold together with the Tribune. Mroue’s ambition mirrored that of Lebanon’s former larger-than-life prime minister, Rafic Hariri, whose assassination in 2005 accelerated the polarization that eventually left the country’s politics and paralyzed its economy.
Perpetrators of corruption have outlasted the Daily Star. While I was at the paper, it exposed an embezzlement scheme at the state-owned Casino du Liban, whose beneficiaries included Jamil al-Sayyed, head of the country’s domestic security service. Sayyed responded by harassing the paper’s staff, who subsequently received calls from state security asking them to “visit security offices for a cup of coffee,” a warning shot on the scale of intimidation. Writers who persisted with their troublemaking had their passports confiscated or were detained and interrogated for hours at airports whenever traveling. Undercover security officers followed journalists while making themselves noticeable—a scare tactic.
Today, Sayyed is a member of parliament. Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on him pursuant to Executive Order 13441, which targets those who contribute to the breakdown of Lebanon’s rule of law. According to the Treasury Department, he skirted banking regulations by transferring $120 million to overseas investments. “During the 2019 protests, when demonstrators protested outside his home demanding his resignation and calling him corrupt, Sayyed called on officials to shoot and kill the protesters,” according to Treasury Department.
The Daily Star also found itself in an unlikely showdown with Dunkin’ Donuts over the question of tolerance for Lebanon’s LGBTQ community. A Dunkin’ store in Beirut had become a popular hangout for the neighborhood’s gay men, prompting the store to post a sign saying it was a “family place” and it “reserved the right” not to sell to any patrons it deemed to be “dressed inappropriately.” I had become deputy managing editor for the Daily Star’s Lebanon edition at the time, and we published the story on our front page. Even though Lebanon is relatively conservative, Dunkin’ was forced to reverse its decision—but not before making sure it had canceled its corporate subscription to the Daily Star, inflicting losses on our paper. Cognizant that the Daily Star had their back, the LGBTQ community reciprocated by encouraging supporters to subscribe to the paper.
Following Hariri’s assassination and Hezbollah’s consolidation of power behind a democratic facade, the Daily Star remained vibrant and became a main news source for English speakers across the Middle East at a time when other English-language publications in the region were just state-owned mouthpieces. Yet Lebanon’s prosperity ebbed as its Ponzi scheme economy began to lose momentum, while Hezbollah’s regional military entanglements kept the country on a war footing without an end in sight.
Skilled labor emigrated. Investors lost confidence. The Daily Star’s ability to retain talent diminished, and its staff started shrinking. News aggregation and speculation replaced investigative reporting and smartly argued editorials.
This week, after some 30 years since its post-civil war revival, the Daily Star shut down. It had already stopped publishing a print edition, shifting to a web-only format. The paper’s balance sheet had been drowning in red ink for some time. Lebanon, itself, has become inhospitable for businesses of any kind thanks to frequent power outages and prohibitively expensive gas. Banks are insolvent. Credit card limits for overseas purchases are $10 a month, which does not cover subscriptions to any global newspapers.
Of the band of brothers and sisters with whom I worked at Beirut’s Daily Star, only a handful remain in the country. Some have stayed in journalism or similar lines of work. Others have switched to industries ranging from ceramic production to health care.
The paper’s once buzzing offices have been reduced to archives collecting dust in the dark. Its story is the story of Lebanon, reduced in less than 15 years from a promising country to a failing state. Few countries in the region have Lebanon’s promise, but many have its greatest weakness: a state increasingly co-opted by armed Iranian proxies who subordinate the people’s interests to Tehran’s ideology and ambitions. In Iraq, as in Lebanon, they have left in place a Potemkin democracy. In Syria and Yemen, there is no need. Journalists have become targets.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former managing editor at the Daily Star. Twitter: @hahussain
19. Cyberwarfare era calls for security rethink: Estonian ex-president
Excerpts:
Ilves shared what he called the three pillars of a successful digital society, more precisely in the area of public service.
“The first thing is the digital identity,” said Ilves, mentioning an iconic 1993 cartoon in the New Yorker depicting two dogs at a computer. One dog says to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
In Estonia, all citizens and foreign residents have state-issued digital identification that they use to access public and private services -- paying their bills, voting online, signing contracts, accessing health information and much more. To ensure security, the digital ID has to be protected with two-factor identification and end-to-end encryption, said Ilves.
The second pillar, he stressed, is the “architecture” of the system -- having many data centers rather than a single data center where everything is in one place.
The last pillar is “data integrity,” which he believes gets “far too little attention.” Ilves said everyone is so concerned with privacy when it comes to government services, but the real concern is the integrity of data, meaning no one is allowed to change the data.
“Let’s say someone has a blood type of AB. If others read it, it’s not a problem. But if someone changes the data, that’s problematic. That’s what integrity is about.”
To ensure data integrity, Ilves said Estonia has deployed blockchain technology. All critical data is on a permissioned blockchain so that it cannot be rewritten.
Cyberwarfare era calls for security rethink: Estonian ex-president
Published : Nov 22, 2021 - 15:21 Updated : Nov 22, 2021 - 20:31
Estonia's former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves speaks during an interview with The Korea Herald at a hotel in Seoul last week. (Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald)
The evolution of technologies is changing the character of warfare. In any future war, the battle will be determined long before any bullets are fired or missiles flown. Wars may be won through cyberattacks that crash countries’ networks, causing power outages and severing military communication, says former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
The changing face of war requires countries around the world to “rethink” the entire approach to security and defense, Ilves said during a recent interview with The Korea Herald last week. The former president, who spearheaded the Baltic nation’s digital transformation, was in Seoul to speak at the World Emerging Security Forum, organized by the Foreign Ministry, to discuss global cooperation against new security threats.
Ilves added that from a larger security perspective, the biggest change with digital warfare is that “distance has no meaning.”
“What this development in security policy has done is that it has eliminated geography, which up until now has been the primary concern of security thinking because you had kinetic weapons,” he said. “You knew where weapons were coming from, and you were worried about your neighbors. But now, we have to be worried about everybody.”
But cyberthreats have also brought new opportunities to rethink what an alliance is, beyond geography, Ilves stressed.
“Once you get into warfare that is no longer geographically based, well, maybe then you can have an alliance that is not geographically based,” he said. “In fact, it would make an incredible sense if liberal democracies form a nongeographic security alliance to deal with cyberattacks and the weaponization of digital by authoritarian, totalitarian regimes.”
Against a common foe, however, countries are mostly on their own to deal with cyberthreats, he said. They are hesitant to share news of cyberattacks with other countries or publicly disclose them out of fear that sensitive and critical intelligence could be leaked.
Ilves, however, stressed that the sharing of information among like-minded countries is important to tackle future attacks.
“We need to share information and come up with ways of defending ourselves. The main criteria for that should be only open to liberal democracies with rule of law and free and fair election that respect the freedom of human rights,” he said, stressing that leading digital countries like South Korea and Estonia need to cooperate in this area even more.
Ilves’ particular focus on cybersecurity dates back to his two-term presidency from 2006 to 2016. It was during his tenure that a massive cyberattack crippled government and major corporate sites in his country. Many allege that the attack was traceable to Russia -- a charge Moscow has denied.
Dubbed the world’s first cyberwar, the cyberattack was destructive and laid bare Estonia’s security vulnerabilities. But it also offered a silver lining: a chance for the country to rebuild its cyber defense system and firmly establish itself as a global leader in this field. Today the country’s capital, Tallinn, is home to NATO’s cyber defense hub, the Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, and the EU’s IT Agency.
Robust cybersecurity is also critical to Estonia’s highly digitalized society, where 99 percent of all government services are available online -- from filing taxes to voting and accessing medical records. This e-government system came in handy especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing people to access public services at home with no need to wait in line at government offices.
Ilves shared what he called the three pillars of a successful digital society, more precisely in the area of public service.
“The first thing is the digital identity,” said Ilves, mentioning an iconic 1993 cartoon in the New Yorker depicting two dogs at a computer. One dog says to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
In Estonia, all citizens and foreign residents have state-issued digital identification that they use to access public and private services -- paying their bills, voting online, signing contracts, accessing health information and much more. To ensure security, the digital ID has to be protected with two-factor identification and end-to-end encryption, said Ilves.
The second pillar, he stressed, is the “architecture” of the system -- having many data centers rather than a single data center where everything is in one place.
The last pillar is “data integrity,” which he believes gets “far too little attention.” Ilves said everyone is so concerned with privacy when it comes to government services, but the real concern is the integrity of data, meaning no one is allowed to change the data.
“Let’s say someone has a blood type of AB. If others read it, it’s not a problem. But if someone changes the data, that’s problematic. That’s what integrity is about.”
To ensure data integrity, Ilves said Estonia has deployed blockchain technology. All critical data is on a permissioned blockchain so that it cannot be rewritten.
20. U.S. Intel Shows Russia Plans for Potential Ukraine Invasion
Are we heading toward "living in interesting times?" As someone wrote to me this weekend - it could be quite a winter in Ukraine.
U.S. Intel Shows Russia Plans for Potential Ukraine Invasion
November 21, 2021, 3:09 PM EST Updated on November 22, 2021, 8:20 AM EST
- Vladimir Putin’s actual intentions on Ukraine remain unclear
- Intel shows readiness for quick, large-scale move into Ukraine
The U.S. has shared intelligence including maps with European allies that shows a buildup of Russian troops and artillery to prepare for a rapid, large-scale push into Ukraine from multiple locations if President Vladimir Putin decided to invade, according to people familiar with the conversations.
That intelligence has been conveyed to some NATO members over the past week to back up U.S. concerns about Putin’s possible intentions and an increasingly frantic diplomatic effort to deter him from any incursion, with European leaders engaging directly with the Russian president. The diplomacy is informed by an American assessment that Putin could be weighing an invasion early next year as his troops again mass near the border.
The information lays out a scenario where troops would cross into Ukraine from Crimea, the Russian border and via Belarus, with about 100 battalion tactical groups -- potentially around 100,000 soldiers -- deployed for what the people described as an operation in rough terrain and freezing conditions, covering extensive territory and prepared for a potentially prolonged occupation.
Two of the people said about half that number of tactical groups was already in position and that any invasion would be backed up by air support.
A BTR-82A armored personnel carrier lands from a ship during an amphibious landing exercise in Crimea on Oct. 18.Photographer: Sergei Malgavko/TASS/Getty Images
The two people said that Moscow had also called up tens of thousands of reservists on a scale unprecedented in post-Soviet times. They explained the role of reservists in any conflict would be to secure territory in a later phase after the tactical battalions paved the way. Russia hasn’t publicly announced any major call-up of reservists.
One of the people said the U.S. had also shared information about an exponential rise in disinformation targeting Kyiv and that Moscow has recruited agents to try and sow destabilization inside Ukraine.
The ruble fell about 1% against the dollar Monday to the lowest level since August on fears the tensions could trigger new sanctions.
Putin last week denied any intention to invade but welcomed the alarm as evidence his actions had gotten the attention of the U.S. and its allies, which he accused of failing to take Russia’s “red lines” over Ukraine seriously enough.
America and others are not saying a war is certain, or even that they know for sure Putin is serious about one. The people said it is likely he has not yet decided what to do. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this month: “I can’t speak to Russia’s intentions. We don’t know what they are.”
A senior administration official said the U.S. has under Biden demonstrated it is willing to use a number of tools to address harmful Russian actions and would continue to do so. The White House said it had no further comment.
KEY READING
The Russian leader has a history of brinkmanship and prior buildups on the border have come to naught. But officials say he is positioning to act if he wanted to, and they note that even as troops withdrew from an earlier escalation in April they left equipment behind, making the fresh buildup faster and easier.
Russian tanks and equipment in the Pogonovo training area near Voronezh, Russia on April 10.Source: Maxar/Getty Images
For Putin, Ukraine is unfinished business after his annexation of Crimea in 2014. He sees Ukraine as part of Russia and bristles at its outreach with the west, especially its nascent military engagement with NATO. While he has said he doesn’t want a war, in a speech last week he said his goal was to keep the U.S. and its allies on edge for “as long as possible, so nobody gets it into their head to cause a conflict we don’t need on our western borders.” He lambasted the U.S. and others for expanding military infrastructure in Ukraine and stepping up naval missions in the Black Sea and flights by warplanes along Russia’s borders.
Russian officials have said they want to see NATO stop its expanding cooperation with Ukraine and what Moscow sees as a buildup along its borders. There has also been some discussion of a fresh summit between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden to defuse tensions. At the same time, Russian authorities understand that any attempt to occupy large amounts of Ukrainian territory militarily would face widespread public opposition on the ground and trigger sweeping western sanctions that could batter the Russian economy, people close to the leadership said.
Further diplomatic flurries are likely, while the U.S. has been considering re-upping and expanding a package of measures it put together this year during the prior troop buildup which could include sanctions.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov visited Washington last week and asked the Pentagon for more help defending the country’s airspace and coast. Echoing the U.S. concerns, its defense intelligence agency chief told the Military Times he believes Russia could be preparing for an attack by the end of January or early February involving airstrikes, amphibious assaults and an incursion though Belarus.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who traveled to Brussels last week, told Ukraine television on the weekend an incursion was clearly an option for Moscow and that Kyiv needed support from others to deter it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed such talk on Sunday, saying, “this hysteria is being built up artificially.”
“The ones who are accusing us of some kind of unusual military activity on our own territory are themselves sending their armed forces from across the ocean. I mean the United States of America. It’s not very logical and not very decent,” he told state television.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 1.Photographer: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg
For Biden, the actions of the Russian president present multiple challenges. They could freshly test his administration’s appetite to intervene militarily offshore. America only months ago had a a messy withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan after two decades of conflict there. Biden has had to focus political strength on domestic priorities like his economic agenda and dealing with rising prices at the gas pumps and grocery store registers.
The latest frictions come against a broader backdrop. Not only are troops massing again, but record-high gas prices leave Europe vulnerable to Russian largess on supplies. European Union members including Poland have also accused Russia of encouraging a refugee crisis as its ally Belarus funnels migrants toward the bloc. And a Russian weapons test that blasted a satellite out of orbit scattered a large field of debris, prompting U.S. accusations it had endangered the International Space Station’s crew.
Still, one of the people with knowledge of U.S. intelligence said these events are not believed to be part of a wider plan but are being exploited opportunistically by the Russian president.
Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden at the start of their summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16.Photographer: Peter Klaunzer/Swiss Federal Office of Foreign Affairs/Bloomberg
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine blew up in 2014, when Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula and backed a separatist rebellion in the east of the country. That triggered sweeping U.S. and European sanctions, but the conflict has continued, killing about 14,000 people in east Ukraine. Two of the people said that any new attack would be on a scale far greater than seven years ago.
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One of the people said a potential joint response needed to be agreed soon among allies that would be unequivocal and overwhelming if implemented, adding there was still a window of opportunity to deter Putin. It’s unclear at this stage if that would include a possible military response. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Sunday said any violation of the Ukraine border by Russia would lead to “extremely grave consequences.”
Collaboration with Russia could also be cut off, said the person. Officials had noted small improvements in relations since Biden and Putin met in Geneva in June, including working together to tackle issues like climate change, making Moscow’s latest maneuvers all the more striking, the person added.
The U.S. warnings of potential invasion are seen in Moscow as a sign that Washington -- at least so far -- has no intention of compromise and is rallying trans-Atlantic unity against Russia. “The U.S. is laying the groundwork for a unified sanctions response,” said Dmitry Suslov, an expert on Russia’s relations with the U.S. and Europe at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
While Western nations do not currently know the Kremlin’s intentions, they believe that military options are being presented and have little doubt that what they’re hearing and seeing would allow for a large scale attack should Putin decide to make a move in the new year. The people said the U.S. had high confidence in the reliability of the information it had shared with allies.
— With assistance by Gregory White, Henry Meyer, and Daryna Krasnolutska
(Updates to add the market move in seventh paragraph)
21. Inside The 1,000-Year-Old Samurai Code That Still Influences Japanese Culture Today
I am not as well versed in Japanese culture. This is new information to me.
Inside The 1,000-Year-Old Samurai Code That Still Influences Japanese Culture Today
For centuries, Japanese samurai adhered to bushidō, a strict code of honor that emphasized loyalty and honor to country and family. And it still influences Japanese culture today.
Public DomainSamurai in armor, c. 1860s.
The word “bushidō” is one of the most evocative to make its way from Japan into the wider world. The mere mention of it calls to mind romantic images of dashing samurai acting according to a strict ethical code governing every aspect of their lives.
Even today, the concept of bushidō is popular in settings as diverse as martial arts schools and corporate boardrooms, where the precepts of loyalty to one’s group and superiors and willingness to sacrifice all are extolled as supreme virtues.
Yet were you to ask a samurai their thoughts on the bushidō code any time before the 1880s, you’d be more likely to get some very puzzled looks rather than a lecture on the way of the warrior. The reason for this is simple: bushidō was more or less pulled out of thin air as Japan came crashing into technological modernity at a time when many worried that the island nation would lose its traditions.
This is the story of how an occasionally disturbing legend became ingrained in global culture as the defining characteristic of Japanese society.
Early Samurai Bushidō Code
Wikimedia CommonsA reenactment of seppuku, Japanese ritual suicide, in a 19th century play. Willingness to die to preserve one’s honor was claimed to be a key element of bushidō.
According to its modern proponents, bushidō is a uniquely Japanese code of ethics based on duty, honor, and loyalty. These qualities largely derive from Confucian ethics, which stressed personal loyalty and an iron adherence to social hierarchy.
According to the Hagakure, sometimes called “the samurai bible” outside of Japan, if a samurai “will only make his master first in importance, his parents will rejoice and the gods and Buddhas will give their assent. For a warrior there is nothing other than thinking of his master.”
There is sufficient evidence that individuals held these ideals throughout early medieval Japan without being part of a single, formal “bushidō code.” For example, the earliest recorded instance of seppuku, or ritual suicide, occurred in 1170 AD, when Minamoto no Tametomo cut his stomach open after suffering defeat at the hands of a rival clan.
Yet just as often, Japanese feudal lords and their retainers readily betrayed one another if it suited their purposes. Among the most famous examples is the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the largest clash of samurai forces in Japanese history.
At the climax of the battle, tens of thousands of otherwise steadfast samurai turned their backs on the Toyotomi clan and joined the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The victory which resulted from this betrayal was the first step in the foundation of Japan’s last shogunate, which would reign for nearly 300 years until the country opened up to the west in the 1860s.
The Creation Of Bushidō
National Portrait GalleryA depiction of the first landing of American troops on Japanese soil. Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy was responsible for forcing Japan to open its borders, thus triggering the collapse of the shogunate.
By the mid-19th century, the rapidly expanding Western economies of the industrial age were hungry for new markets for export and sources of rare and exotic goods and materials. Japan, the only major East Asian nation still cut off from the outside, was a ripe target.
On July 8, 1853, American naval officer Matthew C. Perry sailed into modern Tokyo Bay with four warships, including two ultra-modern steam-powered paddle frigates. The most forward-looking Japanese could see that the age of the samurai was coming to a close. And by the summer of 1868, a new regime had arisen under the leadership of the young Emperor Meiji.
In the decades to follow, hundreds of young men from samurai families traveled abroad to enroll in Western universities. Among them was Inazō Nitobe, a Christian convert who learned of European chivalry while studying in the United States.
Despite Japan’s breakneck pace in adopting Western technology, political styles, and morality, Nitobe worried that his homeland was in danger of losing its distinctive character and of being perceived as having no unique cultural contributions.
Wikimedia CommonsBushidō was used to exhort Imperial Japanese Army troops to fight fearlessly for the emperor, as in the First Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars.
His attempt to counter that fear came in the form of a book published in 1900, Bushido: The Soul of Japan. For the first time in history, the virtues that Nitobe claimed formed the basis of samurai ethics — and by extension, those of Japanese society — were collected in one volume, with language directly linking the samurai to the romanticized knights of medieval Europe.
“It is indeed striking,” wrote Nitobe, “how closely the code of knightly honor of one country coincides with that of others.”
Nitobe, an agricultural economist, was utterly unfamiliar with Japanese history, military or otherwise. He even believed that he was the first to use the term “bushidō.” And his selective description of a code at odds with the evidence earned him condemnation from the Japanese public and scholars such as Inoue Tetsujirō, a proponent of samurai ethics for more imperialistic reasons.
But Nitobe’s work captured the Western imagination. With a clear counterpart to the chivalrous knight of the Middle Ages — itself a creation of 19th-century authors — Europeans and Americans felt like they finally understood Japan.
Summarizing his motivations for the book, Nitobe said, “I wanted to show that the Japanese are not really so different.”
The Warrior Code And Japan’s Imperial Ambitions
National Archives and Records AdministrationBy shifting the focus of honor of Nitobe’s bushidō from a samurai’s master to the emperor, Japanese militarists hoped to create a nation loyal to the central figure of the empire.
In Japan, interest in Nitobe and Tetsujirō’s ideas about the bushidō code exploded as the imperial government looked to colonial expansion to stabilize its economy after a depression and as militant political factions grew more robust and more radical.
For fifty years, generations of young men had been conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army, priming the population to praise and support the military’s actions.
Stories of valiant and steadfast samurai remaining loyal to their masters to the bitter end were wildly popular on stage, print, and radio. Bushidō was even formally incorporated into military training and public schools in 1910.
The effort was so successful that, by 1927, one observer wrote that “when considering Japanese morality, many people think of bushidō.”
The timing was crucial. Independently-minded army officers serving in China assassinated warlords and slowly increased Japanese military strength. Throughout the 1930s, far-right military officers made several coup attempts, and the Japanese government came increasingly under the sway of senior generals who needed a way to encourage the populace to support their imperialistic aims.
And during World War II, the bushidō code endured until the very end. “No quarter, no surrender. Take no prisoners. Fight to the bitter end. These were everyday words in the combat areas,” historian John Dower wrote in 1986.
“And in the final year of the war such attitudes contributed to an orgy of bloodletting that neither side could conceive of avoiding, even though by mid-1944 Japan’s defeat was inevitable and plain to see.”
The Fate Of Bushidō
Bettmann/Getty ImagesYukio Mishima, seen here overseeing his private militia, was morbidly fascinated by the imperial bushidō of his youth.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the nation turned against many aspects of the Empire, including bushidō. Many former soldiers openly criticized the imperial version of the code, and occupying authorities’ bans on militaristic writing and film prevented any interest from lingering.
Most people in postwar Japan ignored bushidō until 1970, when famed author Yukio Mishima dramatically committed ritual suicide after a failed coup attempt. His fascination with the bushidō of the war years revived debate around the topic. And during the economic growth enjoyed by Japan in the 1970s and ’80s, CEOs cited bushidō as a model and explanation for their international success.
Today, Nitobe’s version of bushidō has the most significant currency in Japanese culture and abroad. It’s still cited in many martial arts schools, particularly those outside Japan, and it was even used to support Japan’s contributions to the Iraq War.
In recent years, as the more horrific events of Japan’s imperial past are removed from school textbooks and ignored or denied by high-ranking politicians, the fact that the ideology used to justify such atrocities is effectively a fantasy is as little-known in Japan as it is elsewhere.
22. Assessing Contemporary Deterrence Parallel to Netflix’s Squid Game
I looked at Squid Game from an information and influence perspective not as a parallel for deterrence theory. This is interesting analysis.
Conclusion:
United States efforts to conduct thoughtful analysis and study the “game” within this era of strategic competition, will fail if it does not unpack the relationships and motivations of the players in order to effectively deter unwarranted outcomes on the homeland and abroad. While the conditions of strategic competition may appear intuitive, it is only by understanding the players, and their respective worldviews, that the rules can be effectively established and the turnabout path to maintaining a democratic, truly free, and just society preserved, as demonstrated in the Squid Game.
Assessing Contemporary Deterrence Parallel to Netflix’s Squid Game
Dr. Brooke Mitchell is a George Washington University Nuclear Security Working Group Fellow. She works on Capitol Hill for a member of the United States Congress and leads appropriation portfolios for defense, energy and water, and military construction and veteran’s affairs. Dr. Mitchell also serves as manager for the Congressional Nuclear Working Group. In addition, she is the Chief Academic Officer for the Small Business Consulting Corporation and principal investigator for Air Force Global Strike Command’s (AFGSC) National Nuclear Strategy and Global Security Workshop for Practitioners. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: Assessing Contemporary Deterrence Parallel to Netflix’s Squid Game
Date Originally Written: November 17, 2021.
Date Originally Published: November 22, 2021.
Author and / or Article Point of View: The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has placed an increased emphasis on the present era of strategic competition with Russia and China. The author uses the Netflix show Squid Game as a metaphor to draw attention to the value of understanding the players’ motivations as central to define the rules of the game in order to create clear focus around contemporary deterrence.
Summary: DoD’s view of deterrence is reminiscent of Netflix’s hit show, Squid Game[1]. Deterrence traditionally focuses on nation states implementing military actions which may deter adversary action[2]. Deterrence fails when the adversary proceeds anyway. Both deterrence and Squid Game involve players executing their free will to compete against the other players. Deterrence becomes complicated today as players and game rules remain undiscovered.
Text: It has historically been assumed that the strongest parties (i.e. individuals, groups, countries) have an advantage and can thus deter the weaker. Deterrence can be measured in terms of nuclear deterrence (including both weapons and weapons systems), along with conventional sources of warpower, and include additional forms of diplomatic, economic, or social variables that enhance one party’s ability to deny undesirable outcomes.
The question remains though: how, in an era of strategic competition, do traditional deterrence theories or concepts hold true when many leaders, military strategists, and subject matter experts view the United States as facing near-peer competition with both Russia and China? If deterrence is still simply the ability to strategically maneuver strength, or capabilities, to the other parties than by this token the United States won this competition long ago. Yet, despite the present conundrum Russia and now China continues to grow their nuclear arsenals; are far outpacing the United States on the research, development, and fielding of hypersonic technologies; and exceed the United States in the militarization of space and other non-terrestrial warfighting domains[3].
In Squid Game players execute their free will to compete against the other players[4]. The idea is that these individuals have nothing to lose but their life and are gambling to both preserve their life and receive tangible gain. This idea pushes the competition to the brink. The game only ends if the majority agrees to stop playing. The psychological tug-of-war between the barbaric nature of the rules and then sentimental connection to the “fairness” of such a competitive (and lawless society made out to be equitable for all) by Squid Game leaders such as the Front Man, further exacerbates the rapidly shifting conclusions of the viewers. By the characters later chasing the money trail to the evil people funding the game, then pursuing the very master mind both controlling and holding the purse strings the viewer is left questioning, “How could I not see that coming?” or “Why did I miss that?” Only when there is crystal clear clarity around the rules and players of Squid Game can action in pursuit of strategically deterring the extreme nature of the game be confronted.
The characters in Squid Game needing crystal clear clarity around the rules and players is very similar to the 21st century conditions surrounding deterrence. The United States and her allies are attempting to deter Russia and China in their respective activities that are nefarious to the well-being of the world. However, in this pursuit the convoluted, interwoven, sentiment to separate the motivations of how Russia and China are now playing the game from their priorities in how they are choosing to do so is vague and unclear. The money trail can certainly be traced and the United States’ ongoing efforts to modernize military capabilities and enhance its diplomacs capability with adversarial counterparts remains an option. Whether military and diplomatic modernization remain a viable, sustainable option against Russia and China in a contemporary context is a different question altogether. It is certainly feasible to continue building deterrence around existing frameworks but then again, if those frameworks were fool proof, then how on the United States watch did Russia and China gain both power and speed in their respective nuclear arsenals and in the contested domains of cyberspace and space?
United States efforts to conduct thoughtful analysis and study the “game” within this era of strategic competition, will fail if it does not unpack the relationships and motivations of the players in order to effectively deter unwarranted outcomes on the homeland and abroad. While the conditions of strategic competition may appear intuitive, it is only by understanding the players, and their respective worldviews, that the rules can be effectively established and the turnabout path to maintaining a democratic, truly free, and just society preserved, as demonstrated in the Squid Game.
Endnotes:
23. Scholar calls on Taiwan to learn from Israel in field of defense
Scholar calls on Taiwan to learn from Israel in field of defense - Focus Taiwan
Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) The United States should consider helping Taiwan build a sounder indigenous defense industry to boost its qualitative military edge, or QME, amid rising threat from China, as it has done with Israel for decades, a local defense scholar said recently.
According to Wu Tzu-li (吳自立), a researcher at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), the long-standing U.S. commitment to maintaining Israel's QME forms a central pillar of the Jewish state's security strategy.
According to a definition detailed in 2008 U.S. legislation, QME is defined as "the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states, or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means."
Such military means should be "possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors."
Israel has a relatively small populations and territory but is surrounded by Arab neighbors that remain hostile.
Understanding the dangers of this quantitative disadvantage, Israel has worked to ensure that the country will instead develop a qualitative edge: the ability to defend itself through military superiority, by heavily investing in high quality training and equipment, with help from the U.S., Wu said.
According to Wu, the U.S. has given Israel foreign aid surpassing US$1.25 trillion as of today, with almost all of it for military assistance.
Israel now has one of the world's strongest armed forces, a robust domestic defense industry and has become one of the largest weapons exporters in the world, he said.
Even the U.S. buys weapons from Israel, including investing in Israel's Iron Dome and other systems which can intercept incoming rockets, among others, he noted.
Taiwan also faces growing military coercion from the Chinese communist regime that has significant superiority in terms of military power despite Taiwan substantially increasing its defense spending in recent years, Wu said.
U.S. lawmakers have also focused on this issue, according to Wu, for instance, several senators introduced a bill earlier this month that would increase military aid to Taiwan to bolster the country's defenses against China.
The Taiwan Deterrence Act, proposed by Republican Senators Jim Risch, Mike Crapo, Bill Hagerty, Mitt Romney, John Cornyn and Marco Rubio, seeks to authorize US$2 billion a year from the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program for Taiwan from 2023 to 2032.
Another piece of legislation proposed by Senator Josh Hawley titled "Arm Taiwan Act of 2021" earlier this month would allow the U.S. to authorize US$3 billion annually for such an initiative from 2023 through 2027 to provide assistance to Taiwan's government, such as equipment, training and other support.
However, the proposed legislation also envisages that in addition to arm sales from Washington, Taiwan should also do its part by investing more to boost its self-defense capabilities, Wu said.
Wu, therefore, called on the U.S. to help Taiwan boost its QME as it did with Israel so that Taiwan can build a stronger domestic defense industry like Israel.
Doing so would significantly speed up the time needed to boost Taiwan's self-defense capabilities, Wu said.
The scholar made the suggestion during a Defense Security Brief published by the INDSR on Nov. 19.
(By Matt Yu and Joseph Yeh)
Enditem/AW
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
