Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:

“…but cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the greater, not the perfect good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness, involves a discretion which may be misapplied an abused.”
- James Madison, Author, The Federalist Papers

"Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards... Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain."
- Sun Tzu

"The first and most important rule to observe...is to use our entire forces with the utmost energy. the second rule is to concentrate our power as much as possible against that section where the chief blows are to be delivered and to incur disadvantages elsewhere, so that our chances of success may increase at the decisive point. the third rule is never to waste time. unless important advantages are to be gained from hesitation, it is necessary to set to work at once. by this speed a hundred enemy measures are nipped in the bud, and public opinion is won most rapidly. finally, the fourth rule is to follow up our successes with the utmost energy. only pursuit of the beaten enemy gives the fruits of victory.
- Carl von Clausewitz




1. Kabul, Afghanistan to Kansas, America The Story of Shakila Nazari
2. Why the West should deter a Russian attack on Ukraine
3. The Ukrainian army has got better at fighting Russian-backed separatists
4. ‘We’re talking about a war’: tech competition between the U.S. and China is in a dangerous new phase, says former Google disinformation chief
5. Beijing’s strategy for global dominance
6. The 2021 War on the Rocks Holiday Reading List
7. Gunnery sergeants who never went to boot camp? It may be coming in the Marine Corps
8. ‘It’s like hell in here’: The struggle to save Afghanistan's starving babies
9. Kurt Campbell on what America is for, “rather than what we’re against”
10. For Contingencies in Indo-Pacom, Army Will Serve as 'Linchpin' for Joint Force
11. FDD | China Seeks to Exploit Interpol Leadership Role to Hunt Dissidents
12. Should Europeans invest in Iran? No! Even after 2025
13. Why the Iran Nuclear Talks Were Over Before They Began
14. Wormuth: Here's the Army's role in a Pacific fight


1.  Kabul, Afghanistan to Kansas, America The Story of Shakila Nazari
Fatima Jaghoori is an amazing person. I am honored to work with her in Shona ba Shona (https://www.shonabashona.net/). Please read her story.


Wed, 12/01/2021 - 9:41am
Kabul, Afghanistan to Kansas, America
The Story of Shakila Nazari
By Fatima Jaghoori
(Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of stories from and about the people in Afghanistan, those who have escaped and those who seek freedom. We wish to highlight the suffering, sacrifices, and desire for freedom of our Afghan allies as well as people and organizations who are helping to ensure the safety of those left behind and the integration of those who have made it to safety and freedom.)
 
She was born in a small village where she was not able to go to school until she was eight years old because the Taliban were in power and there was no infrastructure for girls schools. After the Taliban was ousted in 2002, Shakila started fighting for a voice. She had to fight to get an education, attending school in the middle of a field under a makeshift tent school, right outside of the school for boys. Despite the culture and society that was not supportive of a woman in the military, following in the footsteps of family members who served in the U.S. Army, Shakila attended a military school for infantry tactics for four years and was assigned to the justice department of Defense Ministry of Afghanistan.
 
 
On the 15 Aug 2021, Shakila was the only woman working in her office, when the news broke of the fall of Kabul. She was barricaded in the office and was only let out of the office to run home when the lawyers who were also barricaded in begged and pleaded for the Afghan soldiers to let her escape. With tears streaming down her face, she recalls the soldier saying, “why should you live if we have to die”. She stated she did not have a weapon and if she were to be found, they would cut her up piece by piece, because of her ethnicity and military background. While running through the streets she recalls “I was waiting for one of them to jump in front of me at every turn” while listening to the people on the streets cheer for the control of unruly women by the Taliban.
She sobs, “controlling women means limiting rights for everyone, look at the situation now- no one has a right to live.” Family members were telling her not to stay at their home out of fear of the Taliban searching their homes so every night she had t o move her location as her pictures had been used to recruit other women to join the Afghan National Army (ANA) and were published by the BBC and displayed at the Academy. She was one of eight women in the office of 80, constantly hazed by their male counterparts for their gender, ethnicity, and religious views. Shakila refused to wear a burka and to stay quiet about women’s rights and a woman’s position in the world. She was targeted for not being sufficiently religious and told by male co-workers that she needed to be controlled.
 
 

After going to the Hamad Karzai International Airport (HKIA) on three different days, she was bereted and beaten and she watched the Taliban beat any women trying to leave while accusing them of selling themselves to Americans. Despite the danger, threats, and hardship, she was able to lead the extraction operation of her team of 23 people, consisting of Afghan National Army personnel that were trained by or worked alongside U.S. Military forces. Shakila’s group was led by TMS (Team Madame Sam) – group of veterans and friends helping those they deployed with or have personal ties; it seems Uncle Sam is trying to forget our allies, ANA females and their sisters and brothers. They were beaten at the checkpoints and shot at from all directions from the security forces around the airport. While she was being shot at by the Afghan security forces at the gate, one woman was being beaten and when Shakila tried to defend her, the officer started yelling at Shakila, chastising her for the amount of Hazara women she had in her group. She was accused of taking her entire clan, while at the same time beating the other woman. Fortunately, their group was able to get out on the morning of the August 26, 2021, at approximately 10am, just a few hours prior to the bomb going off.
 
 
 
Shakila and her sisters and brother arrived in Wichita, Kansas in mid-November, due to their familial connections in Kansas. Gathering  at the table for Thanksgiving was a mix of somber thoughts and feelings of joy. The little family of siblings embraced the tradition of gathering around holiday lights in the city, watching other kids enjoy time with their parents while they remember theirs. Shakila proudly watched her sisters and brother take selfies next to the giant Christmas tree with a smile but that smile fades when she starts remembering her parents and the Afghan people awaiting help; hungry and freezing while contemplating their future in a new land.
Afghanistan and the Afghan people need people to stand up for them and to not forget them because their voices are being extinguished as seconds pass. The past 20 years, the Afghan people were the ones suffering as various countries came to fight in their backyards. This was not a war the Afghan people asked for, but they are left to pay the price; women, children and elderly while the men are hunted. Shona ba Shona and Spartan Sword are two organizations directly helping the Afghan people with U.S. military veterans working daily to continue the efforts. Our country is a democracy run by the people and for the people. The repercussions of this humanitarian crisis will affect the minds of our young Americans as they grow, the mind of the American veterans and gold star families who sacrificed soo much and somehow not enough in the minds of our previous and future allies. As Afghans, as American veterans, as active-duty military, as gold star family members, as Patriotic Americans - we ask for the support of the generous and caring American people in ensuring we do not leave our allies behind. Please consider contributing financially or joining the effort:
 
America made a promise to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with our Afghan allies. Their lives and our honor are on the line.
Our Vision:
Every Afghan who risked their life for our safety will find a safe haven and a new start. Our mission is to Aid, Evacuate, and Integrate.
 
We are currently supporting the Afghan Relief Mission (ARM).
This humanitarian mission has two parts:
  1. Finding safe passage out of Afghanistan for vulnerable groups including but not limited to US Citizens, SIV Visa holders, Afghan refugees and other groups targeted by the Taliban for execution.
  2. Supporting these vulnerable groups with food, shelter, and clothing as they transition to their new life.
 
 
  
 

About the Author(s)

Fatima Jaghoori, is a Hazara Afghan native, U.S. Army OIF veteran, a Kansas State student. She is trying to move one piece of sand at a time during this sandstorm that began Aug 15, 2021. A lover of freedom, seeker of equality, believer in the American Dream, her goal is ensuring the voices of the women in danger in Afghanistan are heard. Shakila Nazari and Fatima are cousins who want equality for women in the U.S. military and Afghan military, despite race or gender. The journey of standing shoulder to shoulder with our Afghan Allies is new but the roots built over the years are deep through empathy, humaniy, and understanding. “We can achieve equality and cohesion once we hear one another, together we can be amazing.”



















2. Why the West should deter a Russian attack on Ukraine
Okay, but someone please conduct a thorough analysis to determine what in fact will deter Putin from attacking Ukraine. What are the specific concrete actions the US, NATO, and Ukraine can take to deter a Rusia attack. It is fine to say we must deter Russia by the devil is in the details. What will deter Putin?

Why the West should deter a Russian attack on Ukraine
Insight
30 November 2021
Russian forces are massing near Ukraine’s border again. Putin hopes to win concessions from Kyiv without fighting, but more concessions will not bring peace. The West should focus on deterring Russia.
For the second time this year, Russian forces are massing near Ukraine’s north-eastern and southern borders, flanking the areas of the Donbas region that they or their local proxies have controlled since invading Ukraine in 2014. In April, more than 100,000 Russian troops were deployed in regions near Ukraine, ostensibly for exercises. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence claims there are now as many as 90,000 in the area again. The Kremlin has been conducting an information campaign against Ukraine for several months, questioning its sovereignty. Russia may be preparing to invade, or merely intending to intimidate. As NATO foreign ministers meet in Riga on November 30th and December 1st, they should consider how to deter Moscow, reassure Kyiv and minimise instability in Eastern Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his views on Ukraine. In 2008, when the Bucharest NATO summit meeting promised Ukraine and Georgia membership, Putin told US President George W Bush: “You understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state!”. In 2013, questioned by Charles Grant about his attitude to Ukraine, Putin said: “We have common traditions, a common mentality, a common history and a common culture.… I want to repeat again, we are one people... [Ukraine] is part of our greater Russian, or Russian-Ukrainian, world”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his views on Ukraine.
This year Putin has returned to his theme. In a long article published in July, ‘On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, Putin argued that modern Ukraine was “entirely the product of the Soviet era … shaped – for a significant part – on the lands of historical Russia”, and blamed the West for seeking to turn Ukraine into an “anti-Moscow Russia”. Former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, currently the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, followed up in October with an article likening Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (who is Jewish) to German Jewish intellectuals who asked to serve in the SS; Medvedev’s conclusion was that there was no point in talking to Ukrainian vassals of Western masters.
The Kremlin is using these narratives to convey different messages to different audiences. The Russian population is supposed to feel threatened by the West’s ‘puppet regime’ in Kyiv, and to believe that the Ukrainian population would, if given the chance, rather be part of the Russian world than the West (even though opinion polls show most Ukrainians support EU membership, and a plurality favour NATO membership). The message to Ukrainians is that they are being used as cannon fodder by the West: were it not for the ‘neo-Nazis’ who took power in Kyiv in the 2014 ‘coup’, they could return to their spiritual and cultural home in the Russian world, and have peace in their country. And for the West, the message is that Ukraine will always matter more to Russia than it does to the West. Consequently, it should not be treated as a sovereign state, but as a historical anomaly that will inevitably gravitate towards Moscow.
Putin has framed his intentions towards Ukraine in different ways at different times. In 2014, he spoke of ‘Novorossiya’ – a province of the pre-1917 Russian Empire that covered large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine – in a way that implied that he had ambitions to control the territory again. His July article suggested that Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were all originally part of one ‘Russian world’, which was subsequently divided by Russia’s enemies. But he might settle for something less than absorption of all or part of Ukraine, ensuring only that it remains neutral and neutralised – permanently prevented from seeking EU or NATO membership. It is safe to assume that the more he can get, by whatever means but at a reasonable cost, the more he will take.
The information barrage has been accompanied by the deployment of Russian forces towards the Ukrainian border. Though the number of troops believed to be in the area is slightly smaller than in Spring, Ukrainian military intelligence has assessed that there are still around 1200 tanks (almost six times as many as in the entire British army) and 1600 artillery pieces – enough for a significant military operation.
This does not mean, however, that Putin has taken a definite decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the 2014 operation to seize Crimea, he showed that he and his military commanders understand Chinese strategist Sun Tzu’s dictum: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. What Putin does next will depend in part on what the West does to shape his risk calculation in the coming weeks.
There are three basic approaches that the West could take. The first is to lean on Zelenskyy to make concessions to Putin. A recent article by Samuel Charap of RAND argued that rather than focusing only on coercing Russia, the US should also try to put an end to the cycle of crises by pushing Kyiv to take steps toward implementing its obligations under the Minsk II agreement – the 2015 ceasefire agreement brokered by then French President François Hollande and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel when Ukrainian forces in the Donbas were on the point of being overrun. There seems to be some support for this approach in the Biden administration.
There are two problems with putting pressure on Ukraine to yield to Russia (apart from the moral aspects – which Charap acknowledges): the first is that when Putin demands that Ukraine fulfil Minsk II, he means Russia’s interpretation of it. That would require Ukraine to make the first move, taking steps that would put its security at greater risk, such as giving the de facto authorities in the Donbas a veto over Ukraine’s foreign policy orientation, including relations with the EU and NATO. In return, Ukraine could only hope that Russia would carry out its side of the bargain, and give back control of the Ukrainian border to the Ukrainian authorities. Ukraine has only to look at the example of Georgia to know how likely it is that Putin would do this: Russia has never carried out its obligations under the 2008 ceasefire deal negotiated by then French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The second problem is that Putin has already indicated that he wants more than simply the implementation of the Minsk agreement: he wants to end NATO co-operation with Kyiv and stop the supply of Western equipment to Ukrainian forces, increasing Ukraine’s future vulnerability. Each concession will merely become the basis for negotiating the next.
The second approach the West could take is to remain neutral, calling on both sides to show restraint. Until recently this was the approach of France and Germany: in April, as Russian forces near the Ukrainian border were reinforced, Berlin and Paris called on “all parties to exercise restraint and work toward the immediate de-escalation of tensions” – ignoring the fact that Russia was threatening Ukraine, not vice versa. Such even-handedness could encourage Putin to think that an attack would be essentially cost free, or that (as in the first scenario) the West would force Ukraine back to the negotiating table in the interests of restoring ‘stability’.
Equally, Western refusal to take sides could result in Ukraine believing that it had no choice but to fight Russia on its own and assessing (wrongly) that its best hope of success would be a pre-emptive military offensive in the Donbas. Zelenskyy, a relatively weak and inexperienced president, might think he could defeat Russia’s proxies before Russia could react, or hope that Ukraine’s Western partners would have no choice but to help Kyiv if Russia counter-attacked. A similar scenario led to near-catastrophe for Georgia in 2008 when after years of Russian provocations the erratic Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, launched an attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia in the hope of pushing the Russians out. Instead, the Russians captured all of South Ossetia and Georgia’s other rebellious region, Abkhazia, and the West did nothing to help Georgia militarily.
Ukraine’s survival as an independent, democratic state is vital to the West.
The third approach the West could take is to focus on deterring Russia and reassuring Ukraine. This is by no means an easy option. The first challenge would be to convince Western opinion and the Kremlin that Ukraine is as important to the West as it is to Russia. Russian commentators have done a good job over many years in making the case that Ukraine is of existential importance to Moscow. But Ukraine’s survival as an independent, democratic state is just as vital to the West, and especially to Europeans. If Russia sought to control eastern, central and southern Ukraine, leaving a land-locked, unstable western rump, the effects on European security would be profound – much greater than the annexation of Crimea. Refugee flows would destabilise Ukraine’s western neighbours: Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Russia’s dominance of the Black Sea would grow, leaving NATO allies Bulgaria and Romania more vulnerable. Russian forces would be several hundred kilometres closer to NATO territory. There would be consequences for the US too: Biden has repeatedly emphasised America’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – even though it is not a treaty ally. If the US stood by while Russia dismembered the country, it would further undermine Washington’s reputation as a reliable partner, following its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The West has some economic leverage with Russia – though Russia’s sovereign debt is low, major Russian corporations would be vulnerable to being shut out of Western debt markets. But comprehensive sanctions take a long time to be politically effective, while countries can adapt to limited sanctions or find ways to circumvent them. Western sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea and the shooting down of flight MH17 in 2014 are still in place and may have helped to restrain Putin from pushing further into Ukraine since then. Still, he may judge that broader economic sanctions would hurt the West as well as Russia, and would therefore be unrealistic or unsustainable for anything more than a very short period. Ending the purchase of oil and gas from Russia, for example, would have a major effect on the Russian economy; but no EU leader is going to suggest cutting off almost half of the EU’s gas supplies and almost a quarter of its oil supplies, especially not during the current gas crisis with heating bills already spiking.
Western countries should accelerate the supply of defensive weapons systems to Ukraine. Ukraine’s armed forces, though much stronger than in 2014, are still short of some key equipment including anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems. The US has supplied 47 launchers and 360 missiles for the Javelin anti-tank system, and Ukraine has bought 12 Bayraktar drones from Turkey. Ukraine’s air defences depend entirely on Soviet-era equipment. But even if the West provides Ukraine with more defence systems, these would not have an instant effect on the balance of forces: it takes two or three training seasons to be fully competent with a Javelin, for example.
If Western nations want to deter Russia, the most effective step, but the hardest politically, would be to deploy some Western forces near the front line.
If Western nations want to deter Russia, the most effective step that they could take, but also the hardest politically, would be to deploy some Western forces near the front line, if requested by Ukraine. Britain’s Mirror newspaper reported that 600 UK special forces were on standby to deploy to Ukraine. There has been no official confirmation of the story, nor similar stories from other Western countries. But it would be a credible response to the current situation. Putin has been reluctant to confront NATO member-states’ forces directly. When the US killed around 200 Russian mercenaries in a battle in Syria, Putin did not escalate, but effectively disowned them. After Turkey shot down a Russian combat aircraft that strayed into Turkish airspace in 2015, Russia imposed sanctions, but did not retaliate militarily.
If Western countries did step up military support to Ukraine, it would be even more vital to keep open channels of communication to the Russian leadership (to the extent that they exist) to ensure that the West’s intentions are understood. If countries chose to deploy forces to Ukraine, they should make clear to Russia that they were only there in pursuit of Ukraine’s right to self-defence, in accordance with the UN Charter; and that if Russian deployments returned to normal peace-time levels, there would be no need for Western forces to be deployed in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the West would need to emphasise to Zelenskyy that the deployment of Western forces was not intended to give him a blank cheque for military action, but to stabilise the situation and prevent conflict.
If Putin can achieve his objectives without having to risk open conflict, he will do so. If he thinks conflict is necessary, he will fight, unless he sees the likely cost as too high. The history of Putin’s wars in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria suggests that he takes calculated risks – risks that his Western counterparts might not take – but he is not rash. Before he decides to send his forces across the Ukrainian border, NATO needs to show him that it would be rash indeed.
Ian Bond is director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform.

3.  The Ukrainian army has got better at fighting Russian-backed separatists

Excerpts:
But Russian thinking may be changing in response to a version of the future it finds intolerable. It fears that a West-veering Ukraine will abandon its historical role as a buffer between Russia and the West, and instead play host to American firepower only a short distance from Moscow. Critics accuse Mr Putin of scheming to ensure that the Minsk II ceasefire agreement of 2015 would see Donetsk and Luhansk, with their large Russian populations, put back into a federal Ukraine with a power of veto over any Westward tilt. That has not happened. Ukraine’s courtship of Europe and America is continuing and Russia is losing patience, reckons Samuel Charap of the RAND corporation, an American think-tank.
That does not mean that Russia wishes to gobble up large swathes of Ukrainian territory for good. Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign-policy analyst close to the Kremlin, suggests that a quick, hard incursion akin to Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia could occur, followed by merciless talks. A pretext would not be hard to find, or to manufacture.
That force, unleashed fully upon Ukraine’s troops, would pulverise them. Nothing in Ukraine’s arsenal would be able to stop Russia’s air force of modern jets, which recently proved their power in a bombing campaign over Syria. Most of Ukraine’s navy vanished along with Crimea in 2014 and has not been rebuilt since then. Russian troops are better armed, greater in number and backed by a smoother logistics set-up. No Western power looks willing to wage war against Russia for Ukraine’s sake. Mr Putin is probably bluffing. If he is not, Dima’s confidence will face a fearsome test. 
The Ukrainian army has got better at fighting Russian-backed separatists
But now war of a different kind looms
Nov 30th 2021
KYIV
WHAT TO MAKE of the military analysts who calmly list the reasons why the most serious war in Europe since 1945 might begin in January? The flat, muddy terrain of south-eastern Ukraine will be frozen solid by then, allowing Russian tanks to roll in. It is in the middle of the deployment cycle for the conscripts who make up much of Russia’s ground forces. And Russia may find itself with a pretext for invasion, since the new year has in the past brought front line flare-ups in Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed separatists. Besides, the 100,000 Russian troops massed near the border are more than mere theatre; Russia is setting up field hospitals and calling up its reserves.
Dima is unimpressed. A colonel in the Ukrainian army, he has watched the rapid transformation of his country’s armed forces from a bad joke to something approaching a modern army. And he thinks Russia has been watching, too. “They are afraid of us, because since 2014 we have shown what we can do,” says Dima, who prefers not to use his real name. “It would be a third world war, at a minimum,” he says, perhaps with a touch of hyperbole. In the corner of a café in Kyiv, fidgeting with cigarettes and coffee, he remembers how far Ukraine has travelled.
In 2014 Dima was commanding a battalion near Luhansk, a city near the Russian border. Of his 700 soldiers, only 40 were ready for active duty. His men did not bother to wear their clumsy Soviet-army vests or helmets, which offered little protection against bullets. Soldiers instead, when possible, dressed in German gear scrounged abroad in second-hand stores by volunteers. His tanks had the wrong engines installed. Few men had the training they needed to fight well. Had Ukraine enjoyed today’s military back in 2014 “Donetsk and Luhansk would be free today,” claims Dima with a snap of his fingers.

But they are not. Ukraine failed to stop Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the self-declared “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk remain outside Ukraine’s control. That Ukraine had just 6,000 combat-ready troops at the time was a legacy of decades of neglect. Well-intentioned Ukrainian politicians were complacent after the signing in 1994 of the Budapest memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from America, Britain and Russia. Ill-intentioned officials, some with Russian citizenship, sold off equipment and took their cut.
Now Ukraine is getting its act together. Military spending as a share of GDP has more than doubled to 4%, funded in part by a “military levy” on incomes. America has given $2.5bn-worth of equipment to Ukraine. That includes Harris radios to ensure troops can communicate, and counter-battery radars to detect the source of enemy fire. Soldiers enthuse about their modern new uniforms. Conscription was reintroduced, though 85% of Ukraine’s soldiers are still professional.
Some necessary reforms will take time the country does not have. Procurement is murky and state-owned manufacturers are unproductive. An overly rigid Soviet-era command culture persists. But Ukraine has 250,000 troops and a further 900,000 reserves. Some 300,000 of them have experience on the front line. The new soldiers are better trained. The West, at first reluctant to send Ukraine weaponry, is changing tack. Ukraine has bought TB-2 Bayraktar combat-capable drones from Turkey, a NATO member, which the separatists can do little to stop. America has sent Ukraine Javelin missiles, though on the condition that they be stored far from the front line.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wants more. Weaponry is nice but what he covets most is accession to NATO. That would commit America and 29 other countries to leap to Ukraine’s defence were it attacked by Russia. But such an invitation looks highly unlikely; NATO does not want an unambiguous commitment to defend a country Russia has already attacked. However, Ukraine is preparing its forces for “interoperability” with NATO forces anyway. Joint exercises with NATO are increasingly common; the older ones such as Rapid Trident, and Sea Breeze this summer, are getting bigger and more sophisticated. New exercises are also cropping up, such as Cossack Mace, a Britain-Ukraine exercise that began this year, and “Coherent Resilience”, an annual tabletop NATO exercise with Ukrainian officials that began in 2017. A new policy mandates command of English among all Ukrainian troops by 2025.
Much of Ukraine’s improvement has been based on the premise that Russia wants to challenge Ukraine, but does not want the cost of waging a war in its own name. Vladimir Putin funnelled troops and small quantities of Russian kit to the front line; but he has not sent planes or entire battalions. That has produced the kind of disorganised ground war that Ukraine has been getting better at fighting ever since. If Ukraine’s beefier military can deny Mr Putin his preferred option of a low-risk military gambit, the thinking goes, Ukraine might keep Russia at bay.
But Russian thinking may be changing in response to a version of the future it finds intolerable. It fears that a West-veering Ukraine will abandon its historical role as a buffer between Russia and the West, and instead play host to American firepower only a short distance from Moscow. Critics accuse Mr Putin of scheming to ensure that the Minsk II ceasefire agreement of 2015 would see Donetsk and Luhansk, with their large Russian populations, put back into a federal Ukraine with a power of veto over any Westward tilt. That has not happened. Ukraine’s courtship of Europe and America is continuing and Russia is losing patience, reckons Samuel Charap of the RAND corporation, an American think-tank.
That does not mean that Russia wishes to gobble up large swathes of Ukrainian territory for good. Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign-policy analyst close to the Kremlin, suggests that a quick, hard incursion akin to Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia could occur, followed by merciless talks. A pretext would not be hard to find, or to manufacture.
That force, unleashed fully upon Ukraine’s troops, would pulverise them. Nothing in Ukraine’s arsenal would be able to stop Russia’s air force of modern jets, which recently proved their power in a bombing campaign over Syria. Most of Ukraine’s navy vanished along with Crimea in 2014 and has not been rebuilt since then. Russian troops are better armed, greater in number and backed by a smoother logistics set-up. No Western power looks willing to wage war against Russia for Ukraine’s sake. Mr Putin is probably bluffing. If he is not, Dima’s confidence will face a fearsome test. ■
4.  ‘We’re talking about a war’: tech competition between the U.S. and China is in a dangerous new phase, says former Google disinformation chief
‘We’re talking about a war’: tech competition between the U.S. and China is in a dangerous new phase, says former Google disinformation chief
BY 
December 1, 2021 10:42 AM EST

It’s become apparent in recent years that the U.S. and China now find themselves in a tech-fueled arms race—one with repercussions involving everything from cyber warfare to intellectual-property theft. It is a conflict that author Jacob Helberg describes as a “gray war” in his new book, The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power—and as intimidating as that descriptor may be, Helberg insists that “war” is the right way to phrase it.

“I understand that war is a scary concept, but calling it a competition is a disservice,” Helberg said Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech 2021 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif. “At the end of the day, if Japan and Germany sell more cars than [U.S. automakers], it’s not the end of the world. Here, the political survival of democracy and equal competition is on the line. We’re not playing tennis; we’re talking about a war, because China is using every tool at its disposal.”
From 2016 to 2020, Helberg led Google’s internal policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference on its platform, including state-backed misinformation efforts from the likes of Russia that sought to undermine U.S. elections. The experience informed Helberg’s understanding of the challenges now facing American companies and the U.S. government alike—and he’s convinced that framing it as a “war” is important to prioritizing the task at hand. “Your overriding objective should be winning the war—that should be your North Star,” he noted.
Helberg was joined in discussion by other experts who provided their own thoughts on this tech-driven conflict. “I think the world of national security in Washington, D.C., has been aware of this,” according to Lori Esposito Murray, president of the Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board. She added, however, that the private tech sector has largely been slow to recognize the geopolitical significance of its industry: “The internet has become, and it is, a weapon.”

Stephen Ward, managing director at private equity firm Insight Partners, said that he believes the U.S. has “actually done well” given its disadvantages in fighting Helberg’s “gray war.” Ward, who focuses on cybersecurity investments for Insight, noted that China and Russia are able to operate more swiftly and uniformly, as authoritarian regimes unbeholden to the same rules and transparency required of the U.S. government. 
“The coordination [with private companies], the speed at which they share information, the sanctioned activities—we’re not playing that game,” Ward said. “We have rules [in the U.S.]; they don’t have those rules. Considering the playing field, I think we’ve done an amazing job as a government—while playing defense most of the time.”



5.  Beijing’s strategy for global dominance


Beijing’s strategy for global dominance
Enlisting American governors and mayors is a clever component
By Clifford D. May - - Tuesday, November 30, 2021
washingtontimes.com · by Clifford D. May

OPINION:
The Cold War was a struggle for global supremacy between two superpowers. It ended thirty years ago this month when the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.
People are now asking whether a second Cold War has begun. It seems to me the answer is obvious. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has made it abundantly clear that global supremacy is his goal.
The tougher question: Do Americans have the will and the energy “to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out” as President John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address in 1961, described what then appeared to be an endless contest with the U.S.S.R.?
If it turns out we’re not up for the fight, it is likely that we will leave our children a world dominated by totalitarians. Put the past (e.g., the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) aside and consider what China’s rulers have been doing lately.
They have stripped Hong Kong of its freedoms in violation of their clear treaty obligations. They’re threatening Taiwan. They’re persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, concealing vital information about a deadly virus unleashed from Wuhan, debt-trapping poor nations, stealing fortunes in American intellectual property, subverting U.N. agencies, while massively building their military capabilities.
Simultaneously and audaciously, they’re competing to win hearts and minds around the world – at America’s expense. A tweet from a Foreign Ministry spokesman last week asserted that the U.S. “wants to make democracy a tool for advancing its global strategies and geopolitical interest. This in itself is the greatest damage to democratic values.”
There’s more. My FDD colleagues, Emily de La Bruyere and Nathan Picarsic, have just published a report on what may be the cleverest and most insidious effort now being undertaken by the People’s Republic of China (PRC): “systematic campaigns” to influence American state and local governments.
Their new monograph, “All Over the Map: The Chinese Communist Party’s Subnational Interest in the United States,” details how Beijing is taking advantage of governors and mayors who prioritize trade, investment, and job creation with little concern for – and often little understanding of – national security.
Local elected officials, they write, are often unaware of the “extent to which short-term boons from economic cooperation may lead to long-term losses for the United States by hollowing out key industrial sectors and gradually offshoring jobs and economic growth.”
They cite a study by PRC think tank and university researchers finding that the governors of 17 states are currently “friendly to China, 14 have ambiguous attitudes toward China, six are tough on China, and 14 have made no clear or public statement on China.”
At the same time, many Hollywood moguls and star athletes kowtow to Beijing, presumably because they’re afraid of getting cut off from lucrative Chinese markets. The CCP also relies on American corporate leaders to assist them.
Reuters reported last month that the PRC embassy in Washington “sent letters pressing executives to urge members of Congress to alter or drop specific bills that seek to enhance U.S. competitiveness” and warning companies “they would risk losing market share or revenue in China if the legislation becomes law.”
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, which has made significant investments in China, last week apologized for making a joke about Chinese Communists. Can you imagine an American executive apologizing for making a joke about Republicans or Democrats?
While Americans play economic checkers, Mr. Xi plays chess or, more precisely, Go, an abstract strategy game. For example, the FDD report notes that, over the past decade, “China has come to monopolize the international solar supply chain, which the United States once led. China has done so in large part thanks to acquisition of expertise and technology from U.S. players, as well as domestic subsidies and preferential policies.”
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley recently pointed out that Hunter Biden helped secure “one of the world’s largest cobalt mines for China.” That mine, in the Congo, sold for $2.65 billion. Cobalt is a key component in the batteries used in electric vehicles. In other words, Professor Turley adds, Hunter Biden’s “alleged influence-peddling was used to deliver a huge strategic advantage to the Chinese in the very area of electric cars that his father was making an American investment priority” in line with White House climate-change policies.
John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, has reportedly lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, apparently because such legislation would hinder his efforts to persuade China’s rulers to pledge to limit carbon emissions.
Sen. John Barrasso regards such pledges as worthless. “China’s emission-reduction target actually allows its emissions to increase until 2030,” he observed last week. “In 2019, China emitted more greenhouse gasses than the rest of the developed world combined.”
Ms. de La Bruyère and Mr. Picarsic add: “The CCP is shaping the incentives of U.S. political leaders and private companies, promising them short-term economic or climate-policy inducements in exchange for Beijing’s longer-term cannibalization of American industry, security, and values.”
Toward the end of the Trump administration, there was recognition of Beijing’s influence operations and the beginning of an effort to resist them. But much has been left for Mr. Biden to do – if he sees this as a vital national interest. The FDD report provides a list of specific measures. “There is no time to waste,” Ms. de La Bruyère and Mr. Picarsic urge.
In his 1961 Inaugural, President Kennedy spoke of “those nations who would make themselves our adversary,” warning: “We dare not tempt them with weakness.” That was true then. It seems to me it’s equally true now.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times.
Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Click to Read More and View Comments
Click to Hide
washingtontimes.com · by Clifford D. May

6. The 2021 War on the Rocks Holiday Reading List

A lot of great reading to choose from for the holidays. My (biased) recommendations are below.  Only two of my four could be selected so here are my four recommendations.

Grey Wars: A Contemporary History of U.S. Special Operations, by Dr. Nancy Walbridge Collins, Yale University Press, 2021.
 
Professor Collins had incredible inside access at the highest levels of USSOCOM. She provides a unique assessment of special operations over the past two decades from a perspective few outsiders can attain. While the past is important, this book provides an understanding of the foundation from which special operations forces will evolve for future challenges operating in the grey zone of strategic competition among the revisionist and rogue powers and the continued threat of violent non-state actors.
 
Patterns of Impunity: Human Rights in North Korea and the Role of the U.S. Special Envoy, by
Dr. Robert R. King, The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2021
 
Ambassador King is the last U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, a congressional mandated position that has been vacant since 2017. With the Biden administration’s desire for a human rights up front approach this is a must read for all who work in the human rights space and who want to understand the human rights tragedy in North Korea. Hopefully his successor will soon be named, and this should be the first book he or she reads when nominated.
 
The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government’s Greatest Humanitarian, Robert D. Kaplan, Random House, 2021
 
Robert Kaplan knows how to write about great events and great men. He tells the story of Bob Gersony who is little known outside the U.S. government. There are few in or out of government whose portfolio included the of complex situations and difficult countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. He has provided deep insights through detailed interviews and on the ground reporting. His research methodology and skill at reporting should inspire all foreign service officers, intelligence professionals, special operations personnel, and foreign area officers who work deeply embedded in indigenous environments. And for Korea watchers Chapter 16 is a must read.
 
Irregular Soldiers and rebellious States: Small-Scale U.S. Interventions Abroad, by Dr. Michael p. Noonan, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
 
Dr. Noonan provides an analysis of a select group of case studies looking at direct and indirect intervention in complex political military conditions. He provides a framework for assessing future conflicts below the level of state on state or major theater war. Although many want to believe the U.S. will not conduct similar operations in the future, they should keep in mind that history provides a guide to the future. This is a history worthy of deep study and refection.


The 2021 War on the Rocks Holiday Reading List - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by WOTR Staff · December 2, 2021
Every year we kick off the holiday season with a roundup of books recommended by the War on the Rocks and Texas National Security Review team. Enrich your friends’ libraries, get a family book club going, or treat yourself to something new. We hope you enjoy!
Emma Ashford
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark. This classic 2012 book is perhaps the best history book I’ve ever read. It combines large-scale historical trends with the minutiae of diplomatic history: what the key actors across the European continent were thinking, saying, and doing in the run-up to the Great War. The characters and actions trip off the page in ways curiously reminiscent of today’s interconnected world. More importantly, they remind us of the ways in which even the best intentions in foreign policy can easily go awry.
Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, Mary Elise Sarotte. In 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union was greeted with a wave of optimism about the future trajectory of European security and Russian politics. Today, U.S.-Russian relations are locked in a damaging, dead-end, and hostile stalemate. Sarotte’s broad yet detailed history explores how we went from one state of affairs to the other and suggests it will be near-impossible to rewind the clock. A must-read for anyone interested in U.S.-Russian relations or the study of U.S. foreign policy since 1991.
Mary Kate Aylward
Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry. This is one of many stories the Kentucky author and farmer has set in the fictional Port William, based on his own hometown of Port Royal. His portrait of small-town America may seem too good to be true, but I think that’s a measure of Berry’s sadness at what was lost to highways, agricultural mechanization, and the pursuit of speed and profit — all of which Jayber observes from his perch as the town’s bachelor barber.
Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for her first short-story collection and then evidently decided she needed to level up, so she moved to Rome, learned the language, and wrote her latest novel in Italian. In short, self-contained chapters, we follow an unnamed older woman around her life in an unnamed Italian city as she explores the boundary between a solitary life and a lonely one.
David Barno and Nora Bensahel
Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada, Mark Adkin. Written by a British Army major stationed in Barbados during the 1983 U.S. invasion of neighboring Grenada, this account remains the most definitive tactical account of the conflict. Adkin describes in painful detail the stunning array of errors, confusion, and jaw-dropping lack of coordination that went into the hastily organized invasion. A sobering reminder that major U.S. military operations in the future may be far more fraught with chaos and confusion than those of the last three decades.
Over the Beach: The Air War in Vietnam, Zalin Grant. A striking narrative that describes the air war over North Vietnam as fought by Navy carrier pilots flying from the Tonkin Gulf. Grant, a veteran Vietnam War correspondent, drives home the incredible dangers and staggering losses to the airmen and their machines that fought over the heavily defended skies of the north. Told both through the eyes of the author and the personal accounts of those who fought and the spouses they left behind, this book brings home the intensity, fear, and dangers of combat flying in the last war in which the United States took heavy losses in the air.
Mike Benitez
Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor, Edward S. Miller. Any policy wonk or strategist worth his or her salt knows there are multiple instruments of national power. This book details the history of the secret economic campaign the United States waged against Japan to financially strangle the country in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor. This book isn’t the easiest read (it was written by a former Fortune 500 chief financial officer), but the strategic insights gained make it worth the effort.
Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, Peter Sims. This easy read is not about national security, but the example-rich concepts detail how breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries. Highly recommended for any commercial, government, or military organization that wants to accelerate change without failing epically.
Claude Berube
Washington Irving: An American Original, Brian Jay Jones. America’s first superstar in the literary field is given his due in this extensive biography of Washington Irving. Satirist, businessman, civil servant, and writer, Irving was as popular in England as he was in the United States and associated with giants like Byron, Mary Shelley, and Walter Scott as well as kings and queens. Military historians will also appreciate his ties to the U.S. Navy and diplomacy. Aspiring writers will also understand Irving’s periods of writer’s block and need to find old unpublished manuscripts simply to pay the bills.
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson. Nearly 30,000 citizens of London were killed during the Blitz and another 28,000 were seriously injured. Larson guides the reader to the streets and throughout the countryside as well as in the minds of the country’s leaders in defying Germany. If you liked Larson’s Dead Wake, you’ll love The Splendid and the Vile.
Tami Davis Biddle
The best book on war, hands down, is Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. It has everything: causes of war, coercion theory, democracy in war, morality and ethics, escalation theory, leadership, war termination, alliance theory — everything! And it’s all just as relevant and useful as it was when first written.
And Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go To War. If you read the preface and the first few pages, you will be hooked — and you will never think about war the same way again.
Ralph Clem
My two recommendations focus on the last year of World War II, one as regards Germany and the other Japan: Ian Kershaw’s The End (Germany) and Max Hastings’ Retribution (Japan). Key takeaways: Germany is one of the very few countries in history that refused to sue for peace and instead fought to the very end. Even though I knew of Japan’s gruesome record of atrocities, I had no idea that it was as bad as Hastings describes, especially in China. I did know that the horrific casualties on Okinawa helped convince U.S. senior leadership to go ahead with the atomic bombs and shorten the war. Also, Hastings is very sympathetic to LeMay’s firebombing campaign for the same reason.
Audrey Kurth Cronin
Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840. I picked up this book for deeper insight into the origins of the U.S. Constitution. Amar is a Yale University law and poli-sci professor who delves into the lively “conversations” that produced words Americans revere but also fight over. It’s well-sourced and based on primary documents from 1760-1840. Understanding the stories, history, and context in greater depth was valuable, but what grabbed me was the author’s optimism, reminding me of ideas and values that can still unite us — if we can stop shouting at each other.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari. This book brings together some of the key dilemmas facing humanity in the digital age, connecting concepts across disciplines and topic areas in 21 short thematic chapters. I’m a fan of Harari’s Homo Deus and Sapiens, and this book has the same sweeping erudition in bite-sized pieces. The chapters on terrorism and war are good, of course, but my favorites are those on equality, liberty, and civilization. Great for shaking your brain out of familiar ruts.
Patrick Cronin
Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945, Richard Overy. (Note that this is the U.K. version, which you can order online. The U.S. edition is not available until April.) Overy’s masterwork offers a brilliant framework for thinking about World War II as a broad and lengthy military-political-economic contest of old and new would-be empires. Overy’s blend of historical narrative and conceptual thinking ensures every reader looking for insights into today’s major-power competition will find a treasure trove of insights.
To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers, Bruce D. Jones. The author delivers on his promise of a book focused on the struggle for political and economic power from the vantage point of the world’s oceans. Beautifully crafted and told in such a way that the reader will hardly notice when Jones crosses the customary barriers erected to separate naval operations from trade, undersea internet cables, and climate change. Read this book to come away with a deeper understanding of why the world’s oceans are both vital and connected to core defense, economic, and environmental security.
Annika Culver
We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women’s Lives, Manon Garcia. Incredibly well-written, engaging, and extremely provocative, Garcia’s tour de force is a must-read for anyone who is wondering about the status of feminism and its reverberations at a key moment in global history. In a thoughtful reinterpretation of past luminaries like Simone de Beauvoir, she points out how, rather than serving merely as a default strategy to avoid conflict, “submission” takes a lot of work and involves incredible labor for women who decide to follow the dictates of their societies, workplaces, and partners. For some, submission to such expectations can even be pleasurable. Garcia unfolds a bold tapestry of questions and philosophical musings on a topic that is bound to provoke and stimulate animated discussion.
Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami. Kawakami’s fascinating book examines a plethora of issues facing three women in a working-class Japanese family as they head down roads toward adolescence and adulthood, a successful professional career potentially without children, and aging in a profession based on looks. The author’s prose is immensely suspenseful as readers become curious onlookers into how each woman’s life unfolds and encounters a variety of issues concerning female embodied experiences.
Nicholas Danforth
The Circassian: A Life of Esref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent, Benjamin Fortna. A compelling real-life spy story that doubles as a brief history of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The Complete Short Stories of Saki, H.H. Munro. A century on, still the funniest thing written in the English language.
Ryan Evans
City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas, Roger Crowley. This fascinating story of how Venice built and lost a maritime empire over the course of hundreds of years has so much for students and practitioners of strategy. I came away both enthralled and horrified by the Venetian leaders of the era. Their systematic and single-minded pursuit of profit and trade led them to change the world forever, in ways both admirable and ghastly.
The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Steven Runciman. Inspired in part by Crowley’s book (the Venetians played a large role in weakening the Byzantine Empire, running it, and later defending it unsuccessful from the Ottomans) and in part by the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, I picked up this classic account of the final end to what was once the greatest empire and civilization the world had known.
Richard Fontaine
América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898, Robert Goodwin. More time passed between Columbus and George Washington than between Washington and our present day. We don’t think much about the fact that Spain owned half of the modern United States at our country’s founding or about what went on for the 300 years of its North American domination. This book tells you.
Sovietstan: A Journey Through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Erika Fatland. Think you can’t make a profile of Turkmenbashi breezy and entertaining? Think again. A Norwegian anthropologist saddles up and hits Central Asia. Fascination ensues. (Hat tip to my colleague Nathalie Grogan for the rec.)
Rosemary Foot
I have particularly enjoyed Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. If you want to think about the forms that love might take, the uses we make of others, our degrees of attachment, and what the end might look like, this book provokes you to think about these things and much more.
I’ve also enjoyed Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees. Set in the grey zone in Ukraine between separatist and loyalist forces, it is about one man’s devotion to his bees and to finding the right place for them and, therefore, perhaps, for himself, at a time of war. This is very sparingly written but has a particular beauty that comes from the underlying idea rather than the prose itself.
Ulrike Franke
The Responsibility to Defend: Rethinking Germany’s Strategic Culture, Bastian Giegerich and Maximilian Terhalle. Germany’s security policy no longer fits the strategic challenges that it faces. That is the verdict of Giegerich and Terhalle, two observers of German defense policy. The book lays out the changed security situation for the Federal Republic and explains the reasons for the “fundamental unseriousness” of the German discussion on these topics. To Germany-watchers, the authors’ analysis may not come as a surprise, but for those wanting to understand Germany’s often surprising policy decisions better, this book gives a full account in less than 150 pages.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang. This 1991 book, which enjoyed enormous success at the time, deserves another read today. Chang tells the story of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and finally herself in an ever-changing China between 1900 and 1978. She gives fascinating insights from the time of the emperor to the absurdity of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
Jason Fritz
Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey, James Rebanks. Between COVID-19 and climate change, I have begun to ask some fundamental questions about my own relationship with nature, and I’m certainly not alone in this. Rebanks is a farmer in the Lake District and author of the best-selling The Shepherd’s Life. While part autobiography, the book is about rethinking food production from animal health and preventing natural disasters to sustainable land management. Rebanks offers a philosophy of farming that builds on millennia of knowledge, mostly forsworn in the last half-century, but updates it for the modern world.
Guarded by Dragons: Encounters with Rare Books and Rare People, Rick Gekoski. Gekoski, possibly the most important book dealer of the last 50 years, fills page after page with witty anecdotes on dealing with the rarest books in the world, the people who wrote them, and the people that collect them. Beyond great stories well told, it’s an education on the book trade itself. An absolute must-read for book lovers.
Mark Galeotti
Gangsters are people too, even if often deeply damaged and/or unpleasant ones with questionable impulse control. Federico Varese‘s brilliant Mafia Life: Love, Death, and Money at the Heart of Organized Crime draws on his fieldwork amongst the hoodlums of the world to explore the texture of their day-to-day lives, from their working days to their dying ones. A fascinating tour de force.
While on the subject of gangsters, I’ve been on a bit of a retro, noir kick this year and Dashiell Hammett remains one of my favorite writers of the era, with an almost Hemingway-like telegraphic taciturnity to his prose. The Maltese Falcon may get more attention because of the film, but for my money, his Red Harvest is the best of the crop, a tale of moral corruption in Poisonville, a town torn between rival gangsters and corrupt officials, all ready to be played against each other. Apart from inspiring both Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, it also set the standard for hard-boiled interwar “morality imposed by immoral means” tales.
Stacie Goddard
Wars of Revelation, Rebecca Lissner. This book doesn’t come out until December, but I had the opportunity to read a preview. Lissner asks how U.S. military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq transformed grand strategy, especially perceptions of its own power. She uses original historical material and, on top of that, the book is beautifully written.
The Consequences of Humiliation: Anger and Status in World Politics, Joslyn Barnhart. There has been a lot of work on status and great-power politics, and this is a welcome and original addition. Barnhart looks specifically at reactions to humiliation in world politics and how shameful events can spark future aggression. What’s particularly impressive is her ability to dive down into the individual level to really unpack the psychology of humiliation in world politics.
T.X. Hammes
The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Security, Azzem Azhar. A journalist and serial entrepreneur, Azhar has written a highly readable book that illustrates the essential skill of thinking in terms of exponential change. Every field is being affected by this trend.
The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, Wesley Morgan. This meticulously researched book provides a sharp analysis of how initial tactical success in the Pech Valley led to long-term defeat. Of particular interest is the continuity it provides to the inherently disconnected narrative of the units rotating through the hardest place. Great companion to The Afghanistan Papers.
Doyle Hodges
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Marc Reisner. Though somewhat dated (first published in 1986), the issues described in this history of water and the American West have only grown more acute since its writing. Reisner is an engaging writer, devoting time to vivid descriptions of the out-sized (and occasionally outlandish) personalities of the farmers, ranchers, real estate developers, conservationists, bureaucrats, and engineers who fought over whether and how to bring irrigation to naturally arid regions. The nobility and hubris of the American impulse to shape nature to suit human desires are on clear display, and the implications for the future are sobering.
Squeeze Me, Carl Hiaasen. Florida is as much a character in Hiaasen’s novels as any of the men and women whose misadventures he chronicles. Most of his main characters are the human equivalent of “factory seconds” — genially flawed people who wouldn’t pass the quality check to be brand-name humans and are the more fascinating and lovable for their many imperfections. In this novel, Hiaasen assembles an absurd collection of characters, all of whom travel in or intersect the orbit of a collection of Burmese pythons (an invasive species) and an unnamed U.S. president (only ever referred to as “POTUS” or his Secret Service call sign) living in a resort/Winter White House near Palm Beach. Like most of Hiaasen’s books, this is a fast, breezy read that will result in at least chuckles and perhaps a few belly laughs.
Bruce Hoffman
The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of A Nazi Fugitive, Philippe Sands. Sands, a renowned international human rights lawyer and law professor at University College London, has written the year’s best thriller — an achievement even more impressive given that it is a work of nonfiction. In this sequel to his equally magisterial East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity,“ Sands tells of an unrepentant Nazi, his doting wife, and their now elderly but still admiring son — interweaving it with the story of the son of another World War II-era Nazi who reviles his father and Sands’ own family’s suffering as a result of the genocidal campaign overseen by both fathers. The late John le Carre also makes a cameo appearance in this riveting tale of mass murder and familial love, Nazis and the Vatican, the onset of the Cold War, and the infamous “ratline” that facilitated the escape from postwar Europe of some of the world’s most wanted war criminals.
2034: A Novel of the Next World War, Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis. Reminiscent of the “invasion literature” popular in Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century that eerily presaged World War I, this scarily plausible work of fiction by a former U.S. marine (and award-winning novelist) and a former U.S. Navy admiral who commanded NATO is as gripping as it is incisive. Many thrillers are hyped as “real page-turners,” but this one delivers in terms of narrative arc and the authors’ intimate familiarity with military operations and crisis management.
Frank Hoffman
Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence, Ryan Hass. This concise and engaging book examines how the United States can improve its approach towards China by building upon its advantages rather than focusing on what it can do against China. While Hass underestimates Beijing’s ambitions, his arguments for renewing U.S. economic power are compelling. Stronger argues for improving our deterrent posture “through a credible ability to impose massive costs on potential aggressors, though not necessarily at the geographic point of attack.”
The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint, Michael O’Hanlon. O’Hanlon’s unique threat framework is valuable. He uses the Pentagon’s “4 plus 1” threat construct, which covers China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism for the front half of this book. Then, the author introduces a functional threat framework that he calls “the other 4 plus 1.” This construct includes nuclear, biological, digital, climatic, and weakened domestic support. When these challenges “interact with the classic list of threats, they can make every problem more serious. They can exacerbate, intensify or accelerate the dangers posed by more classic, human adversaries.” The author offers reasonable approaches to mitigate the enormous risks posed by their combination.
William Inboden
After I selected my two books, I realized that they take place in the years 1943 and 1944, respectively. Perhaps this is no coincidence. In ways that still resonate and even haunt us today, the fraught and tragic World War II era brought out both the worst and the best in humanity. These two books, different as they are, emphasize the best.
The Year of Our Lord: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, Alan Jacobs. With Advent season upon us, it is fitting to include a reading in the Christian tradition. This marvelous book profiles five Christian intellectuals — Jacques Maritain, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Simone Weil, and C.S. Lewis — during the year 1943, and their wrestling with the meaning of democracy and Christian faith amidst the horrors of totalitarianism, carnage of war, and uncertain future of the world.
The Last Stand of the Tin-Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour, James Hornfischer. “Gripping” is an overused word, but it obtains for this remarkable story of the U.S. Navy’s last epic surface warfare battle. In the 1944 battle off Samar in the Philippine Sea, a resolute band of destroyers and destroyer escorts fought off a much larger Japanese fleet, at great sacrifice and loss. Many Navy officers have described this book as the single best testimony to Navy valor in combat. The book holds particular poignancy since the author, who died of brain cancer earlier this year, was my literary agent, and friend. Shortly before his death, the Navy presented Jim with the Distinguished Public Service Award, its highest award given to a civilian.
David Johnson
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1); The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 (Vol. 2); Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Vol. 3), Ian Toll. This is a brilliant and very readable history trilogy of the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. It takes the reader from the strategic political environment in Washington, D.C. to the individual sailor, soldier, and marine. What I found particularly useful is the description of how the Navy adapted rapidly to a war for which it was not prepared. This involved technical corrections to weapons — most famously torpedoes that were duds — and ruthlessly replacing prewar officers were not up to the demands of the war. A fascinating work on many levels.
The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, Elbridge Colby. Colby was the lead for the current National Defense Strategy when he was in the Department of Defense early in the last administration. He is a noted strategic thinker, particularly in areas that have gone neglected since the Cold War, e.g., nuclear weapons. This book is a tour de force providing direction for a U.S. strategy to confront the regional challenges now and in the future, particularly China. You may not agree with everything in the book, but it will be one of the yardsticks against which other strategies will be measured.
Burak Kadercan
Yankee Leviathan, Richard Bensel. In his now-classic take on the American Civil War, Bensel examines the relationship between war-making and state-building from a comparative perspective. For Bensel, it was in fact the South, not the North, that acted more like a typical “modern [European] state” in terms of organizing the society for war efforts. The book covers not only the war itself, but also the war’s paradoxical impacts on the evolution of Republican and Democratic Parties in the century that followed the war. Now that “polarization” has become a robust feature of American politics, it is perhaps a good time to revisit the causes, conduct, and consequences of the most polarizing episode that the United States experienced in its history.
Faith in Nation, Anthony Marx. In the last decade, the term “populism” has gained considerable traction in academia and policy debates. Marx explores the “dark” side of populism in the context of nation-building in Spain, England, and France during the early modern era: Leaders at the time needed to consolidate their domestic support and, in order to do so, they singled out religious minorities as internal enemies and “others.” Times might have changed, but the logic of populism remains the same: Populist leaders around the globe single out internal enemies in order to galvanize support for their regimes, sometimes with deleterious consequences. In this context, revisiting the exclusionary origins of the so-called modern nation-state may provide insights into the present and future of world politics.
Nina Kollars
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, Daniel Immerwahr. Immerwahr’s book, among others in the genre of hidden U.S. history, walks the reader through the histories of U.S. territories and how they came to be part of our nation, and also weirdly invisible to us. The histories are fascinating, funny, and horrible all at once. Email me when you get to the guano part.
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, Rose George. When everybody is worried about cyber effects and supply chain, my first instinct is to look at the human side of the issue. George embarked on her research by going aboard the Felixstowe and capturing life aboard a container ship and the complexity of our global supply chain as told through its workers.
Sarah Kreps
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe. I had never read this classic about a man marooned on a Caribbean island but figured that a pandemic year was an opportune time to read about solitude and survival. The protagonist’s mantra is that things can always get worse and one has to consider the ways that good fortune has been planted in one’s path, which seems like a useful guide. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but notice the sometimes jarring ways in which race shaped the interaction between people from different lands who have never encountered each other but immediately understood the structural hierarchy.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. The prologue opens with a quote from Oppenheimer: “Damn it, I happen to love this country.” The contradictions that sentence insinuates run throughout the book and give the 736 pages of the Oppenheimer biography a novel-like quality. We have Oppenheimer, a brilliant but eccentric mind; the United States, nascent but changing the course of history; and technology, piquing intellectual curiosity and innovation yet raising grave questions about its consequences. In many ways, the book foreshadows the contemporary landscape of politics and technology and thereby offered a twist on the implications I took away when I first read it several years ago.
Carrie Lee
Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay. This was an important book in its time that has been instrumental in helping me walk through how the fall of Kabul has impacted our veterans and the national security establishment more broadly. It uses one of my favorite pieces of literature —Homer’s Iliad — to examine combat trauma in Vietnam veterans and the inadequacy of America’s response. Written with a variety of audiences in mind — from medical professionals to veterans to their loved ones — it is a creative and thoughtful treatment of the causes and effects of moral injury that is well worth a read in today’s context.
I’ve just received Mara Karlin’s The Inheritance in the mail and can’t wait to crack it open. Karlin tackles what is perhaps the most pressing and important question in the civil-military relations community today: What effect has twenty years of war had on the relationship between the all-volunteer force, the government, and the society it is sworn to protect? There is little doubt that the lessons that the United States learns from the post-9/11 war years will have important implications for the future of national security, and as one of the best scholar-practitioners in the country, Karlin is well-placed to conduct such a wide-ranging analysis. An absolute must-read for anyone trying to understanding how past becomes prologue in the wake of Afghanistan.
Tanvi Madan
The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India, Vijay Gokhale. Like its namesake — Rush Doshi’s Long Game — this is a very worthwhile and informative book that is well-written to boot. Gokhale was India’s foreign secretary and ambassador in Beijing, and one of its leading China hands. The book offers a perspective from Delhi on what it’s like to deal with China across a negotiating table. The chapters on the 1940s–1960s highlight how long India has seen China as a challenge, as well as the debate within India on the approach to take toward its largest neighbor. The chapters covering Sino-Indian interactions since the Indian nuclear tests in 1998 are particularly insightful, not least because they allow the reader to compare how Beijing deals with India versus the United States.
There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, Fiona Hill. One of the benefits of this book is that it is not a Trump administration tell-all, despite what the former president seemed to think. Instead, it manages to combine Hill’s personal experience in the United Kingdom, Russia, and United States, domestic politics, and geopolitics skillfully. I listened to the audiobook — narrated by the author herself — and would recommend that version for those open to audio editions of books.
Melanie Marlowe
Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee, John Bew. The full and complex portrait of the quiet but monumentally influential Attlee, Britain’s post-war prime minister and longtime Labour leader, gives Bew (a Kings College London historian and Boris Johnson adviser) a free hand to tell the story of twentieth-century Britain, an era of remarkable and enduring change in both domestic and foreign policy. The reader has a front-row seat to the political, social, economic, diplomatic, and defense debates of the time, and it is nearly impossible to avoid feeling some affection (and longing) for personalities who believed their fights to be for the national interest. Bew’s splendid writing, understanding of practical politics, and knack for selecting and telling stories make this award-winning history a captivating read.
To Provide and Maintain a Navy: Why Naval Primacy is America’s First, Best Strategy, Jerry Hendrix. Agree or disagree with the precise prescriptions Hendrix provides, he makes an undeniable case that the precious peace and prosperity built on free and open seas could be lost, quickly, if we do not change course. This book is clearly written, accessible to anyone interested in politics or national security matters, and short enough to read in a few hours, so there is no excuse for not picking it up!
Shane Mason
Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941, Alan Allport. There’s so much packed into this beautiful and provocative history (e.g., a reassessment of Neville Chamberlain, the British military’s approach to the defense of France, and Anglo-American ties), but for me the book is at its most captivating when discussing Belfast. My grandparents were from the city and I was raised on the stories they told (and retold) of their childhood there during the war. Allport dedicates a chapter (“Ulster Kristallnacht“) to the cruel realities of British (and Irish) life in Northern Ireland, demonstrating that Britain was not a peaceable kingdom on the eve of World War II. Later in the book, he describes how unprepared Belfast was for the night of April 15, 1941, when the Luftwaffe bombed the city and its shipyard, the largest in Europe. Close to 1,000 people were killed in the Belfast Blitz. My grandparents, luckily, were spared. Britain at Bay helped me understand a little more about the history of a country, a conflict, and my own family.
David Maxwell
Grey Wars: A Contemporary History of U.S. Special Operations, Dr. Nancy Walbridge Collins. Collins had incredible inside access at the highest levels of U.S. Special Operations Command. She provides a unique assessment of special operations over the past two decades from a perspective few outsiders can attain. While the past is important, this book provides an understanding of the foundation from which special operations forces will evolve for future challenges operating in the grey zone of strategic competition among the revisionist and rogue powers and the continued threat of violent non-state actors.
Patterns of Impunity: Human Rights in North Korea and the Role of the U.S. Special Envoy, Dr. Robert R. King. King was the last U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, a congressionally mandated position that has been vacant since 2017. With the Biden administration’s desire for a “human rights up front” approach this is a must-read for all who work in the human rights space and who want to understand the human rights tragedy in North Korea. Hopefully, King’s successor will soon be named and this should be the first book he or she reads when nominated.
Michael Mazarr
Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, David A. Nichols. Not a new book but rigorous, detailed, and supremely entertaining — a critical reminder of how a thoughtful, pragmatic president navigated one of the worst crises of the Cold War. Eisenhower managed to balance vigorous anti-communism with a determination to avoid nuclear war, which he fully recognized would represent the end of civilization. Never theological about U.S. interests, always looking to the long term, Ike’s worldview could not be more timely.
The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What It Means for Business and Society, Eric D. Beinhocker. Nations and defense establishments will thrive in the 21st century, in major part by finding ways to be more adaptive, creative, experimental, and fast-moving. That much is a truism, but the degree of progress made in that direction, especially in the U.S. government, remains modest. Beinhocker’s fascinating study points to ways organizations can cultivate bottom-up “portfolios of experiments” that provide a competitive advantage. Along the way, he tells a fascinating and insightful story of the collision of neoclassical economics and the complex reality of human social life and large systems.
Bryan McGrath
False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Bjorn Lomborg. Far from a climate denier, Lomborg puts forward sound and rational policy ideas that counter the prevailing narrative. A useful corrective to the modern-day Cassandras of the climate movement.
The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King, The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea, Walter R. Borneman. I somehow missed this when it was published and someone gave it to me a few years ago. It sat on the shelf while I looked and said, “I know these guys. There are more important things to read.” Then I read it and it reminded me how unserious we are about seapower and just how serious these men were.
Douglas Ollivant
The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, Rush Doshi. The title reads like a conspiratorial pamphlet. But Doshi is as mainstream as an author/analyst gets — Yale- and Brookings-affiliated, now on leave to serve on the China desk at the Biden National Security Council. Doshi outlines how China has used a series of “displacement strategies,” first “blunting” and more lately primarily “building,” to compete against Chinese perceptions of U.S. power. The Long Game is simultaneously a diagnosis of the U.S. situation relative to its closest rival and a primer in how to shift strategies in response to changing circumstances.
Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes, Aurelian Craiutu. It may not be too strong to say that Craiutu foresaw our political polarization. A lifelong student of the concept of political moderation, Craiutu uses a series of exemplar thinkers — from Raymond Aron to Adam Michnik — to demonstrate how a center might hold. Craiutu uses these figures to provide a model (or a vision?) for how a future political actor might attempt to steer a moderate course through America’s current Manichean divide.
Megan Oprea
Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War that Won It, John Ferling. If you’re looking for a one-volume history of the Revolutionary War, Whirlwind is the way to go and Ferling’s prose style makes it an easy and pleasurable read. It may not get into all of the detail that a true lover of the Revolutionary War could want, but for someone just looking to learn about the war in fairly broad strokes, this is a must-read.
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas. While you might not be able to finish this one before the holidays are over, this book cannot be matched when it comes to adventure, revenge, and swashbuckling fun. It’s the perfect story to escape into during the holidays, or really any time.
Ankit Panda
India’s War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia, Srinath Raghavan. Raghavan’s military history of India’s involvement in World War II is richly sourced and well-written. Unlike some military histories that can get bogged down in the trees and miss the forest, Raghavan helpfully contextualizes what World War II meant for pre-independence India and how the colonial politics of the 1930s and 1940s weighed on the emergence of what would become independent India’s armed forces.
Iskander Rehman
When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance, Michael Neiberg. An invaluable and highly readable contribution on a key moment in American diplomacy by one of our most talented historians. In lively prose, Neiberg engages in a fascinating — and at times excoriating — dissection of the Roosevelt administration’s policies, largely “marked by panic and ineptitude,” toward France in the wake of the cataclysmic events of 1940. Washington’s continued dalliance with Vichy and Roosevelt’s visceral, often irrational, distrust of de Gaulle was not only strategically ill-advised and morally questionable — it also fostered serious tensions with decision-makers in London and cast a lasting pall over Washington’s relations with post-World War II France. Neiberg should be commended for taking such a nuanced and clinical approach to one of the less glorious moments in U.S. statecraft, for doing so in such an engaging style, and for providing such a vital contribution to the field of 20th-century diplomatic history. It’s also extremely timely in an era where leading far-right presidential candidates in France, such as Eric Zemmour, have been propagating their own revisionist defenses of the Vichy regime.
Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America, David A. Lupher. One of the more impressive examples of scholarship I have had the good fortune of coming across over the past year. In this remarkable study, classicist Lupher examines how, in 16th-century imperial Spain, both proponents and opponents of colonization drew on examples drawn from antiquity — and from Roman history in particular. Beautifully written and veritably brimming with erudition, this volume reminds us of the importance of acquiring a working knowledge of the classics. Not only does it provide us with the ability to intellectually engage with the ancients — it’s also essential to understanding the conceptual templates, strategic mindsets, and cultural reference points of the hundreds of generations of decision-makers who succeeded them. And nested deep within the Spanish imperial class’s richly agonistic debates on classical antiquity, Lupher reminds us, are a number of enduring insights on the nature of imperialism, expansion, and warfare. Hugely worthwhile for any contemporary student of grand strategy and an embarrassment of intellectual riches, this is strategic history done right.
Russell Rumbaugh
The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government, Harvey Sapolsky. Sapolsky provides the definitive account of one of the greatest defense acquisitions: developing and fielding Polaris nuclear missile-carrying submarines. He points out that success came not from brilliant management or engineering but the political capital that came from everyone knowing the United States needed this capability in the nuclear age. A great reminder for everyone who wants to blame the acquisition system when it’s really the lack of consensus that their pet project is as critical to national security as nuclear-missile submarines. The equivalent story for ICBMs is told in Neil Sheehan’s A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon. Tom McNaugher tells what happens when you don’t have complete consensus that your project is the most important task in New Weapons, Old Politics: America’s Military Procurement Muddle.
Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the 20th Century, Paul Hammond. The standard story is McNamara changed everything in the Department of Defense. But his reforms were mostly rolled back shortly after he left office. Hammond takes us to the moment right before McNamara and traces all the attempts up until then to resolve the tensions the Pentagon still faces: civil-military relations, centralization versus decentralization, staff versus line, and balancing military expertise with civilian judgment. Admittedly a dense read but worth the trouble to cut through the assumptions and shibboleths of today to see what are new operational imperatives, what are thorny problems with downsides no matter what choice made, and what are just hurt feelings.
Kori Schake
Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, Howard French. This powerful book writes Africans and their descendants back into Western history, challenging the idea that African societies were isolated from global connection or needed contact with Arab and European civilizations to produce their modernity. The continent’s rich diversity collapsing into unitary “blackness” invites solemn contemplation of all that has been lost with the crushing of so much human potential.
2034, Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis. We are living through a great renaissance of veteran writing. Mostly it’s about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Ackerman has written some of the best of it — the novels Green on Blue and Dark at the Crossing, his memoir Places and Names. Most strategy failures are failures of imagination, and this blistering read by Ackerman and Stavridis will hopefully have the same shock effect of helping us imagine war with China that August Cole and P.W. Singer’s Ghost Fleet did in 2015.
Loren DeJonge Schulman
The Rose Code, Kate Quinn. It feels like there’s a new book out every six months on women codebreakers and some miss the mark. This one, though fiction, doesn’t, telling the story of three women at Bletchley Park and ticking off all the boxes of a good holiday World War II read: romance with a prince (Prince Philip no less), a mystery spy, solid but not too esoteric exploration of “need to know” in wartime, and just enough about cryptography to keep you interested but not dizzy.
Missionaries, Phil Klay. I’m late to this, but felt like it was waiting for me when I picked it up. Every character is real and deeply recognizable, not terribly likable but loved by those who know them; I am certain their lives were progressing or fumbling before I opened the book and continue on now that I’ve finished. This does not mean Missionaries was predictable — its familiarity was like that of a glimpse in a mirror where you are shocked that the person there is you. I’m waiting to go back to it.
Erin Simpson
The Library Book, Susan Orlean. One part unsolved mystery, one part history of Los Angeles — this narrative treatment of the massive 1986 library fire was perfect for getting me out of a reading rut. East Coast readers will benefit from a bit of history about the West and all will enjoy Orlean’s story-telling skills.
The Perfume Thief, Timothy Schaffert. Another historical mystery, this one fictional. Set in occupied Paris, it explores collaboration, transgression, love, and survival. A surprising page-turner.
Sarah Snyder
The Idealist: Wendell Wilkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World, Samuel Zipp. I loved the idea of using Wendell Wilkie’s 1942 trip to illuminate the place of the United States and Americans in the world as well as to reveal the evolution of American attitudes toward post-war internationalism. A deeply researched book, it was still a very engaging read.
In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates, Jana Lipman. Based on extensive international research, Lipman shows how American allies and Vietnamese citizens confronted the refugee crisis precipitated by the American withdrawal from Vietnam. I particularly liked how this book examined the legacies of the war from different perspectives and geographic vantage points than many earlier accounts.
Kristina Spohr
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth proved a wonderful mental escape during the COVID-19 lockdowns. In this rich book on life on both sides of the Bering Strait from the mid-19th century to the present, Demuth weaves together ethnographic detail with the evolution of global trade, all the while writing a most stimulating story of how regional ecological richness was turned into state (or imperial) power, driven by relentless hunger for economic growth and by ferocious ideological competition formulated in the metropoles to exert control over peripheral lands, seas and peoples — much to the detriment of local culture and the environment at large.
Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away by Anne Hagedorn is a deeply researched and enthralling tale of American Communist-turned-spy George Koval. Born to Russian-Jewish parents who returned to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, he was then recruited into Soviet military intelligence before being sent back to the United States as a sleeper agent in New York. From there he entered the Manhattan Atomic Project during World War II and began passing highly sensitive information to Moscow, leading to the 1949 Soviet production of an atomic bomb identical to that of the Americans, years earlier than anybody had expected. It is a fast-paced and gripping thriller, one that truly tickles the historian’s interest.
Mark Stout
From Warsaw with Love: Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance, John Pomfret. Pomfret provides a breezy journalistic account of a U.S.-Polish intelligence partnership that began to flourish even before Poland was out from under the Soviet yoke. The account includes a fair share of derring-do but it also shows how both strategic interests and personal relationships play into international intelligence cooperation and how such cooperation can take on a life of its own, insulated from the broader diplomatic relationship between the countries.
Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors: Religion and the History of the CIA, Michael Graziano. Graziano describes how the OSS and the CIA used intelligence both as a weapon and to build bridges to potential partners during World War II and the Cold War. It is a fascinating read that can also stimulate useful thinking about the strategic use of soft power and of information competition in today’s environment.
Heather Stur
Tales of the South Pacific, James A. Michener. This collection of loosely related short stories illustrates war’s reach into private lives and personal connections. The stories take place during the height of World War II’s Pacific War, but much of the action centers on the relationships between Americans, colonials, and locals on islands in the Coral Sea. Michener’s vivid writing transports readers to the islands and reveals both the excitement and the monotony of war with equal parts gravity and humor.
Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, Edward Miller. A central problem in the history of U.S. nation-building efforts has been identifying a local leader who is both popular with the masses and friendly to the United States. In the early years of U.S. intervention in Vietnam, American advisers hoped Ngo Dinh Diem was such a leader for South Vietnam. Previous histories of the Vietnam War cast Diem as a puppet of the U.S. government, but Miller upends the conventional wisdom by presenting Diem as a legitimate historical actor whose very act of asserting a vision for postcolonial Vietnam caused Americans to turn against him.
Photo by Ivan Radic
warontherocks.com · by WOTR Staff · December 2, 2021

7. Gunnery sergeants who never went to boot camp? It may be coming in the Marine Corps

The Marine Corps is innovating. I bet my Gunny friends do not like this proposal (the title of the article anyway). But I think the title is a little misleading. I think it would be more accurate to say they will be appointed to a Staff NCO grade but they will not be put into leadership positions as Gunnery Sergeant. The Corps leadership is adjusting for culture.  Perhaps they might want to call these ranks Specialist 6 and Specialist 7, etc. (or have those been used before? )

Excerpts:
Marines who made it though boot camp may find it hard to take orders from someone who was able to skip the entry level training milestone, regardless of what rank is on their collar.
Marines who would join the Corps via lateral entry without going through entry level training would likely not be put into leadership positions.
Keeping lateral entry Marines out of leadership positions may help prevent cultural pushback or outright insubordination, Kate Kuzminski, the director of the military, veterans and society program at the Center for a New American Security told Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.
“You certain wouldn’t want a Marine coming in leading other Marines,” Kuzminski said. “They’re coming in for their technical expertise and they’re solving a specific problem.”

Gunnery sergeants who never went to boot camp? It may be coming in the Marine Corps
marinecorpstimes.com · by Philip Athey · December 1, 2021
Enlisted Marines are made in boot camp. Marine officers, The Basic School.
Long days and harsh instructors give sharp lessons in what it means to be a Marine and forge a bond shared by all Marines, regardless of when they joined. Marines past and present remember the day they were handed the coveted eagle, globe and anchor emblem and welcomed into the fold.
But the Corps is now considering forgoing that historic initiation for potential Marines with highly sought-after skills.
The idea for lateral entry, laid out in Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s new Talent Management 2030 document, could see those “exceptionally talented Americans” forgo entry level training and join the Marine Corps as lieutenant colonels or gunnery sergeants.
“How does that line up to a culture of a Marine Corps at roughly 180,000 Marines that go through this exacting training that makes us all one in the same ― uniformity in what we do?” Lt. Gen. David Ottignon, deputy commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told reporters Nov. 22.
In 2019 the Marine Corps rejected making a similar move under former Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, instead opting to allow those cyber experts to join a Marine Corps Cyber Auxiliary unit.
“If anybody wants to join, you can sign up,” Neller said in 2019. “You can have purple hair, too, but no [Eagle, Globe and Anchor].”
Ottignon said the Corps is still studying the best method to introduce lateral entry in the Marine Corps, but stressed the need to fill certain roles in the Marine Corps.
Berger said the Corps may use lateral entry for jobs outside the cyber field as well, saying that the Corps will look at bringing in trained and experienced aviation mechanics from the civilian world into the ranks.
To lead or not to lead?
Marines who made it though boot camp may find it hard to take orders from someone who was able to skip the entry level training milestone, regardless of what rank is on their collar.
Marines who would join the Corps via lateral entry without going through entry level training would likely not be put into leadership positions.
Keeping lateral entry Marines out of leadership positions may help prevent cultural pushback or outright insubordination, Kate Kuzminski, the director of the military, veterans and society program at the Center for a New American Security told Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.
“You certain wouldn’t want a Marine coming in leading other Marines,” Kuzminski said. “They’re coming in for their technical expertise and they’re solving a specific problem.”
But that may be easier on the cybersecurity side of the house than the aviation side, she added.
“Aviation mechanics are more integrated with the more traditional model right. So yeah, I think for the sake of credibility of that individual within our unit, (normal entry training) does matter,” she said.
The pay problem
The Corps would allow specially skilled civilians to enter at an elevated rank and pay to make the job more attractive to those who can ask for higher wages in the civilian world.
But, senior Rand economist Beth Asch said the military pay system that gives extra for years in service may push some of that talent out the door early.
“Let’s say you’re allowed to come in as an O-5, you’re still coming in with one year of service so you are in a different place financially than other O-5s,” Asch said.
A lieutenant colonel with fewer than two years of service would make $3,341.70 a month less in base pay than a Marine with the equivalent rank with more than 16 years of service. That lieutenant colonel would even make less than a captain with just four years of service.
A study by Rand, which Asch co-authored, found that moving to a pay scale that emphasizes time in grade rather than time in service would make lateral entry a more competitive option than the current pay system.
Asch did note that the Corps could find alternative methods to make up for the pay disparity, including awarding time in service based on skills and qualifications.
Even if the Corps finds a way to make up for the internal pay disparity, it still has an uphill battle when it comes to fighting against corporate pay for similar roles.
“We know there is exquisite talent out there,” Ottignon said. “So how do you attract that talent to serve in the United States Military, in the United States Marine Corps?”
The Corps does not necessarily want people who are solely motivated by salary and should leave them to large companies, Kuzminksi said.
The Marine Corps “should get out of the business of competing with the private sector for compensation,” Kuzminski said.
“Finances certainly do play a part in people’s decision, to join, but really focusing on the unique mission set and the of or the pace of the work, and really highlighting, this is a way to critically fill a mission,” would prove more fruitful for the Marine Corps, she said.
The Corps already uses this recruitment method to fill its combat arms ranks, Kuzminski noted, looking for people who want to fill a role, rather than simply out paying any competition.
The pay disparity may be a detriment, but Berger said the Corps needs to find a way to introduce that talent.
“Unless we find a means to quickly infuse expertise into the force ― at the right ranks ― I am concerned that advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, among other fields where the speed of technological change is exponential, will force us into a reactive posture,” Berger said in the talent management document.

8. ‘It’s like hell in here’: The struggle to save Afghanistan's starving babies

Such tragedy and heartbreak. Imagine a mother begging to die during childbirth.  I fear these babies will never recover to develop properly. 


‘It’s like hell in here’: The struggle to save Afghanistan's starving babies
BBC · by Menu
By Elaine Jung & Tom Donkin
BBC World Service
Published
12 hours ago
Share page
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
A malnourished child in Kandahar in October
Doctors in Afghanistan's crisis-hit hospitals, many of whom are now working without pay, spoke to the BBC about the country's deepening humanitarian crisis.
All names have been changed
The young woman was crying, begging the doctor to kill her and her baby. Dr Nuri, an obstetrician in central Afghanistan, was about to deliver the baby by Caesarean section when the mother broke down.
"I don't know how I can stay alive," she said, according to Dr Nuri, "so how can I give birth to another human being?" The women on Dr Nuri's ward are so malnourished that they know they are unlikely to have enough breast milk to feed their children.
Dr Nuri says the wards are so crowded that she has to squeeze past women in labour pressed up against blood-stained walls, or lying on dirty sheets. Most cleaners left her hospital months ago, fed up with working without pay. And the maternity ward is so crowded that sometimes there are several women to one bed. Nearby facilities and private clinics have had to close, and this once prestigious modern hospital in central Afghanistan sees three times the number of women that it used to.
"The maternity ward is one of the happiest wards of any hospital, but not anymore in Afghanistan," says the obstetrician. She says that in just two weeks in September she watched five newborn babies die of starvation.
"It's like hell in here."
Afghanistan was already reeling from severe drought and decades of conflict, but the Taliban's takeover hastened the country's descent towards economic collapse. The slowing trickle of international aid, which propped up the economy and its health system for decades, came to a grinding halt in August. Western donors cited serious concerns in moving money through a government which denies basic rights to women and girls, and threatens harsh Sharia punishments. This means Afghanistan is facing its worst hunger crisis since records began, according to the latest UN figures. About 14m children are expected to suffer acute levels of malnutrition this winter.
Across the country, hospitals treating the starving are on the brink of collapse, with nearly 2,300 health facilities already closed. Doctors in remote areas have reported being unable to provide basic medicines - even something as simple as paracetamol for the gravely ill who have walked 12 hours to seek treatment.
In the capital Kabul, a major children's hospital is seeing some of the country's worst cases of starvation. It's currently running at 150% capacity.
The hospital's director Dr Siddiqi saw a surge in fatalities in September after funding was cut, when up to four children under the age of 10 died every week from malnutrition or related diseases, such as poisoning from poor food hygiene. He says it's the youngest who bear the brunt of the crisis, with most under the age of five arriving too late to be saved.
"These children are [effectively] dying before they're admitted… We lose many cases like this," he says.
For those that do make it in time, there are few resources with which to help them - the hospital is suffering serious shortages of food and medicine, and struggles to even keep the patients warm. There is no fuel for central heating, so Dr Siddiqi now asks staff to cut and collect dried tree branches every day to feed a wood burner. "When we finish the branches we're worried about the next month and what to do next."
On Dr Nuri's maternity ward, regular power cuts are proving fatal. Several premature babies have died when their incubators failed during outages, she says.
"It is so sad to see them dying in front of your eyes."
And she says the power cuts can have potentially fatal implications for patients undergoing surgery too.
"The other day, we were in the operating theatre and the electricity was cut off. Everything stopped. I ran and shouted for help. Someone had fuel in their car and gave it to us so we could run the generator."
So, she says, every time the hospital performs an operation, "I ask people to hurry. It is a lot of stress."
Despite being forced to work under such challenging circumstances, most healthcare staff are not even paid at the moment.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
A child receiving medical treatment in Kandahar in October
Dr Rahmani, the director of a hospital in Farah province which specialised in treating Covid patients, shared with the BBC a letter from the Taliban-led health ministry, dated 30 October, which asked staff to keep working without pay until funding was secured.
On Tuesday Dr Rahmani confirmed that his hospital had now had to close when those funds did not materialise, and photos show patients being wheeled out of the hospital on stretchers. It is not clear what will now happen to them.
Nearby, another hospital specialising in treating drug addicts is also struggling to adequately care for its patients, whose withdrawal from heroin, opium and crystal meth can no longer be supported with medication.
"There are patients who have to be tied to the bed with chains, or there are patients who need to be handcuffed because they experience severe attacks. It's very difficult for us to take care of them," says Dr Nowruz, the hospital's director, adding that - without proper care - "our hospital is exactly the same as jail for them".
But this hospital too is on the brink of closing in the face of dwindling staff, and if it does shut, Dr Nowruz worries what will become of his patients in the brutal winter ahead.
"There is no shelter for them. They normally go and live in places like under bridges, in ruins, in graveyards, in a situation which is unbearable for a human," he says.
Dr Qalandar Ibad, the Taliban-appointed health minister, told BBC Pashto in November that the government is working in step with the international community to re-implement aid efforts.
However, major donors are looking to sidestep the Taliban, fearing that otherwise the aid won't be used for its intended purpose. On 10 November the UN succeeded in doing this for the first time - injecting $15m directly into the country's health system. About $8m was used to pay some 23,500 health workers over the past month. Though a relatively small amount for now, other international donors are hoping to follow suit. But time is running out.
"Soon we will not have enough drinking water," says Dr Nuri, as patients struggle to keep warm in the dropping temperatures.
Harsh weather conditions will soon restrict the remaining passage of goods being driven in from countries like Pakistan and India.
"Whenever these women leave our hospital with their babies, I keep thinking about them. They don't have any money, they can't afford to buy food," she says. Her own family is also struggling to stay afloat.
"Even I don't have enough food to eat as a doctor - I can't afford it and have almost finished all my savings.
"I don't know why I still come to work. Every morning I ask myself this question. But maybe it's because I'm still hopeful of a better future."
Additional reporting by Ali Hamedani, Kawoon Khamoosh, Ahmad Khalid, and Hafizullah Maroof
Related Topics
BBC · by Menu

9.  Kurt Campbell on what America is for, “rather than what we’re against”
This should be a fundamental narrative coming out of the Global Engagement Center (GEC)- e.g., what we stand for. In the face of all propaganda and rhetoric from the revisionist, rogue, revolutionary powers, and violent nonstate actors our response must always be built on what we stand for. We must never forget that and that is a lesson we should take from the Cold War. We had a superior narrative then and we still have one now (assuming we still want to live by our founding principles) 

Kurt Campbell on what America is for, “rather than what we’re against”
The White House “Asia tsar” spoke with Lowy Institute
Executive Director Michael Fullilove on the shape of the region
lowyinstitute.org · by Sasha Fegan
Veteran US official Kurt Campbell has long championed more American engagement in Asia and is credited as the architect of Barack Obama’s 2015 “Pivot”. He is often referred to as President Joe Biden’s “Asia Tsar” and has been influential in shaping the “Quad” grouping and the recent AUKUS agreement.
Speaking at the opening of Lowy Institute’s Indo-Pacific Operating System Conference, Campbell’s message was resolutely future oriented. He pushed back against criticism that the United States was trying to preserve the status quo or return to the past, which he called “a fool's errand”. And he repeatedly stressed the evolving nature of the Indo-Pacific region.
“I see the operating system as a living thing” Campbell said, requiring “the deepest integration with partners and allies”.
Campbell stressed America’s continued commitment to the region, which he said is animated more by what the United States is for, “rather than what we’re against”. Adding that the United States remains largest investor in most Indo-Pacific countries, he said that its “Build Back Better World” program with other G7 nations will emphasis further climate and infrastructure spending – a move many see as a counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Campbell sought to clarify the Biden administration’s recent inconsistent messaging on Taiwan, saying there had been no change to in US policy since the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
Campbell also said that the “feedback loop in China is not working as effectively as it was in the past” and that recent changes by the Chinese Communist Party means “the only way to get things done in China today is at the senior leader level”.
Campbell said that China’s “dramatic economic warfare directed against Australia” in recent years had concerned the United States. He said that “China’s preference would have been to break Australia … to drive Australia to its knees” (a comment picked up in media reports). He said Biden brought up the treatment of Australia during the recent leaders summit with President Xi Jinping, and had pointed out to Xi that the moves were “antithetical to China’s interests” and were “backfiring”.
Campbell said he firmly believed that China fundamentally respects Australia’s “strength fortitude and resilience” and will eventually re-engage “on Australia’s terms”.
Campbell said that the AUKUS arrangement, which will see the United States and United Kingdom share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, was a response to China’s assertive actions over the last five-to-seven years and amounted to the “most important strategic innovation of this period”. He added that the “strategic intimacy” between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia will stretch well beyond nuclear submarine secrets, to sharing technology over artificial intelligence, cyber and long-range weapons systems.
Campbell said Biden brought up the treatment of Australia during the recent leaders summit with President Xi Jinping, and had pointed out to Xi that the moves were “antithetical to China’s interests” and were “backfiring”.
He acknowledged that Australia’s path to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is “an enormous challenge” given it currently has no nuclear capability. But he reiterated that the United States would ensure that there is no gap in capacity in Australia’s submarine program, without going into specifics of what that might look like. Campbell did say that “Australian sailors will have the opportunity to serve on American vessels and vice versa”, adding that an American submarine will soon port regularly in Australia and in “20 years it will be taken for granted that our sailors sail together”.
Asked whether other countries may one day join AUKUS, Campbell revealed that many close allies had privately approached the United States in the immediate aftermath of the AUKUS announcement to ask if they too could join in the agreement. Campbell said that the United States will only share its “crown jewels” of nuclear submarine technology with the United Kingdom and Australia. But he credited both with insisting that the AUKUS agreement be written as a “open architecture”, leaving open the possibility that other nations could participate in some way in the future.
Asked whether the United States would seek to upgrade its relationship with the Association of Southeast Asia Nations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, Campbell said that the United States recognises the “critical importance” of ASEAN centrality in the region and will focus on “high-level leader-to-leader engagement” ahead of the next leaders’ summit in January 2022.
Campbell said that China’s pursuit of a larger nuclear deterrent capability has been shrouded in secrecy and is potentially destabilising for the region. Campbell said that during Biden’s talks with Xi, the US President had underlined the need to have clear comminutions between the two countries to avoid misunderstandings and told Xi that open communications are “part and parcel of being a responsible global leader”.
lowyinstitute.org · by Sasha Fegan

10.  For Contingencies in Indo-Pacom, Army Will Serve as 'Linchpin' for Joint Force

We do love our linchpins and cornerstones (along with bedrock, mainstay, key, fundamental principle, centerpiece, core, backbone, anchor and others)

For Contingencies in Indo-Pacom, Army Will Serve as 'Linchpin' for Joint Force
defense.gov · by C. Todd Lopez
While the U.S. was involved for 20 years in the Middle East with conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese military studied how the U.S. military operates and also embarked on its own large-scale modernization effort.

Sling Load Ops
Soldiers conduct sling load operations with a CH-47 Chinook during a training exercise at the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex, South Korea, March 25, 2021.
SHARE IMAGE:
Photo By: Army Spc. Brooke Davis
VIRIN: 210325-A-IZ078-113
"A more powerful Chinese military helps to underwrite Beijing's strategy to achieve the 'great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation' by 2049 — to include development of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] into a 'world class military' by midcentury," Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said during a conversation today with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"China's focus on modernizing its military capabilities will strengthen its ability to coerce Taiwan and rival claimants in territorial disputes, project power globally, and counter interventions along the PRC's [People's Republic of China] periphery," she said.
Right now, the Chinese military is manned with about two million service members — 975,000 of them in army combat units. It also has the most ships of any navy in the world, Wormuth said. And within the Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese military also has the largest air force.
China now has the ability to attack U.S. sensors and communication links in space and also has missiles that can sink U.S. ships and take down aircraft, Wormuth said.
"They have missiles that can reach U.S. bases in Japan and Guam, exposing our planes and runways to attack," she said. "Not only does China have advanced precision weapons, it has them in large and growing quantities. And just recently, China conducted a missile test that sent a missile around the world, dropping off a hypersonic vehicle that glided all the way back to China where it then struck a test target."
Considering the advancements made by the Chinese military and the challenges it poses to the U.S., Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has identified China as a "pacing challenge" for the Defense Department.

Night Ops
Green Berets and explosive ordnance disposal soldiers prepare to train for night direct action operations in Okinawa, Japan, May, 20, 2021.
SHARE IMAGE:
Photo By: Army Pfc. Caleb Woodburn
VIRIN: 210520-A-AB123-1001M
The entire U.S. military must be prepared to meet that pacing challenge, Wormuth said, but as the secretary of the Army, she laid out capabilities she thinks the Army will be able to bring to that joint effort.
"In my view, the Army will have at least five core tasks if a conflict breaks out, and these are tasks the Army can usefully perform without presuming substantial expansion of Army permanent presence in the region in the near term future," Wormuth said.
First, she said, the Army will serve as the 'linchpin" service within the joint fight.
"The Army will establish, build up, secure and protect staging areas and joint operating bases for air and naval forces in theater," Wormuth said. "We will be prepared to provide integrated air and missile defense, both for fixed sites and using mobile elements. We will provide area security and quick reaction forces where needed."
The Army will also use its vast logistics capacity to sustain joint force partners across the Indo-Pacific region, she said.
"The Army, for example, will provide much of the secure communication network background. We will generate intra-theater distribution networks to keep the joint force supplied from dispersed locations, and we will maintain munition stockpiles and forward arming and refueling points," she said.

Military Ops
A group of soldiers assigned to 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, split into smaller teams to capture an objective while practicing military operations in urban terrain on Camp Fuji, Japan, June 10, 2021.
SHARE IMAGE:
Photo By: Army Pfc. Anthony Ford
VIRIN: 210610-A-HS753-015
The Army can also provide command and control capability at multiple levels to ensure coordination and synchronization across the joint force.
"The Army, with its substantial planning and operations capacity at the division and corps level, is uniquely well placed to provide command and control for the joint force," Wormuth said.
Beyond just mission support, Wormuth also said the Army brings substantial combat capability to the joint force. For instance, she said the Army will provide ground-based, long-range fires to enhance the joint force’s strike capability.
"Using our long-range hypersonic weapons, mid-range capability and precision strike missiles — all of which we will begin fielding in fiscal year 2023 — we will be able to interdict fires across sea lines of communication, suppress enemy air defenses and provide counter fires against mobile targets."
Finally, she said, the Army can provide counter-attack capability using its maneuver forces. Infantry stryker elements or combat aviation brigades, for instance, can be used to restore territorial integrity of allies and partners.
While Wormuth said the Army is currently capable of providing such capabilities to the joint force without changes in its existing permanent presence in Indo-Pacom, some changes would be useful. Right now, the U.S. military footprint in Asia is oriented towards the northeast, in places like Japan and Korea, for instance.

Sling Load Ops
U.S. soldiers conduct sling load operations with a CH-47 Chinook during a training exercise at the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex, South Korea, March 25, 2021.
SHARE IMAGE:
Photo By: Army Spc. Brooke Davis
VIRIN: 210325-A-IZ078-445
"I think there is very much a desire to be able to expand our access and basing arrangements more into Southeast Asia; because, if we were able to do that, we would have ... a more dispersed posture that would give us much more flexibility," she said. "I think it is very much in our interest, and in the interest of our allies and partners, to explore how we can shift that posture over time."
Nevertheless, considering where the U.S. operates now in Asia, she said it's important to maintain realistic assumptions about where the U.S. will be operating from, at least in the near future.
"The Indo-Pacific ... is a region of great opportunity for the United States, but also real challenges," she said. "The Army is stepping up to that challenge, both in terms of how we contribute to the country’s ability to compete with China and our ability to deter coercion and aggression in the region."
defense.gov · by C. Todd Lopez
11. FDD | China Seeks to Exploit Interpol Leadership Role to Hunt Dissidents

Excerpt:

Likewise, Congress and the Biden administration should take measures to mitigate Beijing’s ability to exploit Hu’s position for political purposes. The United States is the largest financial supporter of Interpol and should not be afraid of leveraging its influence to prevent abuses. Washington should also work more closely with democratic members of Interpol to support more legitimate and qualified candidates for leadership positions. Washington should also continue to call for greater transparency regarding Red Notices originating from Beijing and insist on reviews of politically motivated submissions.

FDD | China Seeks to Exploit Interpol Leadership Role to Hunt Dissidents
fdd.org · by Zane Zovak Research Analyst · December 1, 2021
Interpol’s General Assembly voted last week to elect a senior Chinese public security official, Hu Binchen, to serve on the international police organization’s 13-member Executive Committee. The election results have prompted strong condemnation from human rights activists and legislators around the world who fear that Hu’s election will enable Beijing to leverage Interpol’s resources to target Chinese political dissidents.
Interpol’s Executive Committee is responsible for overseeing the organization’s General Secretariat, which runs Interpol’s day-to-day operations, including the Red Notice system. A Red Notice is an international wanted-person notice submitted by individual countries or international courts. A specialized task force within the General Secretariat then reviews and votes on each submission. While the system is designed to prevent alleged criminals from evading justice, rogue regimes have previously exploited it to pursue political dissidents.
Hu’s victory makes him the second Chinese official to hold a leadership role in Interpol. Meng Hongwei, a Chinese official who became president of Interpol in 2016, faced criticism for abusing Red Notices before he vanished in 2018 during a trip to China. Meng reemerged in prison the following week, with Interpol receiving his resignation as Beijing announced he was under investigation for bribery, although the charges appeared spurious.
Beijing subsequently sentenced Meng to more than a decade in prison, but his arrest was likely further evidence of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s crackdown on political rivals under the guise of anti-corruption efforts. Recently, Grace Meng, the wife of Meng Hongwei and a friend of Hu, warned that Hu may suffer a similar fate if he deviates from Beijing’s objectives for Interpol.
According to a recent report by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based human rights group, China has a well-documented history of using Red Notices as a tool of political persecution. In July, Moroccan authorities arrested Idris Hasan, a Uyghur software engineer and critic of the Chinese Communist Party, at the Casablanca airport on the basis of a Red Notice spearheaded by Beijing. Hasan’s arrest received widespread international attention, prompting Interpol to review and then cancel the notice for violating the organization’s charter. The review stated that China’s politically driven request for the notice was inconsistent with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Safeguard Defenders report also notes that China issued an average of 33 Red Notices per year between 2005 and 2014, a number that has increased to over 200 annually since then. In 2016, the PRC issued more than 612 Red Notices. Even for dissidents who try to evade these notices, Beijing has shown it will resort to threatening and harassing family members to elicit compliance with its demands.
However, the Biden administration and most of Congress have been silent regarding Hu’s victory, raising questions about Washington’s willingness to confront China’s larger bid to populate international organizations with leaders deferential to its interests. Lawmakers in the House and Senate should hold more hearings on China’s role in and manipulation of international organizations. Members of Congress, along with the White House, should also publicly condemn these malign efforts.
Likewise, Congress and the Biden administration should take measures to mitigate Beijing’s ability to exploit Hu’s position for political purposes. The United States is the largest financial supporter of Interpol and should not be afraid of leveraging its influence to prevent abuses. Washington should also work more closely with democratic members of Interpol to support more legitimate and qualified candidates for leadership positions. Washington should also continue to call for greater transparency regarding Red Notices originating from Beijing and insist on reviews of politically motivated submissions.
Zane Zovak is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he focuses on the diplomatic and military actions of the People’s Republic of China. He contributes to FDD’s China Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from the author, the China Program, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Zane Zovak Research Analyst · December 1, 2021

12. Should Europeans invest in Iran? No! Even after 2025

Excerpts:
Importantly, the Biden administration may suspend US terrorism sanctions on Iran without any evidence that banks and companies have ceased financing terrorism. Knowingly doing business, even short-term trade, with such firms may open European companies up to future prosecution and fines when a future administration rightfully reimposes all terrorism sanctions. Even when engaging in humanitarian trade, which U.S. law exempts from sanctions, those who export goods to Iran must vet their partners carefully.
For European businesses, regardless of their potential degree of exposure to risk in Iran, investing before the 2024 presidential election in the United States would be a mistake. Even afterward, major long-term investment and trade in Iran, especially in industries dominated by the IRGC, could be precarious. For as long as the country remains in the hands of a clerical dictatorship that will not foreclose its nuclear options, the next crisis may be just around the corner.
Iran may declare itself open for business, but for the wise, not all open doors are worth entering.
Should Europeans invest in Iran? No! Even after 2025
eureporter.co · by Guest contributor, Saeed Ghasseminejad· December 1, 2021


After years of international isolation, economic instability, and sanctions, European companies may be tempted to resume business with Iran if Washington and Tehran revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Before they do, chief executives and compliance officers need to carefully consider the severe risks that would come with deliberate exposure to Iran’s money laundering riddled financial system, writes Saeed Ghasseminejad.
Upon the implementation of the 2015 nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), many European companies rushed into Iran to reap the economic benefits. Fortune 500 companies such as France’s Total, Airbus, and PSA/Peugeot; Denmark’s Maersk; Germany's Allianz, and Siemens; and Italy’s Eni signed investment deals.
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA in 2018 and then reimpose sanctions forced these companies to exit the country, however. Yet the Biden administration is eager to bring back the nuclear deal; negotiations between America and Iran are scheduled to resume on November 29, so European firms may have an imminent opportunity to reenter the Islamic Republic.
They should not. And the key reason ought to be apparent: A renewed JCPOA may last no longer than the original deal - and when sanctions return under a future President, the next Justice Department could hold companies to account.
Advertisement
There is no reason to assume that Joe Biden or his party will win the 2024 presidential election. The next president may be a Republican who favors heavy unilateral sanctions against the clerical regime. European companies may again find themselves in a post-2018 situation. For business planning purpose, 2024 is around the corner.
Moreover, the agreement that the Biden administration may reach with Tehran is highly unlikely to end the Islamic Republic’s nuclear saga. In the best-case scenario, the deal might postpone the crisis for a few years. The regime’s nuclear program has no economic rationale. It is doubtful that any accord, no matter how economically generous, will convince Tehran to end the military dimensions of its nuclear program. The crisis over Iran’s pursuit of an atomic bomb is bound to resurface sooner rather than later. This substantially increases the risk of long-term investment in Iran — unless one thinks the Israelis and the Americans will just accept the bomb as a nuclear fait accompli, which is possible but not the most likely outcome.
A handful of companies may find profitable opportunities despite the risks. An individual company’s degree of exposure to Iran-related risk and adverse events depends on at least three factors. The first is the type of business entering the country. For example, all other things being equal, investment in Iran is more exposed to risk than trade is, since investment puts collateral on the ground. By contrast, trade generally does not or does it to a much lesser extent.
Advertisement
Second, the size and horizon of businesses are important. Companies may be able to wrap up a minor short-term deal before political conditions change. It would be far harder to do so with a massive long-term investment.
Third, the nature of the industry matters. The Iranian economy, after all, is dominated by malign actors such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This control potentially exposes European parties to a serious risk of violating American terror financing, money laundering, and human-rights laws and executive orders, which may well remain on the books even under the Biden administration.
Importantly, the Biden administration may suspend US terrorism sanctions on Iran without any evidence that banks and companies have ceased financing terrorism. Knowingly doing business, even short-term trade, with such firms may open European companies up to future prosecution and fines when a future administration rightfully reimposes all terrorism sanctions. Even when engaging in humanitarian trade, which U.S. law exempts from sanctions, those who export goods to Iran must vet their partners carefully.
For European businesses, regardless of their potential degree of exposure to risk in Iran, investing before the 2024 presidential election in the United States would be a mistake. Even afterward, major long-term investment and trade in Iran, especially in industries dominated by the IRGC, could be precarious. For as long as the country remains in the hands of a clerical dictatorship that will not foreclose its nuclear options, the next crisis may be just around the corner.
Iran may declare itself open for business, but for the wise, not all open doors are worth entering.
is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow Saeed on Twitter@SGhasseminejad. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.


13. Why the Iran Nuclear Talks Were Over Before They Began

Excerpts:
Congress should reject any deal that lets Tehran keep stonewalling the IAEA and fails to demand a full accounting of Iran’s prior nuclear weapons-related activities. Deceit isn’t a foundation for an effective agreement.
And a deal that suspends U.S. terrorism sanctions on Iran without the clerical regime halting its sponsorship of terrorism should also be rejected. Legislation codifying this principle would strengthen the Biden administration’s hand at the negotiating table. That would preclude Biden from providing financial lifelines for Iran’s central bank, oil company, tanker company and petrochemical company – all of which remain under U.S. sanctions for directly supporting terrorism.
In nuclear diplomacy, no deal is better than a bad deal. The President needs a reminder.

Why the Iran Nuclear Talks Were Over Before They Began
19fortyfive.com · by ByRichard Goldberg · November 30, 2021
The reversal of fortunes for the Islamic Republic is breathtaking. The regime entered 2021 with just $4 billion in accessible foreign exchange reserves, according to the International Monetary Fund – down from more than $120 billion in 2017. The next year, the Trump administration ceased America’s participation in the JCPOA and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign that stretched Tehran’s finances to the breaking point. The regime cut back on subsidies, provoking mass demonstrations calling for an end to the dictatorship.
In 2020, General Qassem Soleimani, a top general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) died in a U.S. military strike. Unknown assailants gunned down Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of Iran’s covert nuclear-weapons program, throwing the regime further off-kilter. And Iran faced increasing pressure from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to account for previously unknown and still undeclared nuclear sites throughout the country – and to explain why the agency discovered nuclear material at several of them.
The regime found itself backed into a corner. Until January 20, 2021.
President Joe Biden replaced his predecessor’s campaign of maximum pressure with one of maximum deference. Biden hoped that goodwill gestures would induce Tehran not just to return to the JCPOA, but to reach a follow-on agreement that included even tougher restrictions. In theory, the follow-on agreement would address the JCPOA’s many deficiencies – most importantly, its lack of restraints on either Iran’s missile program or its support for terrorism, and the deal’s sunset provisions, which would allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons threshold state after several years.
Biden’s strategy has turned out to be carrot-filled and stickless. The administration stopped enforcing its most important sanctions, allowing Iran to significantly increase its exports of crude oil to China. Washington would even unfreeze billions of dollars of regime assets to allow Iran to pay off its foreign debts.
Biden has also avoided taking any actions that he thinks might provoke Tehran and jeopardize a return to the JCPOA. When Iran ordered its proxies in Iraq and Syria to attack U.S. troops and related targets, the president responded with pinpricks or not at all. He took no action in March when a U.S. contractor died after an Iranian-backed attack on a U.S. base in western Iraq – nor did he respond militarily to a UAV strike on U.S. troops in Syria in October.
Rather than reciprocate Biden’s restraint, Iran seized on American weakness – increasing the frequency of attacks on the U.S and its allies while pushing its nuclear program far beyond levels once perceived as possible redlines for U.S. military action. Tehran has enriched uranium to 60 percent purity – nearing weapons grade – produced uranium metal – a component of nuclear weapons – and blocked IAEA access and verification efforts at key sites. Despite all this, the Biden administration instructed its allies not to put forward any resolutions of censure at the IAEA’s quarterly Board of Governors meetings.
The results? To use a football metaphor, Iran was arguably backed up to its own 1-yard line at the end of 2020 and is now driving deep into America’s red zone after just 10 short months.
Last December, Mr. Biden told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman he wanted to negotiate new agreements “to tighten and lengthen Iran’s nuclear constraints, as well as address the missile program.” One year later, undermined by his own uneasiness about U.S. power and red lines – Iran enters the Vienna talks poised to keep pushing Biden to see how much more the United States will pay for Iran doing less than before.
With the administration walking right into a trap of its own making, it’s time for Congress to demand a policy reset on Iran. That includes exercising its statutory prerogative to review any nuclear agreement concluded with Iran before the president can lift any sanctions.
Congress should reject any deal that lets Tehran keep stonewalling the IAEA and fails to demand a full accounting of Iran’s prior nuclear weapons-related activities. Deceit isn’t a foundation for an effective agreement.
And a deal that suspends U.S. terrorism sanctions on Iran without the clerical regime halting its sponsorship of terrorism should also be rejected. Legislation codifying this principle would strengthen the Biden administration’s hand at the negotiating table. That would preclude Biden from providing financial lifelines for Iran’s central bank, oil company, tanker company and petrochemical company – all of which remain under U.S. sanctions for directly supporting terrorism.
In nuclear diplomacy, no deal is better than a bad deal. The President needs a reminder.
Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served on Capitol Hill, on the U.S. National Security Council, as the governor of Illinois’s chief of staff and as a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer.
19fortyfive.com · by ByRichard Goldberg · November 30, 2021



14.  Wormuth: Here's the Army's role in a Pacific fight

Another view of the linchpin.

Wormuth: Here's the Army's role in a Pacific fight - Breaking Defense
As "linchpin service," Army sees logistical, communications and, yes, combat roles in possible conflict.
breakingdefense.com · by Andrew Eversden · December 2, 2021
Soldiers assigned to the Pacific-based 25th Infantry Division perform an air assault mission. (Pfc. Daniel Proper/US Army)
WASHINGTON: The US Army would serve as the “linchpin service” for the joint force in the Indo-Pacific should fighting break out there, the secretary of the army said today, detailing the five support and combat roles she sees the Army playing in a region with clearer Navy and Air Force missions.
Secretary Christine Wormuth said that in a conflict with China the service would have three support missions within the joint force: building and defending bases in the Pacific, providing command and control for the broader military, and sustaining logistical supply lines across vast distances.
“The joint force will be dispersed throughout the region. We will be operating from many different bases,” Wormuth said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Beyond physically protecting the force, she said, “there has to be a way of distributing supplies, munitions, fuel to the entire joint force — to providing command and control, you know, over that very wide area. And the Army, I think, is very well-positioned to do that.”
Wormuth said the service’s network will be the “backbone” of joint force communications in the Pacific, and the Army is an obvious choice to provide command and control.
“The Army, with its substantial planning and operations capacity at the division and corps level, is uniquely well-placed to provide command and control for the joint force,” she said.
Creating a joint, common operating picture is a crucial piece of command and control for the joint force. The Army learned at its recent joint Project Convergence experiment that the services have substantial work to do to get their disparate common operating picture synchronized — a “single pane of glass” through which commanders can see all battlefield data.
As far as combat, Wormuth said the Army could take an offensive role with its long-range precision strike capabilities under development as part of the service’s extensive modernization effort.
The Army currently is developing a Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon that can fly up to 1,725 miles, a Mid-Range Capability that can reach 1,100 miles and its Precision Strike Missile which right now has flown beyond to 499km, but the Army will likely try to fly further. All three of those options are expected to be in prototyping by fiscal 2023.
Those missiles will allow the service to strike enemy forces on land, “suppress enemy air defenses, and provide counter-fires against mobile targets,” Wormuth said.
Finally, the Army would likely be called upon to counter-attack in the event of an enemy incursion. Wormuth said infantry, Stryker and combat aviation brigades would play that role to “restore the territorial integrity of our allies and partners.”
Wormuth: Army ‘Very Interested’ In Broadening Basing Arrangements
One critical challenge the Army and broader US military faces in the Pacific, however, is geopolitical in nature: access to bases. More Indo-Pacific bases, spread across the vast area, would allow the US more places for troops and long-range strikes.
The Pentagon recently released its heavily classified Global Posture Review, which explored the US military footprint globally and concluded that no major strategic shifts were needed, aside from some operation level changes like new rotations and military construction. But Wormuth said that the service is “very interested in broadening the access and basing arrangements that that we already have” and expanding it into other parts of the region, particularly Southeast Asia.
“There is very much a desire to be able to expand our access and basing arrangements more into Southeast Asia because if we were able to do that we would have a more dispersed posture that would give us much more flexibility,” Wormuth said. “So looking forward I think it is very much in our interest and in the interests of our allies and partners to explore how we can shift that posture over time.”
Expanding those agreements is an issue for the State Department and higher levels of the Pentagon, she said. The implications for the Army in the Global Posture Review focus on pre-positioning assets in the Pacific as is.
“An important part of the Global Posture Review was thinking about where we can increase opportunities for pre-positioning of equipment and stock,” Wormuth said. “So that is something that we will be looking at and looking at ways to put more into the region, to use our already pre-positioned assets in the region that are there more efficiently so that we can get more bang for our buck out of what we already have there.”
breakingdefense.com · by Andrew Eversden · December 2, 2021


15.



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

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

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

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