Quotes of the Day:
"Popularity may be united with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed lover of freedom."
- Alexis De Tocqueville
"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
- Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908)
“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
- Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944), author
1. The next Russian invasion of Ukraine will be too big to hide, and Russia doesn't care
2. Is There a Kishida Doctrine?
3. Japan’s hypersonics aim for strategic independence
4. What the U.S. Should Learn From U.K. Cyber Strategy
5. The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine
6. Opinion | Brave Afghans who served with me and others are in danger. Our government can’t let them die.
7. Hong Kong tears down ‘Pillar of Shame’ sculpture honoring Tiananmen victims
8. FDD | Putin Can’t Be Allowed to Re-Divide Europe
9. FDD | Is Israel Facing Up To Reality On Hamas and Hezbollah?
10. FDD | The Coming Middle East Narco Wars
11. Capitol Police Chief Can Now 'Unilaterally' Ask for National Guard Help In Emergencies
12. US Army conducts first tactical cyber exercise readying teams for operations
13. Former U.S. sailor sentenced for selling stolen special ops gear to China
14. Opinion - Mission Unaccomplished: Describing Failing US Military as ‘Awesome’ - Andrew Bacevich
15. On volatile border between India and China, a high-altitude military buildup is underway
16. Strategic Foresight in U.S. Agencies - An Analysis of Long-term Anticipatory Thinking in the Federal Government
17. US Embassy mocks Russia for blatant lie about respecting Ukraine
18. Russian national extradited to US to face charges for what officials call a global hacking scheme that stole millions of dollars
19. Trump 'very appreciative' and 'surprised' Biden acknowledged his administration's COVID vaccine success
1. The next Russian invasion of Ukraine will be too big to hide, and Russia doesn't care
The next Russian invasion of Ukraine will be too big to hide, and Russia doesn't care
No 'Little Green Men' this time.
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The Kremlin is making it clear that Russian forces could soon push deeper into Ukraine, and this time it may look more like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan than the covert campaign Russia has waged since 2014.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoigu claimed on Tuesday that an American private military company was poised to launch chemical weapons into parts of Ukraine held by Russian-led separatists. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby flatly dismissed Shoigu’s comments as “completely false.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin also appeared visibly angry during a speech on Tuesday, in which he accused the United States of “arming and urging on extremists from a neighboring country” inside Ukraine. In fact, Russia has armed, trained, and led separatists, who have carved out semi-autonomous zones in the Donets Basin of Eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbass region.
“If our western counterparts continue a clearly aggressive line, we will undertake proportionate military-technical countermeasures and will respond firmly to unfriendly steps,” Putin reportedly said, according to The Guardian. “I’d like to stress that we are fully entitled to do that.”
Ukrainian soldiers walk at the line of separation from pro-Russian rebels near Katerinivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Dec 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak)
While Russia has consistently denied since 2014 that its forces have fought on Ukrainian soil, the Kremlin no longer seems to feel the need to camouflage its hostile actions, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe.
The world would most likely see a full display of Russian military power if Putin commits to a new campaign in Ukraine, Hodges said.
“I think the risk of this is going up very quickly and that the Kremlin is operating at a much higher than normal risk-tolerance level because they really haven’t been stopped before, since their invasion of Georgia in 2008, and so far, we don’t look strongly unified or resolute with our allies,” Hodges said. “The language coming out of the Kremlin is most alarming. Putin talks about genocide in the Donbass [Donets Basin]; one of his senior deputies talks about perhaps needing to bring nukes into Belarus; constant references about NATO’s threatening behavior towards Russia, and today a reference by Defense Minister Shoigu about U.S. private military contractors planning to bring in chemicals for use in the Donbass. He is preparing his own population and setting the pretext for ‘we had no other choice.’”
Since 2014, top Kremlin officials have denied that Russian forces annexed Crimea and then invaded eastern Ukraine. Russian troops wore no forms of identification when they annexed Crimea from Ukraine, earning the nickname “Little Green Men” in the West — the Russians called them “polite people.”
Later that year, other “Little Green Men,” who wore uniforms that were neither Russian nor Ukrainian appeared in eastern Ukraine. Although they claimed to be Ukrainian insurgents, these troops looked more like they belonged to a professional military than a rebel force.
Russia-backed separatists walk on a road that takes them to Artemivsk, littered with destroyed Ukrainian army tanks and vehicles, outside Debaltseve, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015, on the edge of the territory under their control. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
While the Russians may use covert forces as part of a pretext to launch a renewed invasion of Ukraine, military operations would be on a much bigger scale than they were nearly eight years ago, Hodges said.
“Little Green Men from 2014 seems almost cartoonish now compared to what I expect we’ll see,” Hodges said.
Hodges noted that Russia’s Caspian Sea flotilla is currently in the Azov Sea practicing amphibious operations. Those ships and troops could play a major role in any new hostilities with Ukraine.
“It is well-placed if Russian forces intended to conduct operations along the Azov Coast between Mariupol and Crimea,” Hodges said. “Also, where is the rest of the Black Sea Fleet? They would be essential for any sustained, major combat operations in my view, primarily launching cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine.”
Pro-Russian rebels fire artillery grad rockets towards Debaltseve on February 18, 2015, near Vuglegirsk, Ukraine. Ukrainian troops have been forced to retreat from Debaltseve following continued fighting as rebel fighters advance into the town in spite of the recent ceasefire agreement. (Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images)
While signs of an imminent Russian invasion are certainly adding up, it is also possible that the Kremlin is instead waging a long-term campaign of political warfare against Ukraine, said retired Army Col. David Maxwell, a former Green Beret.
The Russians may not want to risk a U.S. and NATO response to a new invasion of Ukraine, so rather than waging conventional warfare, they could be trying to wear the Ukrainians down over time, Maxwell said.
“Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population,” Maxwell said.
“The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker to the detriment of their own government and country,” he continued. “It is interesting to note the notion of permanent war, since it denotes a permanent enemy. In the current geopolitical structure, the clear enemy is Western civilization, its values, culture, political system, and ideology.”
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is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.
2. Is There a Kishida Doctrine?
Excerpts:
It’s probably too much to expect a distinctive Kishida Doctrine. It’s more likely that he will follow Abe’s faltering lead on security and diplomacy, meaning continuity at a time when Japan might benefit from upping its diplomatic game by constructively engaging with adversaries. A priority should be rescheduling the summit Abe had planned with Xi in April 2020, which was called off due to the pandemic. Japan and China have much to discuss as they mark the 50th anniversary of normalization of relations amid heightened tensions. At a press conference on December 21, Kishida reiterated his intention to prioritize a summit with Biden before reaching out to any other leader, but he should remember that when Abe became prime minister in 2006 his first overseas trip was to Beijing to engage in fence mending.
Given frosty relations now, a low-expectations Japan-China summit might help Kishida burnish his leadership credentials by jumpstarting dialogue about the security issues that divide the nations and threaten the region. After all, face-to-face diplomacy is essential to go beyond the dead-end of lobbing recriminations.
Is There a Kishida Doctrine?
Even from retirement, former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo continues to cast a long shadow over Japan’s foreign policy.
Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is finding it hard to emerge from the shadow of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (2006-07, 2012-2020). Kishida faces high expectations for deft diplomacy because he was Japan’s longest serving foreign minister (2012-2017) in the postwar era, but in reality Kishida never got much of a chance to shine because Abe was de facto foreign minister.
Kishida is probably most remembered for his role in reaching two flawed accords with South Korea in 2015. After much public jousting, Seoul and Tokyo reached agreement on UNESCO World Heritage designation for Meiji Industrial sites, contingent on Japan posting signage affirming that Koreans were forced to work at the sites. This rare feel-good moment in bilateral relations was quickly dissipated by Kishida’s comments at the press conference announcing the deal, where he asserted that being forced to work is not the same as forced labor.
Why Kishida felt compelled to rain on the parade by making this dubious distinction is uncertain, but probably he was concerned that right-wing nationalists in Japan might criticize him. Alas, the glimmer of goodwill evaporated, and Japan looked more churlish than contrite.
This incident is an example of a deeper problem: Under Abe’s aegis, historical revisionists became more aggressive in denying, downplaying and shifting responsibility for abuses committed by Japan during the colonial and wartime eras. Their exculpatory and vindicating narrative of Japan’s shared past with Asia has been mainstreamed domestically, roiling regional relations.
Kishida also reached a deal with his South Korean counterpart at the end of 2015 regarding the comfort women. Although touted as “final and irreversible,” the agreement was dead on arrival for number of reasons. Prominent among these was the absence of a public apology by Abe; second-hand reports of one in a phone call with then-Korean President Park Geun-hye fell well short of the grand gesture needed to heal this deep wound. Subsequently Abe rebuffed President Moon Jae-in’s request for a public apology.
The deal also fell short because it was negotiated in secret likes an arms deal, without consulting the comfort women or their advocates. Moreover, the deal involved a dubious quid pro quo. Tokyo expected the South Korean government to remove the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and not raise the comfort women issue internationally in exchange for about $9 million in hush money for distribution to the dwindling ranks of elderly survivors. It did not help that the deal was negotiated with President Park – a year later, she was on her way out of office due to cronyism allegations that lead to her impeachment.
It may not be fair to read too much into these diplomatic fiascos, however, as Kishida may have had his hands tied and was only executing Abe’s agenda.
Looking forward, Kishida inherits the same set of foreign policy challenges that Abe and Suga Yoshihide made little headway on. Despite all the fanfare and global grandstanding, in his biography of Abe entitled “The Iconoclast,” Tobias Harris concludes that Abe achieved remarkably little, especially in his regional diplomacy. Relations with China and South Korea remained chilly and there was no progress on territorial disputes with these neighbors. Nor was there any progress on North Korea and the abduction issue. In a bid to overcome the Northern Territories dispute with Russia, Abe met Vladimir Putin more than any other world leader, but had nothing to show for his efforts. Putin seemed to lead a credulous Abe on, as a way of driving a wedge between Tokyo and Washington over the U.S. policy of isolating Moscow due to its 2014 seizure of Crimea.
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In South Korea, Tokyo is hoping that former prosecutor general Yoon Suk-yeol, the presidential candidate for the conservative People Power Party (PPP), prevails in the elections next March because his opponent, Lee Jae-myung, from current President Moon’s Democratic Party, has taken a harder line on the history issues that have derailed bilateral issues. Whoever wins, it is hard to predict smooth sailing as the forced labor and comfort women issues continue to fester, but with Yoon there is a possibility of hitting the reset button. Washington is frustrated that its two allies remain at odds over their shared past and will continue to pressure them to nurture a better working relationship to counter contemporary threats in the region.
Kishida’s China Challenges
Kishida has been dealt several early surprises that are testing his foreign policy leadership: Abe’s controversial speech warning China that it’s playing with fire over Taiwan, joint Sino-Russian naval and air patrols around Japan, and U.S. President Joe Biden’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Abe’s bombshell speech to a Taipei-based think tank on Japan-Taiwan relations on December 1 has further soured relations with Beijing. Abe warned China against invading Taiwan, urging it “not to step onto a wrong path” adding, “Military adventure would lead to economic suicide.” Noting that an invasion of Taiwan would be a threat to Japan, Abe also asserted that it would be “an emergency for the Japan-U.S. alliance,” calling on President Xi Jinping not to miscalculate the allies’ resolve.
Abe’s rhetorical saber rattling over Taiwan continues a pattern of increasingly bold statements by Tokyo, including a joint communique with the United States in April 2021 that included a line stating: “We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.” This may seem like a fairly bland statement, but it was the first time since 1969 that the allies issued a joint statement naming Taiwan. Back in 1969 the Taiwan clause was included to reassure the U.S. that it could use its bases in Okinawa after reversion in 1972 in the event of a contingency in the Taiwan Straits.
No longer constrained by leadership responsibilities, Abe’s recent speech played to his hawkish constituency by inflaming a tense situation. Perhaps signaling limelight deprivation syndrome, Abe subsequently repeated his warning on Japanese television, adding that an attack on a U.S. vessel would allow Japan to invoke its right to collective self-defense, alluding to unpopular legislation he rammed through the Diet in 2015 that was designed to skirt constitutional constraints on Japan’s military.
There was speculation that Kishida’s appointment of Hayashi Yoshimasa as his new foreign minister following a post-election cabinet reshuffle, replacing Abe’s protégé Hagiuda Koichi, presaged closer engagement with China as the two nations gear up for the 50th anniversary of normalization of relations in 2022. Hayashi had headed a Diet group advocating improved ties with China and was invited to Beijing soon after his appointment as foreign minister.
Abe’s blunt warnings, however, will complicate engagement and celebrations because as a former premier and now head of the LDP’s largest faction, his influence is immense. Beijing reacted harshly with its own warnings. Perhaps this might be a bad cop/good cop gambit, with Abe drawing red lines while Kishida pursues dialogue, but more likely it is a way for Abe to box in Kishida and Hayashi.
In his Diet policy speech, Kishida sought a $6.8 billion supplementary defense budget to boost Japan’s military arsenal and raised the possibility of acquiring enemy base strike capabilities, a gambit that critics insist violates Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.
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In boosting total defense spending to $53 billion in FY2021-22, up 15 percent from the previous year, Kishida has also agreed to increase payments to Washington for hosting U.S. bases and is committed to pursuing the ill-fated Henoko base construction project, in part because the regional risk environment deteriorated sharply on Abe’s watch.
It remains to be seen whether Kishida will go beyond Abe’s empty grandstanding on values diplomacy and human rights. As prime minister, Abe was circumspect about China’s crackdown on Hong Kong and the Uyghurs even as he promoted the concept of a Free and Open Indo Pacific and shared values. Kishida has named Gen Nakatani, a China critic, as his czar for human rights, a newly created position that suggests Tokyo might take a harder line.
Yet, Japan has long been wary of risking anything in support of human rights or opposing democratic backsliding. Given that China is Japan’s biggest trading partner, and crucial to a sustainable economic recovery, it seems unlikely that Tokyo will suddenly find its backbone, wishful thinking notwithstanding. Biden’s decision to boycott the Beijing Olympics, citing ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs, put Kishida in a tight spot since Washington seeks solidarity on values diplomacy while Japanese corporate interests and diplomats advocate business as usual.
Meanwhile, despite his circumspect stance while in office, Abe has pressured Kishida to join a U.S. diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. It appears that Kishida is trying to walk the tightrope by not attending himself or sending any Cabinet ministers to the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 to appease Washington (and LDP hawks) while dispatching a delegation of high-ranking Olympic sports representatives as a sop to Beijing. This boycott-lite will add to the chill in bilateral relations with China.
A Kishida Doctrine?
It’s probably too much to expect a distinctive Kishida Doctrine. It’s more likely that he will follow Abe’s faltering lead on security and diplomacy, meaning continuity at a time when Japan might benefit from upping its diplomatic game by constructively engaging with adversaries. A priority should be rescheduling the summit Abe had planned with Xi in April 2020, which was called off due to the pandemic. Japan and China have much to discuss as they mark the 50th anniversary of normalization of relations amid heightened tensions. At a press conference on December 21, Kishida reiterated his intention to prioritize a summit with Biden before reaching out to any other leader, but he should remember that when Abe became prime minister in 2006 his first overseas trip was to Beijing to engage in fence mending.
Given frosty relations now, a low-expectations Japan-China summit might help Kishida burnish his leadership credentials by jumpstarting dialogue about the security issues that divide the nations and threaten the region. After all, face-to-face diplomacy is essential to go beyond the dead-end of lobbing recriminations.
Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston is the director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan.
3. Japan’s hypersonics aim for strategic independence
Japan’s hypersonics aim for strategic independence
Japan’s hypersonic weapons program aims to reduce its military reliance on the US and boost its latent nuclear power status
Japan unveiled plans to develop its own hypersonic weapons back in March 2020, joining the club of states that have such technology, including the US, Russia, China, India, Australia, France, Germany, and North Korea. Those plans are taking on new strategic significance amid signs Tokyo may amend its pacifist constitution to allow for more offensive military capabilities.
Japan plans to field two types of hypersonic weapons, the Hypersonic Cruise Missile (HCM) and Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile (HVGP). The HCM functions like a conventional cruise missile and can be armed with an armor-piercing warhead designed to penetrate the deck of an aircraft carrier, or an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) warhead for land attack.
In comparison, the HVGP utilizes a solid-fuel rocket engine to boost its warhead to high altitudes before separating, where it can glide to the target at hypersonic speeds. It also can be armed with multiple EFPs for area saturation attacks.
Further, in December 2020, Japan revealed its plans for its own domestic sixth-generation stealth fighter jet, dubbed the F-X. Japan plans to manufacture about 90 jets with a project cost of US$48 billion. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has been designated as the main contractor, with US defense contractor Lockheed Martin providing technological support.
Other Japanese companies such as IHI Corporation, Subaru and Fujitsu are also involved in the project.
The F-X will feature drone remote control technology, a dual-purpose radar that can be used as a microwave weapon, VR helmet-mounted display, sensor data exchange capability with US and Japanese forces and is optimized for air superiority missions while still being capable of performing air-to-ground and anti-ship roles.
The F-X is a sixth-generation stealth fighter in development for Japan and the nation’s first domestically developed stealth fighter jet. Credit: Japanese Ministry of Defense.
The design nature of stealth fighters and hypersonic weapons to penetrate defended enemy territory puts them at odds with Japan’s longstanding pacifist defense policy, which places restraints on the country’s offensive military capabilities. These developments thus may be interpreted as part of Japan’s efforts to achieve strategic independence.
Chinese academic Wu Huaizhong notes that Japan’s pursuit of strategic independence is distinguished as being “independently designed and self-contained.” This implies the “normalization of the state”, and not breaking away from the post-World War II order.
To achieve this, Japan aims to remove internal constraints in defense and security, develop offensive military capabilities and promote multilateral regional diplomacy to form a network of partners outside the US-Japan alliance. The changes Japan seeks do not aim to change strategic-level constraints but are focused on the tactical level.
As such, Japan’s hypersonic weapons program boosts Japan’s latent nuclear power status as an alternative to the US as a strategic deterrent. While Japan has renounced nuclear weapons, it has the resources, technology and skills to assemble such weapons on short notice.
Japan could thus mount nuclear warheads on its hypersonic weapons to field its own nuclear deterrent, should it decide for whatever reason that US security guarantees are inadequate or unnecessary.
However, the economic and security benefits Japan currently receives from its US ally are strong arguments against acquiring nuclear weapons. But rising nationalism and increasing threats from China, Russia, and North Korea could eventually push Japan towards the nuclear option.
Japan could also choose to export its hypersonic weapons and stealth fighter to form a defense logistics network with itself at the center, as part of its multilateral diplomacy.
The 30FFM Mogami-class frigate. Photo: Twitter
In that direction, on March 30 this year, Japan and Indonesia signed a defense deal focusing on arms transfers and defense industry collaboration. A potential joint project under this deal is Japan’s 30FFM Mogami-class frigate, which Indonesia plans to operate as well.
Apart from Indonesia, Japan could also choose to open collaboration over the F-X stealth fighter to other states seeking such aircraft, notably India, which has just started its own stealth fighter program.
4. What the U.S. Should Learn From U.K. Cyber Strategy
It always seems to be up to the US to state what it will not attack while the Russians and the Chinese (e.g., Unrestricted Warfare) in effect tell us everything is a target and targetable by multiple means.
Excerpts;
The U.S. certainly needs to be more active in cyberspace and use its offensive cyber weapons to degrade the capability of criminals and states to attack private industry and undermine U.S. military power. But the U.S. should also clearly articulate what it won’t attack. The U.S. should say it doesn’t intend to use cyber operations to harm civilians or cause nuclear war—and that it will respond with force if an adversary conducts such cyberattacks against the U.S. or its allies. Meanwhile, the U.S. should prioritize cyber operations that collect intelligence as well as deceive and degrade the offensive cyber capabilities of adversaries like Russia and China.
As the Biden administration makes the final edits on its National Defense Strategy, it should learn from the U.K. Cyber operations can complement and augment existing foreign-policy options. The U.S. should lean in to cyber power while also clearly stating what actions are off the table.
What the U.S. Should Learn From U.K. Cyber Strategy
Despite what Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says, cyber operations neither trigger perilous conflict nor do they make conflict more violent.
WSJ · by Jacquelyn G. Schneider and Erica D. Lonergan
The Trump administration veered in the other direction, promising to “defend forward” and “persistently engage” without saying what actions the administration viewed as off-limits for itself and its adversaries. While public reports suggested that the administration conducted some limited offensive cyberattacks, certain senior officials suggested the U.S. wanted to do far more, and the New York Times reported that the U.S. even targeted the Russian power grid.
Neither approach was optimal. The Obama administration leaned too far back, and the Trump administration too far forward. The Biden administration has a chance to get cyber strategy right by taking a lesson from the U.K.’s recently published National Cyber Strategy, which provocatively argues that offensive cyber operations provide “a range of flexible, scalable, and de-escalatory measures . . . often in ways that avoid the need to put individuals at risk of physical harm.” The strategy follows recent public statements by British leaders announcing offensive cyber operations, conducted with the U.S., intended to stem a surging tide of ransomware attacks. Whereas U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described cyberspace as an arena in which “the risks of escalation and miscalculation are high,” the U.K. argues that cyber operations are tools for de-escalation.
Who’s right? For the past several years, academics have studied the question of cyber escalation through experiments, war games, statistical analysis and case studies. The results don’t support Mr. Austin’s claim. There is little evidence that cyber operations trigger perilous conflict spirals or that cyber operations make conflict more violent. The same characteristics that make cyber operations less escalatory than conventional weapons—plausible deniability, virtual effects and transience—also make them poor substitutes for bombs and missiles.
Cyber operations excel as tools for deception, often through data manipulation and intelligence collection. Whether these operations can de-escalate a crisis is up for debate, but by expanding the foreign-policy tool kit, cyber operations could allow states to influence and shape one another’s actions without resorting to violence.
How the U.S. uses and responds to cyber operations affects how norms of appropriate behavior in cyberspace develop. The Obama administration’s assumptions about the risks of escalation from cyber operations may have given adversaries the impression that the U.S. didn’t consider cyber threats a priority. This impression generated frustration from the private sector as intellectual-property theft and ransomware attacks increased.
But the Trump administration also struggled to turn risky cyber operations into strategic wins. Cyber operations reportedly used alongside conventional capabilities against Iran, against ISIS or in Afghanistan didn’t seem to change outcomes. Ransomware attacks increased, and the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Server hacks were two of the most extensive cyber breaches in history.
The U.S. certainly needs to be more active in cyberspace and use its offensive cyber weapons to degrade the capability of criminals and states to attack private industry and undermine U.S. military power. But the U.S. should also clearly articulate what it won’t attack. The U.S. should say it doesn’t intend to use cyber operations to harm civilians or cause nuclear war—and that it will respond with force if an adversary conducts such cyberattacks against the U.S. or its allies. Meanwhile, the U.S. should prioritize cyber operations that collect intelligence as well as deceive and degrade the offensive cyber capabilities of adversaries like Russia and China.
As the Biden administration makes the final edits on its National Defense Strategy, it should learn from the U.K. Cyber operations can complement and augment existing foreign-policy options. The U.S. should lean in to cyber power while also clearly stating what actions are off the table.
Ms. Schneider is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Ms. Lonergan is a research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Both have worked for the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
WSJ · by Jacquelyn G. Schneider and Erica D. Lonergan
5. The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine
How about the assumption of a strategic mistake for the Russian intervention in Syria? How is that working out for Putin? Of course Syria is not Ukraine.
Conclusion:
If Russian forces enter Ukraine yet again, Kyiv is likely to lose the war and the human toll will be extensive. The long-term damage suffered by Moscow, however, is likely to be substantial as well. The seemingly impetuous Mr. Putin has maneuvered his way into a strategically risky position, and the West ought to leverage the Kremlin’s mistake and drive a hard bargain in any diplomacy
The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine
An invasion would be a diplomatic, economic and military mistake for Putin. Let him make it if he must.
Ukrainian reservists participate in a military exercise near Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec. 18.
Photo: sergey dolzhenko/Shutterstock
As Russia continues its destabilizing military buildup around Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies have made clear they prefer to resolve the crisis through diplomacy. This reflects not simply the preference of the Biden administration when it comes to national-security matters but also the West’s desire to avoid inflaming and escalating the situation through military action.
This makes good sense. Any Russo-Ukrainian war is likely to be bloody for the combatants, result in a wave of refugees heading west, and further destabilize an already precarious regional security situation. Nonetheless, as diplomatic efforts unfold, there are good strategic reasons for the West to stake out a hard-line approach, giving little ground to Moscow over its demand to forsake Ukrainian membership in Western institutions and halt military activity in Central and Eastern Europe. Rather than helping Russian President Vladimir Putin back down from the position he’s taken, the West ought to stand firm, even if it means another Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s efforts to destabilize and undermine the Ukrainian government by keeping alive the smoldering war in the Donbas region haven’t returned Kyiv to Moscow’s orbit. Instead, Ukraine has used the past several years to boost its military capabilities gradually, strengthen its ties to the West, and improve its economy. It’s unclear why Mr. Putin has chosen this moment to demand assurances that Ukraine won’t become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union. Perhaps the Kremlin believes time isn’t on its side as Ukraine continues to slide closer to the West. Or Mr. Putin might assume Washington is more willing to accommodate Russia’s demands, given the intensifying American rivalry with China. Or it could even be that Mr. Putin hopes to bolster his declining public support with a jingoistic foreign adventure.
Regardless, Mr. Putin’s tactics have placed the West in a reactive mode, hoping to avoid a war in Europe that could result in tens of thousands of casualties. The death and destruction could far outpace that of the relatively more limited war in Donbas, where as many as 14,000 have died since 2014. But Mr. Putin’s price for turning down the heat is anathema to Western values of national self-determination and sovereignty. Moreover, a NATO-Russia agreement preventing Ukraine from seeking membership would violate a 1975 Helsinki agreement on security and cooperation in Europe—signed by Moscow—which said European states have the right to belong to any international alliance they choose.
Mr. Putin therefore appears to have taken quite a risk—and the West ought to exploit his gamble by maintaining a hard-line stance in diplomatic discussions. In the best case, Mr. Putin is forced to back down, losing face domestically and internationally, even if his state media spins it as a victory or claims the buildup was merely part of an exercise.
In the worst case, if Mr. Putin’s forces invade, Russia is likely to suffer long-term, serious and even debilitating strategic costs in three ways. First, another Russian invasion of Ukraine would forge an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe. Although the EU has shown a remarkable degree of solidarity in maintaining its limited sanctions on Russia since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, there are cracks in the edifice. Germany’s new left-leaning government hasn’t yet found its footing on Russia. Italy, Austria, Hungary and even France have shown a willingness to consider opening up to the Kremlin, despite the Russian forces in Crimea and Donbas. And NATO’s attention and resources remain split between Russia on the one hand, and instability and insecurity emanating from across the Mediterranean Sea on the other. Russian tanks crossing into Ukraine would focus minds and effort.
Second, a Russian reinvasion of Ukraine would likely result in another round of more debilitating economic sanctions that would further weaken Russia’s economy. Disconnecting Russia from the tools of global finance and investment—such as the Swift banking-payment system—would make it difficult for Moscow to earn money from its oil exports. Similarly, a ban on Western institutions’ trading of existing Russian debt in secondary markets would limit Moscow’s ability to finance development. Over time, a stronger, more effective round of sanctions would hasten Russia’s economic decline relative to the West, reduce its power overall, and make it far more expensive for Mr. Putin to intimidate and destabilize his neighbors.
Third, another Russian invasion of Ukraine, even if militarily successful in the short run, is likely to spawn a guerrilla war in those areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces. This will sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.
If Russian forces enter Ukraine yet again, Kyiv is likely to lose the war and the human toll will be extensive. The long-term damage suffered by Moscow, however, is likely to be substantial as well. The seemingly impetuous Mr. Putin has maneuvered his way into a strategically risky position, and the West ought to leverage the Kremlin’s mistake and drive a hard bargain in any diplomacy.
Mr. Deni is a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of “Coalition of the Unwilling and Unable: European Realignment and the Future of American Geopolitics.”
6. Opinion | Brave Afghans who served with me and others are in danger. Our government can’t let them die.
A heartfelt plea.
Opinion | Brave Afghans who served with me and others are in danger. Our government can’t let them die.
Jayson Harpster is a U.S. Army veteran. He lives in D.C.
Please don’t let my friends die.
It’s a simple plea to the U.S. government from many American veterans of the Afghanistan war. And so far that plea is being ignored.
My friends Nabi and Kohee are what our political class calls “Afghan allies.” They were Afghan intelligence officers whom I served with during my second deployment to Afghanistan. God blessed me the day I was assigned to work with such fine men. They taught me about their country, I taught them about intelligence analysis, and together we tracked Taliban threats.
The Army gave me a Bronze Star for the work that I did with Nabi and Kohee. That helped get me into a good school, get a good job, a good life — the American dream. But for my friends, the fact that they worked with the Americans is a death sentence, and I dare not use their full names given the ongoing threats to them and their families. The Taliban raided Nabi’s house the very night it conquered Kabul. If he had not already gone into hiding, he’d be dead. Kohee and his family had to flee their home when their pro-Taliban neighbors threatened them with death and promised to “take care of” their teenage daughter. “Take care of” means forcibly marrying her off to a Taliban fighter to be raped.
Working with fellow veterans and volunteers, I desperately tried to get Nabi, Kohee and their families into the Kabul airport so they could escape. But U.S. guards turned them away, all while some planes were taking off with unfilled seats. Nabi evaded a half-dozen Taliban checkpoints to get within six feet of his assigned pickup location, only to be attacked with tear gas by American guards and whipped by a Taliban fighter. It was only after days of failure at the airport that we made the difficult decision to help them flee to Pakistan.
In Pakistan, they live with the risk of being deported back to Afghanistan. They can barely go outside. The kids can’t go to school. And they can’t go to another country that will accept them. Every time I see a message notification on my phone, I’m afraid.
All we can do is wait and see whether the United States will keep its promise to our Afghan allies. We’ve filed for humanitarian parole and paid more than $7,000 in filing fees to CIS so my friends can come to the United States, just like the thousands of luckier Afghans who got into Kabul airport. Our bipartisan team of volunteers submitted letters of support from Army officers and non-commissioned officers, photographic evidence of their service with U.S. forces, certificates from U.S. and NATO units and affidavits attesting to the threats to their families. We’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars and built a support team to provide these families with housing, food, medical care, education and anything else they need to resettle in the United States. We got them out of Afghanistan and could get them to the United States if only CIS chooses to let them live.
Please, Director Jaddou, don’t let my friends die.
I don’t know what to do for the Afghan allies who are still stuck in Afghanistan. But I know that my friends aren’t the only ones hiding in other countries. CIS knows that they are in serious danger, yet it seems they have started rejecting their applications. If it is actually the policy of the United States to turn away veteran-endorsed Afghan allies, then our bureaucracy isn’t just passively “letting them die”; it is actively killing them.
Please, Secretary Mayorkas, don't let my friends die.
For my friends and other Afghan allies, it is humanitarian parole or eventual deportation and death. If we won’t do it for the Afghans, then we should do it for our veterans. Too many of us have too much survivor’s guilt already. There’s already a grave at Arlington I ought to visit more often. I know that I couldn’t bear another 13 souls on my conscience.
Please, President Biden, don’t let my friends die.
7. Hong Kong tears down ‘Pillar of Shame’ sculpture honoring Tiananmen victims
Hong Kong tears down ‘Pillar of Shame’ sculpture honoring Tiananmen victims
Yesterday at 7:24 p.m. EST|Updated yesterday at 9:12 p.m. EST
HONG KONG — Under the cover of darkness early Thursday, authorities in Hong Kong tore down a public sculpture dedicated to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, accelerating a campaign to erase the crackdown from public recollection and stamp out dissent in a city that until recently was one of Asia’s freest.
The 26-foot-tall artwork, known as the “Pillar of Shame,” had stood at the University of Hong Kong for nearly a quarter-century and honored the hundreds, if not thousands, of students and others killed on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese military crushed pro-democracy protests.
The sculpture, depicting naked bodies twisted together, some in mid-scream, was created by Danish artist Jens Galschiot and was one of the last remaining Tiananmen commemorations on Chinese soil. Each year on the anniversary of the massacre, students would scrub and clean the memorial.
With students away on Christmas break, workers erected yellow barriers and large white curtains around the site of the sculpture on the university campus, while security guards kept onlookers away. Overnight, the artwork was dismantled into two pieces, wrapped up and taken away.
The sculpture’s removal underscored the dramatic political changes in Hong Kong, where authorities have sharply curtailed freedom of expression since China imposed a harsh security law last year and rescinded freedoms it had promised the former British colony until 2047. The ability to commemorate Tiananmen in Hong Kong long differentiated the city from the Chinese mainland, where authorities have scrubbed the massacre from official history.
But since last year, officials in Hong Kong have banned an annual Tiananmen vigil and arrested activists. A museum documenting the crackdown has been shuttered and its online successor blocked in Hong Kong.
Samuel Chu, president of the Campaign for Hong Kong, an advocacy group, condemned the removal of the sculpture. “Its creation in 1997 was a touchstone for freedom in Hong Kong; its destruction in 2021 would be a tombstone for freedom in Hong Kong,” he wrote on Twitter.
The Council of the University of Hong Kong, the institution’s governing body, said it made the decision on Wednesday to remove the sculpture from the campus.
“The decision on the aged statue was based on external legal advice and risk assessment for the best interest of the university,” it said in a statement, adding that the university has the right to take “appropriate actions” to handle the artwork and that the institution could be in violation of colonial-era laws if the sculpture remained.
The HKU Council said the Pillar of Shame had been put into storage.
Galschiot, in emailed statements and on social media, expressed his shock at the events.
“The Pillar of Shame is getting demolished right now in Hong Kong. The sculpture has been covered and is heavily guarded so that no students can document what is going on,” he wrote, adding that he condemned the destruction of private property. He later said in a phone interview that the removal was “a political statement against the democracy movement” in Hong Kong.
The sculpture had been on permanent loan to the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, a group that for years organized annual Tiananmen vigils but disbanded recently after it was targeted by national security investigators.
Galschiot, who maintains he is the owner of the sculpture as its creator, had appealed to Hong Kong authorities to allow him to bring it back to Denmark. But despite repeated requests, he said he had not heard back from the university. Because of its age, the sculpture needs special care to ensure it does not get destroyed, he said.
Galschiot still hopes the Pillar of Shame can be returned to Denmark so he can repair it and find it a more permanent home. Installing the sculpture in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington would send a strong signal, he said, adding that Taiwan, London and Norway also could be options.
By Thursday morning, the yellow barricades remained at the university. But the artwork was gone.
Crawshaw reported from Sydney. Theodora Yu contributed to this report.
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8. FDD | Putin Can’t Be Allowed to Re-Divide Europe
Excerpts:
It’s time for the U.S. and its allies to counter Russia’s false narrative on security and reassert the principles that ended the Cold War and the era of great-power domination. We should tell the Kremlin that the time is right not for a renegotiation of another tired text, but for a recommitment to the security principles enshrined in the Charters of Paris and Istanbul. That includes the withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia, Moldova, and more recently Ukraine.
Facing massed troops both within and without its recognized borders, Ukraine is the latest country paying the price for the West’s failure to defend the post-Cold War principles and impose financial costs for the 2008 invasion of Georgia. We should get it right this time. The Biden administration and NATO should reject any negotiations that involve taking away the right of states to choose their own security arrangements. They should issue a clear warning that painful economic sanctions will be the response to any additional violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, in addition to helping Ukraine defend itself against further Russian aggression. Should Russia use force to seize more territory in Ukraine, we should show Moscow that those who destroy the international security order will not enjoy the fruits of the economic order.
FDD | Putin Can’t Be Allowed to Re-Divide Europe
Moscow’s latest treaty proposals are just another attempt to usurp the sovereignty of its neighbors.
Eric S. Edelman
Senior Advisor
David J. Kramer
Florida International University
Ian Kelly
Northwestern University
fdd.org · by Eric S. Edelman Senior Advisor · December 22, 2021
There once was a dream of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. On Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued draft treaties for both the United States and NATO to consider that, if adopted, would tear that dream to shreds. While the drafts might generously be interpreted as opening gambits in a negotiation, the Biden administration and America’s NATO allies should quickly and firmly reject Vladimir Putin’s efforts to revive the Cold War by redrawing the lines of Europe.
Among other demands, the Russian proposals include promises by NATO that the alliance will admit no new members and will even abstain from military cooperation with states bordering Russia. Notably, they contain no promises on the Russian side not to cooperate militarily with states bordering NATO members. In effect, the Russian government has claimed a sphere of exclusive influence in Europe, not unlike that which it maintained by force and violence from 1945 to 1989. But the Iron Curtain’s division of Europe was emphatically rejected, not only by the United States and the peoples of Europe, but by the USSR and its successor states themselves.
Thirty years ago this month, the fifteen republics of the USSR became independent states. They had watched as, two years before, the countries of the Warsaw Pact sloughed off communism and declared themselves free from the domination of the Soviet Union. There was more than just independence in the air then. There was also a growing consensus that liberal democracy and free markets represented a better future. Soviet citizens unfavorably compared the USSR’s decades of economic stagnation and political repression with the West’s growing prosperity and freedoms. People were tired as well of the zero-sum, confrontational approach of the Cold War.
The idea of Europe as a zone of shared security and prosperity was reflected in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, signed in 1990 by the USSR and the countries of Europe and North America. It proclaimed the end of “the era of confrontation and division of Europe.” The signatories pledged to commit to “democracy based on human rights and fundamental freedoms,” and “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State,” emphasizing as well “the freedom of States to choose their own security arrangements.”
The Charter of Paris was signed by the USSR, and in 1999, an updated document was signed in Istanbul by the U.S., Canada, 51 European and post-Soviet states, and the European Union. The Charter for European Security “reaffirm(ed) the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance.” Like the Charter of Paris, it also reiterated that no state “can consider any part of the (European) area as its sphere of influence.” The 1999 agreement also called for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgian and Moldovan territory—a commitment that Moscow has failed to fulfill.
Now largely forgotten, the two Charters marked the rejection not only of the Cold War’s division into two zones, but also of irredentism—the idea that a country could claim any territory formerly belonging to it, one of the motivating factors of the Second World War.
After the experiences of two World Wars and one Cold War, the Charters embodied ideas both Europeans and Americans found worth defending. President George H.W. Bush summed it up as “Europe whole, free, and at peace.” The first president of independent Russia, Boris Yeltsin, recognized the linkage between shared prosperity and shared security, and in 1990 wrote a letter to the NATO Secretary General stating that joining NATO “was a long-term political goal” for Russia. His successor, Vladimir Putin, has said he discussed the possibility of joining NATO in his first meeting with President Clinton in 2000.
Putin became Russian acting president in 1999, but by 2007, he was painting NATO not as a community of shared security, but as a vehicle to threaten Russia. In that year, Putin delivered a scorching speech in Munich that excoriated the U.S. and its allies. He effectively delinked Russia from the Western zone of shared security, condemning NATO (though not by name) as a “vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries.” In the same speech, however, he emphasized that Russia wanted to remain a part of the Western economic system, and that it would join the World Trade Organization and welcome further Western investment.
Not long after Putin’s speech, his government began its first attempts to re-divide Europe. When NATO proclaimed support for Ukraine and Georgia’s eventual membership at a summit in April 2008, Moscow insisted on legal guarantees that NATO would not enlarge any further. The former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—whose independence the United States had recognized throughout the Cold War—had already joined NATO in 2004. In June 2008, the Kremlin proposed talks on a draft treaty that would allow Russia to veto any new members of the alliance. The U.S. and its allies ignored the proposal, which would have severely limited other countries’ sovereignty in direct contravention of the Charters of the 1990s. Two months later, Russia invaded Georgia and to this day occupies twenty percent of that country’s territory.
Russia wanted to benefit from the economic integration of the post-Cold War world while rejecting the security order that made economic integration possible. The proper American and allied response to Russia’s aggression should have been to impose costs. But no significant penalties were imposed for the use of force against Georgia’s territorial integrity. The lesson to the Kremlin was that it could assert domination over what it called its “sphere of privileged interests” without paying a price.
When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, far from pursuing penalties against Russia after its invasion, his administration signaled that pursuing productive relations with Moscow (the “Reset”) was more important than defending the principles of the Paris and Istanbul Charters. Several U.S. administrations have longed to leave European security to Europe and “pivot to Asia”—to face the Chinese challenge—as if the U.S. can’t confront threats on both fronts. Putin constantly reminds us that we have no choice but to address both challenges simultaneously.
The Russian leader has exploited U.S. and European leaders’ distraction, while the Western alliance has taken the idea of “Europe whole, free, and at peace” for granted. Putin has presented his own narrative of the security situation in Europe. For Russia, NATO enlargement is a result not of the decision of sovereign nations to join, but of Washington’s aggression, pushing the alliance up against Russia’s borders. Moscow claims that the “U.S has placed bases around Russia” to threaten Russia, not to respond to the requests of European countries for U.S. assistance—requests made urgent by Russia’s series of invasions, interventions, assassinations, and attempted coups throughout Europe. With little consistent defense of NATO’s real intentions, and no reinforcement of the principles that ended the Cold War, some Western analysts have bought into Russia’s claim of NATO’s malign goals and its assertion of a right to intervene in Eastern Europe.
As in 2008, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s draft treaties—one with NATO and the other with the U.S. alone—are again asking the West for no further NATO enlargement. Perhaps counting on Washington’s reputation for having a short memory, the agreement uses language from the treaty first proposed in 2008. But the demand that NATO end military cooperation with the countries along Russia’s borders goes further than the 2008 request. Ironically, even while it shreds the last remnants of the Istanbul Charter, both of Moscow’s proposals include provisions that the would-be signatories “reaffirm… their commitment to the purposes and principles of the 1999 Charter for European Security.”
It’s time for the U.S. and its allies to counter Russia’s false narrative on security and reassert the principles that ended the Cold War and the era of great-power domination. We should tell the Kremlin that the time is right not for a renegotiation of another tired text, but for a recommitment to the security principles enshrined in the Charters of Paris and Istanbul. That includes the withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia, Moldova, and more recently Ukraine.
Facing massed troops both within and without its recognized borders, Ukraine is the latest country paying the price for the West’s failure to defend the post-Cold War principles and impose financial costs for the 2008 invasion of Georgia. We should get it right this time. The Biden administration and NATO should reject any negotiations that involve taking away the right of states to choose their own security arrangements. They should issue a clear warning that painful economic sanctions will be the response to any additional violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, in addition to helping Ukraine defend itself against further Russian aggression. Should Russia use force to seize more territory in Ukraine, we should show Moscow that those who destroy the international security order will not enjoy the fruits of the economic order.
Eric S. Edelman serves as chair of FDD’s Turkey Program and as an advisor to FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power. He also serves as a counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Ian Kelly is the ambassador (ret.) in residence at Northwestern University. Previously, he was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and ambassador to Georgia. David J. Kramer is director of European & Eurasian Studies at Florida International University’s Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs and served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the George W. Bush administration.
fdd.org · by Eric S. Edelman Senior Advisor · December 22, 2021
9. FDD | Is Israel Facing Up To Reality On Hamas and Hezbollah?
Excerpts:
There are signs, finally, that Israel has potentially reevaluated this approach and is bringing its public messaging closer in line with reality. A week before the Dec. 10 explosion at the Burj al-Shemali camp, an unsourced report in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot laid out the latest, presumably official assessment of Hamas activities and plans in Lebanon and their relation to Hezbollah and Iran. The report retained some of the standard silliness, but significantly, it held Hezbollah responsible for Hamas’ activity. The report stated plainly that Hezbollah oversaw the establishment of whatever capability Hamas is said to be building in Lebanon and added, correctly, that the Shiite group had a veto over any movement by Hamas it did not approve of. It then went on to say that any Hamas attacks from Lebanon will require “a strong Israeli response in Lebanon,” even as it reiterated that neither Hezbollah nor Israel were interested in a major conflict.
Is this a meaningful shift? And, if so, why now? While subtle, this modification is in accord with another message Israel has conveyed: Should Hezbollah press ahead with local production of precision-guided missiles, the IDF would jettison the existing rules and target the assembly facilities in Lebanon. As for timing, it’s not entirely clear why this is happening now except that perhaps Israeli officials recognize that they are running out of time.
After a decade of misreading the United States’ intentions on Iran, the Israelis are now watching in horror as the same Obama administration crew is leading them, once again, toward the endgame of a nuclear Iran. Forced to reckon with the fact that it will be up to Israel to deal with that threat, the Israeli government is now openly talking about plans for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program.
FDD | Is Israel Facing Up To Reality On Hamas and Hezbollah?
fdd.org · by Tony Badran Research Fellow · December 22, 2021
On Dec. 10, a large explosion rocked the Palestinian camp Burj al-Shemali outside the southern Lebanon city of Tyre. The site of the explosion was a center belonging to the Palestinian terror group Hamas that includes a mosque and a health clinic. Residents told local media that a fire from the blast spread to the mosque, where it triggered the explosion of weapons stored inside.
On the surface, the explosion served as a reminder of Hamas’ habitual use of civilian structures for military purposes and of the group’s military activity in Lebanon. But, more important, the incident highlighted that Israel may finally be breaking with its shortsighted public posture that Hezbollah bears no responsibility for Hamas’ activity. Shortly before the explosion at Burj al-Shemali, there were long overdue signs of Israel developing a new willingness to acknowledge reality and hold Hezbollah responsible for attacks carried out in the country the group controls.
In 2018, Israel publicized an assessment of Hamas building training camps and weapons facilities in Lebanon with assistance from Hezbollah, but its posture toward Hezbollah in Lebanon mostly impeded its willingness to take any overt action to deter the buildup. Then the issue resurfaced this past May, during the brief war between Israel and Hamas. While the fighting was focused in Gaza and southern Israel, on three separate occasions that month, an unidentified group, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the time maintained was a Palestinian faction, fired rockets at Israel from southern Lebanon. Most of them landed in the Mediterranean or failed to make it into Israeli territory. The IDF responded with artillery shelling, and that was the end of it. No second front opened up in the north, and Hezbollah didn’t join the fray.
After the May war ended, there were two more such rocket attacks, in late July and in early August. The last one saw a slight escalation in Israel’s response as the IDF used airstrikes in addition to artillery fire, but struck nothing of value. In turn, Hezbollah decided it needed to respond in order to preserve what it calls the deterrence equation, which says such Israeli strikes inside Lebanese territory cannot be left unanswered. Its response was therefore formulaic: a barrage of 20 rockets deliberately fired into open terrain in the Golan Heights. Once again, Israel and Hezbollah had performed their dance, and it ended there. There were no other rocket attacks by this so-called Palestinian faction.
While the attack-counterattack sequence was a predictable feature of the status quo, the Israeli response over the past six months was significant for how absurd it was. The messaging that came out of Israel about the power dynamics in Lebanon and what the proper Israeli course of action should be, presumably informed in part by the IDF, pushed two main points. First, that Hamas’ activities, although assisted and supervised by Iran, actually presented a challenge for Hezbollah. That is, Hamas supposedly was looking to operationalize a second front against Israel irrespective of or even against Hezbollah’s preference, which could in turn embroil Hezbollah in a conflict it didn’t necessarily want. Second, that Israel’s response to any provocation from Hamas in the north should be in Gaza, not necessarily in Lebanon, so as not to play into Hamas’ hand.
What this messaging was about, really, was Israel’s posture toward Hezbollah. Israeli officials understood that it was Iran and Hezbollah who allowed Hamas (assuming it was Hamas or even a “Palestinian faction”) to fire those rockets during the last Gaza war, and that by doing so they were engaged in a probing exercise designed to test Israel’s response. Iran and Hezbollah wanted to see if they could extend the rules of engagement that Israel has agreed to in Lebanon—Israel avoids striking in Lebanon, Hezbollah does not activate the Lebanese front—to Hamas (or an “anonymous” party). This would establish a precedent in which Hamas—or, for that matter, any unnamed faction—could harass Israel from Lebanese territory under Hezbollah’s protective umbrella. Israel would be dissuaded from retaliating with serious strikes inside Lebanon by the risk of setting off a broader war with Hezbollah. The gambit was to influence Israel’s operational calculus in Gaza and the West Bank, and even in Jerusalem, as Hezbollah stated explicitly during the May war. More generally, it would allow Iran and Hezbollah to heat things up with Israel, from Lebanon, cost-free.
The IDF’s response to the attacks between May and August on the one hand signaled Israel’s refusal to accept an alteration to the existing rules. On the other hand, it communicated that Israel was not interested in changing them itself. Against that backdrop, all the presumably IDF-informed commentary reinforced this posture: Israel sees Hamas’ operations in Lebanon as independent from — or even intended to embroil — Hezbollah. By endorsing the fiction that Hamas is an independent actor in Lebanon capable of going rogue, Israeli officials justify not countering aggression from Hezbollah. The nominal benefit of that tactic is that it avoids allowing minor incidents to escalate into a larger war—but at the cost of allowing Iran and Hezbollah to manipulate Israel’s self-deterrence and push the envelope.
There are signs, finally, that Israel has potentially reevaluated this approach and is bringing its public messaging closer in line with reality. A week before the Dec. 10 explosion at the Burj al-Shemali camp, an unsourced report in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot laid out the latest, presumably official assessment of Hamas activities and plans in Lebanon and their relation to Hezbollah and Iran. The report retained some of the standard silliness, but significantly, it held Hezbollah responsible for Hamas’ activity. The report stated plainly that Hezbollah oversaw the establishment of whatever capability Hamas is said to be building in Lebanon and added, correctly, that the Shiite group had a veto over any movement by Hamas it did not approve of. It then went on to say that any Hamas attacks from Lebanon will require “a strong Israeli response in Lebanon,” even as it reiterated that neither Hezbollah nor Israel were interested in a major conflict.
Is this a meaningful shift? And, if so, why now? While subtle, this modification is in accord with another message Israel has conveyed: Should Hezbollah press ahead with local production of precision-guided missiles, the IDF would jettison the existing rules and target the assembly facilities in Lebanon. As for timing, it’s not entirely clear why this is happening now except that perhaps Israeli officials recognize that they are running out of time.
After a decade of misreading the United States’ intentions on Iran, the Israelis are now watching in horror as the same Obama administration crew is leading them, once again, toward the endgame of a nuclear Iran. Forced to reckon with the fact that it will be up to Israel to deal with that threat, the Israeli government is now openly talking about plans for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program.
Tony Badran is Tablet magazine’s Levant analyst and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets @AcrossTheBay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Tony Badran Research Fellow · December 22, 2021
10. FDD | The Coming Middle East Narco Wars
I have never heard of captagon.
Excerpts:
Stemming the tide of Captagon production and trafficking inside Syria requires stepped-up coordination and enforcement to improve drug interdiction in transit countries and foreign markets. To address these threats before they metastasize and become unmanageable, the United States should develop an international effort to disrupt and ultimately dismantle the narcotics production and trafficking networks associated with the Assad regime.
Any such effort must start with a coordinated interagency process to integrate diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement efforts to identify and prosecute or sanction individuals and companies involved with Assad regime-linked Captagon production and trafficking networks. The United States should also support law enforcement and sanctions-related investigations in partner countries receiving or transiting large quantities of Captagon or Captagon precursors.
Recognizing the problem, Congress has issued multiple calls for the development of an interagency strategy to target the Assad regime’s trafficking networks and work closely with allies and affected governments.
Syria’s growing drug trade is unlikely to shrink, let alone disappear, until the civil conflict itself ends. Only through international pressure, a coordinated interagency and international effort to target narco-trafficking and a political solution to the conflict in Syria will key drug-trafficking networks become a liability, rather than a source of badly needed revenue.
FDD | The Coming Middle East Narco Wars
fdd.org · by Matthew Zweig Senior Fellow · December 22, 2021
In April, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states temporarily banned the import of agricultural products from Lebanon. This was not a response to political events or to an overt military or political provocation by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terror group that effectively runs Lebanon. Rather, the ban came in response to the discovery of a massive shipment of the amphetamine Captagon, concealed in Lebanese produce that arrived in a Saudi port.
Captagon is a brand name for a dangerous, addictive amphetamine-type drug that includes fenethylline hydrochloride. Captagon is not new to the Middle East; it has been around since the early 1960s and is a popular party drug for some. However, the scale of Captagon production and trafficking in and around Syria is new and concerning.
A recent New York Times investigative report detailed how industrial-scale Captagon production and trafficking is quickly becoming financially indispensable both to Hezbollah and to the Iranian-backed regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Branching into the amphetamine market likely also provides new sources of income for other Iranian proxy groups active in global narcotics trade.
A financial crisis in neighboring Lebanon, combined with the long-term effects of U.S. and European sanctions, cut off significant sources of revenue for the Assad regime. In need of cash, the regime turned to Captagon, which it ships out of both Syrian and Lebanese ports, fueling a war effort that has killed over 500,000 Syrians and displaced millions more. This turn to the drug trade signals a new phase in the Syrian conflict: the emergence of Syria as a narco-state.
A wave of major Captagon seizures across the globe originating in and around Syria suggests a multibillion-dollar global trade. In July 2020, Italian authorities seized 84 million Captagon tablets worth a total of €1 billion, believed to have originated in the Assad regime-controlled Port of Latakia. It was the world’s biggest seizure of amphetamines to date, according to the Italian government.
The Captagon drug trade not only facilitates Assad’s atrocities against the Syrian people, but could also create further instability through the widespread proliferation of amphetamine usage in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.
Conflict, destruction and territorial fragmentation are key factors allowing armed groups and narco-entrepreneurs to profit from the drug trade. Large-scale narcotics production and trafficking by rogue regimes or in ungoverned or under-governed spaces often sows further regional instability, leading to higher criminality and public health problems in consumer and producer countries. This pattern is now taking hold in Libya, where there is a burgeoning Captagon trade with reported Syrian links.
Furthermore, narcotics markets are not static. Today’s Captagon amphetamine markets could easily transform into far more potent methamphetamine markets, which happened in Afghanistan.
The political wars of today’s Middle East risk becoming the lethal narco-wars of tomorrow.
Stemming the tide of Captagon production and trafficking inside Syria requires stepped-up coordination and enforcement to improve drug interdiction in transit countries and foreign markets. To address these threats before they metastasize and become unmanageable, the United States should develop an international effort to disrupt and ultimately dismantle the narcotics production and trafficking networks associated with the Assad regime.
Any such effort must start with a coordinated interagency process to integrate diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement efforts to identify and prosecute or sanction individuals and companies involved with Assad regime-linked Captagon production and trafficking networks. The United States should also support law enforcement and sanctions-related investigations in partner countries receiving or transiting large quantities of Captagon or Captagon precursors.
Recognizing the problem, Congress has issued multiple calls for the development of an interagency strategy to target the Assad regime’s trafficking networks and work closely with allies and affected governments.
Syria’s growing drug trade is unlikely to shrink, let alone disappear, until the civil conflict itself ends. Only through international pressure, a coordinated interagency and international effort to target narco-trafficking and a political solution to the conflict in Syria will key drug-trafficking networks become a liability, rather than a source of badly needed revenue.
Matthew Zweig is a senior fellow at FDD. From July 2019 to December 2020, Matthew served as the senior sanctions advisor in the Office of the Special Representative for Syria Engagement. From 2001 to 2018, he served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Matthew Zweig Senior Fellow · December 22, 2021
11. Capitol Police Chief Can Now 'Unilaterally' Ask for National Guard Help In Emergencies
Capitol Police Chief Can Now 'Unilaterally' Ask for National Guard Help In Emergencies
The U.S. Capitol Police chief will be able to more quickly ask for the National Guard's help in an emergency under a bill signed Wednesday by President Joe Biden.
The chief will now be able to "unilaterally" request assistance from the D.C. National Guard or federal law enforcement agencies without prior approval from the Capitol Police Board, streamlining a process that lawmakers have identified as one of the reasons for the Guard's slow response during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
The bill passed both chambers of Congress earlier this month in voice votes.
"January 6th showed us that every minute counts during an emergency," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the bill's sponsor, said in a statement after the Senate passed the measure. "Our report found that Capitol Police officers and their law enforcement partners were left alone to defend the Capitol and our democracy itself from violent insurrectionists, while the chief of the Capitol Police was delayed in obtaining approval to request help from the National Guard."
Klobuchar was referring to a report released jointly by the Senate Rules Committee she chairs and the Senate Homeland Security Committee earlier this year about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump while Congress was certifying Biden's electoral victory.
The report found that "the need to await Capitol Police Board approval during an emergency hindered the ability to request District of Columbia National Guard ("DCNG") assistance quickly."
The board is a four-member panel with oversight of the police force and is composed of the Senate and House sergeants-at-arms, the architect of the Capitol and, in a non-voting capacity, the police chief.
"Our bipartisan investigation into the response failures on January 6th clearly demonstrated the need for the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police to have more unilateral flexibility to quickly request assistance in an emergency," Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the ranking member of the Rules Committee and co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement this month. "This bipartisan bill addresses a major security challenge that was evident on January 6th, and is part of our ongoing effort to strengthen Capitol security moving forward."
Questions have also persisted about whether the Pentagon delayed the Guard's response during the attack.
In March testimony to the Senate, retired Maj. Gen. William Walker, who was the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard at the time of the attack, said Pentagon officials' concerns about "optics" and "unusual" restrictions that prevented deploying a quick reaction force without higher approval delayed the response. Under the timeline he laid out during his testimony, it took more than three hours to get approval to deploy Guard troops after the Capitol Police requested help.
But a Pentagon inspector general report released last month said Walker was given approval to deploy earlier than he suggested in his testimony and that then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy had to call Walker a second time a half-hour after the initial approval to reissue the deployment order. Overall, the IG report found that Pentagon officials "did not delay or obstruct the DoD's response" to the attack.
The House committee investigating Jan. 6 is in part seeking answers about the National Guard response, as highlighted in its recent contempt proceeding against former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
According to a committee report detailing its reasons for holding Meadows in contempt of Congress, he sent an email Jan. 5 promising an organizer of the rally that preceded the violence that National Guardsmen would be on hand Jan. 6 "to 'protect pro Trump people' and that many more would be available on standby."
12. US Army conducts first tactical cyber exercise readying teams for operations
US Army conducts first tactical cyber exercise readying teams for operations
MUSCATATUCK URBAN TRAINING CENTER, Ind. — A group of terrorists is holed up in a governor’s mansion, a smart house riddled with Internet of Things devices. An U.S. military unit wants to force them out, but risking an outright shooting match might not be the best course of action.
On the ground, Army cyber forces are called in to use their skills to hack into the house’s smart devices to gain intelligence on what’s going on inside and potentially use cyber effects to force the terrorists to leave.
This is one example of how soldiers from the 915th Cyber Warfare Battalion tested their skills in a fictitious scenario during a recent exercise, part of validating themselves as a ready unit.
The 915th was created by Army Cyber Command in 2019 under the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade as the result of a pilot program to build tactical, on-the-ground cyber and electromagnetic teams to augment units with cyber, electronic warfare and information operations capabilities.
The vision is to create a total of 12 expeditionary cyber and electromagnetic activities teams (ECTs) by 2026 that will help plan tactical cyber operations for commanders and conduct missions in coordination with deployed forces.
The first such unit, ECT-01, was at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Indiana, a sprawling facility featuring physical buildings that can can be hacked into, demonstrating actual physical effects of cyber or electronic operations, in early December as part of its readiness checks.
It was the first such validation exercise that will stress the ECT’s functions over the course of five days.
In the past, these forces from the battalion have accompanied units to combat training center rotations to augment their operations using their specialized and tailored information effects. However, this type of training environment isn’t the optimal venue because those rotations are meant to test, stress and validate full brigades.
“For this exercise, we have more control,” said Capt. Gabriel Akonom, an officer with the battalion. “We have more control over the training objectives … whereas we have much less control, if any, for a CTC rotation.”
Tactical cyber forces tested their skills as a means of validating themselves as a ready unit.
As the Army is building this unit, it needs a combat training center-like facility where it can test itself against critical objectives it will need to achieve on behalf of units it will be called in to support.
“We have an opportunity here where we control the scenario and we can really test and the stress the ECT proper. When we go to a CTC, we have the added benefit of actually integrating with an infantry platoon, a scout platoon. We are not there yet with this training situation where we can actually do that,” battalion Sgt. Maj. Marlene Harshman said.
Officials said they focused on three main objectives during the event, based on the mission-essential task list:
- Conduct expeditionary deployment activities, including everything the team needs to plan, organize and deploy a team both administratively and logistically;
- Establish infrastructure operations, which the team needs to accomplish to integrate into a network of higher command to conduct their operations, and;
-
Provide information advantage, which is still a bit undefined given the Army is still developing the doctrine for it.
Given the unit is so new and is still in the process of being built, officials said these training objectives, as well as mission-essential task lists, are likely to change in the future.
“The METLs should change based off the mission. We’re talking about cyberspace being constantly evolving; we know the METL is going to change,” said Lt. Col. Benjamin Klimkowski, commander of the 915th.
Looking to training
In the example of the governor’s mansion, officials explained that given it is a target-rich environment from a digital standpoint, it allows the unit to test their skills and be able to provide multiple options for a joint commander. This means being able to provide non-kinetic capabilities instead of lethal ones for a variety of reasons.
“What we did is during our [field training exercise, we] provided some information, notional intelligence type things, we allowed them to determine how they were going to actually do these operations,” said Maj. Richard Byrne, the battalion’s operations and training officer.
Expeditionary CEMA teams provide units with proximal access to digital targets.
The exercise tests not only the physical presence of the soldiers — meaning their ability to conduct proximal or localized effects on physical targets — but a remote aspect in a supporting role as well.
“It’s a complex set of skills that we need to be able to exercise in one shot so we have a portion here and a portion [at Fort Gordon, Georgia] communicating in a way that they would realistically communicate,” Akonom said.
Prior to coming to Muscatatuck, the unit did a field training exercise at Fort Gordon as part of another readiness check in which they were given the same information and network they’d see at the range.
Given cyberspace requires a lot of planning, officials wanted to give the unit practice and lead time prior to deploying to the training center.
“We want to give them a more realistic scenario where they have the information first, be able to conduct some analysis, do some [military decision making process] … and deploy to the scenario with information required to actually conduct the operation,” Byrne said.
While there was no physical force directly opposing the unit on the ground, they did provide and build a virtual network as well as emit signals into the environment. These emissions allow the unit to be able to practice sensing and then interpret those signals to be able to target a force in non-lethal ways.
Additionally, the unit benefited from seeing manifestations of their digital effects in the physical world — such as taking actions on the smart house.
“I think ECT-01 really was able to go to the next level because ... we were able to see effects in the operational environment from their actions in the digital environment and really see the cross-talk of their actions in the physical environment from maneuvering being relayed in the digital and then having an effect in the informational,” Sgt. First Class Andrew Farnsworth, who is supporting the exercise from Army Cyber Command, said. “You got that level of realism that they would be able to tell their supported commanders in whatever geographic space that they’re going to.”
What’s next?
Given the unit is new, there are still many uncertainties as to what happens next in terms of building out more units and how a unit becomes officially validated.
“Our [initial operating capability/full operating capability] criteria, because we’re new, are still being built. Between 780th [Military Intelligence Brigade] and Army Cyber [Command], those are still not set in stone yet,” Harshman said. “What we’re working towards is the validation piece of the ECT. The validation piece is what the 780th is driving for us.”
Following its trip to Muscatatuck, ECT-01 will likely do some mission readiness training with a partner. This will be critical because it was created to operate, integrate and support another unit.
ECT-05 will likely go to Defender Europe, a major Army exercise, and support a unit there following its trip to Muscatatuck, officials said.
Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.
13. Former U.S. sailor sentenced for selling stolen special ops gear to China
Home confinement?
Excerpts:
“(Shaohua Wang) also admitted that he maintained a warehouse in China to house the military equipment, travelled back and forth frequently, and had connections to buyers in China,” the Justice Department said.
He was sentenced to 46 months in prison in February 2020.
“Shaohua “Eric” Wang is currently serving the remainder of his sentence on home confinement at home with (Ye Sang Wang) and their two minor children,” court records state.
Ye Sang Wang is originally from China and enlisted in the Navy in 2005, becoming a U.S. citizen two years later, according to court records.
She later sponsored her husband to become a U.S. citizen.
Former U.S. sailor sentenced for selling stolen special ops gear to China
A former U.S. Navy sailor was sentenced to 30 months’ confinement and a $20,000 fine Tuesday for conspiring with her husband to illegally export “sensitive military equipment” to China for their own profit, the U.S. Justice Department announced.
Former Logistics Specialist 1st Class Ye Sang “Ivy” Wang, 37, was assigned to Naval Special Warfare Command and admitted to using her official position to buy military gear that her husband then sold to online buyers in China, according to the department.
She pleaded guilty in July and received an other-than-honorable discharge from the Navy in September, according to court records.
Her husband, Shaohua “Eric” Wang, 38, ran an online store selling pilfered gear to customers in China, according to court records.
In one instance, those records show that Shaohua Wang sold a ballistic helmet belonging to SEAL Team 5 to a Chinese customer in November 2018, netting him about $2,300 in the process.
RELATED
The inside story of how two men who’d forged a deep bond on the battlefield attempted to sell stolen Army weapons.
One item Ye Sang Wang purchased in March 2018 using her military email and mailing address identifies U.S. personnel in the field and was subject to federal export controls.
Wang was deployed to Iraq at the time and told her command the package she ordered to her San Diego-based command was for her husband’s camping trip, according to the department.
Later in 2018, she returned home and gave the device to her husband, but law enforcement had secretly disabled it beforehand.
Wang told the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that her husband had sent her an Excel spreadsheet of military gear for her to purchase for buyers in China, according to the department.
Her husband couldn’t buy the gear with his personal email address, so he repeatedly pestered his wife to do so.
“She grew so annoyed at his repeated requests that, after purchasing equipment for him through March 2018, she gave him her password to her military email address and told him to buy the export-controlled military equipment posing as her after she deployed,” the Justice Department said.
Shaohua Wang’s scheme began in September 2016, according to court records.
Those records indicate that Ye Sang Wang kept providing military equipment to her husband through December 2018, even though she knew she was under investigation since at least October 2018, court records state.
“Ms. Wang betrayed her oath to the U.S. Navy and ultimately threatened the operational readiness and safety of our nation’s military by attempting to acquire and illegally export sensitive military equipment to China,” Special Agent in Charge Joshua Flowers, of the NCIS Southwest Field Office, said in a statement.
Shaohua Wang pleaded guilty in September 2019 to selling export-controlled U.S. military equipment through his online business and admitted to enlisting his wife to use her Navy position to further the scheme, according to the department.
RELATED
More than $1 million in weapons parts and sensitive military equipment was stolen out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and sold in a vast black market, some of it to foreign buyers through eBay, according to testimony at a federal trial this week.
“(Shaohua Wang) also admitted that he maintained a warehouse in China to house the military equipment, travelled back and forth frequently, and had connections to buyers in China,” the Justice Department said.
He was sentenced to 46 months in prison in February 2020.
“Shaohua “Eric” Wang is currently serving the remainder of his sentence on home confinement at home with (Ye Sang Wang) and their two minor children,” court records state.
Ye Sang Wang is originally from China and enlisted in the Navy in 2005, becoming a U.S. citizen two years later, according to court records.
She later sponsored her husband to become a U.S. citizen.
Geoff is a senior staff reporter for Military Times, focusing on the Navy. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was most recently a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.
14. Opinion - Mission Unaccomplished: Describing Failing US Military as ‘Awesome’ - Andrew Bacevich
As you might expect from Professor Bacevich: scathing commentary.
Opinion - Mission Unaccomplished: Describing Failing US Military as ‘Awesome’ - Andrew Bacevich
Mission Unaccomplished: Describing Failing US Military as ‘Awesome’
Praising the awesomeness of that military has become twenty-first-century America’s can’t miss applause line.
Professional sports is a cutthroat business. Succeed and the people running the show reap rich rewards. Fail to meet expectations and you get handed your walking papers. American-style war in the twenty-first century is quite a different matter.
Of course, war is not a game. The stakes on the battlefield are infinitely higher than on the playing field. When wars go wrong, “We’ll show ‘em next year—just you wait!” is seldom a satisfactory response.
At least, it shouldn’t be. Yet somehow, the American people, our political establishment, and our military have all fallen into the habit of shrugging off or simply ignoring disappointing outcomes. A few years ago, a serving army officer of unusual courage published an essay—in Armed Forces Journal no less—in which he charged that “a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”
The charge stung because it was irrefutably true then and it remains so today.
As American politics has become increasingly contentious, the range of issues on which citizens agree has narrowed to the point of invisibility. For Democrats, promoting diversity has become akin to a sacred obligation. For Republicans, the very term is synonymous with political correctness run amok. Meanwhile, GOP supporters treat the Second Amendment as if it were a text Moses carried down from Mount Sinai, while Democrats blame the so-called right to bear arms for a plague of school shootings in this country.
On one point, however, an unshakable consensus prevails: the U.S. military is tops. No less august a figure than General David Petraeus described our armed forces as “the best military in the world today, by far.” Nor, in his judgment, was “this situation likely to change anytime soon.” His one-word characterization for the military establishment: “awesome.”
The claim was anything but controversial. Indeed, Petraeus was merely echoing the views of politicians, pundits, and countless other senior officers. Praising the awesomeness of that military has become twenty-first-century America’s can’t miss applause line.
Of course, no other military on the planet—in fact, not even the militaries of the next 11 countries combined—can match Pentagon spending from one year to the next.
As it happens, though, a yawning gap looms between that military’s agreed upon reputation here and its actual performance. That the troops are dutiful, seasoned, and hardworking is indisputably so. Once upon a time, “soldiering” was a slang term for shirking or laziness. No longer. Today, America’s troops more than earn their pay.
And whether individually or collectively, they also lead the world in expenditures. Even a decade ago, it cost more than $2 million a year to keep a G.I. in a war zone like Afghanistan. And, of course, no other military on the planet—in fact, not even the militaries of the next 11 countries combined—can match Pentagon spending from one year to the next.
Is it impolite, then, to ask if the nation is getting an adequate return on its investment in military power? Simply put, are we getting our money’s worth? And what standard should we use in answering that question?
Let me suggest using the military’s own standard.
Demanding Victory
According to the United States Army’s 2021 “Posture Statement,” for example, that service exists to “fight and win the nation’s wars.” The mission of the Air Force complements the Army’s: “to fly, fight, and win.” The Navy’s mission statement has three components, the first of which aligns neatly with that of the Army and Air Force: “winning wars.”
As for the Marine Corps, it foresees “looming battles” that “come in many forms and occur on many fronts,” each posing “a critical choice: to demand victory or accept defeat.” No one even slightly familiar with the Marines will have any doubt on which side of that formulation the Corps situates itself.
In other words, the common theme uniting these statements of institutional purpose is self-evident. The armed forces of the United States define their purpose as winning. Staving off defeat is not enough, nor is fighting to a draw, waging gallant Bataan-like last stands, or handing off wars-in-progress to pliant understudies whom American forces have tutored.
Mission accomplishment necessarily entails defeating the enemy.In General Douglas MacArthur’s famously succinct formulation, “There is no substitute for victory.” But victory, properly understood, necessarily entails more than just besting the enemy in battle. It requires achieving the political purposes for which the war is being fought.
So when it comes to winning, both operationally and politically, how well have the U.S. armed forces performed since embarking upon the Global War on Terror in the autumn of 2001? Do the results achieved, whether in the principal theaters of Afghanistan and Iraq or in lesser ones like Libya, Somalia, Syria, and West Africa qualify as “awesome”? And if not, why not?
A proposed Afghanistan War Commission now approved by Congress and awaiting President Biden’s signature could subject our military’s self-proclaimed reputation for awesomeness to critical scrutiny. That assumes, however that such a commission would forego the temptation to whitewash a conflict that even General Mark Milley, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged ended in a “strategic failure.” As a bonus, examining the conduct of America’s longest war might well serve as a proxy for assessing the military’s overall performance since 9/11.
The commission would necessarily pursue multiple avenues of inquiry. Among them should be: the oversight offered by senior civilian officials; the quality of leadership provided by commanders in the field; and the adequacy of the military’s training, doctrine, and equipment. It should also assess the “fighting spirit” of the troops and the complex question of whether there were ever enough “boots on the ground” to accomplish the mission. And the commission would be remiss if it did not take into account the capacity, skills, and determination of the enemy as well.
But there is another matter that the commission will be obliged to address head-on: the quality of American generalship throughout this longest-ever U.S. war. Unless the commission agenda includes that issue, it will fall short. The essential question is obvious: Did the three- and four-star officers who presided over the Afghanistan War in the Pentagon, at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and in Kabul possess the “right stuff”? Or rather than contributing to a favorable resolution of the war, did they themselves constitute a significant part of the problem?
These are not questions that the senior ranks of the officer corps are eager to pursue. As with those who reach the top in any hierarchical institution, generals and admirals are disinclined to see anything fundamentally amiss with a system that has elevated them to positions of authority. From their perspective, that system works just fine and should be perpetuated—no outside tampering required. Much like tenured faculty at a college or university, senior officers are intent on preserving the prerogatives they already enjoy. As a consequence, they will unite in resisting any demands for reform that may jeopardize those very prerogatives.
A Necessary Purge
President Biden habitually concludes formal presentations by petitioning God to “protect our troops.” While not doubting his sincerity in praying for divine intervention, Biden might give the Lord a hand by employing his own authority as commander-in-chief to set the table for a post-Afghanistan military-reform effort. In that regard, a first step should entail removing anyone inclined to obstruct change or (more likely) incapable of recognizing the need to alter a system that has worked so well for them.
On that score, Dwight D. Eisenhower offers Biden an example of how to proceed. When Ike became president in 1953, he was intent on implementing major changes in U.S. defense priorities. As a preliminary step, he purged the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which then included his West Point classmate General Omar Bradley, replacing them with officers he expected to be more sympathetic to what came to be known as his “New Look.” (Eisenhower badly misjudged his ability to get the Army, his own former service, to cooperate, but that’s a story for another day.)
A similar purge is needed now. Commander-in-chief Biden should remove certain active-duty senior officers from their posts without further ado. General Mark Milley, the discredited chair of the Joint Chiefs, would be an obvious example. General Kenneth McKenzie, who oversaw the embarrassing conclusion of the Afghanistan War as head of Central Command, is another. Requiring both of those prominent officers to retire would signal that unsatisfactory performance does indeed have consequences, a principle from which neither the private who loses a rifle nor the four stars who lose wars should be exempt.
However, when it comes to a third figure, our political moment would create complications that didn’t exist when Ike was president. When he decided which generals and admirals to fire and whom to hire in their place, Eisenhower didn’t have to worry about identity politics. Top commanders were of a single skin tone in 1950s America. Today, however, any chief executive who ignores identity-related issues does so at their peril, laying themselves open to the charge of bigotry.
Which brings us to the case of retired four-star general Lloyd Austin, former Iraq War and CENTCOM commander. As a freshly minted civilian, Austin presides as the first Black defense secretary, a notable distinction given that senior Pentagon officials have tended to be white or male (and usually both). And while, by all reports, General Austin is an upright citizen and decent human being, it’s become increasingly clear that he lacks qualities the nation needs when critically examining this country’s less-than-awesome military performance, which should be the order of the day. Whatever suit he may wear to the office, he remains a general—and that is a problem.
Austin also lacks imagination, drive, and charisma. Nor is he a creative thinker. Rather than an agent of change, he’s a cheerleader for the status quo—or perhaps more accurately, for a status quo defined by a Pentagon budget that never stops rising.
A speech Austin made earlier this month at the Reagan Library illustrates the point. While he threw the expected bouquets to the troops, praising their “optimism, and pragmatism, and patriotism” and “can-do attitude,” he devoted the preponderance of his remarks to touting Pentagon plans for dealing with “an increasingly assertive and autocratic China.” The overarching theme of Austin’s address centered on confrontation. “We made the Department’s largest-ever budget request for research, development, testing, and evaluation,” he boasted. “And we’re investing in new capabilities that will make us more lethal from greater distances, and more capable of operating stealthy and unmanned platforms, and more resilient under the seas and in space and in cyberspace.”
Nowhere in Austin’s presentation or his undisguised eagerness for a Cold War-style confrontation with China was there any mention of the Afghanistan War, which had ended just weeks before. That the less-than-awesome U.S. military performance there—20 years of exertions ending in defeat—might have some relevance to any forthcoming competition with China did not seemingly occur to the defense secretary.
Austin’s patently obvious eagerness to move on—to put this country’s disastrous “forever wars” in the Pentagon’s rearview mirror—no doubt coincides with the preferences of the active-duty senior officers he presides over at the Pentagon. He clearly shares their eagerness to forget.
As if to affirm that the Pentagon is done with Afghanistan once and for all, Austin soon after decided to hold no U.S. military personnel accountable for a disastrous August 29th drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 noncombatants, including seven children. In fact, since 9/11, the United States had killed thousands of civilians in several theaters of operations, with the media either in the dark or, until very recently, largely indifferent. This incident, however, provoked a rare storm of attention and seemingly cried out for disciplinary action of some sort.
But Austin was having none of it. As John Kirby, his press spokesperson, put it, “What we saw here was a breakdown in process, and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership.” Blame the process and the procedures but give the responsible commanders a pass.
That decision describes Lloyd Austin’s approach to leading the Defense Department. Whether the problem is a lack of daring or a lack of gumption, he won’t be rocking any boats.
Will the U.S. military under his leadership recover its long-lost awesomeness? My guess is no. In the meantime, don’t expect his increasingly beleaguered boss in the White House to notice or, for that matter, care. With a load of other problems on his desk, he’s counting on the Lord to prevent his generals from subjecting the troops and civilians elsewhere on the planet to further abuse.
© 2021 TomDispatch.com
15. On volatile border between India and China, a high-altitude military buildup is underway
Will we see more conflict at the top of the world?
On volatile border between India and China, a high-altitude military buildup is underway
The Washington Post · by Shams Irfan and Gerry Shih Yesterday at 4:00 a.m. EST · December 22, 2021
ZOJI LA PASS, India — The construction crew peered into two inky shafts bored into a rocky cliff face, bracing against the bitter cold and the impending blast.
Harpal Singh gave the go-ahead. The mountain was rocked by a thunderous explosion and, moments later, patriotic cheers. India was one step closer to completing a top strategic priority: a series of new tunnels and roads leading to the increasingly militarized border with China.
The tunnel will “safeguard the territorial integrity of our motherland,” said Singh, an engineer overseeing about 1,700 men racing to finish one stretch of the $600 million upgrade. Down the twisting one-lane road from their work site were parked construction machines, heavy trucks hauling winter supplies for the army, and armored vehicles under camouflage-patterned tarp, all preparing to make an arduous drive to the border that will become substantially shorter once the construction is finished.
“We understand the importance of this project,” Singh said. “It’s the vital supply line to the border with China.”
High in this corner of the Himalayas, an expanse of snowy peaks and glacier-fed rivers claimed by both China and India, a tense standoff between the two armies is spurring a flurry of infrastructure and military buildup that’s transforming one of the world’s remotest and most inhospitable regions.
On the Chinese side of the unmarked border, new helicopter pads, runways and railroads have been laid on the Tibetan plateau, according to satellite images and state media reports. On the Indian side, officials are rushing construction on the Zoji La tunnels, upgrading several strategic roads and unveiling new cellphone towers and landing strips. Both countries have deployed more military force to the border, with India diverting nearly 50,000 mountainous-warfare troops there, according to current and former Indian military officials. In recent months, both militaries have publicized combat-readiness drills to practice airlifting thousands of soldiers to the front lines at a moment’s notice.
Following 13 rounds of inconclusive negotiations between military commanders since June 2020, the standoff is now entering a second winter, an unprecedented development that is stretching logistics and budgets — especially for India. But the result, observers say, is a normalization of a hardened border, and an uneasy stalemate between two Asian powers that could last for years.
Retired Lt. Gen. Deependra Hooda, who served until 2016 as head of the Indian army’s Northern Command, said India last year assigned, for the first time, an offensively oriented mountain warfare division to the China border.
“The thinking was always we could handle China politically, diplomatically, but that feeling changed after 2020,” said Hooda, who directs the Council for Strategic and Defense Research think tank in New Delhi.
The deployed troops require “huge infrastructure to support them, huge reserves to replace them,” he added. “But even if there is a diplomatic process, the fact is that suspicions are going to remain. There’s no way of returning to the status quo.”
Over the years, the question of where India ends and China begins has been the subject of negotiations by various parties — including the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty, and an independent India under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Communist China under Mao Zedong. The roughly 2,100-mile border does not cleave through significant natural resources or population centers, but the dispute over where exactly it lies has led to a bloody war and several skirmishes.
The current impasse began in May 2020, when Chinese patrols objected to Indian construction on a strategically placed road in Ladakh, inside territory that China claimed. The faceoff culminated in a brawl that killed scores of soldiers that June.
Infrastructure construction also sparked earlier flare-ups. In 1957, China built a road linking the two vast and restive regions in its west — Tibet and Xinjiang — that crisscrossed an expanse of salt flats that India claims to be part of Ladakh. Tensions over the road simmered and contributed to the Sino-Indian War of 1962, in which China attacked India and both sides saw thousands of men die in freezing conditions.
In 2017, Chinese workers sought to build roads near India’s Sikkim state before they were stopped by Indian troops, creating a diplomatic crisis.
India needs to firm up its border by building infrastructure not only for its military but for its civilians, said Sonam Tsering, a former village councilor from Chushul, which overlooks a lake where new structures housing Chinese troops have materialized over the past year.
Nearby Demchok village, which didn’t have electricity a decade ago, got its first cell tower only in November, Tsering said. Basic roads are still lacking in the region, and many residents are moving away because of poor living conditions, a trend that erodes India’s territorial claims, he added. Last month, a village leader wrote a letter to India’s defense minister pleading for reliable electricity, basic hospitals and roads, and 4G cell towers for nine villages without service.
“The Chinese villages across the Indus River have had multiple cell towers for the last 15 years, with cable TV, electricity lines, big concrete houses, wide, paved roads,” Tsering said. “China gives citizens incentives to live in these forward villages because they know civilians living there are the first line of defense.”
A Pentagon report in November said China has recently built a small settlement in disputed territory on the eastern section of the India-China border. Military infrastructure has also increased: Satellite imagery suggests that in 2019 and 2020, China had finished expansion projects on about 20 helipads or airstrips bordering India, said Sim Tack, a former military analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm.
Both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have equated infrastructure with national security. After Indian and Chinese troops clashed last summer, Modi vowed to triple spending on border infrastructure and assured troops in Ladakh that India’s enemies had tasted its “fire and fury.” This year, Xi traveled to Tibet for the first time to inspect a new railway leading to the Indian border, then told People’s Liberation Army officers at a command center to “comprehensively strengthen training and preparation work.”
Wang Xiaojian, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, said that China was committed to peace at the border and considered the situation “stable and controllable,” while adding that China would firmly safeguard its territorial sovereignty. Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said the two countries’ foreign ministers met most recently in September 2021 in Tajikistan and agreed to continue talks between diplomats and military commanders to resolve the remaining issues.
Christopher Clary, an expert on India-China military relations at the University of Albany, said the border buildup has been “asymmetrically” more taxing for India than China, which has a defense budget that is 3.5 times as large as India’s and a gross domestic product six times as large. Chinese leaders have historically been wary of antagonizing India, Clary said, but they could afford to prolong the standoff as a way to punish India for its growing closeness with the United States and its allies.
“There must be concern as India increasingly takes part in the Quad, and other alignments perceived as encircling China, and Beijing may want to use demonstrative force to show there are red lines,” Clary said, noting that Mao attacked India in 1962 after sensing Nehru’s closeness with his rival, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
In the decades following India’s defeat in 1962, New Delhi intentionally avoided building infrastructure in Ladakh, fearing that roads might help the Chinese army descend the Himalayas and march on the Indian capital, said Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
But today, the thinking in New Delhi has flipped.
On the road to Ladakh on a recent afternoon before the start of the snow season, dozens of heavy trucks painted with pictures of Sufi saints idled at a weigh station, their drivers milling about.
“I have been traveling on this road for the last 35 years but never seen it as busy as it is now,” said Nazir Ahmad Wani, 65, a Kashmiri driver who was bringing machinery and winter supplies to the border.
Wani recalled volunteering to shuttle goods during the 1999 Kargil War, when Pakistan shelled the road. Now, about 200 out of 500 trucks every day are again carrying military supplies, Wani estimated. There’s no shooting, he said, but a familiar sense of tension.
“It’s scary to see lots of men and weapons being ferried every day to Ladakh,” Wani said. “It’s as if something big is about to happen.”
Shih reported from New Delhi. Pei Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
Read more:
The Washington Post · by Shams Irfan and Gerry Shih Yesterday at 4:00 a.m. EST · December 22, 2021
16. Strategic Foresight in U.S. Agencies - An Analysis of Long-term Anticipatory Thinking in the Federal Government
Each chapter in the table of contents below is a hot link that will take you to the text for each chapter.
Strategic Foresight in U.S. Agencies
An Analysis of Long-term Anticipatory Thinking in the Federal Government
Last updated on December 15th, 2021
Abstract
U.S. public policy has often been myopic, sacrificing long-term needs to short-term interests. This short-termism not only reduces economic performance, threatens the environment, and undermines national security—to name but a few consequences—it also leaves the United States vulnerable to surprise and limits its ability to manage crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The question is, what to do about it?
Answering that question requires that we understand the causes of short-termism. This report argues that it is, in part, a mechanism for coping with the uncertainty of the future and that reducing myopia requires providing policymakers tools for managing that uncertainty. Specifically, it maintains that the practice of strategic foresight—the rigorous examination of imagined alternative futures to better sense, shape, and adapt to the emerging future—can put boundaries around future uncertainty while enabling better strategy in the present.
As evidence, it provides a detailed case study of the U.S. Coast Guard’s “Project Evergreen,” a cyclical scenario planning exercise, and it explores the proliferation of strategic foresight techniques throughout the federal government, while noting that they remain under-utilized. It concludes by calling for a national-level foresight organization that reports directly to the president.
Contents
Authors
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the dozens of people, in particular members of the U.S. Coast Guard, who lent me their expertise and recounted their experiences. I am indebted to John Kamensky for reading this report in its entirety and making many valuable suggestions, as well as to several reviewers who wished to remain anonymous but who sharpened the section on the U.S. national security establishment. Parts of this report draw on my doctoral work at Harvard Business School, and I would like to extend my gratitude to Professors Amy Edmondson and Robin Ely for their mentorship and guidance. Thank you also to the team at New America, particularly Peter Bergen and David Sterman, for making this report possible, as well as to the Smith Richardson Foundation for its support. Finally, in the interest of transparency, I should note that I operate a foresight consultancy, Event Horizon Strategies, and state that it has no business pending with the agencies I profiled.
17. US Embassy mocks Russia for blatant lie about respecting Ukraine
Quite a tweet from the embassy.
US Embassy mocks Russia for blatant lie about respecting Ukraine
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine responded with mockery after Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed Russia has always respected Ukraine’s territorial independence.
In a Dec. 16 interview reported by Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, Zakharova said, “Our country has treated Ukraine as a sovereign state for more than 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite our common past, despite our common present.”
Responding to Zakharova’s comments, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv tweeted, “Russian MFA Spokesperson Zakharova claims ‘Russia has always treated Ukraine as an independent state,'” with a laughing emoji. “We look forward to Russia’s immediate withdrawal from Crimea and Donbas.”
Russian MFA Spokesperson Zakharova claims “Russia has always treated Ukraine as an independent state.” We look forward to Russia’s immediate withdrawal from Crimea and Donbas.
— U.S. Embassy Kyiv (@USEmbassyKyiv) December 19, 2021
The U.S. Embassy’s comments refer to Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, as well as its ongoing support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Last week, Russian court documents appeared to inadvertently reveal the presence of Russian troops in the Donbas region. Zakharova’s comments also come as tens of thousands of Russian troops have gathered for weeks near the Russian border with Ukraine. According to Ukrainian defense officials, about 122,000 Russian troops are gathered within 200 km (125 miles) of the border with Ukraine, while a further 143,500 troops km (250 miles) of the border. The massing of Russian troops near Ukraine has increased fears in the west of an invasion.
During her comments last week, Zakharova also dismissed Ukraine’s aspirations to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and suggested their efforts to join the alliance are not their own, but rather are being done at the direction of western powers.
Zakharova said Ukraine’s request to join NATO “hasn’t been made sovereignly by that state” adding, “All these statements are based on the playbooks that they have been receiving from their Western handlers for many years.”
Zakharova also reportedly claimed NATO does not truly consider Ukraine a sovereign nation.
“It’s not a sovereign state that declares it wants to join NATO and that it’s their sovereign right,” Zakharova said. “It’s a result of some pressure, some lobbying or some downright control over this country, which only pretends to play a sovereign role, by other states.”
In recent days, Russia has made other bold claims about the cause of tensions around Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Russia’s troop buildup on Ukraine’s border is in response to aggressive actions over the years by NATO.
“They are to blame for what is happening in Europe now, for the escalation of tensions there,” Putin said. “Russia had to respond at every step, and the situation was continuously going from bad to worse. It was deteriorating all the time. And here we are today, in a situation when we are forced to resolve it.”
Putin also said, “If our Western colleagues continue their obviously aggressive line, we will take appropriate military-technical reciprocal measures and will have a tough response to their unfriendly steps.”
18. Russian national extradited to US to face charges for what officials call a global hacking scheme that stole millions of dollars
Russian national extradited to US to face charges for what officials call a global hacking scheme that stole millions of dollars
A Russian national arrested in Switzerland has been extradited to the U.S. after officials say he participated in a global scheme to trade information from American computer networks that netted tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.
The scheme, authorities said, allowed individuals unauthorized access into into a company’s computer network to view or download the non-public files of several companies, including Capstead Mortgage Corp., Tesla, Inc., SS&C Technologies, and Nevro Corp.
Vladislav Klyushin, 41, of Moscow, Russia, was arrested in Sion, Switzerland on March 21, 2021 and was extradited to the United States on Dec. 18. Charges were unsealed Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. Klyushin is charged with conspiring to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, and with obtaining unauthorized access to computers, wire fraud and securities fraud.
Along with Klyushin, Ivan Ermakov, 35, and Nikolai Rumiantcev, 33, both of Moscow, Russia, were charged in the District of Massachusetts with conspiring to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud and with obtaining unauthorized access to computers, wire fraud and securities fraud.
Mikhail Vladimirovich Irzak, 43, and Igor Sergeevich Sladkov, 42, both of St. Petersburg, Russia, were also charged in the District of Massachusetts with conspiracy to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, and with securities fraud.
Ermakov, Rumiantcev, Irzak and Sladkov remain at large.
Ermakov, officials said, is a former officer in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, a military intelligence agency of the Russian Federation. He was previously charged in July 2018 in federal court in Washington D.C. for actions linked to hacking and influencing the 2016 U.S. elections.
In October 2018, Ermakov was also charged in federal court in Pittsburgh in connection with hacking and spreading disinformation targeting international anti-doping agencies, sporting federations, and anti-doping officials, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Klyushin, Ermakov and Rumiantcev worked at M-13, an information technology company based in Moscow, where Klyushin served as the company’s deputy general director, court documents said.
M-13 offered services that sought to discover vulnerabilities in a computer system. In addition, Klyushin, Ermakov and Rumiantcev also offered investment services through M-13 to investors in exchange for up to 60% of the profits, officials said.
From about January 2018 to September 2020, Klyushin, Ermakov, Irzak, Sladkov and Rumiantcev agreed to trade in the securities of publicly traded companies based on non-public information, authorities said.
With the information, Klyushin and others knew ahead of time whether a company’s financial performance would meet, exceed, or lag market expectations, authorities said. The information allowed them to accurately predict whether a company’s share price would rise or fall following the public announcement of that performance.
Authorities said, the scheme purchased shares of companies that were about to disclose positive financial results and sold short shares of companies that were about to disclose negative news.
Authorities said the scheme generated tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.
In harvesting the information, authorities said, the scheme also stole employees’ usernames and passwords, authorities said. The scheme used the stolen usernames and passwords to obtain access to the filing agents’ computer networks.
From the information received through the hacking, Klyushin and others viewed quarterly and annual earnings reports that had not yet been filed with the SEC or disclosed to the general public, of hundreds of publicly traded companies.
Authorities said Klyushin and others distributed their trading across accounts they opened at banks and brokerages in several countries, including Cyprus, Denmark, Portugal, Russia and the United States, and misled brokerage firms about the nature of their trading activities.
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© 2021 Advance Local Media LLC
19. Trump 'very appreciative' and 'surprised' Biden acknowledged his administration's COVID vaccine success
It would be great if this was a sign of the way things could go - what a great thing it would be if these two men could demonstrate mutual respect. Would their constituencies follow suit and allow the tow parties to compromise on policy issues to move our country forward. Unfortunately I know my naive statement is describing a parallel universe that may never connect with our real wor. But one can hope and may the below article is a sign!
I do think Biden miscalculated. He should have given the Trump administration great credit for the rapid development of the vaccines from the beginning of his administration and should continue to emphasize the great contribution of the Trump administration. Perhaps if he had done so and if former President Trump had accepted the praise we would have a greater number of vaccinated Americans.
Trump 'very appreciative' and 'surprised' Biden acknowledged his administration's COVID vaccine success
CNN reporter asks Biden if lack of available tests is a ‘failure’ amid omicron surge.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
EXCLUSIVE: Former President Trump said Tuesday that he is "very appreciative" and "surprised" that President Biden thanked him and his administration for their success in making COVID-19 vaccines available to the public, telling Fox News that "tone" and "trust" are critical in getting Americans vaccinated.
Biden on Tuesday afternoon announced increased testing capacity, expanded access to vaccines, and support for hospitals across the country amid a surge in cases of the omicron variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week make up more than 73% of new infections in the country.
"Thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, America is one of the first countries to get the vaccine," Biden said Tuesday. "Thanks to my administration, the hard work of Americans, we let, our roll-out, made America among the world leaders in getting shots in arms."
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Tuesday evening, Trump reacted to Biden acknowledging his administration’s efforts.
"I'm very appreciative of that—I was surprised to hear it," Trump told Fox News. "I think it was a terrific thing and I think it makes a lot of people happy."
Trump then repeated that he was "a little bit surprised."
"I think he did something very good," Trump said. "You know, it has to be a process of healing in this country, and that will help a lot."
The Trump administration created Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to create vaccines against the novel coronavirus, as the pandemic raged in 2020. Under his administration, the Food and Drug Administration approved emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
Trump in December 2020 signed an executive order that would ensure all Americans had access to coronavirus vaccines before the U.S. government could begin aiding nations around the world.
"This is a great thing that we all did," Trump said, referring to the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines. "I may have been the vehicle, but we all did this together."
"When we came up with these incredible vaccines—three of them—and therapeutics—we did a tremendous job, and we should never disparage them," Trump said. "We should be really happy about it because we’ve all saved millions and millions of lives all over the world."
(Getty Images)
Trump, who is fully vaccinated, told Fox News that he received a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The former president was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October 2020.
For those still hesitant to receive a COVID vaccine, Trump said: "You have to embrace it. You don’t have to do it, and there can’t be mandates and all those things, but you have to embrace it."
Trump said getting Americans vaccinated is "really a matter of tone" instead of mandates.
"It’s a matter of getting people out to, ideally, get the vaccine," Trump said. "If you have the mandate, the mandate will destroy people’s lives—it destroys people’s lives, just as the vaccine saves people."
He added: "I think that it’s really a question of tone, it’s a question of trust, and hopefully, the people that have had COVID, hopefully they will be given credit for that."
Trump predicted that those who have already been infected with COVID-19 are "in pretty good shape of not getting it again, or getting it in a much lighter way."
"They probably won’t catch it, but if they do get it, it’s not going to be nearly as severe, and there probably won’t be hospitals involved," Trump said.
FILE - Staff Sgt. Travis Snyder, left, receives the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine given at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, Dec. 16, 2020, south of Seattle. The Army says 98% of its active duty force had gotten at least one dose of the mandatory coronavirus vaccine as of this week’s deadline for the shots. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
In March 2020, amid the first surge of COVID-19 cases in the United States, Trump moved to limit travel from China, and later from Europe, to the United States— a move he was criticized for.
Biden, last month, moved to limit travel from some African countries, after the omicron variant was believed to have been first detected in South Africa but did not face as much criticism.
When asked for a reaction, Trump told Fox News: "It is a little tough to be overly critical now, because he just thanked us for the vaccine and thanked me for what I did. You know, that’s a first—so it is very tough for me to be overly critical now.
"But, you know, we did shut it down, and we were criticized by some, we weren’t criticized by all," Trump said. "And ultimately, they said we did the right thing. I think we saved hundreds of thousands of lives in our country by closing it down to China, and then, ultimately closing it down to Europe very early.
"I think … people understand that now," he said.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
