Quotes of the Day:
"Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have."
- Timothy Ferriss
"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."
- Winston Churchill
1. ‘3212 Un-Redacted’ Review: Trying to Solve a Mission’s Mysteries
2. Hamartia, tragic righteousness and America’s ‘forever wars’
3. Leading Through the Impossible: Army Colonel Recounts Tragedy of Afghanistan Withdrawal
4. Andrew Sullivan says America's democracy is at risk because citizens can't compromise
5. Olympics sponsors pressured over China’s ‘appalling human rights record’
6. Picking up brass with a Green Beret
7. Folding America’s Nuclear Umbrella
8. U.S. Drug Maker Johnson & Johnson to Split into 2 Companies
9. National security adviser Jake Sullivan stunned by slow pace of federal bureaucracy
10. EXCLUSIVE: Russian disinformation ‘true constitutional threat,’ top Air Force general warns
11. Cyber agency beefing up disinformation, misinformation team
12. Ministry working to fight Chinese cognitive warfare
13. China’s Global Network of Vocational Colleges to Train the World
14. 5 'Truths' Have Guided US Special Operators for 40 Years, but They Face New Tests From Russia and China — And at Home
1. ‘3212 Un-Redacted’ Review: Trying to Solve a Mission’s Mysteries
I watched this. I strongly recommended it despite it being very painful to watch. Painful for the families, painful for the survivors, painful for those who were punished and painful for those not published. And very painful for the Special Forces Regiment and the military writ large. This provides a lot of information in a very coherent and cogent way and tells the story from the families and team perspectives. We saw this unfold over a long period of time as information was released piecemeal. This puts things together in a way to understand the context and the events. But it raises many more questions particularly about the orders for the HVT mission, the presence of a CIA team in the unit's convoy, the allegation the mission was to gain intelligence about an American aid worker who was (and still being ) held hostage and then with the "cover-ups'. But the blaming of the ODA in an apparent deliberate attempt to cover up something else is the most egregious. A true insult to the memories of the fallen, the other members of the team and the families. The way the story is told seems to vindicate the ODA but there are more questions. The most damning question to ask is was the ODA blamed to "protect" the chain of command? Don Bolduc makes the accusation that those who were supposedly being "protected" were members of the "club" - he called them card carrying members of the club and that there was a deliberate attempt to protect them.
Mark Mitchell is also interviewed extensively (as is the AOB Commander) and he provides important context and insights from his position as acting ASD SO/LIC.
This is a troubling documentary. But it may be very useful in helping us to learn lessons (that we should already know) about how these incidents should be handled and how investigations should be conducted which are always going to eventually be exposed and come under public scrutiny.
‘3212 Un-Redacted’ Review: Trying to Solve a Mission’s Mysteries
The documentary looks into the complex circumstances involving four American soldiers who were killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017.
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Col. Mark E. Mitchell in “3212 Un-Redacted.”Credit...ABC News
By
Nov. 11, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ET
“3212 Un-Redacted,” produced by ABC News with the investigative reporter James Gordon Meek serving as a writer and an onscreen presence, visually plays more like a television special than a feature documentary. It devotes much of its first half-hour to remembering the fallen men — we learn, for instance, about how Sgt. La David T. Johnson rode a single-wheeled bike around the Miami area — and introducing their families, no strangers to military culture, who feel betrayed. “The army let me down,” says Arnold Wright, the father of Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright. “They let my son down. And then they lied about it.”
Meek is particularly interested in why higher-level officials might have proceeded with the operation, after pushback from the ground; the answer he proposes suggests complex motives that probably couldn’t be fully assessed without more information than is publicly available. But at times, the filmmaking itself could be clearer. Meek indicates that he was first contacted about the project around 2018, but the movie shows footage of an American-Nigerien military meeting in September 2017, the month before the ambush. (A representative for the film says it comes from “Chain of Command,” a series by National Geographic, which isn’t credited until the end.) The lack of labeling only raises questions, slightly marring what otherwise plays like a thorough, outraged exposé.
3212 Un-Redacted
2. Hamartia, tragic righteousness and America’s ‘forever wars’
Very thought provoking and worthy of reflection.
Excerpts:
I urged them to please think about why people were prepared to give their lives to strike at the West and said that if we did not figure out the causes and address them, we and our children were doomed to spend our lives in a cycle of violence, never able to travel the world safely.
What I wrote was framed carefully. I said: ‘I am no apologist for our enemies or for terrorist methods. I am a soldier. I have attended too many of my friends’ funerals (ironically killed by IRA terrorists funded heavily from New York). There is a need to act, but we should act with regret and reluctance, knowing that we too are killing innocents and recognising that by accepting “collateral damage” we have given up much of our claim to moral superiority. We should not demonise our enemies either, even the psychologically warped young extremists of the Taliban, because that will blind us to the understanding we must have for our cause to prevail.’
The responses I received shook me to the core. One said: ‘Do not ever send me another e-mail.’ The message, clearly written in haste, went on to say that it was easy for us in Australia to sit in the middle of nowhere and feel superior and do nothing, and then to complain to those who did act. ‘This puts you right in there with Canada and France as blood suckers of the world,’ the writer said.
That left me shocked and saddened. These were educated, well-travelled people—good people. My questions ultimately took me on a path to a PhD examining counterproductive political overreactions. Yet, my overriding impression from the responses to my email then, and now, was of a violent Salafist ‘gotcha’.
An American scholar related that merely proposing the hypothetical retrospective question of ‘doing nothing’ to a conference of terrorism academics saw him physically threatened. He and others have observed how 9/11 didn’t merely suspend critical thinking, but rather prohibited it.
This illustrates the innate genius of the attack. Do something so terrible that it lights a fire of righteousness within your enemies. Set a fire in what is best in God-fearing America, the grim determination to see a morally necessary task through—that which saw sacrifice for Europe in 1917 and 1942. Trigger what John F. Kennedy espoused of the US: ‘we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship’.
Conclusion:
Hamartia. The first act of the tragedy seems reasoned, and attacking Afghanistan is blessed with initial success. Then unbounded rationality does its work, and the 20-year tragedy unfolds.
Hamartia, tragic righteousness and America’s ‘forever wars’ | The Strategist
Aristotle defined tragedy as the story of the inexorable downfall of a hero, not from greed or vice, but from human error or frailty. Harmartia is that tragic flaw. Two thousand years ago, the Greeks wrote plays to show that the innate trait that doomed the protagonist might be an admirable one.
Is righteousness America’s hamartia?
On an evening years ago, I was doing paperwork at my desk, the commanding officer of an Australian Army Reserve unit. One of my captains told me: ‘Sir, another plane has hit.’ I watched the TV as drama became disaster, and I watched my officers, curious about what this might reveal of them. I wondered what it might portend for us all. My memories are not only of the soul-chilling horror of it all, but also of a disorientation that prompted momentary schadenfreude and unmediated questioning.
The words of one young officer remain clear: ‘The Americans will never fall for this.’
Was 9/11 a provocation?
In 1975, David Fromkin explained terrorism as psychological jujitsu, the uncertain and indirect strategy of inducing response. ‘First the adversary was made to be afraid, and then, predictably, he would react to his fear by increasing the bulk of his strength, and then the sheer weight of that bulk would drag him down.’
In the days after the aircraft struck, wise voices warned clearly and presciently. On 20 September 2001 they were silenced. There could be no reflection on motive in the face of the binary sentiment unleashed by President George W. Bush’s stark logic: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’
Did Osama bin Laden intend to lead the US on a path of failed counterinsurgencies, loss of moral and strategic standing, and the invigoration of Salafism? Researchers analysing bin Laden’s papers deny such planning. It doesn’t matter. What mattered was the response. Fromkin’s essential insight was that terrorism wins ‘only if you respond to it in the way that terrorists want you to’.
It seems that America did respond in a way that served al-Qaeda objectives. With hindsight, many now condemn the political leaders of that time, forgetting perhaps that having framed the attacks as war, not crime, those leaders and their successors were then borne along on an irresistible tide of public desire for vengeance. A sentiment that, in the words of David Kilcullen, was and long remained ‘beyond bounded rationality’.
We are now wading through a media high tide of retrospective analysis. Where’s the exploration of how horror and shock turned ‘ordinary folks’ into avenging angels?
In 2000, I had come to know some Americans from the petroleum industry, mostly Texans, who had visited Australia. We cheerfully exchanged news and jokes in emails. I considered them friends. After 9/11, the nature of their communications changed dramatically and took what I feared was a sinister direction. These included photos of sailors on an aircraft carrier writing crude messages on bombs to be dropped on Afghanistan. It also included a map of that country coloured blue and labelled ‘Lake America’.
I emailed these Americans saying that I believed a true friend stands by in time of need, that Australians were with the US and Britain in this, and that I also believed that a true friend must be ready to say what is unpalatable. I said that much of the comment from the US carried the theme that it was somehow amusing to bomb Afghanistan. I have no problem with black humour; it’s a healthy way to deal with distress. But this stream of images and ideas had become vengeful glee and that filled me with sadness.
I urged them to please think about why people were prepared to give their lives to strike at the West and said that if we did not figure out the causes and address them, we and our children were doomed to spend our lives in a cycle of violence, never able to travel the world safely.
What I wrote was framed carefully. I said: ‘I am no apologist for our enemies or for terrorist methods. I am a soldier. I have attended too many of my friends’ funerals (ironically killed by IRA terrorists funded heavily from New York). There is a need to act, but we should act with regret and reluctance, knowing that we too are killing innocents and recognising that by accepting “collateral damage” we have given up much of our claim to moral superiority. We should not demonise our enemies either, even the psychologically warped young extremists of the Taliban, because that will blind us to the understanding we must have for our cause to prevail.’
The responses I received shook me to the core. One said: ‘Do not ever send me another e-mail.’ The message, clearly written in haste, went on to say that it was easy for us in Australia to sit in the middle of nowhere and feel superior and do nothing, and then to complain to those who did act. ‘This puts you right in there with Canada and France as blood suckers of the world,’ the writer said.
That left me shocked and saddened. These were educated, well-travelled people—good people. My questions ultimately took me on a path to a PhD examining counterproductive political overreactions. Yet, my overriding impression from the responses to my email then, and now, was of a violent Salafist ‘gotcha’.
An American scholar related that merely proposing the hypothetical retrospective question of ‘doing nothing’ to a conference of terrorism academics saw him physically threatened. He and others have observed how 9/11 didn’t merely suspend critical thinking, but rather prohibited it.
This illustrates the innate genius of the attack. Do something so terrible that it lights a fire of righteousness within your enemies. Set a fire in what is best in God-fearing America, the grim determination to see a morally necessary task through—that which saw sacrifice for Europe in 1917 and 1942. Trigger what John F. Kennedy espoused of the US: ‘we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship’.
Hamartia. The first act of the tragedy seems reasoned, and attacking Afghanistan is blessed with initial success. Then unbounded rationality does its work, and the 20-year tragedy unfolds.
Charles Knight is an adjunct senior lecturer at Charles Sturt University. Image: Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
3. Leading Through the Impossible: Army Colonel Recounts Tragedy of Afghanistan Withdrawal
Leading Through the Impossible: Army Colonel Recounts Tragedy of Afghanistan Withdrawal
davidson.edu · by Davidson College The Davidson College wordmark.
Hardman commands the 3rd Brigade of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a storied unit that fought in the mountains of Italy in World War II and most every major U.S. engagement since. Last summer, he was headed to Afghanistan to help lead the withdrawal of U.S. troops. On a stop in Qatar, he ran into his Army mentor’s mentor, a retired colonel and, now, civilian analyst whose relentless queries earned him the eponymous nickname.
“He looked me in the eye before I left,” Hardman said in a telephone interview from Kuwait. “And he said, ‘You’re probably going to make the hardest decisions you ever make in your career.’”
Things Started to Go Badly
Hardman, a 1997 ROTC graduate of Davidson College, served in Afghanistan before and also deployed to Iraq. He earned a master’s degree in history at George Washington University and taught as an assistant professor at West Point in between a succession of command positions.
The Army tasked Hardman with two roles in Kabul. He was the commander of security forces and chief of staff for all of the Army’s units on the ground in Afghanistan. He and his troops were to help complete the withdrawal, help advise and assist the Afghan government and security forces, safeguard the U.S. embassy and bolster security at the airport.
Then-President Trump had signed a deal to remove all troops by last spring, and President Biden delayed it until September. Either way, the Afghan people knew that the American troops that had held off the Taliban were leaving.
As the days ticked down, hundreds of Afghans scrambled to leave the country. A crush at the airport began to build. The Taliban was seizing control of other major cities at alarming speed, sometimes without gunfire.
Hardman plays soccer with Afghan refugees in Qatar. Photo courtesy of Matthew Hardman.
“[Hardman] was put in a very difficult position,” said retired Gen. Chuck Swannack, former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. The circumstances at Kabul Airport, he said, made it impossible to take some of the more effective steps to mitigate risk, such as limiting the number of people and building out extra standoff space.
Hardman described the situation as tragic from all directions.
“I had units on the ground that I was responsible for,” he said. “It was really chaotic, a really dangerous situation. I was also really fortunate. I had really good people on the ground.”
His troops deployed at Kabul’s airport and the embassy. The battalion commanders grasped the gravity, and the risk—in the tragedy for the Afghan people and the impact on the soldiers who were trying to stop it.
Hardman was drawing on everything invested in him throughout his career by professors, mentors, institutions and friends.
“It was right here, right now,” he said. “You had to get control, so we could do this as safely as possible…Nobody wanted to be in that tragic situation, but they knew that we were doing something important, that a lot of people were relying on us. We wanted to do right by the Afghans. We wanted to do right by the mission. These 18- and 19-year-olds who had never before served in Afghanistan felt that.”
Grier Martin, a fellow Davidson alum and Afghanistan veteran, said Hardman’s education and experience likely helped him take on such a complex mission.
“It was not full-on combat,” said Martin, now a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves. “It was a mission that was not just providing security, but also figuring out who gets to go through the gates and who doesn’t. It involved, I suspect, interacting with a lot of local Afghans, some with allegiance to the Taliban. You need the technical skills of leading combat troops and the human skills to know what motivates people, to have an understanding of different cultures and their history, their politics.”
The troops under Hardman’s command heartened him. He watched Marines who hadn’t slept in days helping as many families as they could. One put his arm around a grandmother and walked her through the line to get on a plane. Others were helping deal with sick or dying children.
What they couldn’t do was prevent the horrific scenes of Afghans chasing a U.S. plane down the runway, some clinging to it.
An Explosion at the Airport
On Aug. 26, Hardman walked out of a meeting with diplomats and Department of Defense officials and received a text message: There had been an explosion at the airport gate. He hustled to the command post.
“The initial report seemed like everybody was going to be okay,” he said. “Within about 10 minutes it became clear that it was going to be a horrendous day.”
U.S. Army Col. Matthew Hardman led the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Matthew Hardman.
Two suicide bombers killed 60 Afghans, 11 Marines, an Army soldier and a Navy sailor.
“We were gutted,” Hardman said.
Five days later, the last U.S. military plane left Kabul and ended the nation’s longest war.
Hardman was among the “Gen Xers” who put on a uniform in the late 1990s. The millenials followed, along with Generation Y. He considers himself an “old guy” in the Army now. He keeps reaching out to young soldiers to better understand their perspective. They think and do things differently, he said, and they are inspiring.
“Every generation, they want to serve,” he said. “They want to have a sense of purpose, to be part of something bigger than themselves. It’s incumbent on the rest of us to help them to achieve that purpose. Unleashed, they’re amazing…We’re going to be okay."
davidson.edu · by Davidson College The Davidson College wordmark.
4. Andrew Sullivan says America's democracy is at risk because citizens can't compromise
Will be on 60 Minutes Sunday night. But I had to highlight this quote:
"The American Constitution was set up for people who can reason and argue and aren't afraid of it, and then reach compromises, the whole thing is designed that way," Sullivan says. "If you're in a tribe, and all that matters is the victory of your tribe…You can't make it work."
We should ponder and reflect upon this.
Andrew Sullivan says America's democracy is at risk because citizens can't compromise
The conservative author says the January 6 insurrection was a wake-up call for Americans to open their minds to compromise as the U.S. Constitution's authors intended.
Andrew Sullivan on separating politics & life
The United States' democracy is in trouble, says conservative author, blogger, and editor Andrew Sullivan. Too many Americans can't separate their politics from their lives, he says, and refuse to debate and compromise – the critical elements the authors of the U.S. Constitution had in mind when they designed the framework of our governing system.
Scott Pelley interviews Sullivan for the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, November 14 at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS.
Sullivan, a journalist and editor for more than 30 years with strong opinions and a penchant for controversy, says there's nothing new or even bad about the pointed political battles roiling our society.
"That's healthy," he says. "What's not healthy is when that isn't just retained and kept in the political area but becomes personal, becomes something you bring to the supermarket… Thanksgiving dinner… permeates everything."
"And that separation between politics and life is what we're losing. And that's a terrible thing to lose," he tells Pelley.
The reason it's so terrible, says Sullivan, is that without that separation, America's democracy can't function the way its authors designed it to. They wrote the Constitution for "reasonable" people, he says.
"The American Constitution was set up for people who can reason and argue and aren't afraid of it, and then reach compromises, the whole thing is designed that way," Sullivan says. "If you're in a tribe, and all that matters is the victory of your tribe…You can't make it work."
The results of such one-sided thinking were horribly displayed on January 6, he says, and America is in for more rough times if change doesn't come.
"This country came to the point where we had violence in the usual peaceful transfer of power. That is a huge warning to how unstable our system can be if we remain tribalists in a system that's supposed to be designed for reasonable citizens," Sullivan tells Pelley. "We're flying from reality. We're inventing abstractions and ideologies. We're fighting each other. We're demonizing each other. The system can still work. It's we who are broken."
Sullivan was born in Britain and later became a U.S. citizen. He says he developed his open mind early in life when he realized he was gay, conservative and Catholic. He began his career in U.S. magazine journalism, rising to the editor of The New Republic and a senior editor at The Atlantic.
He has written or edited several books, including "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back," "Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality" and "Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989–2021."
He's blogged on and off again for 20 years. It's now called The Weekly Dish, and Sullivan also hosts a podcast. He has often attracted criticism from the right and the left for his controversial positions. In the wide-ranging interview with Pelley, he addresses some of his most high-profile criticisms.
© 2021 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
5. Olympics sponsors pressured over China’s ‘appalling human rights record’
I heard a China expert wonder if this issue will be part of the Xi-Biden discussion on Monday.
One thing we should think about is a parallel wh. the Sochi Olympics. We should anticipate what could happen following the next Olympics. Can and will the PRC exploit a successful Olympics with some major action following the completion of the games??
Olympics sponsors pressured over China’s ‘appalling human rights record’
The big sponsors of the Beijing Winter Olympics, including Visa, Coca-Cola, Airbnb and Omega, are under pressure from human rights campaigners to use their leverage to address human rights abuses in China.
Human Rights Watch, a US-headquartered campaign group, said letters sent to each of the top corporate sponsors in May questioning their involvement in the Beijing Games drew no responses from the companies.
“There are just three months until the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, but corporate sponsors remain silent over how they are using their influence to address China’s appalling human rights record,” said Sophie Richardson, director of the China programme at Human Rights Watch.
“[The sponsors] are squandering the opportunity to show their commitment to human rights standards and risk instead being associated with an Olympics tainted by censorship and repression,” she said.
The group’s targeting of some of the world’s highest profile consumer brands marks the latest sign of the international furore surrounding the Games.
Human rights groups and some western politicians are using China’s role as host of the international sporting event to highlight human rights abuses and repression, including Beijing’s security crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
There is debate over whether a widespread boycott of the Games would be effective in pressuring China to change course in its treatment of the Uyghurs and other minority groups.
Still, some western parliamentarians — including from the UK, the US and the EU — have for months called for politicians and dignitaries to boycott the 2022 Games.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international cross-party group of legislators, has suggested the Games be relocated. Others have called for a complete athlete boycott.
In April, Ned Price, the US state department spokesperson, said a boycott was one option “on the agenda”. President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, are expected to hold a virtual summit next week.
Human Rights Watch on Friday published its letters sent to the companies. The group urged corporate sponsors to press Beijing to allow an international investigation into Xinjiang and to demand the release of detained human rights defenders.
In September activists from 200 different human rights groups wrote to international broadcast networks, urging them to cancel deals to show the Games. According to a letter sent to the networks, the groups said broadcasters were at “serious risk of being complicit in China’s plan to ‘sport wash’ the severe and worsening human rights abuses”.
China has already ruled that no foreign spectators would be able to enter the country to attend the Games, part of its strict border controls and regional lockdown as it fights to eradicate Covid-19.
Human Rights Watch also noted that visiting athletes and Chinese spectators might risk “censorship or reprisals” if they protested at the Games in a way that was critical of the government and the Chinese Communist party.
The international boycott campaign coincides with rising public activism by a new generation of high profile athletes.
The trend has gathered pace and spread internationally in the four years since Colin Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback, knelt during the US national anthem played before each match he played, in protest against police violence.
More recently, Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka garnered widespread acclaim for advocating for awareness of racial injustice and mental health.
6. Picking up brass with a Green Beret
Picking up brass with a Green Beret
The first time I met someone from special forces was on a MOUT site at Fort Bragg back when I was a Private. We were the OPFOR for some green berets.
They had simunitions, we had paintballs.
There are three things I remember about that training:
- They were good – all of their movements were crisp and professional (I kept getting shot before I event saw anyone)
- They were older – like, way older. I was probably 19 at the time. They all looked to be in their mid-30s or early 40s.
- They were humble – story below.
At the end of one of the training days, we were under the stars with white lights picking up brass from the exercise. We had a platoon of infantrymen from the 82nd there, but every member of the SF team was out there picking up brass with us.
I remember plucking brass off of the concrete and dropping it into my helmet while a Segreant First Class next to me told me about Special Forces, the training, and the mission. He told me about the different schools he hasd gone to. He told me how he speaks a foreign language as a job requirement. He told me about trips to South America and working with partners.
All of that was cool, but it’s not what struck me.
The thing that struck me was the fact that he was out there picking up brass. He wasn’t above it. It displayed a professional maturity I wasn’t accustomed to yet – my experiences to date had been infantry training and being a new soldier in the 82nd.
Picking up brass was something privates did while the platoon leadership waited.
This was something different.
Something to admire.
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7. Folding America’s Nuclear Umbrella
A key point:
The argument for a “no first use” or virtually equivalent “sole purpose” declaration is that it will lead rogue states to follow the idealistic example of U.S. arms-control advocates and pare back their own nuclear posture. That was always far-fetched and it would be madness to believe in today’s strategic environment.
Folding America’s Nuclear Umbrella
Biden weighs ‘no first use’ even as strategic storm clouds loom.
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Photo: saul loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The botched Afghanistan withdrawal is President Biden’s biggest foreign-policy blunder so far, but at least he can say he was following his predecessor and trends in public opinion. If Mr. Biden scales back America’s nuclear deterrent by adopting a “no first use” policy or its equivalent, the strategic damage to the U.S. may be worse and the White House will have no one else to blame.
The Trump Administration’s 2018 “declaratory policy” said the U.S. reserved the right to use nuclear weapons not just in response to a nuclear attack, but also in “extreme circumstances” involving “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,” including with chemical or biological weapons. That’s consistent with U.S. policy as long as it has been a nuclear power.
Now the Biden Administration is in the middle of its Nuclear Posture Review, set to conclude in the coming months, and Washington and foreign capitals perceive that significant changes may be afoot. Last month the Financial Times reported that NATO countries as well as Japan and Australia were pressing the U.S. not to abandon its long-standing ambiguity on nuclear-weapons use.
That prompted two House Republicans to send a letter Monday asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for all communications “conveying ally views regarding a potential change in U.S. nuclear declaratory policy.” Meanwhile, U.S. supporters of a change are also trying to influence the President in the press. Politico reports that “it doesn’t appear the Pentagon wants to give him much of a choice,” citing an anonymous Defense official—a clever appeal to the President’s fear of being “boxed in” by his generals.
Yet the President decides whether to order the use of a nuclear weapon, and he would only be boxing himself in by narrowing America’s freedom of action. The next Republican President would promptly reverse the unilateral change.
The argument for a “no first use” or virtually equivalent “sole purpose” declaration is that it will lead rogue states to follow the idealistic example of U.S. arms-control advocates and pare back their own nuclear posture. That was always far-fetched and it would be madness to believe in today’s strategic environment.
China’s arms buildup has weakened if not eliminated the U.S. conventional military advantage in Asia. Mr. Blinken also warned this year of “the rapid growth of the PRC’s nuclear arsenal.” A recent Pentagon review said Beijing is “moving to a launch-on-warning (LOW) posture with an expanded silo-based [nuclear] force.” The same review raised “concerns regarding its compliance” with biological and chemical-weapons conventions.
The Trump Administration’s 2018 review cited “Russia’s belief that limited nuclear first use, potentially including low-yield weapons” can create a “coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict.” Russia has again massed troops on the Ukrainian border. America’s great-power rivals will be emboldened to escalate if the U.S. needlessly forswears even limited nuclear options.
The fallout would be felt in Europe and Asia, as U.S. allies recalculate America’s role, and China and Russia press for advantage with newfound peace of mind about the possibility for escalation. Folding America’s nuclear umbrella would invite a geopolitical storm.
Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
8. U.S. Drug Maker Johnson & Johnson to Split into 2 Companies
Here is how @DPRK_News, the Supreme Leader of Satire described this on Twitter:
DPRK_News (@DPRK News Service) Tweeted: US drug maker Johnson & Johnson splits into two corporations, to be named Johnson, and Johnson. https://twitter.com/dprk_news/status/1459308343051395073?s=27
U.S. Drug Maker Johnson & Johnson to Split into 2 Companies
November 13, 2021 08:19
U.S. drug maker Johnson & Johnson announced Friday it will separate its consumer health business of over-the-counter, name brand drugs from its prescription drug and medical device business, creating two companies.
In a release posted to its website, the 135-year-old company said its new Consumer Health Company will be publicly traded and market such products as Band-Aids, Neutrogena skin cream, Tylenol pain reliever and Listerine mouthwash.
The company known as Johnson & Johnson will continue selling prescription drugs and medical devices. The company developed one of the three U.S.-approved COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the cancer treatments Darzalex, Erleada, and Imbruvica, among other medications.
The Johnson & Johnson logo on a package of Band-Aids in St. Petersburg, Florida, in this file photo taken on Oct. 16, 2012. /AP
Johnson & Johnson said the split is likely to be completed over the next 19 to 24 months, if approved by the company board of directors.
In the release, the company said the split is the best way to serve consumers and patients as well as healthcare professionals. Rival U.S. drug maker Pfizer made a similar move when it and GlaxoSmithKline merged their consumer divisions, with plans to create a separate pharmaceutical company next year.
- Copyright © Chosunilbo & Chosun.com
9. National security adviser Jake Sullivan stunned by slow pace of federal bureaucracy
Another slow pace of bureaucracy is the appointment and approval of Ambassadors and national security officials. I would like to see a study of the impact of this. Was that a contributing factor to the AUKUS-France submarine issue? How does the slow pace of appointments affect our foreign affairs and national security? Can it be measured and quantified?
National security adviser Jake Sullivan stunned by slow pace of federal bureaucracy
President Joe Biden’s foreign policy team was hampered by the slow pace of the federal bureaucracy, according to one of his top White House advisers.
“The thing that has surprised me the most is ... frankly, the kind of incredible human effort that is required to move even as simple a decision as the allocation of some funding for development purposes in a single country,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a Thursday event with an Australian think tank. “Let alone a highly complex decision — like how to put together AUKUS.”
That’s a reference to the pact in which U.S. and British officials agreed to transfer nuclear submarine technology to Australia, a deal unveiled as a landmark upgrade to manage threats from China — only to give way to a diplomatic fiasco with French President Emmanuel Macron, who fumed at Australia’s unexpected decision to scuttle a submarine deal with Paris in favor of the Anglo-American technology.
“The number of steps that are required to get from a presidential decision to execution on the ground ... the way resources have to move, the way instructions have to be communicated, the way allies need to be engaged and consulted,” Sullivan said. “Until you stare at it square in the face from the seat I sit in, you don't fully understand what you're kind of dealing with as this massive machine.”
Sullivan, 43, a veteran foreign policy hand respected for his experience and intellect, has drawn the assignment of orchestrating “a fair and humane process” for airing debates within the executive branch over the development of U.S. foreign policy.
“And to fundamentally create a circumstance in which information is flowing to the president as the ultimate decision-maker, recommendations and choices are being framed up effectively,” he said.
China’s emergence as a revisionist power in the Indo-Pacific has put pressure on many components of American power while stoking fear of an eventual military conflict between Washington and Beijing.
“From my perspective, all of this talk of the United States and China going into a new Cold War, or that we're on our way to conflict, or the Thucydides Trap — We have the choice not to do that,” Sullivan said. “We have the choice, instead, to move forward with what President Biden has called 'stiff competition.'”
In any case, the machine backfired, according to French officials who insisted that U.S. and Australian officials sinned by omission against Paris, where government and defense industry leaders were stunned when the deal surfaced in August. Biden acknowledged last month that “what we did was clumsy” and implied that a diplomatic breakdown had occurred.
“I had been under the impression long before that France had been informed,” Biden said in Rome, following a meeting with Macron on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
Sullivan refused to confirm that U.S. officials thought Australia had noticed the French. “We have had to go through some challenges in dealing with the rollout and in how we've tried to engage intensively diplomatically with the French,” he told the Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove. “I just think there's no profit in revisiting how we got to where we are. Where we are now — we've put out, in our view, a very strong and meaningful and substantive plan of action with the French on a range of issues, including relating to the Indo-Pacific. And, we're digging in on the real work of AUKUS.”
By Sullivan’s own admission, that response was “a dodge,” but he underscored the long-term value of the pact.
“Where I sit today, the good news lies ahead,” he said. “And we are going to redeem the vision our leaders laid out, and it's going to be an incredibly positive thing for our countries.”
10. EXCLUSIVE: Russian disinformation ‘true constitutional threat,’ top Air Force general warns
EXCLUSIVE: Russian disinformation ‘true constitutional threat,’ top Air Force general warns
Military, country 'playing with fire' as trust in institutions erodes, Hinote warns
NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW:
Russian social media disinformation campaigns and the increasingly hostile political battles they have fueled across America represent a “true constitutional threat” to the nation, contributing to COVID-19 vaccine skepticism and other serious issues in the military and beyond, a top Air Force general told The Washington Times.
In an exclusive interview last week, Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force‘s deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, warned that the internal divisions could fundamentally weaken the country and chip away at American moral leadership around the world. He spoke as the Pentagon was formulating guidelines to define and weed out what officials call extremist and anti-government views in the ranks.
Gen. Hinote made headlines by saying “we are in danger of losing our republic” after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol while Congress was trying to ratify the presidential election results. He offered similarly bleak assessments last week.
“As somebody who studies threats around the world and has pledged to defend the Constitution of the United States, one of the things that gives me the most concern is the lack of unity that is represented by something … like Jan. 6,” Gen. Hinote said. “I worry deeply that some of the norms that have kept us strong and have put us in a position of leadership around the world have eroded over time. … We’ve got to be honest with ourselves. We’re playing with fire if we can’t figure this out as a people and come together and figure out a way to work out our differences peaceably.”
The Jan. 6 riot sparked immediate action inside the military. As one of his first orders of business after taking office, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a “stand-down” in February for all U.S. military units around the world to spend a day discussing extremism, discrimination and related issues.
The Pentagon is expected to soon release formal definitions of an “extremist” or “extremist behavior.” The specifics will be significant because some critics have warned that the fight against extremism could inadvertently target political conservatives and Catholics.
Pentagon officials, however, insist that the effort is aimed only at identifying service members who are active in White supremacist or other extremist groups, especially those who may be willing to engage in violent, anti-government attacks.
Defense Department leaders also view political divisions and extremist behavior as critical national security threats that can be blamed at least partially on U.S. adversaries, chiefly Russia. Gen. Hinote recounted to The Times one of his first briefings years ago about the extent to which foreign disinformation campaigns were targeting the American political system and amplifying domestic political differences.
“I remember going out to my car that’s out here in front of the Pentagon … and I remember thinking to myself as I closed the door, ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a true constitutional threat to the United States,’” he said. “I believe that when Russian bots are attacking our conversations with each other in ways that are meant to drive us to poles and separate us right down the middle, I worry a lot that that is a threat to the Constitution of the United States. I still believe that today.”
Aside from the Jan. 6 riot, Gen. Hinote said, a troubling “symptom” of those attacks and subsequent political turmoil has been a drastic decline in Americans’ faith in the country’s institutions, such as the government and media.
That lack of faith, he said, has shown up in skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines. In the Air Force, nearly 8,500 active-duty personnel have not received a vaccine, even after the troops’ first deadline of Nov. 2.
Air Force officials said 2,753 haven’t started the vaccination process and 800 others have simply refused. Another 4,933 have applied for religious exemptions that haven’t been processed.
About 97% of the service’s personnel have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Still, Gen. Hinote said, a deeper problem is keeping Americans — both civilians and those in uniform — from vaccinations.
It’s “a symptom of a problem,” he said. “I think the problem we are seeing … is this idea of the lack of trust of institutions, that institutions have for whatever reason lost trust. And even [for] the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention], which by any measure prior to the pandemic was the gold standard of anything having to do with infectious disease.
“Because of the disinformation, because of the lack of trust of institutions and the fact that that gives disinformation a place to take hold and to grow, yeah, I think when we see ourselves, we don’t trust institutions like we did,” Gen. Hinote said.
11. Cyber agency beefing up disinformation, misinformation team
Cyber agency beefing up disinformation, misinformation team
The Hill · by Maggie Miller · November 10, 2021
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is beefing up its disinformation and misinformation team in the wake of a divisive presidential election that saw a proliferation of misleading information online.
“I am actually going to grow and strengthen my misinformation and disinformation team,” CISA Director Jen Easterly said during virtual remarks at the RE:WIRED conference on Wednesday.
Easterly noted that earlier this week she had a meeting with “six of the nation’s experts” in the disinformation and misinformation space. She stressed her concerns around this being a top threat for CISA, which is charged with securing critical infrastructure, to confront.
“One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” Easterly said.
“We are going to work with our partners in the private sector and throughout the rest of the government and at the department to continue to ensure that the American people have the facts that they need to help protect our critical infrastructure,” she added.
Easterly’s comments came a year after CISA came under fire by President Trump for its efforts to push back against election misinformation and disinformation, primarily through setting up a “rumor control” website. Trump fired former CISA Director Chris Krebs, and several other top CISA officials were forced to resign in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election, largely as a result of this effort.
Despite the political pressure, the rumor control site remains up. Easterly pledged in September to continue using the page, and CISA did indeed use the rumor control site to counter election disinformation and misinformation during the recent 2021 elections in 30 states, including the closely watched Virginia governor’s race.
“We now live in a world where people talk about alternative facts, post-truth, which I think is really, really dangerous if you get to pick your own facts, and it’s particularly corrosive when you talk about matters of election security,” Easterly said Wednesday.
“There is a certain percentage of the American people that are not going to be convinced and are not going to listen to the government, we get that, but there is a certain part of the American public that do still trust the government and that do still come to us and that get facts about things that can be difficult to understand,” she said.
Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith on Wednesday separately sounded the alarm about online disinformation and misinformation impacting issues including elections and COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Smith specifically warned about the ability of foreign governments to use disinformation to meddle in another country’s affairs, an issue that became particularly concerning following Russian efforts to spread disinformation to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump.
“It has become in some ways almost a tool of choice to disrupt a democracy, to sow dissent, to cause people to question even fundamental facts like who won the election and is this vaccine safe, or does it work,” Smith said in a speech at the Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs. “In some ways, it may be far more effective, it’s certainly less expensive, to launch a government-sponsored disinformation campaign than it is to build a hypersonic missile, and we have some countries that have the resources easily to do both.”
The Hill · by Maggie Miller · November 10, 2021
12. Ministry working to fight Chinese cognitive warfare
Ministry working to fight Chinese cognitive warfare
ALREADY COVERED: All scenarios in a Reuters report on a possible Chinese attack have already been discussed by the defense ministry and Pentagon officials, an analyst said
- By Wu Su-wei and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer and CNA
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The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that it is combating Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cognitive warfare efforts against Taiwan.
The ministry said it has submitted guidelines to the Legislative Yuan to define cognitive warfare efforts by foreign powers and to outline the military’s actions to combat it.
China’s use of social media and other platforms to spread disinformation and cause social unrest in Taiwan has been increasing, it said.
A Chinese People’s Liberation Army Shaanxi KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft is pictured in a handout photograph following the incursion of 19 Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Oct. 2.
Photo: EPA-EFE / the Ministry of National Defense
The CCP engages in cognitive warfare with Taiwan through the use of propaganda, fake social media accounts, content farms and Taiwanese collaborators, it said.
The military traces misinformation shared through social media in Taiwan, and posts corrected information on its own social media accounts and Web sites, the ministry said, adding that it also posts the corrected information in replies to public posts where possible.
Meanwhile, a defense researcher on Saturday said that the military must continue to improve its asymmetric combat and electronic warfare capabilities to meet the threat of a Chinese invasion attempt.
Institute for National Defense and Security Research senior analyst Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) was responding to an investigative report titled “T-Day: The Battle for Taiwan,” published by Reuters on Friday.
The possible scenarios regarding a Chinese attack discussed in the report have all been previously discussed between the ministry and US officials at the Pentagon, he said.
The article described six scenarios, including a Chinese blockade of Lienchiang County, an invasion of Kinmen County, a customs quarantine, a full blockade, an air and missile campaign, and an all-out invasion of Taiwan.
In each of the scenarios, China’s goal is to force Taipei into unification negotiations, which Taipei refuses in every scenario, instead appealing to the US, Japan and Australia for assistance.
“Reuters has said that Taiwan’s reserve forces are too weak, and this is an area the military is working to strengthen,” he said.
Su cited the report as saying that Taiwan would counter a Chinese attack with missiles, but that the number of missiles it has is limited.
“However, if Taiwan is able to secure Harpoon anti-ship missiles from the US, that would change the situation,” he said.
Citing a statement by Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) in a letter to the Wall Street Journal that was published on Thursday, Su said that “Taiwan is no match for China in resources, manpower or military technologies.”
However, Taiwan has the will and determination to defend itself, so it must speed up investment in its asymmetric warfare capabilities to tip the scales in its favor in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, he said.
“Taiwan should also play to its strengths in information technology, and invest more in its electronic warfare capabilities,” he said. “This is an area that China has been investing in recently, so Taiwan needs to keep pace.”
Su said that an estimated 18 percent of Chinese military planes that have flown near Taiwan’s waters in the past year were electronic warfare aircraft.
This showed that China was seeking to emulate tactics used by the US military, such as the use of its Suter software that allows it to monitor and control enemy air-defense systems, he said.
To counter this, Taiwan must improve the encryption of its wireless communications and develop heterogeneous communications systems, he said.
13. China’s Global Network of Vocational Colleges to Train the World
What could possibly go wrong?
China’s Global Network of Vocational Colleges to Train the World
At Luban Workshops locals are trained on Chinese technology with Chinese standards as part of a full court press to globalize Chinese tech.
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Despite questions from U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy team about the lack of local benefits for countries along the Belt and Road, China and Chinese companies are serious about upskilling and employing more locals on overseas projects.
This is not mere altruism. The students will be trained on Chinese technology with Chinese standards as part of a full court press to globalize Chinese tech. It is a component of a bigger effort to tighten the economic linkages between China and the Global South, which Beijing sees as key to competition with the United States.
Beijing is also answering the demands of partner countries, which are insisting that Chinese projects employ more locals.
Until recently, this localization effort had been led by Chinese companies. In response to pressure from local societies and governments, Chinese firms adapted by upskilling locals to work on their projects. As we show in a recent paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Chinese companies in Central Asia have trained thousands of locals to staff their projects and overcome chronic skills shortages in Central Asia. Numerous studies show similar localization trends in other parts of the world.
Now China’s government is following its firms. As with many Chinese government programs, Luban Workshops began as a provincial initiative. The government of Tianjin opened the first Luban Workshop in Thailand in 2016. So far, 1,125 Thai students have reportedly graduated from the workshop, and over 8,000 exchange students from other Southeast Asian countries have undergone training programs there. The facility has expanded from 232 square meters to 2,000 square meters, with its offerings increased from four practical teaching courses to 15, from one technical major to six.
Tianjin’s initial plan seems to be for the workshops to serve the interests of state-owned and private firms from the city, facilitating local training and employment, which increases competitiveness and brand recognition of these firms in the host country. At the same time, they also serve the interests of the Chinese government as an instrument of soft power, one that goes hand in hand with its global geoeconomic policy, and one that developing countries find attractive.
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As such, Luban Workshops have subsequently been co-opted by China’s central government and gone global. In May 2021, the Tianjin Daily reported there were 18 Luban Workshops worldwide. Like Confucius Institutes, Luban Workshops are usually housed within a local institution, usually a vocational college, in the host country. They focus training on skills shortages in that country.
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China also provides training for local instructors who teach at Luban Workshops in China. Between 2016 and 2020, 136 local instructors have been trained in China.
More Luban Workshops are on the horizon. The Tianjin government signed additional agreements in 2020 which, when finalized, will bring the number of workshops to 24. In May 2021, China’s foreign minister said in a meeting with his five Central Asian counterparts that the Chinese government will establish a Luban Workshop in each Central Asian country. Then in September, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China would establish 10 Luban Workshops in the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (some of those will invariably overlap with the previous announcement regarding Central Asia).
If these workshops are established, there would be over 30 globally. The workshop in Thailand has trained over a thousand people a year. If other workshops operate at a similar rate, these workshops will train tens of thousands per year globally. Further announcements about the establishment of more workshops are likely.
Of course, questions remain over the quality and the connection of skills to demand. Reports from the workshops themselves may overstate their achievements. But China’s overseas economic policy has proven adaptable, and these workshops could well evolve with the changing needs of emerging economies.
The key here is that the Chinese government has been willing to listen to host countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative and marshal plans to transfer industrial skills to these economies.
14. 5 'Truths' Have Guided US Special Operators for 40 Years, but They Face New Tests From Russia and China — And at Home
This is really disappointing.
The article and the author fail to acknowledge that the 5 SOF Truths were developed by the late Colonel John Collins, AKA The Warlord. He wrote them as part of Congressman Earl Hutto's forward to his major report on Special Operations.
And as a recommendation to USSOCOM, all SOF references to the Five Truths should really give credit to Colonel Collins. Every time someone publishes the SOF Truths it should say "by Colonel John Collins."
Colonel Collins embodies the 5th truth, "Most special operations require non-SOF support." He was not a "SOF operator" (though he was a UW planner in Europe during the Cold War) yet he was one of the biggest SOF supporters and did much to educate Congress and the public on the importance of Special Operations to our nation's security.
5 'Truths' Have Guided US Special Operators for 40 Years, but They Face New Tests From Russia and China — And at Home
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320th Special Tactics Squadron airmen gather around their team lead during training at Camp Hansen, Japan, November 19, 2015. (Photo by Senior Airman John Linzmeier/USAF)
For decades the U.S. special operations community has had a set of “truths” to guide how it selects and trains commandos and how it fights.
The U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) used hard-earned lessons and failures to create those five “SOF Truths.”
Now, more than 40 years after the formal establishment of a special-operations structure and after 20 years of war in the Middle East, these guiding principles remain essential as the U.S. faces new tests from China and Russia.
The SOF Truths
Marines go through U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command’s Assessment and Selection course at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, January 30, 2015. (Photo by Sgt. Donovan Lee/USMC)
The first SOF Truth is “Humans are more important than hardware.” As SOCOM states, people, not gear, make the difference. Highly trained individuals working as a team can accomplish any mission even with equipment limitations, but untrained units with all the gear in the world can’t.
The second SOF Truth is “Quality is better than quantity.” A few, carefully selected, well-trained, and well-led special operators are preferable to a larger number of less qualified troops.
The third SOF Truth holds that “Special-operations forces cannot be mass-produced.” Building a fully trained and operational special operator takes years and millions of dollars. Even after they are assigned to a Navy SEAL platoon, a Green Beret detachment, or Marine Raider team, those operators still receive training. You can’t mass-produce such forces without degrading their capabilities.
The fourth SOF Truth is “Competent special-operations forces cannot be created after emergencies occur.” This is probably one of the more important guidelines as it emphasizes the time required to build a competent special-operations force. If the U.S. hadn’t had elite Tier 1 units before finding Osama bin Laden, it probably wouldn’t have been able to pull off that mission.
The fifth SOF Truth holds that “Most special-operations require non-special-operations support.”
Although the “special” in special operations can create a sense of elitism, most commandos require the support of conventional forces to achieve their mission. Whether it’s analysts who provide key intelligence for an operation, the submariners who transport a Navy SEAL team for a clandestine mission, or the Army tankers who support a Delta Force squadron in the field, conventional troops are often key in the success of special-operations forces.
Lost Along the Way?
Competitors from the U.S. take part in the Fuerzas Comando competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, June 21, 2019. (Photo by Spc. Jose Vargas Marmolejos/U.S. Army)
SOCOM designed its five SOF Truths as a set of principles that are applicable in different situations and eras. They are, in essence, the philosophical foundations of the U.S. special operations community that will apply as long as that community exists.
However, the global war on terror brought significant changes to that community. The demands of a two-front war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the need to have a global presence in more than 70 countries forced SOCOM to expand. As a result, the force strayed from its Truths.
“I might characterize this ‘diversion’ more as a struggle for balance,” said Lino Miani, a former Army Special Forces officer.
“During the [global war on terror], our mission required more forces than we had and gave us little time to develop them,” Miani, president of the Combat Diver Foundation, told Insider.
Increased operations put more pressure on the military to bring in more troops.
U.S. Army soldiers of the 75th Ranger Regiment in Iraq, April 26, 2007. (U.S. Army)
Every battalion in the 75th Ranger Regiment jumped from three to four line infantry companies. Each Army Special Forces Group added a fourth battalion of Green Berets. Delta Force and Naval Special Warfare Development Group, which used to be known as SEAL Team 6, each raised an additional assault squadron.
Special operations units were in high demand, conducting near-constant operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. The tempo created concerns about burnout and about slipping standards of conduct and discipline.
SOCOM expanded because the Pentagon ordered it, not because it sought to. Recruiting, training, and retaining special operators is a lengthy and expensive process that can take anywhere from several months to years, depending on the tier of their unit.
The SOF truths were “really stubborn,” said Miani, CEO of Navisio Global LLC, an international security and business consultancy. “Growing the SOF force, particularly the SF [Special Forces] Regiment, proved expensive and difficult, and many subsequent incidents involving discipline and effectiveness could be arguably traced directly back to a standard that was lowered or modified in some way.”
In an era of great-power competition, in which the U.S. military faces increased competition and potential conflict with a near-peer adversary — namely China and Russia — a smooth working relationship between all elements of the Pentagon is key.
Members of SEAL Qualification Training Class 336 at their graduation ceremony in Coronado, California, April 15, 2020. (Photo by MCS 1st Class Anthony W. Walker/U.S. Navy)
Special operations and conventional units must be able to cooperate and interoperate. U.S. special operations forces’ ability to operate with and near conventional forces during the war on terror was “a luxury” that reduced logistics chains, Miani said.
“I suspect very strongly that as we shift once again toward great-power competition as an operating concept, SOF will have to relearn a lot of lessons about supporting itself in remote locations. At the tactical level, this means unconventional logistics that cannot be accomplished by defense contractors with large footprints,” added Miani, who runs AeroEye, a security firm offering aerial surveillance and monitoring.
That challenge underscores the emphasis the SOF Truth puts on planning and on conventional support. The principle of “one team, one fight” might be overused today, but it is of paramount importance in a military setting — and it might not be easy to achieve against a capable opponent.
This article was written by Stavros Atlamazoglou and originally published on Insider.
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.
